by Earl Emerson
Pretty soon two firefighters race past carrying a ladder. Their helmet insignia says L-3, so I know things are on track. Wollf will be along in a minute. The ladder tells me he’ll be dead soon.
Even though my heart is pounding, I stand calmly and watch with the other women and a couple of men. Pretty soon some bitch in a white chief’s helmet comes along and screams at us to move out of the street. That we’re in the way.
We’re already on the parking strip, but we all take five steps backward until we’re ruining our shoes in the tall wet grass in some asshole’s yard.
The people around me are watching the firefighters take hose off Engine 13. They’re watching the chief. They’re watching the drivers running the pumps. I could tell them what each of these firefighters is doing, but I don’t want to draw attention to myself. Besides, I have my eyes on the roof.
It seems to take forever.
And then they’re up there. One of them is. No. There’s another one. They’re in the back. At first I cannot tell who is who. I know Wollf is the biggest on the crew. That there’s one woman, about my size, who is the smallest. Two of them are walking across the steep part of the north slope. One slips, and my heart leaps in my chest. I don’t need anybody to fall off. I want them all directly over the fire. Half a ton of human hope ready to be charbroiled.
They’re making their way across the north slope of the roof.
One is starting the chain saw. The other is standing by with an axe. Neither realizes he’s on a giant mousetrap. Standing where the cheese should be. A third firefighter makes his way to them. The only thing that would make this better would be if that bitch chief got up there.
They will go through that roof like a satellite dropping out of the sky.
This is going to be so un-fucking-believable.
Standing in the wet grass, I wait with the other looky-loos, my mouth hanging open. I begin to flog the dummy through the hole in my coat pocket.
Funny how things work out.
Next thing I know, I’m running for my life.
45. WE GOT FIRE! WE GOT FIRE!
Going to the roof was arguably the most macho of all truck operations, standing in the dark and the rain and the snow with a roaring chain saw, smoke and flame chasing past your face after you get the hole open. It was also possibly the most dangerous position on the fire ground.
At least the cold snap from last week had blown through. There would be no ice.
“We got fire! We got fire!” Eddings shouted into her radio when she arrived.
“Did you hear that shit?” Dolan asked.
“Settle down,” I said.
We were ripping along Twenty-third, maybe five or six blocks away, watching smoke curl up into the sky. These were all residential streets, quiet at night except for the occasional Metro bus. Single-family homes. Woodframe. Brick.
We took Stevens off Twenty-third, turned left on Twenty-second, and found our way blocked by the battalion chief’s Suburban. The street was full of smoke, so we saw everything through a gray-black haze permeated by ping-pong flashing red lights and bright wig-wag headlights from the rigs. In addition to the chief, Engine 13 and Engine 30 were already there. We were going to have to carry our ladders and equipment almost a block.
On the apparatus handset I said, “Ladder Three at location. We’re going to the roof to ventilate.”
Before we stopped rolling, I turned and shouted over the engine noise to Rideout and Towbridge in the crew cab behind us. “You guys take the ladder. We’ll follow with the saws and pike poles.”
“You want the twenty-five or thirty-five?” Towbridge asked.
“I can’t see the house. Better take the thirty-five.”
Dolan exited on one side of the rig, I on the other. I was wearing my bunking boots, trousers, and coat. I walked halfway back alongside the compartment doors to my mask compartment and slung a half-hour bottle and backpack onto my shoulders, cinching down the shoulder and waist straps.
From the ladder compartment at the rear of the apparatus I pulled a ten-foot pike pole. I was already wearing a four-pound pick-head service axe at my belt and carrying a six-volt battle lantern on a hook on my chest. On the other side of the rig, I passed Dolan, who was still getting his equipment together. “You bringing the saw?” I asked.
“Both saws.”
It never hurt to have a backup in case the Stihl didn’t start.
Shabbier than the rest of the neighborhood, two side-by-side houses sat on an embankment, volumes of smoke issuing from between them.
