Mario?” Fuchs retired to the back of the room. Infantino turned to Captain Miller, who had just taken over Engine Company 23.
“Any ideas on origins and fire load?”
“It looks like it started in a storeroom near the utility core on seventeen. Heavy load of solvents, cleaning fluids, and the like. It spread from there down the hall to an interior decorating shop; bolts of fabric, bales of polyurethane foam for upholstery. There was a lot more than the standard fire load on the rest of the floor.
Dropped ceilings on all the floors so the fire can spread unnoticed.
It’s a new building and consequently attracted a lot of wealthy commercial tenants, almost all of whom had their offices professionally decorated. You know the rule of thumb there: The more expensive the furnishings, the more flammable they usually are. The alarm system was apparently faulty and let the fire get a foothold. We have no record of it being logged in automatically at headquarters.”
“Present status, Chief Fleming?”
“Seventeen is completely gutted, a few fires on sixteen which were minor and quickly darkened down. Situation on eighteen is serious; it looks like it’s getting away from us. Smoke damage is heavy on nineteen,and above -we don’t know how far above except that smoke penetrated to the residential area.” He paused. “There’s going to be a lot of water damage on eighteen and seventeen and the floors immediately below.”
Infantino nodded. “I’ve ordered up another salvage company, as well as rescue and wrecking companies.
Chief Castro, what’s our own position?”
“We need more men. We’ve been concentrating on seventeen but nobody can work in there for longer than ten, fifteen minutes at a time. The radiant he-at will scorch your turnout coat and char hoses; we’ve lost one section already. The fire is spreading on eighteen and we don’t have enough men to contain it.”
“You’ll get them. What about equipment?”
“Standard requirements so far-only more of it. The external standpipe is charged and working; the hoses in some of the stairwells are gone, of course-either burned through or vandals have hacked them through. We’ll need more respirators and masks. And men,” he repeated.
“We need men.”
Infantino caught Fuchs’s eye. There was no smile of triumph on the chief’s face.
“Casualties?”
“Four men to the hospital, smoke inhalation. We might lose one-Murphy, Engine Company 25. Another man was badly cut; a rookie from Truck Company 33 tried to chop out a window to vent the fire on seventeen. He lost a thumb and two fingers.”
The first thing you were supposed to learn, Infantino thought, was how to hold a hatchet. “All right, Chief Verlaine has charge of seventeen.
The next engine company that arrives will be under his command.
Castro, you take eighteen. You’ll get another company as soon as possible. Miller, take care of the cleanup on sixteen.
Fleming, contact Bylson in the communications van and have him set up a two-way communications system in the lobby for in-building contacts; that win take, some of the pressure off him. I’ve asked for more police to help clear the lobby so working conditions down there should improve. Okay, back to stations-I’ll be in touch with each of you as soon as possible.”
They left, leaving the security men and Donaldson behind, as well as Captain Fuchs. Garfunkel was smearing the dirt around on his face with a handkerchief. He glanced up at Infantino.
“You’ve got another problem.”
“What’s that?”
“We’ve got a gas station in the basement.”
Infantino stared at him. “What’s the capacity?”
“Two one-thousand gallon tanks. They were just filled the start of the week.”
“Those permits come over my desk. The Glass House never applied for one.”
Garfunkel was sweating. “Harriman, the super, was going to; I remember him talking about it one day.”
“So you people went ahead and installed it prior to the issuance of-the permit? Who’s your supplier, City Gas and Oil? Call up their night man and have them get a truck over here immediately and start pumping it out.”
Fuchs interrupted. “You sure that’s necessary? We’ll probably have the fire knocked down before they get the gas pumped out.”
“Maybe I’m playing it too safe,” Infantino said slowly.
“But I’m playing it safe. All right?”
“It’s Your show.”
“We could pump it into the sewers,” Garfunkel suggested.
Infantino shook his head. “No dice-gasoline floats on water.
