First-In on The Building Fire

It was a garage we had driven past almost daily. Not far from the firehouse, and set back in the woods at the top of a narrow driveway. We never really took notice to the garage but suddenly it would become a landmark to those firefighters responding to the call.

It was a late afternoon and the call took us by surprise. We had been just relaxing killing some time around the station, and planning our evening activities when the pagers went off. The few of us in the crew room immediately leapt to our feet and ran for the door leading to the gear racks. Voices shouted to each other over the firehouse siren wailing outside.

“What’s the address?”

“Is that ours?’

“We are assisting 71!”

Any time we had a call voices would yell over the blaring siren trying to get any detail we could about the call we were about to face. They say firefighters aren’t afraid of fire, but it sure seemed like it was nervous energy being released with all the persistent questions about the calls we went on.

One or two more volunteers pulled in for the call before we rolled out the large bay doors. I was in the pack seat behind the driver and my partner for the call was Wayne, in the pack seat behind the officer.

Our ride would only last a few minutes because the address was on the same street as the firehouse. The dispatcher had announced the address and advised it was a reported garage fire. This created images of a garage with cars in it, attached to a house, like a lot of large houses in the area. As the engine roared up over the hill and around the bend, Wayne and I both stood up in the open seats and peeked up over the top of the cab, scanning the sky for signs of smoke.

Responding to calls became an art of balance as the truck raced through streets, you were still buttoning your coat or pulling your helmet strap tighter, and strapping on the air pack. All this was being done on the outside of the apparatus in those days. We always had one hand tightly on a hand rail somewhere while the other one completed the task. Some days you would be on the back step trying to button your coat or pull up your boots. Other days you were lucky enough to ride in a seat and felt a little bit safer on the way to the scene. Nine times out of ten, even though seats were provided, we would find ourselves standing, trying to get the first look at the approaching fire scene.

“Hey you ready?” Wayne yelled over the engine cow to me as the siren wound down.

I nodded back to him as I pulled the straps tighter on my air pack. Wayne reached over and gave me a high five, obviously pumped up for the possible fire fight.
As we rounded the last bend, we saw another engine approaching from the opposite direction from the neighboring department. We met at the end of the driveway we were both searching for. The driver of the other engine waved us into the driveway first, but we still couldn’t see much, our view being blocked by so many trees.

Our driver pointed our truck into the narrow driveway and slowly made his way through the trees. My heart raced as I realized we were now the first truck to arrive and would be the first guys inside if we actually had something burning. Seconds seemed like hours, but when the truck finally reached the clearing at the top of the driveway, the garage came into view. It was a large two story four car garage, with a wood shop on the second floor. At first I was relieved that nothing seemed to be burning, but that changed suddenly.

Our apparatus pulled up to the right of the building leaving room for other trucks if needed.

“Back there!” Wayne yelled to me pointing to the rear of the building.

I looked back down the side of the large garage and saw what appeared to be brownish smoke wafting up into the trees. From inside the front door came a fire officer from the neighboring company.

“Get me an attack line right through here into the second floor, looks like it’s toward the rear up there…” the officer yelled at nobody in particular.

I stepped off the truck and reached up through the loops of the preconnected hose. I pulled the hose off the truck and began to walk it out toward the front door. Wayne quickly joined me at the doorway pulling on his air mask as I pulled on my gloves. I quickly walked through the door searching for access to the second floor, making it half the length of the long garage before realizing the stairs were just inside the door.

Wayne and I humped the hose in through the door and up the wooden staircase. Once upstairs the visibility became zero with thick black smoke. I followed closely behind Wayne, crawling on our knees trying to make our way back to the seat of the fire. We followed what felt like a narrow aisle between furniture and bookcases and other unidentifiable objects. Suddenly, our progress stopped, but I could feel the heat searing my ear lobes just below my helmet.

“Dead end!” Wayne yelled through his mask to me. I felt to my left and right and couldn’t tell what it was but we were suddenly boxed in. The only way to go was straight back behind us, the same way we came in. The darkness seemed to get thicker if anything, and before I had a chance to turn around, Wayne stood up in front of me. I glanced up over his shoulder and saw the entire opposite end of the garage engulfed in flames, and with little warning, began rolling across the ceiling toward us. With a few seconds of light from the flames, I noticed we had crawled into a dead end of filing cabinets, cut off from trying to advance further into the building.

“Stay down!” I yelled to Wayne as I pulled on his coat to get him back down to the floor. Just as Wayne fell, the entire ceiling above us flashed, bathing us in a hot glow, and forcing me to lay on the ground to escape the heat.

“Hit the ceiling!” I yelled for Wayne to open the nozzle and start knocking down the fire which had now taken hold of most of the second floor. Behind me I could hear muffled voices yelling through the smoke.

“You guys okay up there?”

“Yeah we’re good, get us another line!” I yelled back into the darkness as Wayne began flowing water at the ceiling. Soon we were joined by another crew with another hose line. Together we began making progress against the flames. While the nozzlemen directed their streams into the heart of the fire, other firefighters began moving the obstacles in our way, making a path straight to the back of the building.

Soon, the bells on our airpacks began ringing; warning us our air supply was dwindling. Wayne and I dropped the hose line and told the other crew we were backing out. We followed the hoseline from the second floor back to the wooden staircase, then to the first floor and outside into the cool fresh air. Smoke and steam wafted from our hot gear making it look like we were on fire. Firefighters standing outside came to us to help us out of our drained air bottles.

“Dammit that’s hot!” one firefighter said trying to release my bottle without using gloves.

“Hell yeah its hot up there, it rolled across the ceiling right above us.”

Wayne sat on the front bumper of the engine and began pulling his gear off next to me. Piece by piece, his gear started piling up on the driveway.

“Little warm up there Wayne?” a junior firefighter had picked up Wayne’s yellow helmet, the face shield and top of his helmet was distorted and melted from the intense heat we had encountered inside the garage.

“Oh shit!” Wayne exclaimed as he first noticed the damaged helmet he had been wearing just minutes before. I quickly grabbed my helmet and saw that it had escaped any damages. It was a reminder for both of us just how important wearing the gear and wearing it correctly is when the heat is on. Without the helmet and hood, we would have surely been burned when the flames flashed across the ceiling above us.

It wasn’t long before the fire had been knocked down and we started our cleanup. Pulses calmed, breathing settled. Muscles began to ache. Walking down the narrow driveway together, Wayne and I just shook our heads and smiled at each other, realizing what a close call we had just survived.