In front of me Rideout and Towbridge disappeared into the smoke as they carried the ladder up a steep paved driveway between the houses. Flame was pumping out a kitchen window at the rear of the house to the south, black smoke jetting out another broken-out window. Three ramshackle pickup trucks blocked the driveway.
Two firefighters hosed down the side of the house to the north.
Engine 30 had been assigned the south house. One of their members was having trouble getting his gear straightened out. His gloves were on the ground, his coat unbuttoned, his MSA backpack straps loose. His main problem, as far as I could tell, was that Eddings was six inches from his face squalling at him like a Marine Corps drill sergeant.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Smith? Get your motherfuckin’ ass in gear! Get into that house with your crew, you worthless pile of shit! My God. My grandmother could . . .” And so forth and so on.
Except for the Pennington fire, all our arsons had been outside buildings, yet the house fire we were looking at to the south had been set inside.
“Where do you want the ladder?” Towbridge asked. I could hear him but couldn’t see him in the smoke.
“Around back,” I said.
From the basement to the roofline, smoke was coming out cracks in the house to the south. Smoke was leaking between the shingles on the roof. This was the perfect candidate for vertical ventilation.
Dolan was near Rideout and Towbridge now, pulling on the starter cord of a Stihl chain saw.
In the old days truckies went to the roof without masks, often choking on smoke so hot it singed their eyebrows. Unless the wind was just right, they took a terrible beating up there. Then the rule came down that we were to go to the roof with a mask on standby. Now it was compulsory to wear a mask in full operation.
Walking across a steep, slippery roof in the middle of the night wearing a mask that limited your visibility had become a major hazard in itself.
By dint of hand speed and initiative, I finished masking up and got up the ladder first, taking the first chain saw with me. I had to shake my head at the fact that the twenty-five barely reached the roof. I’d told Towbridge to grab the thirty-five.
Our portable radios were crackling with commands. At one point Eddings said, “Ladder Three. Split your crew. I want you to do search and rescue in the fire house and also in the exposure house to the north. Ladder Three? Did you receive?”
“Command from Ladder Three. We’re on the roof of the south house. We’re about to open it. You want us to cancel?” I asked.
No reply. A few moments later she gave the search-and-rescue orders to Ladder 7, the second-in truck company.
The roof was in two sections. I was on the first section over a porch and sun room.
Facing me was a flat wall with two windows in it. Above that, the peak of the second, higher roof was running from left to right. I could make the leap up onto the main roof, but it wasn’t a particularly safe evolution, given how steep the roof was. Going back to get a roof ladder now would leave the firefighters inside too long without relief. If I could make it, Towbridge, at six-one, the next tallest on the rig, could make it as well. Two of us could punch a hole in a roof.
A hose stream drummed an interior wall below us, water shooting out a window into the driveway in spurts. Broken glass fell onto one of the pickup trucks. A firefighter in the driveway objected loudly to being sprayed. An Engine 13 member gave a radio re
port saying they’d found victims. It was unclear which house they were in.
The main roof for the residence was a steep eight-twelve pitch. I tied my body loop around the chain saw and slung it over my shoulder to free my hands, then took my service axe out.
I cut a toehold, then another, began making my way to the peak of the roof, stepping in the stirrups as I hacked them out. Each toehold produced smoke. I moved quickly. By the time I was straddling the peak, Dolan was behind me, putting the toes of his boots into the holes I’d cut, the second Stihl in one hand, his own service axe in the other. We were breathing heavily through our MSA face pieces. It was dark up here, and we were on the north side of the house where the moss grew. Each time I tried my foot on the three-tab roofing, my boot slipped.
Straddling the peak of the roof as if it were a giant wooden horse, I scooted along it until I judged we were over the fire.
“Cut here,” I said. It didn’t take long for Dolan to begin sawing a four-by-eight-foot hole below me, just under the peak. I picked away at the section of roof as he cut the hole. The roof consisted of three layers of old roofing material that came up in chunks. Moments later Rideout was beside me, our service axes swinging in tandem.
