Sometimes You Have To Be Creative

This firehouse was unique in the way it covered two very different sections of the township. In the village the building was built in, and had since grown in, the majority of the residents were blue collar, low income, hard working people. Their small houses ranged from small single wood frame houses with no more than a one car space on the side of the road to park or some were twin homes with the wooden porch in front. The roads were narrow and filled more often than not with pick up trucks with gun racks and fishing rods mounted on them. The terrain was pulled right out of a mountain town with steep hills and bends with the houses positioned wherever they could build. The roads made it a challenge for fire apparatus to negotiate. We had to learn how to make tight turns, how to negotiate railroad underpasses on an S-bend, blind corners, steep hills and narrow bridges. Once you became an apparatus driver here, it was thought we could drive apparatus anywhere.

If you pulled out of the firehouse and turned right, travelling up the hill out of the village, within a minute you would be surrounded by large houses with two car garages, large front yards and driveways. The cars would often be washed in the driveways by the white collar owners over the weekend.

It was almost two different worlds.

This particular day we had been hanging out at the firehouse with really nothing going on short of planning dinner. Were we going to order pizza, were we going to Denny’s, going to the pizzeria…etc etc. We sat around the table in the game room throwing ideas out but nobody making a decision.

The tones hit and we were all caught off guard. Usually someone hears our neighboring township companies being dispatched and it will give us a little warning that we may be getting dispatched. This call happened to be outside the township, just over the line on the other side of the creek that meandered through the mills at the bottom of the hilly terrain.

With the sounding of the pagers and the firehouse siren winding up outside, we jumped from our seats and ran to our gear racks. I yanked on my sneakers, already untied in preparation for a fire call, and tossed them aside. I pulled the bunker pants out from under the hanging coat and helmet, pulled them up to my waist, grabbed the coat in one hand and the helmet in the other.

“What is it, anybody hear what it is!” I yelled over the engine starting and siren wailing.

“Mount Road for a house fire!” an anonymous voice replied.

As the loud siren outside wound down I yelled back to Rick,

“We have a crew let’s go!”

I didn’t want anyone to slow us down. We were within minutes reach of this address which meant we could be first in, even though it’s located in another township. This is equivalent to a team coming in to someone else’s field and beating them on their turf. The only obstacle we had to slow us down were the damned roads we had to take to get there.

Jumping up into the pack seat I pulled my coat on, pulled the chin strap tight on my helmet and looked over for Rick who was doing much of the same in the jump seat next to me. With each response we made together, it was an unwritten and unspoken truth that we may not come back, and that at some point my life may be in Rick’s hands, or his life in mine. We knew this as do most firefighters when they make responses into unknown, dark, hot situations. You just never know which call will be the last. You just watch each other’s back like they were family. Rick and I ran so much together as pack partners, I was perfectly comfortable knowing he was with me, the trust I had in him, unwavering.

With each turn and hill of the trip over the creek, Rick and I both tried to peek over the cab to see if we could find any signs of smoke or fire. Finally, as we got closer and closer, we both sat down in the seat and pulled on our air packs. If we did this too soon we wouldn’t be able to stand up and look for the column of smoke we had hoped for. We had both gotten skilled enough that we could wait until the last moment before throwing our air pack on, and still be ready to make the initial attack on the fire.

Our engine made the last turn on to Mount Road and the siren echoed off the rows of homes on both sides of the road. I looked out the side window and noticed the houses were crammed together with small alleys between them. The wood siding was bathed in red flashes from our lights as we raced by. I glanced back over the hose bed to see who was riding the tail board. I saw a helmet I recognized as Donna, my on and off girlfriend at the time, and one or two others. I thought to myself, hope this isn’t much or she would have to hook up to the hydrant to get us water. Donna had attended fire school, I just never thought of her as a “firefighter.” She was a “girlfriend.”

As we approached the block we were looking for the engine slowed. In the cab I could hear the radio blaring, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. It turned out an officer from the local company made it to the scene and requested our engine to lay a supply line from the hydrant into the front of the house. Our driver pulled just past the yellow hydrant on the side of the road, right in front of a small hillside church. A black wrought iron fence lined the front of the church, two stained glass doors were at the end of the short sidewalk, and a tall white steeple rose into the trees surrounding us. Before the guys on the back could wrap the hydrant, I looked up at the cross on the steeple and wondered if I needed to pray. Was someone trying to tell me something?

My thoughts were interrupted by a shout from the back of the truck.

“Go, Go!” a firefighter was waving us on after he had pulled a hose off the truck and wrapped it around the hydrant.