We’d fill the whole sewer system with fumes. A stray spark or a static discharge and we’d have more trouble than we could possibly handle.”
He stood up to go and Garfunkel said, “What about the people in the restaurant at the top?”
“How many?”
“About a hundred and thirty.”
“They’ll be okay so long as they don’t panic-and there’s no reason for them to panic. The fire is forty stories away.”
“Mr. Leroux and Mr. Barton,are up there with their wives.”
“Craig Barton?” Infantino said. Right now, both Barton and Leroux would be invaluable. Nobody would know the building better than its architect and Leroux was ready-made to fill in as building supervisor.
“Get on the house phone and tell em to come down immediately.
We can use them both down here.” He had a sudden thought. “tell them to take the scenic elevator.” To take others, he thought, suddenly depressed, might be murder.
“Yes, sir,” and Garfunkel was gone. Jernigan and Donaldson followed after him.
Once they were alone, Fuchs eyed Infantino silently for a moment, then nodded. “You didn’t ask, but I think you’re doing all right so far.”
“You’re not hoping I’ll fall on my ass?”
A tiny muscle jumped in Fuchs’s forehead and his face froze.
“That’s uncalled for, Infantino. You fall and a lot of people die.
I would hardly wish that if my worst enemy were in charge.”
“You’re right,” Infantino said. “That was uncalled for.”
Fuchs smiled bitterly as he turned to leave. “Someday I’ll tell you about the first real ‘worker’ I was responsible for knocking down.”
Infantino started to follow Fuchs when one of Bylson’s communications men hurried into the room. He introduced himself as Bill Philtron. He was carrying a multiple handy-talky, a heavier version of the single crystal units in use among the fire crews.
Infantino checked it out quickly, then went up to the lobby, followed by Philtron.
The floor was as crowded and confused as before, the firemen fighting their way to the elevators through milling crowds of confused tenants. Where was the goddamned police captain? Infantino thought.
Why the hell hadn’t the lobby been cleared? A young fireman hurried past him, his respirator mask dangling around his neck.
Infantino recognized him and grabbed his arm. “How bad is it up there, Lencho?”
“Damned bad.” David Lencho’s face showed a dirty red pressure line from the mask; the rest of his face was streaked with soot. He looked older than . his years. “The fire’s breaking through to eighteen.”
Infantino grabbed the phone from Philtron’s walky-talky and called Verlaine. “Hal, Infantino-I’m coming up.”
Verlaine’s voice sounded tired and hollow over the phone. “It’s your funeral.”
Infantino handed the phone back to Philtron. “You’re relay station for me while I’m upstairs. Stay on Verlaine’s frequency.” He turned to the elevators as one of the cage doors opened. A fireman stumbled out leading a small, red-eyed boy about four. The boy, crying and gagging, looked wildly about the lobby; he suddenly tore from the fireman’s grip and ran sobbing toward the woman Infantino had noticed earlier. She swept him up and a moment later was joined by her husband. Some of the tightness in Infantino’s
stomach abruptly dissolved. The chance of two years ago repeating itself had been diminished by one.
He caught the elevator with two other firemen. A few moments later he was on the sixteenth floor. A steady stream of water drizzled from the corridor ceiling; the ceiling sagged in loose loops from the framing.
Infantino’s boots squished through the sodden nap of carpeting.
The elevator opened directly on an office suite that took up the entire floor. The salvage company had spread canvas covers over most of the office space but part of the ceiling and carpeting by the elevator reception area was a total loss. Portions of the rug and ceiling were black and charred; Infantino guessed that some of the burning solvent had flowed down the elevator shaft from the floor above. It must have been hell stepping out into that, he thought.
Heavy water stains were spreading down the plastered walls; at one point expensive wood paneling had buckled and warped away from the wall. It would b, much the same, though to a lesser degree, for at least several floors below. The insurance companies would be a lot broker after all this was over, Infantino thought.
