Shouldn't we move off this rickety-ass dock before th—

[FLOOOOSH]

The fireboat brought my firefighting gear from hot and dry to wet and swampy in a mere second. My brain reminded me of standing on the bridge in front of Busch Gardens' Log Flume ride, when there was actually a railing to catch me as the water battered me back.

Instead, I was forced backwards onto the rotted strip of wood slatwork that had been weakened by time, water, and the embers drifting over the Washington Yacht Club. I heard the boards crack under my feet, and clutched my hoseline in the orange light of the boats burning all around us.

Image courtesy of Sgt. Wayne Nelson, BFC3 Aide.

—————

I glanced at the clock.

2:52

Ugh, dammit. I'll never be able to stay up until the first man shows up.

As I prayed for the earliest possible arrival of anyone from the next shift, my half-closed eyes drifted up towards the computer monitor with our dispatch information on a fifteen-second refresh.

Aw, shit.

My stupored run to the watch desk smacked my head off the sitting room door—thankfully, my echoes of "everybody, everybody, marina fire at fifteen hundred M street!" had died down and my skull's buzzing had stopped by the time we all rolled out the door.

My midnight routine of donning my gear is pretty well burned into my psyche. I have, as I've mentioned before, awakened to the wagon lurching to a halt and looked down to find myself in full gear, helmeted, and with my hand already on the door latch. I guess we're here, wherever that might be. But this time I paused; I glanced out the window, struck by the large fireball reflecting off the glassine surface of the Anacostia River.

Engine 18 had already driven down a small hill that led towards the docks. I grabbed 250' of pre-connected hoseline, and my layout man grabbed another hundred feet that was neatly bundled into a hose rack.

The dock was just wide enough to allow us to squeeze past another company already operating a hoseline into what used to be a fairly sizeable boat. Three yacht-type things and a small speedboat were fully involved on our arrival, and we quickly discovered that pissing into them with our handlines was proving futile.

Image courtesy of W. Nelson

"We should just knock holes in all of 'em and let the river put it out!" joked an officer nearby. I sighed as a adjusted my grip on the hose and leaned into it. Well, I did say that I wanted something to do… but this is gonna take forever.

Suddenly, a solution arrived, guns cocked and ready to go.

"Fireboat to Ops, we're in position, opening up the line now."

Wait… what?

Either I hadn't been paying attention to my radio, or some officer hadn't been particularly talkative tonight, but all I knew was that the Fireboat and I were now directly facing each other—and I was sadly out-classed in weaponry.

—————

A line of firefighters made our way back towards the main boathouse, lumbering up the gangway through sheets of water cascading down around us. Truck 7 had left a circular saw on the dock, and I grabbed it—I figured that the junior man on their shift probably wouldn't want to go fishing for it after it was blown of the dock.

We watched the rest of the proceedings from the relatively dry accomodations of a nearby lawn. After our Fireboat had knocked down most of the fire, we still had to go in and mop up a few stubborn hotspots, including the engine compartment of the speedboat (which proved to be a real pain in the ass to access because the fire had riddled the dock with holes). Nevertheless, the universe maintained a sense of humor: as soon as we had flowed enough water into the speedboat to "save" it… it promptly sank.

Image courtesy of W. Nelson

—————

The sun was breaking over the horizon as we packed up and headed home. Driving back across the bridge, I took one last look towards the marina. All of the soot and oil and garbage from the fire was slowly making its way downstream, marring the surface of the already-dirty river. But despite the Halley's Comet of filth flowing under the bridge, it was still a beautiful morning.

I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes, feeling the breeze cool my sweat-soaked clothes.

Man, I really hope my relief is here.

4:15 a.m. – Everyone else is dispatched to deal with what they found.

A great video clip can be found at this link; credit to Vernard Green on Medic 8 at the time.

(As usual, click for full-size images.)

Motir Services, Inc. is (was) a consulting firm serving the DC area; clients include The Library of Congress, Arlington National Cemetery, The U.S. Department of Agriculture, and a whole slew of DC government organizations. Their self-description reads:

"A MULTI-SERVICES FIRM WHOSE PRINCIPAL STRENGTH IS THE ABILITY TO TAKE THE WORLD’S MOST SOPHISTICATED MANAGEMENT SKILLS AND APPLY THEM IN ORDER TO YIELD ONE CONSISTENT PRODUCT – WORLD-CLASS SERVICES."

