As he pressed his body as close to the floor as possible, an attempt to protect himself from the clouds of black smoke and fire billowing around him, Whitfield Brooks said a prayer for God to show him the way out of the inferno.
Less than 10 minutes earlier, Whitfield, 19, son of Greenwood Police Chief Gerald Brooks, entered a burning house on Deadfall Road, prepared to battle the blaze as a firefighter with the Northwest Volunteer Fire Department.
The fire started in the kitchen of the house on the morning of Oct. 19, just two hours after Whitfield had finished his 24-hour shift as a paid, full-time firefighter with the Greenwood Fire Department.
As a child, Whitfield said he grew up watching his father work as an arson investigator and volunteer firefighter with Northwest.
Though he originally planned to go to school at The Citadel, by the time he graduated high school, and after volunteering with Northwest, he knew he wanted to become a firefighter as well.
For his graduation present, his parents, Gerald and Donna, sent him to a seven-week firefighters academy program. While there, an opening arose at the Greenwood Fire Department, and a few days after graduating the program, he was offered the job.
"It"s really a challenge. It"s you against the fire," he said of firefighting. "You know that you"re helping other people. You work together to put the fire out, and you"ve beat something that"s really dangerous."
On the morning of the Deadfall Road house fire, Whitfield drove to his parents" Greenwood home for a visit before he went to his apartment for breakfast.
"The last thing my dad told me was to be careful," Whitfield said.
Within moments of arriving at his apartment, a call from dispatch about a kitchen fire sent him back out the door.
"I figured it would be pretty quick, not much to it," he said.
When the fire engines arrived on the scene, Whitfield, who had arrived at the home a few minutes earlier, suited up and prepared to douse the home with water.
Whitfield and fellow firefighter Josh Strange used a water line to put out the flames rising from the porch and then began to work their way into the house.
With visibility severely limited because of thick, black smoke, the men began feeling their way along the hallway wall, inching closer to the kitchen and the heart of the blaze.But the intense heat roaring through the house caused the ceiling to collapse, and debris rained down around Whitfield, blocking his escape route.
Strange, who was closest to the door, was able to escape.
"At the time of the fire, it"s black and orange (in the house) and you operate by feeling. When the ceiling collapsed, it changed the feel of the house," Whitfield said. "The fire was in front of me and then, just like that, it was all around. I knew I needed to get out because it wasn"t going well."
As the fire raged, he said he sprayed water on his body and began to crawl on the floor, searching for a door leading to safety. He activated his Personal Alert Safety System (PASS), which makes a noise to alert other firefighters of his location.
"About 75 percent of my mind was concentrating on the fact that I was burning " it was a pretty powerful thought," he said. "It did cross my mind that I was getting ready to die and that I was enjoying my last moments."
When his oxygen mask light began to flash, alerting Whitfield that he was running low on air, he said he screamed a prayer over the fire"s roar.
"It was quick and it was loud, and it was "Please show me the way out because I can"t find it," he said.
At that same moment, on the other side of the inferno"s walls, Coronaca Volunteer Fire Department firefighter Al Tumblin was walking behind the house and heard Whitfield"s PASS alarm.
"He (Tumblin) was saying a prayer at the same time I was saying a prayer, and they came together somewhere on their way to the top," Whitfield said. "They met up and it worked, and our prayers were answered. I couldn"t have gotten out without God."
He saw a "square of light" pop up before him, as firefighters on the outside knocked out one of the home"s windows, and after knocking the sash out with his arm, Whitfield dived onto the ladder and out of the blaze.
With first- and second-degree burns covering his arms, lower back, side and thighs, Whitfield said the pain was overwhelming, even as EMS technicians administered morphine.
Within moments, Gerald Brooks received a call from Northwest Assistant Fire Chief Keith Alexander. Because it wasn"t the first time Gerald and Donna had received a call about Whitfield being injured, they said they didn"t panic at first word of the accident.
"You"re always concerned, but I tend to be an optimist," Gerald said. "When I got to the emergency room entrance, I saw his (Whitfield"s) turnout gear. By looking at it, I knew he"d been in a pretty intense situation. A fellow firefighter was being treated there, and the look on his face gave me reason to be concerned."