Towbridge was below Dolan, his hands on Dolan’s hips to keep him from falling. Rideout and I picked off slabs of the roof and watched them slide past Dolan and Towbridge, off the edge of the roof, crashing onto the pickup trucks in the driveway.
Rideout strained to match my efforts. I could feel the sweat in my armpits and inside my face piece.
We cut a hole eight feet long. The black smoke pouring out of the hole wasn’t as fast-moving or as hot as I expected. Dolan looked at me; we were both thinking the same thing. There was an intact ceiling between us and the fire.
Rideout started across to get the pike pole she’d left hanging off the west end of the peak, took three or four steps, began to slide, then hammered her pick-head axe into the roof. For a moment I thought she was going off the roof, but she arrested her fall, sitting on her rump, her axe buried in the three-tab roofing material. Inertia was a wonderful thing when it was saving your life. She looked across at me, her brown eyes swollen with worry. Towbridge stepped up to the hole to see if he couldn’t reach the ceiling below us with his axe.
I walked west along the peak, a boot on either side in case I lost my footing.
I passed Rideout, retrieved the pike pole, sat, then angled it toward her until she grasped it and was able to make her way to the peak behind me.
In front of us, Dolan and Towbridge were bent over chopping in the heavy smoke. They still hadn’t breached the interior ceiling. I slid along the roof, braced myself, and slammed the tip of the pike pole into the bowels of the attic.
A shower of sparks and smoke shot upward past my helmet. Towbridge and Dolan backed off to avoid the rush of heat and sparks.
I slammed the pike pole downward two more times.
Each time sparks shot up past us, Towbridge turned to me and grinned inside his mask. You could only see it in his eyes. I grinned back. Sometimes this job was just too much fun to believe.
It was at that moment that the whole east side of the roof began to shake.
To my horror, the four-by-eight-foot hole we’d cut began disappearing in front of me, as did most of that end of the roof, including the section Dolan was on.
Towbridge vanished into the enlarged hole at the same time Dolan did.
The look of surprise in their eyes would haunt me for years to come.
Even after they disappeared, the roof kept collapsing, folding inward like a row of dominoes, working its way toward me and Rideout. We backed up hurriedly, scooting along the peak. It was slowly gaining on us. We were going in too. And then—
The collapse stopped just short of my crotch.
The whole top of the house continued quivering.
At the spot where Towbridge had been there was only flame and a hell of a lot of smoke roaring out. Hot smoke. More flame. The yellow blaze arched six feet above what was left of the roof, eight feet, ten feet.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. The peak sagged under my weight and began dipping into the chasm.
“Get back, Lieutenant,” Rideout yelled.
I reached the jagged maw in seconds. I’d just lost two men. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before.
“Stay where you are,” I said to Rideout.
“Like hell,” she replied, clambering alongside and below me. “We have to get them out.”
I could feel the sheathing bounce with her movement.
“We don’t need the extra weight,” I yelled, but she was at the lip of the hole, as was I. The roof bobbed like the end of a diving board with a fat man on it.
I keyed my portable radio and said, “Mayday. Mayday. This is Ladder Three on the roof. We’ve just had a cave-in. Two men fell through. We need hose lines in the attic. Now!”
46. SOLE SURVIVOR
Cynthia Rideout
DECEMBER 22, SUNDAY, 0219 HOURS
Tonight has been a little piece of hell. I’ll start at the beginning. We had two side-by-side houses on fire. The fire on the north house was mostly on the exterior. The fire in the south house, the house we tackled, started in the basement.
Our assignment was to go to the roof of the south house, cut a hole, and ventilate so the guys inside didn’t suffocate when they applied water. So they could see. So they wouldn’t get burned.
