There I was, the house exploding behind me, as I held the family dog to comfort it as it cowered in the blasts. What hell was I doing?

The scene is New Orleans, 2005. Yep, after Katrina hit. I was 22, and itching for excitement… so when the call went out for volunteers throughout the US, I signed up with the Red Cross. There was a week’s worth of first responder training, and then I flew to Louisiana with almost nothing but a change of clothes. I arrived just as hurricane Rita hit, and I spent the first night in a flooded country bar singing George Jones by candlelight with locals and volunteers.

I was supposed to be there for three weeks and then ship home. But I found the right group of people and took a job as a courier and then a warehouse manager, lasting for five months afterward, when most people had long gone home.

The stories - and trauma and friendship and lessons I learned from old soldiers, punks, locals, religious leaders, and career disaster responders - would take forever for me to tell.

We worked 16-hour days and had one day off a month, during which we often volunteered with another team like the mobile kitchens. I’d wake up from sleeping in the van on the side of the road to someone offering me a flask of vodka, saying “time to go again!” It was a horror show, and much of my resilience and views on life came out of those five months.

I’m getting to the house, and the dog, and how this memory sticks. Bear with me.

A bunch of us - couriers and hazmat units and a few telephone operators - had formed a small family group together. I forget how exactly it started, but we all looked out for each other and partied and cried together.

When we heard Nine Inch Nails was doing a concert in New Orleans, and they were giving free tickets to aid workers, we jumped at the chance for a day off together. Six of us piled into a van, and all but the driver got huge margaritas from a drive-thru bar.

We chatted and sang along to the Black Eyed Peas as we left Baton Rouge, taking a suburban route instead of the highway to avoid traffic. It felt good to be going to a show for the first time in months, and the lineup was great.

And then, on our left, the house just exploded.

The bang was deafening, and we pulled over, immediately sober. A woman ran screaming out of the house and all of us ran up, one calling 911. A few of the bigger guys ran into the newly burning house and grabbed the woman’s dog and handed it to me. It was a big golden retriever type, a beautiful but terrified dog, so I held him close and tried to talk soft, calming words into his ear.

The others kept trying to save some of the woman’s stuff. She was alone, but her boyfriend had oxygen acetylene tanks for welding in the back - he was at the bar but must have left a lit cigarette.

The next explosion hit, bigger than the rest. I tasted hot gravel in my mouth as we all hit the ground, my arm around the dog to keep him safe.

No one was going into the house now. I went across the street into the shade with the dog, whose name I never asked. We waited for the fire department to arrive and some of our crew were handing out bottled water.

I feel almost re-traumatized telling this. In my memory, it was exciting, but when I actually put these words to paper, all the feelings and smells come back hard.

The lack of sleep. The barely held-together mental state I was in through all this. The dog shivering next to me. The feeling I was in way over my head. The chemical smell of the house. Burnt plastic. Black smoke. Distant sirens.

I forget what I told the dog. Maybe words meant for myself instead. My ears were ringing but I kept talking slowly. Then someone took the dog to a safe place, and each of us had to recount our story to the police. They sent us on our way.

My memory goes dark then. I can’t really remember the conversation after the explosions or the feeling in the van as we went on towards the show. I think I was starting to crack as I held onto that scared dog.

The Red Cross had regular psych evaluations and mandatory therapy for all of us. The thing was, anyone who failed or looked like they were in trouble were sent immediately home. I realize now that it was actually a good idea, but at the time, it meant failure.

So we helped each other with tricks to pass the psych evaluations, relying on each other and alcohol to deal with trauma. I didn’t even realize that’s what I was doing. Three packs of cigarettes a day and handles of vodka for the hotel rooms. It’s easy to see why I thought a “real hero” just kept quiet and drank so he could keep going. That was what TV had told me, anyway, and it seemed true.

That almost took twenty years to put behind me and realize the value of therapy. Even to realize that drinking was a trauma response.

But that night, I was too young to know better. I enjoyed the music and danced with my friends. I tried to tell the story to a group of locals my age and they didn’t believe me. Some of my crew had been talking to a reporter and suddenly there was a microphone in my face. I forget what I said.

I must have slept all the way home. We read about it in the newspaper the next day. I remember thinking: “I thought heroes would be more positive than I am.” And not for the last time I considered I wasn’t a hero or strong, just some dude in that time and place that had to do something, even if it was to comfort that dog.

Years later, I remember that dog and holding onto each other and just getting by in a crazed world. Looking back, I have to admit; I was comforted by the dog myself, then and now.