by Sean Flynn
The transmission was cut off. Another man pushing his talk button, stepping on dispatch.
Sully fiddled with his turnout coat, made sure the sleeves were straight, the clasps working. Three alarms. He could still smell it.
One minute passed.
“Car 2 to Fire Alarm.” The deputy chief, Jack Fenton, one rank above McNamee.
“Fire Alarm answering Car 3.” Man, it was hard to hear the words clearly, decipher the syllables, figure out who was talking and what he was saying.
“Give me a third alarm.”
“Ten-four.”
Sully was moving before the loudspeaker honked on the wall above the apparatus floor. “Let's go,” he yelled to his men. Jay Lyons sprinted to the driver's side, moving more urgently, with more excitement, than he had for the one-tone medical run. Joe McGuirk, Doug Armey, and Mark Fleming piled into the compartment behind the cab. Across the floor, Tom Spencer and his men clambored aboard Ladder 2.
Both engines growled as the garage doors rolled up. Thirty seconds after the alarm sounded, two more trucks rumbled into the night. A third truck, Engine 7, was screaming toward the warehouse from the other side of city.
12
MIKE MCNAMEE WAS IN THE STAIRWELL, ON THE LANDING outside the door to the third floor, when the third alarm was struck. He didn't make the call. The deputy chief, Jack Fenton, did. Anytime a fire went to two alarms, a deputy chief, one rank above a district chief like McNamee, was sent to the scene to assume full command. At that point, McNamee took over the interior command, which, since the battle against Worcester Cold Storage was being fought only inside, still left him essentially in charge.
He was relieved to hear the call for more men. The moments lost on the third floor, staring at identical doors, had rattled him. Fire Alarm hadn't found any information on the building, floor plans or lists of hazardous chemicals that might be stored inside. There was too much he didn't know about the building, too many odd corridors and dark caverns. His men had the fire corralled on the second floor, just beyond the firewall. Engines 1, 12, and 6 and Ladders 1 and 5 were attacking from the B side, and guys from Engines 13 and 16 had two hoses running up the C stairs. But they'd been at it for a while, almost twenty minutes in an oven. Fresh reserves wouldn't hurt. The third alarm would bring a dozen men on two engines and a ladder.
He looked around the stairwell, his eyes already adjusted to the shades of black and gray. The railing was a wide line of ink, ruler-straight, angling up against the charcoal walls. The spot from his flashlight caught certain shapes, threw shadows that bled into the gloom. The walls muffled the sounds of a firefight, the rough hiss of the flames, the dull thud of boots pounding on the steps below, the clank of tools banging against metal. He listened for a moment, alone on the stairs. Everything sounded normal. Every man was doing his job. We can still get this, he thought.
Mike turned toward the stairs, started to climb to the floor above. His boot found the first step with a rubbery thud. Mike raised his other foot, saw the metal tread of the stairs beneath him.
Then it was gone. In a heartbeat, the stairwell went black. His foot, the steps, the railing, his hand held less than an inch from his face—everything disappeared into a viscous cloud. The smoke had dropped from above, but in an instant, making it seem like it came from everywhere at once, as if every molecule of air had spontaneously alchemized into dark poison. There had been no warning, no bang or pop or rumble above the roar of the fire, just an immediate plunge into darkness.
Mike was caught off guard, his mask still clipped to his coat. The first breath seared his throat, and his eyes began to water, tears trying to wash away the sting. “I want everyone on the upper floors down to the ground now,” he hollered up the stairs. “And I want head counts. I want everyone accounted for.” He felt for the radio mike, squinting against the smoke, yelled the same order over the air, but missed the talk button. It never broadcast, but it didn't matter. From above, Mike could hear boots pounding down the stairs. His men would regroup on the first floor, adjust their attack.
He snapped his mask into place, drew in a gulp of fresh air. The smoke was still blinding, but the plastic kept it out of his eyes. He grabbed a railing in the dark and started down, banging his heels against the risers to find each step. Twenty-seven years on the job, and he'd never witnessed so awful a transformation, a building deteriorating that far that fast. He wondered if one of the upper floors had flashed, if hot gases had flooded rooms coated with cork and polystyrene, superheating the walls until they ignited. There was so much smoke, banking down so fast, pouring through hallways, into the stairwell, a force seeming to overwhelm physics, a boiling mist descending, collapsing, on the floors below.