Perhaps the folks at Motir could offer some upper-management-level advice regarding the best placement of this ladder (not that Truck 7 needed it).

The fire eventually went to two alarms, and took approximately thirty minutes to control. At one point, there was fire to be found on every one of the four story building, including a large wooden lean-to structure on the roof.

—————

Do you know what the best part was? Nobody cared what we were wearing.

Alright, that's it. I'm finally going to bed.

/RL

You know what they say… the best camera is the one that's with you.

What's amazing about the advancement of technology is that the iPhone actually has more resolution than the first "pro"-level Nikon digital SLR (The D1, with a hefty price tag of almost $5,000 and a weight to match, sported a groundbreaking 2.7 megapixels). In comparison, my iPhone 3GS has 3 megapixels—I'll concede that the sensor size is different, but without going too much into the mechanics of it, it's still pretty damned amazing. Plus, I can do some post-processing in-camera by using an app called… wait for it… "BestCamera," created by photographer Chase Jarvis' awesome team. It's only $2.99, but you can get some amazing results with it. In fact, Chase's vision has started something of a neat community of iPhone photographers, whose work you can browse here.

Plus, this Apple hardware seems to have held up pretty well kicking around the inside of my bunker coat pocket, along with some door chocks and a few random tools. (Thanks, OtterBox.)

Regardless, it's always with me at work, and I enjoy those "ohmygodIwishIhadacamerarightnow" moments. Because I do! And I revel in going through my phone's photos every few months, because I forgot about most of the ridiculous stuff that's on there.

So here ya go. As always, click to embiggen.

Burn Foundation Fundraisers: a good excuse for firemen to get together and bowl at 8am in the morning.

—————

A poorly-built third story addition in NE… on one hell of a windy day.

—————

An early morning fire in our first-due area, from a few tours ago.

He had just put a new helmet in service that day, and said that he wanted to burn it up a little bit…

—————

Basketball, anyone? I think it adds a genuine Southeast touch to our firehouse.

—————

Potomac Gardens, up in Capitol Hill. An apartment off on the 3rd floor displaced quite a few residents. The woman from the fire apartment was (quite literally) dumped in my arms by Truck 7 for medical care, as she was found in the apartment with significant airway damage from smoke and heat.

View from the courtyard; the windows that weren't smashed out were coated with a thick, greasy soot.

I was pleasantly surprised to see other locals bringing coffee and hot chocolate to the displaced elderly residents who had to sit outside in the cold for a while; it looks like people from Capitol Hill have hearts, after all!

—————

Every firefighter in the city knows exactly what this is… but what it's doing sitting in someone's yard on Park Rd in NW, I have no idea.

N.B. – in order to give due respect to Boston.com’s The Big Picture, higher-resolution images will not be made available on RaisingLadders. Additionally, all captions remain unchanged.

To see larger, even more stunning images, please follow this link.

—————

At around 2:15 PM, a fire broke out in an apartment building in Shanghai. Under renovation at the time, the twenty-eight story building quickly allowed the fire to spread to every single floor. According to a Chinese news source, it took around 100 pieces of apparatus from over 25 different stations to control the blaze (after four hours of firefighting, which utilized tactics such as placing hoses on the roofs of neighboring buildings).

Firefighters spray foam and water on the lower portion of an apartment building on fire in the downtown area of Shanghai on Monday Nov. 15, 2010. (AP Photo)

A person waits for rescue in the scaffolding of a burning apartment building in Shanghai on Monday Nov. 15, 2010. (AP Photo/Xinhua).

Out of an estimated 150 families located in the building, firefighters were able to rescue approximately one hundred people. The official death toll (as reported by Xinhua) stands at 58.

56 more people are still missing.

A man prays for victims killed in an apartment block blaze, at the entrance of the building, in Shanghai November 21, 2010. (REUTERS/Aly Song)

Rescue workers carry a victim out of a burning building in Shanghai, November 15, 2010. (REUTERS/Aly Song)

People gather to watch an apartment building that was destroyed by fire, while flowers and wreaths are placed around in the downtown area of Shanghai on Nov. 17, 2010. (AP Photo)

—————

VIDEO

CNN put together an excellent minute-long newsreel, seen on YouTube.

Dave Statter also has a much longer, much more comprehensive video, available here.

