/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?

I’ve just completed and uploaded my official submission for the Nikon Festival “A Day Through Your Lens” competition (this might explain the absence from blogging for a bit, eh?)

In keeping with contest rules, I’m not supposed to upload the video anywehere for public viewing except through the contest website, so I’ll just have to link it:

Twenty-Four Hours: A Day With Raising_Ladders

It was a hell of a project, but I’m glad to finally have it completed and sent in—now I can take a much-needed break from editing.

Thanks to everyone who helped, including my family, my friend/editor Sean, and the entire crew at E26 #2.

/RL