It took Mike almost fifteen seconds to climb down three floors. The door on the ground floor was tucked behind a half wall, same as on the third floor, practically hidden. He'd remembered how many flights he'd gone up, knew where to break hard right to get out. In the foyer, just inside the loading dock, he pulled off his mask, coughed the smoke from his throat, gulped fresh air. He was bewildered, stunned, at how rapidly the stairwell had darkened, but he didn't dwell on it. No point and no time. The fire had made a tactical maneuver, ambushed him. Now he had to counter.
First he had to get the smoke out of the building, open more holes, give the cloud a way into the open sky. He went outside, looked up the side of the building. A series of arches were framed into one wall, old windows along the stairwell that had been covered with plywood. He grabbed his radio. “Command to Scope 2”
“Scope 2”
“Can you set up behind Engine 1, and underneath Ladder 1, and start taking these windows out on the side?”
“Received.”
Mike glanced up the wall again. Those boards were meant to seal the building tight. They wouldn't just pop open. His men would be working in a miasma of poison for at least ten more minutes. He keyed his microphone again. “Interior, Fire Alarm.”
“Fire Alarm answering Interior.”
“Notify the shop we're going to need some air at the scene.”
“Interior, say again.”
Damned radios. Even when no one stepped on the transmission, hit his talk button in the middle of someone else's sentence, or had his microphone short out when it got splashed with water, messages still got garbled. It required a practiced ear and steady concentration to decipher the words, separate them from the background noise. “We're going to need air,” Mike said again. “Notify the shop, we are going to need resupply for our air.”
“I have that.”
Mike paced outside, studied the building, reconsidered everything he knew so far. There had been a report of homeless people living inside, but that had been twenty minutes ago, long enough for his men to search the building. They'd found evidence that someone was squatting there, the garbage and the waste, but no people. The tramps were out, had to be by now. The actual fire, meanwhile, was isolated but ferocious. Judging by the smoke, the density and the speed with which it had hemorrhaged into the stairs, the flames were exceptionally hot, generating more heat than could escape through the vent on the roof. And the building was dangerous, cagey. It had fooled Mike, confused him with its identical doors and twisting passages, even before it flooded black. Now his men were working blind, trying to feel their way through a furnace.
He considered ordering everyone out. His men could fall back into a defensive perimeter, line up the hoses, blast away from a safe distance—surround and drown. It wasn't glamorous, but it was effective, guaranteed a victory. Worcester firemen always won, too. The whole building might burn to the ground, but the fire always went out and everyone always went home.
Sirens whined in the middle distance, coming closer, louder with every whoop. The third-alarm companies. John Sullivan tried to raise Mike on the radio. No answer. Again. No answer. The third call caught Mike's attention, grabbed him through the chaos of the battle.
“Engine 3,” he said into his radio. He c
ould see the truck's lights flashing under the interstate. “Just hold tight there. Stage.”
He wasn't sure where to send them yet. Another minute, maybe two, and he'd have to reposition all the men on the street.
The engines were pumping one thousand gallons a minute into the mass of flames just beyond the firewall. Robert A. watched it all disappear, swallowed into the orange, almost as if the fire was separating the droplets, feeding on the hydrogen and oxygen. “This is like pissing into a furnace,” he muttered to himself.
Lt. Robin Huard from Engine 12 was next to him, manning a two-and-a-half-inch. Robin was fifty-three, but tougher than most guys half his age. Pumped iron for two hours every day. After almost twenty years on the job, he'd gotten hurt only once, when the harness of his air tank snagged on a latch in the truck. He tried yanking it free, but the harness was stronger than the ligaments holding his arm into the socket.