]]> http://raisingladders.com/2010/11/shanghai-apartment-fire/feed/ 0 http://raisingladders.com/2010/05/early-basement-fir/ http://raisingladders.com/2010/05/early-basement-fir/#comments Thu, 13 May 2010 15:30:02 +0000 raisingladders http://raisingladders.com/?p=593 I think I’m getting sick… photos only today, with brief captions. All photos © me unless stated otherwise.

/RL

This was our view on approach as the third-due engine company. E15 brought the 400′ through the front door and backed up first-due E32. Photo uncredited; http://engine15rescue3.com/fullstory.php?107294

As you can see in the previous picture, the fire/smoke damage extends all the way up the side of the house.

An exterior close-up. As we examined the front room after the fire had been knocked, we saw that all the exterior bars had been cut except for this one set of white bars, looking like they were installed by the homeowner after the house was completed. Despite the fact that the window was laddered on our arrival, the bars would have made it damn near impossible to use this window for egress had we needed it.

Interior damage. When we left the scene, there was no official word on what started the fire.

E19 had a hoseline burst on them while they were operating in the basement. E25 brought another line in to back them up.

This wasn’t the last of it. The engine and squad stayed busy, running two more fires (one in E30′s area, and another in E27′s area) before the tour was over.

Expecting another “food on the stove” box alarm or “nothing found” gas leak (like the last two had been, at 2 a.m. and 3:30 a.m., respectively), I grumbled as I peeled off my sweatshirt. My feet stung from running across the bay floor in socks, so I welcomed the feeling of tucking them sleepily into my boots.

“Oh come on… do you see what time it is? Where the hell is our relief?” It had been a long night already, and my question was lost in the wail of the siren as I pulled on my hood and coat.

Next to me, Bobo snapped on his radio and listened to the tactical channel for a minute.

“Basement fire!” He grinned as he turned back to the window, searching outside for smoke or any other indicators that we weren’t running around out here for nothing.

We were assigned to the rear as the second due company, and quickly found ourselves past 19th Street and pulling around the side.  Bobo had laid out the supply line and met me at the wagon; I grabbed a crosslay and turned to find a dizzying array of chain-link fence that blocked my path to the end-unit townhouse with smoke pumping from the concrete basement stairwell.

After three sharp turns and one poorly-hopped groin-level fence (ouch), I was masking up on the stairs as a guy from the Rescue Squad forced the door open. In we went, to find the damned tightest basement—if you could even call it that—I’ve seen yet. Maybe fifteen feet long by about seven or eight feet wide, the packrat of an owner had shoved all sorts of junk on either side of a very narrow walkway. Now imagine some Squad guys and the backstep of an engine company trying to cram into it; maneuvering my hoseline through and around that mess to get water on the fire was quite a process.

Nevertheless, Engine 15 got the knock while Engine 19 held the first floor above us. We hung around while the investigators did their work and Truck 7 did some overhaul, then we picked up and went home.

As I pulled all my stuff off the wagon, I smiled at the guys hauling their gear across the bay floor to relieve us.

Sometimes, late relief can be a good thing. Two fires in four tours—who could complain?

—————

There’s a bit more information available here at E15/RS3′s website; you’ll notice that the second picture is one of mine. I’ve added a few more below.

This was the entryway at the bottom of the stairs; once inside, we had to make a sharp right and then navigate a walkway even narrower than this.

The only place to maneuver is to the left of this table of junk. The window you see on the right is barely accessible from the interior unless you start climbing.

Coconuts! (There were some really random items in here.)

]]> http://raisingladders.com/2010/04/caught-another-one/feed/ 1 http://raisingladders.com/2010/04/two-tours-one-fire/ http://raisingladders.com/2010/04/two-tours-one-fire/#comments Tue, 06 Apr 2010 11:00:40 +0000 raisingladders http://raisingladders.com/?p=480 As I walked out of the locker room, I saw my officer traversing my field of view in a big hurry.

As I walked out of the locker room, I saw my officer traversing my field of view in a big hurry.

I was on the phone at the time, and my attention was drawn to his form crossing the bay floor. This must be something important.

My curiosity was answered a moment later, when I heard a voice echoing from the watch desk: “1212 Eaton St! First due, first due!”

“Shit, we’ve got a box. I gotta go.”