Wollf orders us to get the thirty-five, but when I go to the back of the rig, Towbridge has the twenty-five out. Easy to figure why. It’s lighter. In fact, it’s considered a one-man ladder, while the thirty-five requires at least two people to carry it. This is so like Towbridge, who, even around the station, is always trying to work some angle to make things easier.
“Wollf said the thirty-five,” I tell him.
“I know. It’s okay.”
So we carry the twenty-five down the street, over hose lines, past firefighters, up an embankment to the house, and then I see the look on Towbridge’s face when he realizes it isn’t going to reach.
Wollf sees our predicament and tells us to take the ladder around back where the roof might be lower. We find ourselves squeezing past these three old trucks in the driveway. It takes forever. At one point we set the ladder across the bed of a truck and walk around to the other side and pick it up again. Wollf has a spot picked out in the backyard. The ground is lumpy and dark, and we move cautiously.
Towbridge and I are both so winded we can hardly talk. Towbridge moves fast, but he pays for it. So do I when I’m working with him. We are both still trying to catch our breath when Dolan climbs the ladder.
We get our masks on, Towbridge looks at me, and we both know neither of us wants to go first. If you go second, you get that extra time to breathe. Carrying that ladder down the street and up into this backyard while wearing fifty pounds of equipment has winded us.
I’m the boot, so I start climbing.
I get to the flat part of the roof, turn around, and steady the ladder for Towbridge. He jumps to the second roof, while I’m forced to crawl onto it and to keep crawling until I get to the toeholds somebody cut with an axe.
We’re cutting the hole when the roof caves in.
Dolan and Towbridge disappear into the fire together.
I scream, but the noise is inside my mask and nobody hears me. Oh my God, I think. They’re dead. Or will be in a matter of seconds.
Then Wollf is leaning over trying to spot them and he has his head in the flames and I think he is going to die too. Which will leave me alone on the roof, the sole survivor of Ladder 3. I’ve never been more frightened in my life.
After a while Wollf reaches down into the smoke and hauls a bundle of yellow out like it’s a sack of dirty laundry. It’s Towbridge.
It’s a long time before we find out what happened to Dolan.
47. WE’VE LOST HIM
Below me is a caldron of flame and hot, boiling smoke. Every once i
n a while a haphazard tongue of flame forces me back. You feel the heat through your turnouts. We don’t have an inch of bare skin showing, but still, you feel it. We might as well be pigs on a spit.
I put my left leg into the hole we’ve cut, searching until I find a board strong enough to support some weight, then reach out and grab the pike pole, which is sticking straight up. I feel the heat crawling up my pant leg.
“Mayday!” I repeat on the radio. “Mayday!” No reply.
Rideout yells, “Dolan! Towbridge!”
And then, before I can lower myself into the fiery attic, a yellow helmet comes into view three feet from my face, a firefighter facing the other direction, blindly backing toward me.
I grab the shoulder strap on his backpack and yard him out of the hole backward. He is incredibly heavy, and thrashes about like a struggling swimmer. Rideout grabs one of his legs when he throws it up over the roof.
Towbridge.
Remarkably, his air is still working and he appears not to be too badly injured.
I grab the pike pole and begin poking around in the smoke at the point where I’d last seen Dolan. Jabbing the pole anywhere he might have fallen, or rolled, or crawled. Or died. Prodding for anything soft.
A hose stream comes out of the smoke and smacks me in the face, hard, almost knocks me off the roof. A moment later it shoots straight up into the night sky. Then it is gone and we can hear it drumming on wood and plaster inside the house. Another stream shoots up into the sky.
“Where’s Jeff?” I ask Towbridge.
“I don’t know. Man, what happened? One minute we’re here and the next minute everything is black and it’s hotter than shit.”
“You were in the attic. Lucky you didn’t go through,” says Rideout.
“I musta landed on the planks. It was weird. I was just walking around down there.”
“Jeff?” I call. “Jeff?”
“Hey, Dolan. Hey, buddy,” yells Towbridge. “Come on outta there.”