Gerald said when he first saw Whitfield at the hospital, he could tell he was in excruciating pain.
"Every muscle was contracted, his face was distorted and his jaw was clenched," he said, adding that he watched as doctors administered a third round of morphine. "In my line of work, you see a lot of tragedy and victims.
It"s tougher when it"s somebody you know, and it"s even tougher when it"s somebody you love."
Within minutes of getting to the hospital, Gerald made the call to Donna, who was at work at the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection in Greenwood.
"I remember going back to the emergency room, and a wall of men met me," Donna said.
Two of the men were Self Regional Hospital security guards. The other two were chaplains.
"I thought he had died," Donna said, through tears. As the men tried to tell her that she did not want to see Whitfield, she said she told them otherwise. "I made it clear to them that I was going to see him. I don"t care how bad it is; a parent needs to see their child.
"When I got to him, Whitfield looked at me and said, "Hey mom, this is the first time you"ve seen my tattoo, isn"t it"?" Donna said, laughing and adding that the tattoo is of a fire emblem. "I felt a lot of relief, but we didn"t know enough to know we weren"t out of the woods yet."
Because Whitfield"s skin continued to burn after leaving the fire " Donna compared it to taking a roast out of the oven " many of his burns began to develop into ones more serious. Doctors worried that his lungs and airway might have been damaged in the blaze, and they needed to insert a breathing tube as a precaution. They also prepared to transport him to the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta, Ga.
"For me, that was one of the hardest things to do " to tell him goodbye before they put him on a helicopter to fly to Augusta," Donna said.
Because doctors still didn"t know if his airway was damaged, Donna said she feared it could be the last time she said goodbye to her son. Doctors later informed her that Whitfield"s lungs and airway were not burned.
At the burn center, doctors first assessed Whitfield"s condition before performing surgery to graft a special fabric over his wounds that acted as a synthetic skin.
During his four-day stay in Augusta, Whitfield"s parents were visited by the parents of another firefighter, Jeff Chavis, who was burned four years earlier in a blaze and received treatment at the center. Chavis, who has a building at the center named after him, died from his injuries.
"The hospital called them and told them they had another young firefighter, and they dropped what they were doing to come see us," Donna said. "It meant so much to us to hear them talk. They were so positive and upbeat, and only four years ago they had lost their son."
The family said it meant a lot to see the see the support from firefighters, who visited Whitfield while in the hospital and at his parents home, where he was sent to recover after leaving Augusta.
Donna said the outpouring of support from the Greenwood community "overwhelmed" the family, and even strangers approached her offering kind words and help.
Though the ordeal was difficult for the entire family, including Whitfield"s younger sisters, Laura Beth, 17, and Catherine, 6, it has also brought them closer together, Donna said.
"We all knew that we had a lot to be thankful for, but we knew this Thanksgiving that we had just that much more to be thankful for," Donna said.
Whitfield has now been able to return to his apartment, and though he continues to have to make regular trips to his parents" house and the hospital for bandage changes and checkups, his wounds are healing.
The skin covering his burns is still sensitive, and he can"t return to work until his doctors have cleared him.
Because the injury happened while Whitfield was working as a volunteer, workers" compensation from the city isn"t available, so, for a time following the accident, Greenwood firefighters volunteered their off-time to work for Whitfield so the teenager would continue to receive a paycheck.
Whitfield said he is now using the employee leave-transfer pool " a method where employees donate their off hours into a pool that can be used by other employees " to support him until he returns to the station.
He said the brotherhood among the firefighters and their show of support during his ordeal still makes him emotional.
"It gets a lump in your throat," Whitfield said. "It"s hard for words to explain how that makes you feel."
Whitfield has since made a trip back to Deadfall Road to take photos of the house where he nearly lost his life, and he said the journey offered some sense of closure.
"It's nice to go back and see what the house looked like. It answers questions," he said.
When he does answer his next call, Whitfield said this fire will "be in the back of his mind," but he won"t let it stop him from doing what he loves.
"I can't wait to go back," he said.