Before I even finished the sentence, I tossed my phone in my pocket and broke into a full sprint from the back of the bay. I weaved my way through and around the boat, the tactical support truck, and the other pieces of Special Operations apparatus that stood between me and the engine.

I turned to Antoine as we pulled on our coats and remarked that I knew we’d end up in this neighborhood tonight. As I remember from my mentoring days, we routinely run into the notorious neighborhood of Barry Farms at least a few times a tour—but tonight, on only my second tour back at 15, I had no clue that we’d be getting a first-due fire.

Seconds later, we turned the corner to Eaton St and started looking around—nothing yet. A quick right turn later, we had hopped a curb and pulled up in front of a two-story end unit with fire coming from the second-floor window.

The first half of the crosslay smoothly found its way onto my shoulder; I spun and took off, pulling the remainder of the hoseline into a neat pile next to the wagon.

The Lieutenant and I pushed up the stairs until we could no longer see; we masked up at the top of the stairs and made a U-turn towards the fire room. Just inside the doorway, I parked myself off to the side and opened up into the ceiling.

It was quick work, since it was only a room-and-contents; thankfully, with the Squad and Engine 25 pushing right up behind us, we got it quick and were able to knock it within a few minutes.

The aftermath. Fire was showing from the window directly above the front door.

—————

“Hey, rook!”

I was outside, replacing my SCBA bottle. I looked up through my mop of sweat-soaked hair to find one of the squad guys ambling towards me.

“Didn’t take you long to earn your shirt, huh?”

I cocked my head quizzically.

“You can’t wear 15 Engine colors until you get a fire.”

He paused as I made the ah-ha! face.

(I should have known it was coming.)

As he turned away, he laughed over his shoulder:

“The hard part is over. Now all you have to do is hurry up and finish your probation, ya dumbass.”

I’ve been gearing up for Ireland and redesigning RaisingLaddersPhotography.com, so I haven’t had much time for writing lately.

I do, however, have a few gems that I made a while back tucked away for just this occasion—enjoy the photos!

They’re quite the throwback to Academy days—a strange mixture, but I think that’s what makes them fun. You’ll find the remainder of them in a new gallery here. Some of the images contain explicit language, so be forewarned.

/RL

P.S. – the two above photos were from an early morning fire in the 1300 block of Trinidad Ave; E10 held the fire at the stairs, while E8 (second-due) got the knock on the basement fire. WUSA9 has a quick tidbit here about the fire.

Oh, 358. We were… interesting.

Enjoy the rest of the posters.

“It’s off! This one’s off!”

The other back step guy and I looked at each other.

What?

We just left the firehouse…

…we’re nowhere near the address…

…do you see… I don’t… there’s no smoke in the sky…

…nobody’s said anything on the radio…

Nevertheless, as our brains struggled with how in the hell he knew that, we simultaneously reached back to turn our SCBA bottles on. Wayne may joke about many things, but this is not one of them. (Incredibly, he would tell us later that he knew about the fire so far in advance because of a “different cloud pattern”—his words, not mine—in the sky towards where the call was.)

We double-checked our gear, and I tightened the last of my harness straps as we made the turn onto 25th Place.

First thought: Ohhhhh yes.

Second thought: Hey dumbass! Quit staring… you have stuff to do.

As I laid out the supply hose and the wagon took off, I saw bright red paint disappear into a haze that enveloped the block. I ran to catch up to the rest of my crew, and I saw that the lineman was already masking up at the front door. I dropped to put my mask on, made sure his hose was flaked out well enough behind him, and headed inside.

What in the name of… Christmas?

Trampling through the living room and working our way towards the stairs, we found ourselves walking over an unbelievable amount of Christmas decorations. Reindeer, nutcrackers of varying sizes, tinsel, rope lights, string lights, extension cords, wrapping paper… anything you can think of, it was in our way (yes, that is Santa and his sleigh in the first picture).

The first floor had a little bit of fire going in the bathroom and kitchen (to our left and right off the small hallway, respectively). My lineman whipped the nozzle around in each room as I fed him more and more line to advance. Our ultimate goal laid in getting up the stairs to the second floor, so we knocked the first floor fairly quickly and prepared to go upstairs.

There was only one problem, which I had been warned of in the Academy (I can still hear VanHagen’s voice): “…yeah, you might have a minute or two to do your own thing, but just know that pretty soon you’re going to have about twenty other [expletive]ers coming right up your ass. If you’ve got something, it’s gonna get real crowded—real fast.”

