I panicked when I attended my first fire

Guo Wang, a novice firefighter with the Wangjing Fire Department in Beijing.

Ever since childhood I dreamed of becoming a soldier. The feeling grew, and when I entered college I saw a recruitment poster.

In 2017, after a year at Hebei Vocational College of Rail Transportation, I decided to join the army.

I didn’t realize that I would be assigned to a firefighting unit until the day before I took the train to Beijing from my hometown, Baoding in Hebei province.

When I arrived in the capital I was sent directly to a military camp in the Daxing district, where I spent two months training with many other new recruits.

However, I panicked when the training ended and I was sent to a fire at a residential property.

The pungent odor mixed with burning plastic made me flinch. It was 2 am and I could barely see a thing. The “taste” of the plastic seemed to be going straight down my throat and I was unable to breathe through my nose.

My team had to enter the building and search for bodies. We found two bodies on the ground floor straightaway, but we later discovered that four people had died in the blaze — the other two were found in the basement, where they had crawled to avoid the flames and smoke.

It was then that I realized how strongly people must want to live when they are at death’s door, and that life is so delicate. I was shocked that people could die in such a cruel and brutal way.

At times, I have been horrified by scenes I have witnessed. One time, I saw a girl whose head had been smashed in when she committed suicide. She had jumped from a high tower but hit a platform as she fell. Half her face was missing. She was just 17 years old.

The officer in charge ordered me to place the body on a stretcher and take it to an ambulance. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

One of my colleagues, who was also a novice firefighter, carried the stretcher instead. When he returned, he told us that he wouldn’t be able to sleep that night and didn’t want to work at night anymore.

That was my feeling, too — I felt that if I did that job I would never sleep again.

Guo Wang spoke with Xin Wen.