Several firemen were on the stairwell landing; one of them leaned weakly against the railing, coughing up black phlegm while another tried to help him through the door.
A fireman said to Infantino, “He got a lung full, Chief.
Respirator valve failed.” It was rare enough-every fireman was taught the care and cleaning of respirators until they could have assembled one in the dark, but on old equipment, valves still sometimes stuck.
“Get him below right away.” The landing on the seventeenth floor was slippery with water and the air was gray with smoke. Several firemen had retreated to the stairwell, smoke-streaked and coughing, while a fresh team edged past them with additional sections of two-and-a-half.
Somebody tapped Infantino on the shoulder and handed him a respirator.
“You can’t go in there without a Scott, Chief.” He helped Infantino strap on the cylinder and adjust the valve.
The main corridor was a maze of crisscrossing hoses, some of them snaking down side passages and others arrowing directly ahead. The smoke was dense and grew denser as he edged forward through the rapidly growing darkness. He could feel the heat now and occasionally the red reflection of flames a few dozen feet ahead. He crouched by three hoseman; the lead man was directing the high-pressure stream toward the flames immediately in front of them. The water on the tile floor was an inch deep-and hot. Another hose team was a few feet farther ahead; Infantino waddled toward them. The stream from the nearby hose drenched the forward group with spray that cascaded down their soot-streaked turnout coats and puddled on the floor.
Infantino felt a hand on his arm and turned; he recognized Lencho in spite of his mask.
Lencho leaned over, touching the face plate of his respirator to Infantino’s ear. “It’s bad,” he shouted. “We’ve sent two crews down already. A lot of flammable stuff, plastic light fixtures and the like. And pieces of the false ceiling keep falling on us. It’s a fucking mess.”
“Whose crew is that up ahead?”
“Mark Fuchs’s-he’s working the nob.” The chief’s son, Infantino thought, getting his baptism under fire. Handling the nob of a high-pressure hose was a man’s job; if you lost control, the heavy brass nozzle could swing around and brain somebody. It was the man on the nob who was most exposed to heat. Infantino had seen them come down after fifteen minutes close up on a fire with their faces red and the backs of their hands blistered right through their gloves. If it were hot enough and your turnout pants were tight against your knees, the flesh under the pants would blister.
“The fire loading is incredible,” Lencho shouted.
“Desks, open files, wall hangings, foam chairs and couches … all that paneling. The stuff goes up like it was drenched with kerosene.”
Infantino nodded and started back down the corridor.
He had just gotten to a cross corridor filled with dense, oily smoke when he heard a panicky “Get down, get down!” Heat flare-up, he thought; the differential between the ceiling and the floor could be in the hundreds of degrees and heat spread in waves. The first man to sense it would cry, “Get down!” so those behind him could flatten themselves against the floor. At that moment he heard a muffled explosion. The far end of the cross corridor flared a brilliant orange. Thick smoke suddenly boiled out at Infantino. He ran for the stairwell door and grabbed a walky-talky from one of the men there.
“Philtron, smoke explosion on seventeen! Get a rescue company up here, on the double!”
There was a flurry of activity in the corridor.
Two men stumbled through the door dragging a third. They pulled the mask off his face and dropped it on. the concrete. The mask was filled with vomit; already blisters were puffing up the man’s face.
The man himself was coughing hard enough to turn his lungs inside out.
“Hot lung!” one of the men shouted. The man had breathed superheated air or even flames; he must have literally burned out a lung, possibly both. Infantino thumbed the walky-talky again.
“Infantino here. Have an ambulance on standby; first casualty coming down. Notify the hospital emergency ward: hot lung case.”
Two men carried the casualty down the stairwell.
“It’s going to be an all-night wienie roast, Mario.”
Verlaine had appeared on the landing, his mask off and his lungs heaving. His face was red from the heat. “Ceiling temperatures have to be six, seven hundred degrees.
