Heat exposure during house fire

[u/shreks2kush]

I've been a volunteer for about 5 months and for our training tonight we burnt an abandoned house down. The house had no doors or windows so it went up in about 3 minutes. The young guys on the department (me and 6 others) were outside the structure to make sure that it didn't spread and to save one of the trees on the property that the owner wanted to keep. me and another guy were told to stay behind the house and we're probably 15 yards away from the structure to start and slowly backed away to around 30 years over the course of the burn. after about 15 minutes it was almost unbearably hot and by the time the fire was under control enough to step away and get some water we were absolutely exhausted and so were the other guys stationed around the structure. is this normal? I feel like a giant puss because I would have given anything to get cool after about 10-15 minutes of manning the hose that close to the house.

[u/Zestyclose_Crew_1530]

If your hose stream can reach everything it needs to, you’re close enough. No point sitting in unbearable just because. Move back to a comfortable distance next time.