When we arrived, a crowd already lined the road. We were the first crew on scene.
This was a big fire.
The sight of a blazing structure fire is really mesmerizing. There are always crowds, and the crowds are stupider than you might think. Sometimes they harass the firefighters, sometimes they try to help, sometimes they try to get close up to take selfies.
We took a few minutes to assess the situation.
We were going to need backup. Lots of it.
The captain called in a second alarm. The fire chief was already en route, but he was headed in from Central, farther away. We got word from dispatch that Station Three was also on the way. Gloucester, too.
The unventilated building had spent the morning smoldering, filling with dark smoke. It was a 1960s-style box store with one entrance of glass doors at the front, and probably a door and a loading bay at the back. Windows don’t break until temperatures get to around five hundred degrees, and the row of windows across the front of the store was still intact.
It was a pretty simple layout, but what made the scene complicated was that road access to the front and the back of the store was interrupted by a solid concrete block wall. The front opened onto a highway, but you could only get to the back of the store by going around the block to a backstreet.
From the looks of the smoke, the fire was concentrated toward the back.
The captain grabbed three guys—Tiny, Case, and Six-Pack—to drive around back, closer to the source. He ordered me, DeStasio, and Owen to stay in front with the ambulance, manage the crowd, and direct the chief and all backup crews around back when they arrived. “This is a defensive fire,” the captain said as they loaded up, pointing at us. “No interior operations.”
Meaning, Don’t go inside.
No argument from me. That building was a deathtrap.
We waited out front, the three of us, but kept busy. The rookie kept an eye on the crowd, I manned the radio, and DeStasio went to inspect the building.
I don’t remember now how we divvied up those jobs. I don’t remember any discussion. Though later, I would find myself wishing that DeStasio had taken any other job at all.
Because as DeStasio inspected the entryway and the windows, he saw something that would change all our lives.
He saw a little boy inside the building.
Bystanders falsely see “someone in the building” all the time.
The smoke, the heat, the way it bends the air—it can make you see things. You can think you see a face at the window, but it’s only smoke. You can think you hear someone screaming Help! but it’s only a whistle of steam. Panic can crimp your mind. I’ve seen it happen over and over and heard plenty of stories. When a civilian says there’s someone in the building, you say thanks and keep on doing what you’re doing.
But when a firefighter says it, that’s a whole different thing.
DeStasio showed back up out of breath. Like he’d been running. And firefighters never run. “You saw him, right?” DeStasio said. “You saw him?”
“Saw who?”
“Inside the building. Just inside the window. A boy.”
I studied the windows. I couldn’t see anything. “I don’t see anyone,” I said.
He looked over to Owen. “You saw him, right, rookie?”
Owen shook his head.
But DeStasio was already pulling on his bunker coat. “Let’s get moving.”
I started to get a bad feeling. “You want to go in?”
“There’s a child in there,” DeStasio said, like, Duh.
“We don’t have the right equipment,” I said, shaking my head. “We have to wait for backup.”
Something flashed over DeStasio’s face then—some kind of rage that I had never seen before. If I had to guess, I would say maybe being told he “had” to do something by a nonranking member of his crew—and a female, at that—didn’t sit too well with him. It’s also possible that he sensed I was doubting him about the child. I’d checked those windows, and I hadn’t seen anything—and why would a kid be inside a grocery store at this hour of the morning? It didn’t add up.
“What we have to do,” DeStasio said, in a voice tight with outrage, “is get in there. Right now!”
“We’ve got orders to stay out,” I said. “Backup will be here in ten minutes.”
“No,” DeStasio said. “We don’t have time to wait.”
Here was part of the problem: DeStasio, as he was constantly reminding me, had a lot more years in the department than I did. He was senior to me in every way—except one. I was a fully trained paramedic, and he was only an EMT.
Technically, even though he was the senior crew member, that made me the ranking medic on the scene.
Which might also account for some of that rage.
DeStasio turned toward Owen. “Get your mask on. We’re going in.”
“We have orders to stay out!” I said.
DeStasio leaned in, his eyes wild and vicious. “Radio the captain.”
So I tried.
I grabbed my handheld and fired it up. “Captain,” I said, “we’ve got a possible child trapped in the building. Over.”
I waited for a reply, but I could only hear static.
I tried again. “Captain, requesting permission to enter the structure and check for victims. Over.”
This time, his radio crackled to life, but it was half static and only half words. I couldn’t tell what he’d said—and, in truth, it sounded more like I was overhearing him than receiving a message from him.
I looked at DeStasio. “I am not reading you, Captain,” I said into the radio. “Please repeat. Over.”
Another long blast of static. Could he read me?
“That’s it,” DeStasio said. “We’re going in.”
“We have orders not to go in,” I said.
“Ask me if I care.”
“That’s insubordination,” I said.
“Tell that to the dying boy inside.”
