Face to face with the insidious killer in the smoke house

Flames work in one way, smoke works in another. It creeps, it swirls, it billows, it blots out the flames, it finds its way insidiously into every corner of one or more rooms while filling the lungs of anyone unfortunate enough to be trapped inside.

Any gardener who has been caught on the wrong side of a bonfire in full spate when the wind changes will know that a few inhalations of smoke are enough to induce coughing fits, and that's just in the open air.

Magnify this several times in a building, add the effects of toxic fumes emitted by furniture or electrical equipment and you have the sort of scenario for which firefighters are trained at Easingwold.

The uncontrollable fireball that results from pouring water on a chip pan fire is familiar from demonstrations at shows and other public events. Demonstrating the effects of smoke is more difficult, because you need a confined space in which to do it.

That is where the smoke house comes in at the Easingwold training centre, opened two years ago as a replacement for a more basic one at Ripon.

Externally the brick-built house looks like an ordinary two-storey semi-detached, but inside there is the minimum of furniture, some of it already blackened by smoke, and footsteps ring on bare metal stairs.

Next door is a control panel which enables instructors to make training as realistic as possible, with temperatures to match, by filling the house with cosmetic smoke and adding flames produced with either real materials or propane gas.

On what turns out to be one of the hottest days of the year, wearing full firefighting gear and breathing apparatus, I have volunteered to be taken into the unknown.

There is no shortage of topical pegs on which to hang this subject. Only a few days before my visit to Easingwold the brigade had renewed its appeal for people to fit smoke alarms, and make sure they work, after a woman and a three-year-old girl died in a house blaze at York. Firefighters discovered a smoke alarm with no battery.

My guide and central trainer, station officer Carl Boasman, knows some of the firefighters who attended that incident and he says they felt it deeply.

In Richmondshire, a senior fire officer has appealed for people to nominate elderly neighbours and relatives for free smoke alarms, while 20 children from across the district have just been given a vivid safety message at Richmond fire station. And at the station in Easingwold, just down the road from the training centre, there is a desperate shortage of part-time community firefighters.

My visit to Easingwold coincides with the second week of a course for part-timers. From a safe distance, I watch them donning breathing apparatus to tackle a fire in an old Ford Escort, set ablaze with barbecue lighting fluid, a pile of orange boxes and propane gas.

The group includes 39-year-old Neil Coates, who is already a qualified firefighter at RAF Leeming but who needs additional training in areas not covered by the services if he is to join the part-time North Yorkshire station at Bedale.

Watching is the easy bit, but now my turn has come. A visit to the kit store produces a helmet and a fireproof tunic and trousers, which seem to equal my own body weight, but footwear poses a slight problem. There are no boots left in my size ten, so I have to go one step up.

Clumping around like Frankenstein's monster in size 11 boots, I trudge towards the smoke house to have the breathing apparatus fitted. Judging by some of the stuff already leaking into the summer air, Mr Boasman has got a nice little conflagration going in there.

More weight is added as a yellow cylinder capable of delivering 25 minutes of compressed air is strapped to my back. The black face mask goes on, a tube is plugged in at the side, I take a deep breath and there is a disconcerting bang as the artificial air supply kicks in.

When Mr Boasman opens the door, releasing an initial rush of smoke, I can see no points of reference, nothing but a greyish fug penetrated only by the beam of his powerful torch.

This turns out to be only a general illustration for my benefit and the conditions cannot be regarded as typical. In a real incident, where firefighters work at least in pairs, smoke can be too thick even for a torch.

In some cases firefighters working their way through a smoke-logged building will be connected by a guideline. In others they will be following intensive training methods which have taught them to adopt well defined patterns of movement and touch to navigate themselves, maintaining constant contact with one another, building up a mental picture of a room and its geography. As Mr Boasman says, it's anything but guesswork.

On top of all that they have to remember the limits of their breathing apparatus, which incorporates electronic devices for monitoring air pressure and surrounding temperatures as well as a manual distress signal.

My breathing seems to be magnified tenfold under the mask as we delve deeper into the smoke house, turn the first corner and feel our way along a wall, our feet methodically sweeping across the floor in a searching pattern.

Mr Boasman cuts an almost ethereal figure a few steps in front, his torch travelling up, down, side to side. Its beam reveals an outline of bare brickwork, a glimpse of a ravaged settee, a chair on which someone could have been sitting. There is nothing but silence and that ubiquitous smoke.

We reach what I think is another corner, or is it the first one all over again? By now I have no idea where we are, and we are only on the ground floor. We could be going round in circles, for all I know. Mr Boasman turns and I hear his voice: "Are you all right?" I raise a thumb, but the gesture lacks conviction.

Steps continue to be agonisingly slow and the equipment I am wearing and carrying is beginning to weigh heavily. I am soaked in sweat and I remember that I must try to breathe normally beneath the tightly fitting mask. We have covered only a few yards but they seem like miles.

Despite Mr Boasman's reassuring presence, I am becoming increasingly apprehensive. I can go neither backwards nor sideways. The only way is forward, relying on Mr Boasman's every step. I feel like a man who has lost his way in a desert sandstorm without a compass, or a sailor who is becalmed at sea without charts in a freak fog.

Suddenly, as if a light has been switched on, I see the afternoon sun and I realise it is all over. We went through the front door of the smoke house and have just come out at the back.

The breathing apparatus is removed but, after a brief rest, it goes back on when I tell Mr Boasman that I am willing to accompany him up the stairs. He adds some gas-powered flames and we take a thermal imaging camera. I get no further than the landing, however, before I have to concede that the fiercely demanding conditions have finally beaten me.

Mr Boasman, who lives at Northallerton, says later: "It's like blind man's buff and it's daunting if you've never done it before. You have to be fit to do this job.

"You have to imagine what it's like for firefighters to have to go into a completely unfamiliar building full of smoke, search for people and then find their way out again carrying someone who might weigh 14 stone.

"Some cylinders can be charged up to give 45 minutes of air, but you have to take into account the endurance of a firefighter."

The smoke house is used for teaching basic breathing apparatus procedures and I realise now that my experience, in temperatures of about 70C, was comparatively mild. The really hot stuff is brewed up in special metal compartments, where students learn how fire behaves and develops in temperatures that can reach 800C.

They were not operating during my visit, but Mr Boasman showed me two of the dramatic results - a blackened helmet and a visor partly melted by the intense heat.

As he says, you have to be fit to become a firefighter. Thankfully for the rest of us, there are plenty of people who want to follow that route.