Burn
I wish my head could
forget what my eyes have seen
in 32 years of firefighting.
Why do you do this?
I love my job.
It does... it's something
with adrenaline
that gets you pumped up.
And here we go!
Got to regroup, keep it
moving, that's the best I can do.
30 a night, times 30 years,
is how you burn a city
down... one at a time.
It was probably the most
beautiful city back in the day,
you know, when there was
factories everywhere,
there was people spending
money around here.
The car industry was booming.
It was much easier
to get a job and it was more
of a family atmosphere then.
You didn't have to lock your doors.
I grew up in Detroit.
I've seen the City change from
a nice, decent neighborhood
look like bombs have hit them.
Most of the neighborhoods
are blighted, vacant lots.
Next to vacant dwellings.
We've got probably
one, two, three, four...
six, seven, eight vacants
on my block.
It kind of hurts me to see
the City getting destroyed like this,
I feel like I'm in the
burning of Rome sometime.
Population loss, I've
watched it go from a city
of one-point-eight million
to seven-hundred thousand,
leaves a lot of vacant homes.
The bottom line is everybody
that can seems to be fleeing.
I mean, this has been
Katrina without the hurricane.
Our city is crumbling around us.
Imagine two-thirds of the
people in your city disappeared,
but they left their houses,
their garbage, their furniture.
As long as
there's people leaving,
as long as there's vacant
houses, there's going to be fires,
it's called fire load,
there's more things to burn.
The neighborhood of our
district is, statistically,
earth for crime, for poverty.
So they were shooting, too?
And the other
one was right there.
High murder rate,
Police telling me this is
not just a murder, but an execution.
Crimes that you never
would, in a million years,
thought would happen
in your neighborhood.
In the City of
Detroit last year alone,
we had over 30,000 actual fire calls.
I mean, we're in trouble,
we need help.
This don't have
nothing to do with the City,
this is must my own
personal edge.
My name is David
Parnell, I'm a FEO,
Field Engine Operator,
Dave Parnell and I
were hired about the same time,
You feel safe when
he's behind the wheel.
seconds of being on the fire drop.
That's what I do.
The soul, if you
will, of the firehouse.
respected by everybody here.
Dave is old.
He has to retire.
He's like Papa Bear.
He's in there, we catch him
nodding off in there a little bit.
He's watching an old
Western, black and white.
It's okay, he's earned it.
Sometimes, I
just need a little Parnell.
What is a man's worth
that doesn't make the
world a better place?
What's a gang besides a
family looking for a home?
Think about it.
My favorite one is when he says,
"I wish my mind could forget
what my eyes have seen..."
Could forget
what my eyes have seen.
We call it bullshit.
Yeah!
But it is comforting.
It is totally comforting.
Well, never get that from Dan.
Come on Dave,
I need some bullshit.
You're going to get
some bullshit from Parnell.
You know, I've
been here so long, you know,
you feel like a fixture,
thirty-three years.
Yeah, thirty-three
years of firefighting,
then I'll retire, I'll be 60.
Are you ready to go?
Absolutely...
no, not at all.
This is my neighborhood,
this is where I live,
this is where I fight my fires.
You used to could walk
in this neighborhood.
Well, now, you're pretty much
afraid to walk to the corner.
This is where some
of the firefighters lived
and grew up, right here.
And now look at it, that
was a fire job right there,
you can tell by the soot that
was in the front of the dwelling.
We've been to that
apartment building over there,
at least a half-a-dozen
times that I know of.
man out of this one, 18011,
out of that one.
When you look around the City,
you look at the burnt-out homes.
That's when you get this
attitude, "This is no good."
And I don't understand it, I'm
not going to understand it.
If you live in the community in which
you work, how do you not do something
for the people that are around you?
You have an opportunity
to make change.
Report of a growing fire...
Ninety-five percent
of what I do is arson.
Very rarely do we have
a legitimate fire.
We can't get out!
Somebody went in
through the back door,
went upstairs, and
they lit the place.
You go up stairs you can smell
some kind of accelerant or something.
I can't picture
another city that's like this
where so many of the fires are arson.
It's beyond me why people would
want to burn their own city down.
There's arson for profit.
There's arson for revenge.
And then there's just
arson for kicks.
It used to infuriate me that
this was going on night after night,
and nobody, nobody seemed to care.
But I mean, we're doing this
for the people that are left,
and for the houses are occupied.
You got to be tough.
The exhaustion
can be depressing.
To blow off steam,
you probably have ten methods
for every individual, you know?
We'll clean it.
Whoa!
Weird pink nursing home.
Nice.
Ohhhh.
Holy cow!
Whoo!
Yeah, the DFD swagger.
I mean, we're above the law.
can do whatever they want.
Cowboys in a big rodeo.
We do things a little
differently, rigs pull up.
Oh, it's in the basement.
Guys go right in, we
advance to the heart of the fire.
Other guys are fighting
fires, you see water shooting in,
we fight fires, you'll
Whoa! You got me!
Detroit puts the
fires out from the inside out.
Plain and simple.
When we go on a
fire, we're kind of hyped up.
We're like, "Let's go!"
"Ah!" You know, you're tackling this
thing like it's some type of dragon.
And we don't really lose too often.
Hot as f***ing sh*t!
We have people that come from
across country, around the world
Well, I don't know
if I should say that,
but we fight fires with balls.
That's...
It's the best
boys' club in the world!
We get paid to be here.
I like coming to
work., I look forward to it.
I think you'll hear that
from most of the guys,
ask anyone in the private sector,
and you'll probably hear differently.
This job is fun!
You get to turn the
lights on, the siren on,
you get to run through red lights.
Let's go!
hours, since there's a closeness,
The busier you
are, the more you bond.
We're tight, it's a brotherhood,
that's just how we roll.
That's the team that we
have, the family that we have,
the trust that we have
for one another.
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"Burn" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 8 Nov. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/burn_4838>.
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