(Editor’s note: This is the last in a series of articles detailing Staff Writer Kevin Shalvey’s experiences at the Bedford Citizen’s Fire Academy.)

With dark smoke flowing out the door, the four Citizens’ Fire Academy students crouched down on the wooden front steps at 98 Campbell Road.

Over the sucking sound that my self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) mask made when I breathed in, I could hear fire Capt. Mark Klose hollering directions from inside the house on Wednesday, April 18.

Eugene Lavoie went inside first, followed by Nancy and David Larson. Holding onto someone’s boot, I brought up the rear. Following the right wall and keeping on our knees, we made a right-handed sweep of the rooms.

For the final week of the Bedford Citizens’ Fire Academy class, we put on our firefighter protective gear and attempted lifesaving techniques at the Campbell Road house, which is slated for a controlled-burn manuever to make way for future development in the area.

A machine filled the small, square house with harmless smoke. Inside, I couldn’t see because of the smoke and because I had to take my glasses off to put on the SCBA mask.

But, when firefighters, looking for victims or the cause of a fire, are in a burning house, they can’t usually see well either.

“Don’t worry, it’s not about seeing anyway,” Klose said.

It’s about having constant contact with your fellow firefighters and knowing, for the most part, where you are in the house, he said.

In the front room, I banged into a chair.

“When we respond to your house, we don’t know what’s in there. We don’t know every house in Bedford,” Klose said.

Some houses are empty and others have stacks of newspapers everywhere, he said. And firefighters can’t tell which is which from the outside.

In the back room, while Lavoie and the Larsons searched for a “victim,” I had to stay at the door.

Klose told me to keep yelling, “I’m at the door. The door is over here,” and to repeatedly bang my fist on the floor and door.

With Klose telling me to continue talking to my classmates so they could locate the door, it was high stress inside the house. But, it would have been 100 times worse if the house was really on fire and victims were inside.

When we did a walk-around surveillance of the house, Klose said it was built in the 1940s.

Because of the era, it was made with all-natural wood and would produce about 8,000 British Thermal Units of heat if on fire.

A newer house made with plastics and composite material, like many of the houses in Bedford today, might reach about 18,000 BTU, Klose said.

Klose yelling, I’m sure, isn’t even near the pressure a firefighter must feel when 900- degree flames are looming around him or her. I’m sure, though, that those firefighters have had much more than an hour of training.

Earlier that night, as we left the Bedford Safety Complex, my classmate Ken Peterson and I were riding in the open-air seats on Engine 2.

My seat looked, classmate Jeff Benson said, much like a roller-coaster seat, with a small bar that hovered over my lap.

“Yeah, it’s like the old roller coasters. Before they went upside down,” Benson said. And, like a roller coaster taking the slow trip upward, the engine roared up Wallace Road to North Amherst Road. Going in the house, then, would be like going into a haunted house.

After our night of training, we returned to the Safety Complex the next day, Thursday, April 19, for a pizza party and graduation.

We were given certificates and asked what we learned during the six-week session.

Stephen Priest said the firefighters volunteering made the Citizens’ Fire Academy a great class.

“Everybody was unbelievable. They were all accommodating and enthusiastic all night,” he said.

John Herper said the CPR recertification was best.

“It’s a valuable experience, because I’ve taken it four times and it seems to change every time,” he said.

Nancy Larson said the firefighters’ knowledge was extensive.

“The thing that impressed me the most was when we were sitting in the classroom viewing slides. It was all the science that’s involved,” she said.

For me, learning what firefighters actually do during a fire will help with my reporting career. And, I really had a great time in the class.