And such was certainly the case. The third due engine company hoping to steal our fire with their own hoseline; the rescue squad trying to muscle past us to do a search…

God only knows who else was crammed in that hallway, but there wasn’t a whole lot of room to move. To top it off, it felt like every person behind us was standing on our damned hose—an unfortunate reality of being in a narrow hallway. After some pulling, some shoving, and a good deal of yelling, we had finally freed up enough line to make it up the stairs (which were rapidly turning into the world’s nastiest Slip-n-Slide made of soot, water, and melted plastic Christmas crap).

At the top of the stairs, Truck 15′s bar man was hooking the walls in front of me, and my lineman was working his way around to the left. We could see the orange glow just past the landing, and we wanted nothing more than to get in there and hit it. A few minor fires jumped up around us, sometimes beside us, sometimes behind us. George was smashing walls with his halligan bar and finding little pockets of fire; each one we extinguished put us closer and closer to the seat of the fire, as we moved inch by inch. The second floor was fully involved, and we approached the middle of the room to find the entire ceiling glowing. I sidled up beside Tate, anchoring the hose with my body so he wouldn’t have to fight as hard against the nozzle pressure. He knocked down the left side of the room, and was even nice enough to give me a minute or two on the line to knock down the right side—seeing as it was the first real house fire both of us had ever had, I was pretty damned appreciative (much to my chagrin, however, he was sure to snatch the nozzle back real quick. It was, after all, mostly his fire).

We heard the truck working around us, their saws opening up the roof and their hooks breaking out the windows. The smoke that had once surrounded us with a soupy blackness transformed into a thinner gray, and began to clear out.

And just like that, most of it was gone. We were ordered to be relieved by another company—and were running low on air anyways—so we made our way down the stairs and outside as the next engine sprayed down what little licks of fire were left.

Outside, we all peeled our masks off. Our coats were steaming, our faces were sweating, and our gear was fully soaked with dirty water.

But we had done it.

Engine 26 had fought the beast, and we won—and we had a kick-ass time doing it, too.

We cleared that call several hours later—after the inevitable and exhausting overhaul work of tearing stuff up, shoveling it into buckets, and piling it in the front yard—with soot on our faces and pride in our hearts.

Sounds corny, doesn’t it? Well, it’s true. The two of us spent the rest of that tour smiling, having finally done something that many people only dream of as a small child in a Halloween costume. Anyone older and more jaded experienced than I will probably say I’m just a young excited kid, still wet behind the ears and with much to learn—and they’re absolutely right. I’m still far too young on this job to know my ass from my elbow, but I’m having way too much fun for anyone to damper my spirits.

Say what you will, gentlemen—critique to your heart’s content, if you wish. But remember that you, too, had a first fire. It may not have been perfect, it may not have been a big story in the local paper. But it was yours, and it was your first.

I’ve got some great guys around to teach me and plenty of time for them to do so; for now, congratulations—here’s to Engine 26 gettin’ it done!

Proudly,

/RL

P.S. – My apologies to the big dude from Truck 6. Give me a call and I’ll buy you a beer.

Image © available upon request, used with permission.

Thursday evening, a film crew came by the firehouse to shoot a segment for Extreme Forensics, a show on the Discovery Channel. The subject matter was D.C. area arsonist, Thomas A. Sweatt, who started a wave of fires several years ago in Maryland and the District. One of the 37 fires he admitted to was a two-alarm in June of 2003, in which an 86-year-old woman lost her life.

Extreme Forensics, realizing that E-26 had responded to that particular location on Evarts St, NE, showed up and asked if some of the guys who were actually on that fire could re-create a bit of the action—you know, run to the engine, put on boots, jump in, pull out with the lights and sirens going.

Wait a minute. Does some of that scene sound familiar to you?

(Yeah, the guys were a lot more amenable to following their directions than mine… damn this red tag! Hey, I got it done under more extreme circumstances. There were more than a few “creative directions” that ended up on my cutting room floor…)

I can only assume from watching those forensic shows that the footage will be either heavily vignetted/put in black-and-white (so the audience knows it happened in the past); slowed by about 50% (to add dramatic tension); and given an over-the-top voiceover by a man with a pleasing baritone voice.

It won’t air until next year, but supposedly the production company will provide us with a copy of the episode.

What’s next?