You feel the heat on the back of your neck first.

Smoke billows into the room in blinding black clouds.

You fall to your knees to escape the hot temperature. With an oxygen tank strapped to your back, it’s awkward to move.

The room pulses with heat, and you can hear a chainsaw ripping through the walls. It’s 200 degrees where you crouch – above you, closer to 2000.

You’ve entered this structure to save its occupants as your fellow firefighters attack the blaze. You crawl, using your flashlight to see in front of you.

You’ve got maybe five minutes until flashover, when the entire room will combust. Every second counts.

Sound frightening?

This is the reality for our volunteer firefighters.

When the fire department asked Sounder editorial staff to be part of a live fire training, we immediately said yes.

We were each fitted with a protective suit, an oxygen mask, a tank, boots, gloves, and more. We would be inside an old wooden house as it was intentionally set ablaze. We’d have two seasoned firefighters by our side as we navigated through the smoke and heat.

Although we were prepared, experiencing live fire is terrifying. We were nearly flat on the floor, black smoke rendering us entirely blind.

We had to maintain complete faith in firefighters Rich Harvey and Patrick Shepler, who stayed just inches away, monitoring our every move.

When you’ve got heat closing in on you, heavy gear on your body, a mask over your entire face, a helmet strapped snugly to your head, and zero visibility, one of your biggest challenges is fending off claustrophobia.

What we experienced was just a taste of what our fire department volunteers do every time they respond to a call. Let’s give credit to our volunteers for doing a very tough job. They risk their lives to save ours.