Engine 12 had responded on the first alarm. Eighteen minutes later, at 6:31, Robin was dragging hose up to the second floor. He ran into Bobby Mansfield, a ladder man out of the same station, coming down the stairs. Bob had been part of the initial crews on the roof, watched Paul Brotherton and Jerry Lucey clean out the skylight. With the job on the roof accomplished, he moved downstairs with the rest of the men. The two guys from Rescue 1, Paul and Jerry, had turned into the top floor to check for the homeless people and any extension of the fire. Everyone else went lower to help with the attack.
Bobby and Robin got the line into position and, at 6:33, Robin radioed the order for his man on the truck to charge the line, arm them against the squalling flames. That was his favorite part, going into combat. And that's what it was, too, combat. He'd fought the Viet Cong thirty years earlier, 101st Airborne, a Screaming Eagle, drafted into the same branch of the army that Tim Jackson had signed on with. The principle had been the same: the enemy wanted to take his territory, kill him if they had to, and he wanted to take out the enemy. It was exhilarating. Danger was funny that way. Except Hamburger Hill, eight endless days neck deep in mud, dodging shrapnel and mortar shells. He'd never needed eight days to defeat a fire.
The first foray into the flames on the second floor went well, the leading flank collapsing as soon as they hit it. The small room they were in blacked out. Usually, that means the fire has been cooled, orange light replaced by smoke. But they could still hear the popping and snapping of a roaring blaze.
“Robin, this ain't right,” Bobby said. “Can you hear it?”
“Yeah. And it's got heat,” Robin said. “I can feel it on my neck.” He paused. “Something's not right here. Something's going on that I don't understand.”
He thought of Tina. They'd been married twenty-five years, raised two kids, built a big house on a lake just outside of town, filled it with antiques he collected. Tina was a nurse, tacked scraps of paper to the kitchen wall with affirmations printed on them, like “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is negotiable.” She knew he was smart, careful, competent. Still, she would remind him sometimes: “Don't be a hero.”
He and Bobby kept washing the walls, studying the room. The smoke was thickening, banking down. Air was rushing into the fire, hot gusts biting into his neck. It felt like wind. That wasn't good. Robin realized he'd lost track of time, that he'd lost his bearings. That was worse. He reassessed the battle. “There are no windows,” he told himself. “You don't know where the staircase is, and you don't know how much air you have left.” He felt a shudder of fear. “You're gonna get trapped in here. You're gonna die in here. You gotta get out.”
Robin leaned close to Bobby, who was on the nozzle. “Drop the line,” he yelled. “We're outta here.”
Bobby kept spraying. Firemen were reluctant to retreat, back down from the enemy. “Drop the line,” Robin hollered again.
Bobby took a step backward but kept the nozzle open.
“Drop the fucking line!” Robin screamed at him. “We're getting outta here, now.”
Bobby slammed the valve shut, let the hose fall to the floor, turned for the doorway, following the hose back out. Robin was behind him. Something caught his leg, wrapped around it, pulled him down. The wires that had fallen from the ceiling. Another wave of smoke banked down, darkening Robin's vision. He clawed at the wires, knew he was running out of time.
A pair of hands broke through the clouds. Steve Adams, one of the men working his truck that night, was on his knees, next to the lieutenant, pulling away the wires. He got Robin untangled. Robin rolled onto his knees, found the hose on the floor, and started to crawl.
“No, it's this way,” Steve yelled over the roar. He was pointing into a black maw.
Robin looked at him, unsure what to do. “Steve,” he said, trying to steady his breathing, “you gotta be positive. You gotta be absolutely positive or we're gonna get lost in here.”
“I'm positive,” Steve said. “It's twenty-five feet, right there.”
Robin took a deep breath, nodded. He stayed close to Steve, the two of them moving as fast as their knees would scrape against the floor. Twenty-five feet seemed like a mile. But then they were out on the stairs on the C side. Steve scrambled down. Robin turned around, went back into the darkness. He went to the edge of the vestibule, his radio in one hand, his thumb on the talk button. “Engine 12 to any firefighters in the second-floor area. Get out to the staircase, get out to the staircase.” He released the button and screamed, “This way out! It's this way!” He didn't know if anyone heard him, if anyone was still floundering in the dark.
