A Must Read--from Alan Brunacini's Son.

[Guest guest]

Oh, Christmas Tree

A burning Yuletide bush delivers the gift of experience

By Nick Brunacini

My first fire was exciting and tense. It was also a matter of life and

death—my life and my brother’s hung in the balance. I was a senior in high

school, and my brother was a freshman. The whole family was starting the day out

together, and Dad was getting ready to go off to his fire chief job. Before he

left, he gave my brother and me explicit instructions to get rid of the 12'

Christmas tree that occupied the living room. My brother and I had put this

chore off for quite some time; Valentine’s Day was only a week away.

Dear old Dad was rapidly losing his sense of humor about our lax approach to

Christmas clean-up, so my brother and I figured we would remove the bomb that

occupied the corner of our living room when we got home from school. Mom and Dad

both left for work, and my sister boarded the bus that would deliver her to the

elementary school down the street. Then my brother and I decided that our chore

was too important to put off. For safety’s sake, we stayed home from school to

remove the menace from our home.

The first order of business was to eat. One needs energy when taking on arduous

and life-threatening tasks. The two of us drove to the local Denny’s and

discussed our tree-removal strategy over a couple of Grand Slam breakfast

specials. Our father had instilled the importance of proper planning and

management to us at an early age. By the time we finished breakfast, we were

ready to take on the tree.

When we got home, we started on our chore. The first step was to remove the

ornaments and lights. We carefully and lovingly removed Mr. Snowman, Santa Claus

and the Three Wise Men (which had been skillfully handcrafted out of yarn in the

Philippines), wrapping them in protective tissue and putting them back into

their boxes. Next off were the lights and garland. We had strung popcorn on kite

string. (My mother had used the leftover popcorn to make red and green popcorn

balls. I still had some of this Yuletide confection wedged in my molars.)

After we had the tree stripped down to its natural, albeit dead, state, we

stuffed it into the fireplace. This was the core of the plan we developed over

breakfast. We did not want to hassle with taking the tree to the dump and were

too civic minded to just dump it on the side of the road. The crux of our plan

was the soundness of the fireplace and flue.

Six years earlier, I had helped my father and another psychopath build our

family home. My father and his building buddy were advocates of

over-engineering. The fireplace flue was a vault. Large 1 1â„2 " thick clay flue

tiles lined a chimney made of grouted 8 x 4 x 16 " cinder block. The space

between the flue tiles and the chimney was then filled with enough concrete to

make an average family-size swimming pool. My brother and I reasoned that since

the structure could serve as a launch tube for a Saturn rocket, a Christmas tree

should be a walk in the park. We stuffed the tree up the fireplace, big end

first. We had to do it this way because the bottom of the tree was at least 6'

in diameter. This took about an hour, and it was not as easy as you’d think.

We were both impaled with splinters, bleeding and pissed off by the time we got

the tree into its final resting place. I recall my brother and I took a 5-minute

break in the middle of this disaster to have a fistfight. Things were not going

well, and they were about to get much worse.

I’m sure many of you are wondering why I’m not writing a story about my

first fire as a fireman. The simple reason is because in all actuality, this was

my first fire, and it was much more exciting than the first one I had as a

member of the Phoenix Fire Department. I also had a lot more riding on this one.

After my brother and I packed the ever-expanding tree into the firebox, we lit a

single match, tossed it in and closed the heavy brass screen. Within seconds,

the heat drove us across the living room. It is the first time I ever witnessed

radiant heat and convection currents. Our clothes were hot. My brother had a

look of abject fear on his face. I’m sure I wore the same look. We were

convinced that we were in the process of burning down the fire chief’s house.

I looked at my brother and told him the whole thing was his fault.

In the span of just a few seconds, we had gone from a single lit match to

nuclear fusion. As if the heat and blistering flames weren’t enough, they were

quickly joined by small pinesap detonations. It sounded like mortar shells going

off. The heavy fireplace screen kept the incendiary embers from flying out and

setting the living room ablaze. The fire was burning so bright that it hurt our

eyes to look at it. After a couple of minutes, we fled the interior and went out

front to see how the chimney was doing.

My brother and I stood hypnotized and helpless in our front yard. We had only

lived in our home for six years. There couldn’t have been that much soot,

creosote and unburned fuel stored in such a new chimney flue. But there was 40

feet of fire blowtorching out the top of the chimney. My mother and father’s

anniversary was the following week, and my brother and I were in serious peril

of burning down their dream home. We couldn’t blame this on my sister. Our

parents were too smart.

The entire event did not last 5 minutes. As my brother and I stood there

weak-kneed, the fire quickly died. We ventured back into the house to find no

more damage than a light haze and what felt like a 25-degree temperature

increase in the living room. The fireplace was devoid of any signs that anything

had been burned in it, let alone 1 million BTUs of last year’s holiday tree.

My first fire left me both invigorated and emotionally drained. That day I

learned how important it is to start your day off right with a nutritious

breakfast, to over-engineer safety devices and to dispose of flammables

properly.