Fire at The State Police Barracks

One thing we were always good for was trying to figure out different ways of training. When a few of us would be bored sitting around the station, and the pinball machine was all played out, someone would suggest going out on the apparatus and flowing water, or hitting a hydrant, or laddering a building.

It was one of those days when a group of us came up with an idea to take an engine up to the abandoned State Police Barracks on Route 1 for some practice with ladders and maybe some forcible entry. The building had been donated to the township fore companies for training after the State Police relocated. After a phone call to the Fire Chief, permission was given to go and practice anything that didn’t involve live fire. This meant we could use ladders, axes, remove doors and saw holes in the roof. The Chief just didn’t want us to use fire with such a limited amount of people going.

Well, that was good enough for us. As long as we got out of the firehouse and did some training, we were happy. Under the direction of Bart, the apparatus driver, who happened to be a former chief officer, we piled on the pumper and held tight as we made our way to the old police barracks.

Once we arrived in the old stone driveway, I joined the crew as we walked through the building. It was a large three story stone house which had been renovated several times, the last being into a Police Barracks. Still new to all this, my eyes widened as we walked from room to room, following Bart as he narrated the tour and explained what we could do and not do.

Back outside we pulled our gear on, coats, boots, helmets and gloves. I was teamed up with a more experienced partner and I followed him around the truck looking for tools we could use. Bart and another firefighter disappeared around the front of the building as I followed my partner inside the back door.

We practiced a few times forcing entry into closet doors, bedroom doors, opening walls up …and everything else we could think of to do with axes, pry bars and halligan bars. We covered the entire first floor while another crew took care of the second floor. Once we exhausted all of our possibilities, we were back outside sitting on the back step of the truck….disappointed that we were already done.

“Hey. Let’s go!” a voice could be heard over the sound of the engine. “Let’s go we have smoke showing!”

In unison, we stood up and turned back toward the building where Bart was walking off the porch waving for us to come toward him.

“Get a crew geared up, stretch a line, let’s go!” Most of us were rookies and instantly felt like the three stooges meeting the keystone cops. I ran to the jumpseat I rode up on and pulled the air pack out of the seat, grabbed the mask hanging above it and walked to the back of the engine. I swung the tank across my shoulder and quickly thought about how to strap it on, and connect the air mask, just like I had been taught not long ago.

I looked up at the side door and saw dark smoke floating out a cross the top of the doorway, and sliding up the side of the building. Questions about how and why this was happening never entered my mind, just what I was going to have to do to put this fire out.

I looked down the side of the engine and someone had already pulled the hoseline off, and stretched it to the stairs to the porch. I pulled my mask and gloves on and grabbed onto the hose line just as the driver started pumping water through it. My partner and I, now instinctively crawling across the porch and in to the darkened door, pulled the hose into the building under close supervision.

It didn’t take long for us to follow the smoke to a small closet on the first floor, where a small fire was started in a drum and was just beginning to lick up the closet walls. We knocked the fire down quickly and then turned to the lessons we just learned about pulling walls checking for hidden fire. Axes and other tools were passed into us from outside and we began opening up.

“Fire on the second floor! Back up crew go!” I turned back and saw firefighters masked up and crawling past us to the staircase to the second floor. The crew disappeared from sight as they ascended into a cloud of smoke on the stairs.

We finished up our overhaul and pulled our hoseline out of the first floor. Once outside, we dropped our airpacks, pulled off our coats and helmets and began wrapping up and packing hose. Soon after, the back up crew came out and joined us cleaning up the equipment. The leaders of this group were smiling and talking quiet then joined us.

“Now listen, as you know we were not allowed to burn up here,” Bart began to explain. “These little fires were done just to give you a taste, but lets not tell anyone this happened, or we all get in trouble.”

We all nodded in agreement. What happened at the police barracks, stayed at the police barracks.

An hour later, we were all back at the station hanging gear up, wiping off the tools. It wasn’t long before I was taking my usual walk around to the side of the firehouse and back to the house up the street where my girlfriend lived. I was looking forward to hanging out with her and watching some TV before taking the long drive home. Unfortunately, my night wouldn’t go that way.

Within one hour of returning from the abandoned barracks building, the pager on my hip beeped again…

“Station 69, Station 54, Station 50, Snorkel 23, Baltimore Pike and Valley Road, at the old Pennsylvania State Police Barracks, Middletown Township, a building fire…”
My heart skipped a few beats as I leaped from the couch and ran as fast as I could toward the firehouse less than a block away. My mind was racing with thoughts of us being responsible for the fire we were being dispatched to.

As I ran around to the front of the station, under the wailing firehouse siren, I noticed other volunteers pulling into the parking lot. I quickly pulled my shoes off and began slipping into the fire boots hanging below my gear.

“Hey we were just up there training!” I yelled over to another guy gearing up. Within minutes, our crew was back on the engine, this time responding with lights and sirens blaring. I strained to hear the radio over the siren but could only tell other apparatus were also responding, and would probably beat us there.

The report of the first-in unit was “smoke showing,” something I didn’t really want to hear. Then all of a sudden our truck went silent. The lights were off and the siren wound slowly until silent. This meant the people on the scene advised it was something small enough for them to handle and we could either return, or proceed into the scene at a reduced speed, as in normal flow of traffic.

From the back step, I strained to look up over the cab of the truck to see what they had. Our truck turned into the side street and stopped. In the front yard already was our Chief. That was a scary sight. Minutes later, our crew was requested to report to the front yard of the building.

I walked up with the group and noticed the engine from Station 69 in the driveway, and a hoseline pulled into the side door. The smoke was no longer visible and it didn’t look like a serious fire, fortunately.

“Who was on the training crew!” The chief’s voice snapped me back to attention as I got closer. Several of us raised our hands. “Get packing! 69’s crew doesn’t touch a thing, I want all of you to pack their equipment, got it!”

If that was all we had for punishment we would have been okay, however, the radio suddenly erupted in activity.

“Hey did you hear that?” a voice yelled from behind the apparatus. “50 just wrecked on the way up here!” Apparently, apparatus from Station 50 responding to the Police Barracks, struck a vehicle while going through an intersection. Fortunately there were no injuries, but we did have to loan them a spare siren which was damaged in the collision.

Needless to say, the lecture we received upon our return to the firehouse was quite long, loud and most of the words the angered Chief used can’t be repeated in mixed company.