His mask vibrated against his face, a soft jackhammer warning him he was running out of air. He yelled once more, then wheeled around, hustling back to the stairs. He got to his feet, rushing now, hitting the treads on instinct, not bothering to feel for them. The fire growled behind him, his pulse pounded in his skull, his breath rasped behind the mask, all of it churning into a chaotic roar.
The mask cleaved to Robin's face as his boot hit the bottom step. He'd drawn the last breath, emptied the tank. It sucked back, like a vacuum pulling on his lungs. He never broke stride as he reached for the mask, ripped it off, gasping acrid air and sprinting outside.
Sixty feet above the pavement where Robin was wheezing, Jerry Lucey felt for his radio in the darkness. “Rescue 600 to Command,” he said. “We need help. On the floor below the top floor of the building. We're lost.”
No one answered. Paul Brotherton was next to him, the two of them on their hands and knees, keeping low, trying to get beneath the smoke. It was impossible. Everything was greasy black. They couldn't see each other, let alone the way out. Jerry wasn't too worried, though, not yet. He'd been here before, lost in a cauldron, wondering if he'd get to fresh air. He always did. Like that time in a triple-decker, the whole back end shrouded by a sheet of fire, Jerry looking for the stairs, going the wrong way, walking into the flames. One of the local sparkies took a picture of him from below, Jerry nothing more than a smudge in a wash of orange. He framed the picture, hung it in his basement rec room next to the Gottleib Rescue 911 pinball machine and above the stuffed dalmatian and opposite the Backdraft poster. Hell of a movie, Backdraft. Jerry had watched it more times than he could count. But Hollywood could never get the fire scenes right. In the movies, a burning warehouse was all orange light and bright flashes. “That is so fake,” he'd tell Michelle. “If they really showed what it was like, the screen would be black.”
If only he had a rope. Jerry thought every man, especially rescue guys, should carry a length of fireproof rope, a leader he could tie off where he came in, mark his trail. His would have been knotted to the door by the B stairwell, all the way across the warehouse. After they left the roof, he and Paul had swept the top level. From the top of the stairs, they moved quickly through two storerooms off the vestibule, then went into the main chamber. It was the same as on the lower floors: eighty-eight feet wide and fifty feet deep, bounded on the far end by a brick fire wall. They passed through that into a slightly smaller room, then turned left toward th
e C-side elevator shaft. They were able to get around the smoke and embers blowing up toward the vent, move around to the back side of the shaft, explore the whole floor. They saw nothing that alarmed them.
With the top floor clear, they backtracked to the stairs on the B wall. They had no choice: the stairwell next to the C elevator, the one Robin Huard had escaped through, went only to the third floor. Above that level, there was only one way up or down.
Jerry concentrated on his breathing, kept it slow, measured. The temperature was rising, 200 degrees, maybe 220. Heat expanded the air in his tank, made it seem thinner, made each breath seem shallow. If a man wasn't careful, he'd pant through the last few pounds in short, gasping moments. He retraced their path again in his head. They'd taken roughly the same route as they had on the floor above: across the chamber, through the fire wall, around one room, left through the elevator shaft. They were in the back corner, behind the shaft, when the lights went out. All that smoke, pouring in from everywhere at once. It smothered everything, even the beams from their flashlights. He and Paul had tried following the walls, feeling a path back out to the stairs, but they'd only gone in circles. Above him, chest-high if he'd been standing, Jerry could feel a narrow ledge, like the sill of a window. But he couldn't put his hand through it.
Paul's alarm went off, his mask rattling against his face. He had three minutes of air left, four if he was lucky. Fifty-five seconds had passed since Jerry had called for help, and still no answer. They could hear Jack Fenton, the deputy chief, calling the third-alarm companies, telling them to get to the second floor, relieve the men on the hoses. Jerry's transmission must have gotten lost in the chatter and the static.
He keyed the microphone again. “Rescue to Command, Rescue to Command.” He measured each word, not wasting oxygen. “We need help on the fourth floor, one floor down. We're running out of air.”
