CLEVELAND — For Cleveland Fire Cadet Josh Engle, fighting fires is a family business.
“My oldest brother and my youngest brother are both on the job,” he told News 5. But, when he enrolled in the Cleveland Fire Academy this year, he found a second family waiting for him.
“Just in a short amount of time, you feel like you’ve known them your whole life,” he said. Thursday, Engle and the 34 other cadets in his class put their camaraderie and skills to the test. They got to battle a live burn at a property provided by Cuyahoga Land Bank.
“We go inside, low visibility, hard to see,” Engle said. “It’s smoky, very hot, and, um, a lot of fun.”
It’s a moment Fire Chief Anthony Luke said the cadets have been working toward for months.
“That they can take all the knowledge and the skills that we’ve given them, put it together, and overall stay calm,” he said.
Just like in an actual emergency situation, anything can go wrong.
“At a live fire, we could have equipment go bad, we could have apparatus go bad, but we still have to perform,” said Luke.
It wasn’t anything these cadets couldn’t overcome with the teamwork that had been instilled from the very beginning of their training. Battalion Chief Tom Schloemer told News 5 that’s very intentional.
“We don’t do anything alone,” he said. “So that’s our expectation for them. So, everything from sweeping the floors to folding hose to putting equipment away, cleaning, mopping; all of that’s done as a team within their company.”
“There’s something about going through all that together and teaming up and going into a house and putting out a fire that really creates a bond that I can’t explain,” added Engle. He also said the training isn’t easy.
“We’ll be out there chopping with axes and chopping telephone poles and all kinds of stuff and throwing ladders and climbing all over the place and be doing that for a long time, sweating and getting a good workout in.”
But the training paid off. Everything they ran into the burning buildings for training this week, the job was hard-wired into their bodies.
“When you get the call, it’s muscle memory; you just go in and get it done,” Engle said.
Now the cadets are ready for any crisis. And when everyone else is running away, Engle told News 5: “I’m going in.”
Watch live and local news any time:
Download the News 5 Cleveland app now for more stories from us, plus alerts on major news, the latest weather forecast, traffic information and much more. Download now on your Apple device here, and your Android device here.
You can also catch News 5 Cleveland on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, YouTube TV, DIRECTV NOW, Hulu Live and more. We're also on Amazon Alexa devices. Learn more about our streaming options here.
