Born to run
It begins with a voice on the radio. Pasay, for verification. Shouts and laughter at a corner of the cement driveway, someone tosses down a hand of cards. For verification, says the voice on the radio. Then — first alarm. The boys confer — Pasay is a half-hour away, there are many volunteer teams in Manila. They wait for the alarm to rise.
When they decide to run, the air crackles with electricity. The fire chief’s voice is calm. “Tatakbo tayo.”
There is no pole to slide down, only a small square room with a battered black couch before a small TV. The floors are tiled shiny white, uneven at the corners. The boys say they did the tiling themselves.
Feet are shoved into black-and-yellow boots. Fire pants are tugged up over cutoff shorts and jeans, heavy helmets tossed up to those waiting at the top of the truck. The siren roars. It’s nine in the evening and there’s a fire, and the boys of Talayan’s volunteer brigade whoop out into the night.
Keno drives — the 21-year-old deputy fire chief Kenneth Evangelista, who is taking up nursing and whose pretty girlfriend sometimes gets jealous of the fact he stands her up to go fight fire. Keno has the look and disposition of a teddy bear, big and bright-eyed, always laughing; the boy who is not old enough to drink in certain countries thunders through Metro Manila traffic with a steady hand and a steadier eye. There was a fire at a factory some time ago, he tells me, where a boiler exploded into his face. The brigade rushed him to a hospital and had him treated. Then they ran off again to kill another fire—along with spiky-haired Keno, who refused to be left behind. He says that although people might not believe it, they’re all in this to help—“Para sabihin ko sa mga magiging apo ko na may natulong ako sa ibang tao na walang kapalit.”
The truck races down Edsa. The lights flash, blinding red and white. The boys at the top of the truck gesture at drivers, calmly directing traffic while cursing at jeepney drivers under their breaths. Everything is a blur of speed and color and whipping wind. There is now word that the fire department has finally called for assistance. The red truck is halfway there, and the boys are in full gear.
Joseph Lim, the clean-cut president with the toothpaste-ad grin and glasses, works as a manager in his family’s construction company. He says it is the camaraderie that brings the group together. They are not friends. They are family, brothers. They can go into a fire knowing nobody will be left behind. “Kung may usok, kung ma-suffocate ka, wala na, bye-bye ka na.”
The group is a strange mix; age is the only common denominator. Talayan’s volunteers are some of the youngest in the country. When they decided to open the department, their oldest was 24. There are radio technicians, tricycle drivers, students like Keno; husbands, brothers, sons. Emong Bandiogue, nearly 18, is the youngest. When he was 13 and the group was based in Mayon, he attached himself to the brigade, working in a volunteer’s car wash and tagging along to fires to unravel hoses. His mother is dead, his father jobless, and he says he did most of his growing up with the volunteers. When the group changed headquarters, Emong was jobless and out of school. His parents were poor, and had taken him out after he graduated from elementary school. He says he didn’t want to begin again.
The boys offered to take him along with them to Talayan. Now he lives there full-time in a small room with four bunks and a door—a full-fledged volunteer who takes on dishwashing duties for his 20-or-so big brothers.
One day, said Joseph, they realized Emong was growing up, gaining weight, getting taller. And they worried: that he would grow up without any sort of schooling, that he would have no foundation, no job. It was an ordinary day, over cards and jokes that they decided to send Emong to school.
Money is tight for the boys, diesel expenses alone can reach P8,000 a month, along with electricity, food, equipment and truck maintenance. It takes P20,000 to outfit one fireman with the basics. Twenty-nine-year-old fire chief Eric Madrid says that although there are some volunteer groups who can afford to equip their members, the boys outfit themselves. Monthly dues to the brigade are dependent on how much anyone has at the moment. It was only last year that they finished paying off their own fire truck. They raise money at training workshops, and offer their services to movie studios. “You know, if they need rain in a scene.”
Most of the money comes from their pockets. As for Emong’s schooling, they’re not that worried. Public school is cheap; allowances and books are the only real expenses. And if Emong decides to go to college, they shrug—“Bahala na.” Emong, a shy boy who is sometimes surprised into a grin, says he is willing.
“We told Emong,” says Joseph, “that if he has problems with his grades, he won’t be allowed to be a firefighter.” Emong is now declaring his wholehearted desire to hit the books.
The Pasay fire is already clawing through wooden houses by the time the truck shudders to a stop. Hoses creep across sidewalks. The street is slick with water and the blooming red reflection of the fire. The volunteers come from everywhere—Binondo, Pasig, Pasay, Manila—sharing water and hoses and the grim duty of saving what is left. Joseph says the ratio is one government firefighter to three volunteers. There are stories, told by volunteers from other brigades, that the Bureau of Fire Protection firefighters are sometimes compelled to sell off their own equipment to augment salaries, and walk into fires in ancient gear.
The road is crowded with onlookers, their fascinated faces trained on the blaze. A young woman has been cornered by a TV crew and is being asked about how she feels about her home burning down—the same home whose door is now a yawning hole, and scraps of curtain flutter out of windows.
At past one, the voice on the handheld radio says the fire is out. The boys climb up the truck, drive down Edsa to blasting music, and head back home to wait for another fire.