As we pulled away, almost one thousand feet of hose fell to the street off our hose bed all the way into the fire scene. The firefighters left at the hydrant would now have to quickly hook the hose up to the hydrant and feed us water at the scene before Rick and I pulled our hose line into the house and emptied the water tank on the engine. This is where teamwork comes into play. Everyone has a job, and everyone depends on someone else to get the job done.

As the engine came to a stop I noticed this house was built on a hillside, making the front door on the ground level, but the rear door was downstairs. One level on the front, two or more levels from behind. I could see and smell smoke coming from the lower level of the house as I stepped off the truck and pulled my air pack straps tighter.

By the time I got to the other side of the truck a hose was being pulled off and across the front porch. I threw my mask on quickly as I followed the hose to the front door. Rick was in front of me and once we pulled our gloves on, we gave each other the thumbs up, and we both grabbed the hose and crouched down low as we went in through the door. The officer behind us was yelling that the fire was in the basement. This I believed since we could barely see our hands in front of our faces through the smoke. No fire on the first floor, but it was floor to ceiling smoke, there was a great chance the fire was below us. To find the basement stairs we crawled along the outside of the room, feeling every nook and cranny until we found a door knob.

We slowly opened the door and found that it was the stairs leading to the basement. I pulled extra hose up behind us in preparation for the run down the stairs. Rick and I looked at each other and yelled through the plastic face pieces, “You ready?” “Yeah, no stopping, just keep going!” I pulled my eqar flaps down and the collar on my coat up, trying to cover as much of my skin as possible. It would still be a while before we got used to wearing those new nomex hoods. We were still using our earlobes as a thermometer, to determine whether or when to evacuate a building.

We knew we couldn’t be slow once we made the stairs. The staircase would act like a chimney where nothing but heat roared upward into the floors above. If we stopped for any reason it surely meant getting burned, or at least taking a lot of extreme heat.

Rick picked up the nozzle and when I gave the signal he dove into the heat. I humped the hoseline down to him as fast as I could so he didn’t get held up, then I followed behind him. When I cleared the stairs and reached the floor of the basement I could feel the temperature cool slightly. The air was clearer on the basement floor and we could make out a small path between piles of boxes, clothes, toys and everything else you could possibly toss into the basement. We made our way toward the back of the room where we suspected the fire to be burning. Both of us proceeded on our hands and knees, Rick still holding the nozzle, me still humping hose up behind us. We were only half way through the room when we found what we were looking for. Suddenly the end of the room in front of us lit up with bright red, orange and yellow. The change from the dark, gloomy, eerie gray smoke was almost welcomed. Not only did the flames light up the room, it became our first point of reference within this blackened room. But the welcome feeling didn’t last long. Not only did the flames shoot up to the ceiling in front of us, it quickly grew in size to start licking across the ceiling above our heads.

I instantly feared a condition called “flashover” when everything in the room reaches an ignition temperature and explodes into flames all at once. The hose in our hands was filled with water and tough to maneuver. I yelled and pointed for Rick to open the nozzle and hit the ceiling to knock down the flames, and cool down the temperature. If we could just drop the temperature at the ceiling we might be able to prevent the flashover I feared. Rick had been holding the nozzle in his hand while we crawled across the floor and ended up holding the hose too far up toward the nozzle to bend the hose back easily. I didn’t want to waste any time repositioning, still realizing the ceiling temperature wasn’t going to wait for us to get a better position. As a result, I wrapped my arms around Rick, still holding the nozzle, and leaned back, pulling Rick back on to my lap. This gave us a better angle to hit the ceiling, and Rick opened up shooting the cool water into the flames rolling above us.

Within seconds, the bright flames darkened back down, and retreated back to the floor level in front of us. I released Rick from my grip and he proceeded to go after the fire at our level, as I fed him some more hose. Within minutes, our low air alarms began ringing, advising us we only had a matter of minutes to get out of the building. By this time, other crews were arriving and were ready and eager to come inside and take over for us. By the time we decided to leave the basement, the fire was all but under control. For the fresh crews the job now was to ventilate and check for extension. Firefighters began filling this small house, inspecting all floors and rooms, and walls for any hidden fire.

Rick and I made our way to the basement exit door since our air bottles were almost empty. We needed to get out into fresh air as soon as possible. As we made our way out the side door, and up the hill to street level, we noticed the bustling scene looked a little different than when we arrived. Flashing lights bathed the surrounding trees in a red glow, a crowd had assembled across the street and a yellow hose wound its way from the back of our truck, down the street and just around the bend out of sight. I looked around for Donna and with no success, I figured she was still at the fire hydrant in front of that church.

It wasn’t long before Rick and I were out of our air packs and sitting on the back of the air bank, snickering to each other about our unique fire attack technique. The point was, however, we responded quickly, made a quick fire attack, knocked the fire down before it ever left the room where it started, and we lived to talk about it, with earlobes intact.

It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last…