We’re inching the hoses along the floor.” More men were staggering out on the landing now several of them vomiting and gagging.
He was only in the way, Infantino thought. “Take care of yourself, Hal.” He turned and walked down the steps, turning sideways halfway down to let another company come up. He rode down on the same elevator with the ‘unconscious man with the ruined lungs, watching the faint pumping of his chest. He was going to die, Infantino thought; he probably wouldn’t make it through the night.
For a fleeting moment he wished to hell that all the taxpayers who had showed up at the last City Council meeting to protest pay increases for firemen could be here now-Why did a man stick with the department, he wondered blackly. Why did he? It certainly wasn’t the Money.
He pushed his way through the lobby and headed across the terrazzo plaza to the communications van. The door was partly open and he could hear the babble of Police and Fire Department transmissions crackling out into the cold night air. Fuchs was standing by the half-open door, staring up at the building, obviously lost in thought.
“We’re not even holding our own,” Infantino said grimly.
“Didn’t expect we would; it’s too soon. If we can keep it from spreading, sooner or later it’ll start to die for lack of fuel.”
“We had damned well do better than that.”
“It’s higher up than usual but we’ve handled fires like it before.”
“I’ve never seen a fire like this before,” Infantino snapped. “I don’t think you have, either.”
Fuchs looked at him intently. “Okay, Mario, what do you want?
You didn’t come outside just to enjoy the weather.”
“I want to order some shape charges and blow through the floor. .
.
vent the fire from above.”
“Forget it,” Fuchs said flatly. “Central Supply doesn’t have any.”
“The department in Southport does; we could borrow some.”
“Infantino.” Fuchs paused -to search for the right words. The snow cresting on his eyebrows made him look like a thin and haggard Santa Claus, Infantino thought.
“You’ve had free rein so far but you can’t have it on this.
You’re not detonating any explosives in that building. U you want to hole through - a floor have your wrecking company do it.”
“That would take time-and we don’t have any.”
“On the contrary, we have all night. We’ll
continue to use conventional methods; the unconventional ones are too damned dangerous.
I see no reason why we shouldn’t be able to control this fire with them.”
Infantino felt the, frustration start to build. “Do you know what shape charges are? How they work?”
“I’m familiar with them,” Fuchs said. “But I also know the risk of using explosives in a building we know next to nothing about.
Legally, it’s risky; structurally, it’s even more so. You prove to me that you’re a building engineer and I’ll listen to you.
Otherwise, it’s a flat no. You run the risk of weakening the whole structure to the point where it might have to be condemned after the fire.”
“That’s nonsense; I’ve handled explosives in the Army.
Infantino persisted. “I know what they can do.”
Fuchs looked up at the side of the. building, ignoring Infantino.
“I said no, mister,” Fuchs said.
Infantino followed his eyes up the side, to the tiny spot of light crawling down the southern shear wall. The scenic elevator, probably with Barton and Leroux aboard. They might be able to provide both the information and the arguments that he needed…
There was a sudden shout from firemen in the plaza.
Far above him, Infantino heard a brittle, popping sound.
One of the huge plate-glass windows set in the Curtainwall at the eighteenth-floor level suddenly vanished. He caught a glimpse of something large and hot sailing out over the plaza; a moment later pieces of glass exploded from the terrazzo. He heard another popping sound; the neoprene gasket surrounding the adjoining window had softened.
The glass, bowed outward, driven by the heat and internal pressure, then jumped from its frame. It knifed through the cold night sky, a natural airfoil.
“Get those men off the plaza!” Infantino yelled. Other windows were popping out now; they sailed out over the plaza. One fragment sliced through the top of a police car, another struck the side of a nearby ceramic planter holding a small conifer and shattered; shards of glass ricocheting against the communications van. Fuchs and Infantino ducked a fraction of a second too late. Infantino felt a sting in his cheek.
The Glass Inferno Page 23
