‘I can’t stay here. I have to go fight it.’
Most see a raging fire and run in the other direction — but not Micah Reyna. The Hahnville senior is a volunteer fire fighter who was one of the first responders in the Phillips 66 pipeline explosion and fire in Paradis, helping to set up communications for his fellow firefighters and staying at their side for days in the face of an unpredictable, frightening inferno.
“It was scary,” Reyna said. “I was on my way there and I knew, if it blows, then I’m right here. I’m losing my house, I’m losing friends, people (at the fire department) who have raised me since I was 10 years old. I was crying on my way there, knowing all of that. But, like with every fire, once you‘re there, you get that adrenaline rush, and you build your own safety.”
Reyna said there were plenty of unknown factors in the early hours of the fire.
“We didn’t really know what gas was there, but we had heard there was possibly a hydrogen pipeline right next to it, about 20 to 30 yards away,” he said. “And the fire was covering about 100 yards.
We only had about an hour or two before that pipe would have burnt through. We tested the air to see if it was leaking. If it was, there would probably be an explosion in the next few hours.”
The first night, Reyna was on scene from nearly 8 p.m. into the morning hours, arriving at his aunt’s house around 4 a.m. But he couldn’t sleep — his older brother, a longtime firefighter, was out on the scene, and Reyna’s home was in a zone of homes evacuated by St. Charles Parish.
“I told my Mom, ‘Mom, I can’t stay here. I have to go fight it,’ Reyna said. “She didn’t want me to, of course. I was 17 at the time, inexperienced. But she let me … I couldn’t let my brother be out there by himself. He’s got a little girl, too. I didn’t want anything to happen to him, knowing I couldn’t be there to help him.”
Reyna’s interest in becoming a firefighter actually stemmed from his big brother, who joined at the age of 16.
“I was 11 or 12 at the time … I saw where he got to do all these things late at night,” Reyna said. “I thought, ‘that’s what superheroes do.’ I always wanted to be like him.”
It wasn’t the first fire that hit close to home for Reyna, who will be attending Texas A&M in the fall for fire fighting. He works at Zydeco’s, which burned down in Boutte in May of 2016 and has reopened in Paradis. Reyna was one of the firefighters on the scene that day as well.
He says he can’t wait to get to A&M, where he believes he’ll best be prepared.
“Everything they have there is amazing,” Reyna said. “They have the best props (training exercises). Earthquake, car wreck, semi-truck props that simulates if a truck flips over on the freeway and is hanging off, showing you how you would use airbags to lift the truck up, give it a cushion … it will be the hardest training that I’ve ever had.”
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