DeStasio was already moving toward the building. He grabbed Owen as he went and pulled him along. Owen, of course, would have no choice but to follow DeStasio’s orders. That’s the essence of the paramilitary structure. DeStasio may have ranked below me, but Owen ranked well below us both.
“We have orders to stay out!” I shouted, again, following.
“That’s not what I just heard.”
“You heard static!” I said.
“We always go in. If there’s even a chance someone’s inside, we go in.”
“Do not go in there!” I shouted. I ran past them and put my body between DeStasio and the entrance, standing my ground.
But there was that rage again. DeStasio came at me, shouting, his face red, spit collecting at the edges of his mouth.
I’d never heard DeStasio shout.
“I’ve been with this department longer than you’ve been alive!” he said, his face like a mask of agony. “When I started working with this captain, you were in diapers! We’ve fought more fires together than anybody can count! Don’t tell me what we need to do! I know what to do! I could follow our captain’s orders in my sleep! There’s a boy in that building! We don’t have time to wait! ‘To Protect and Serve!’ You want me to leave that little boy to burn to death, but I won’t do it!”
“You can’t go in there!” I shouted.
“You can’t stop me!” He smacked Owen on the shoulder. “Rookie, come on.”
In slo-mo, I watched as the rookie started to follow him.
“Rookie!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”
He turned and shook his head. “It’s a deathtrap in there.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, raising my hands like, What the hell? “It’s a deathtrap in there.”
Owen shook his head, dead serious. “Can’t let him go in alone.”
Shit.
I checked the road for any sight of backup on the way. Still nothing.
And that’s when I realized the crux of it. The rookie wasn’t goin
g to let DeStasio go in without him, and I wasn’t going to let the rookie go in without me.
This was happening.
We were all doomed.
I tied a guide rope to a pole near the entrance, then turned on our PASS safety devices and secured our masks and air tanks. Sometimes, in a well-vented structure, you don’t have to turn on your air right away—but this place was the opposite of well vented. I opened the valve on DeStasio’s tank, DeStasio opened up Owen’s, and Owen opened mine.
Time for a quick reminder. “Rookie,” I said, “what’s the average time the air in a thirty-minute canister lasts in a working fire?”
“Fifteen-point-six minutes,” Owen answered.
“Very good,” I said, tugging on the guide rope to make sure it was secure. “At the eight-minute mark, we come back out for new canisters—no exceptions. Even if your low-air alarm isn’t going off yet. Even if DeStasio won’t come with you. I am not letting you die today, got it?”
The rookie nodded.
I glared at the back of DeStasio’s helmet. “This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done at a fire,” I said to Owen. “Stay at the perimeter of the building on the front wall. Stay in physical and verbal contact with me at all times. And whatever you do, do not get off the guide rope.”
We might be okay.
Maybe.
We pushed open the sliding doors. Smoke came billowing out like from a dragon’s mouth.
When you’re working inside a burning structure, you can’t expect to be able to see. The smoke is thick and dark and fills up the rooms. If the windows blow out, sometimes the smoke will dissipate, and if you stay low, you’ll have some visibility—but there are no guarantees, and you find your way by feel. That’s a particular skill: the ability to visualize rooms and construct mental floor plans in totally unfamiliar spaces without using your eyes. There’s definitely a spatial relationships component.
Also a not-freaking-the-hell-out component.
The heat pushes you down anyway, and you sweep the rooms on all fours, keeping contact with the walls. In residential structures, you have to check under beds and in closets, because when kids are scared they tend to hide under furniture and in toy boxes or laundry hampers. But where would a kid hide in a grocery store? Where would we even start looking?
DeStasio had seen him at the front window. That’s where we’d start, at the front perimeter. We’d have to stick together. The rookie had never been in a hard-core situation like this, and though we’d driven him through countless blindfolded drills, it wouldn’t be the same. The heat, the time pressure, the blackness.
It’s a whole different thing when you do it for real.
Normally, you never enter a structure without a hose line, both as a source of water to hold back the flames and as a lifeline back to the place where you entered. You stay on the hose—always, always—or risk getting lost in an unfamiliar space. You feel the couplings to know which way is out.
But we didn’t have a hose. The hose had gone around back with the pumper.
Here’s some irony: We’d ordered new radios, but they hadn’t come yet. Even good radios were hard to work in tough conditions, but the static on the captain’s line had been unacceptable. I read once that most firefighter deaths came back to communication problems, and that didn’t surprise me at all.
Did I think what we were doing right now could lead to firefighter deaths?
Yes.
But we’d just have to work like hell and hope for the best.
And find the boy, if we could.
Inside, we worked our way around magazine stands and lines of carts. I kept one glove on the guide line at all times, and alternated the other between feeling around the space and keeping contact with DeStasio’s boot up ahead. The rookie was behind me, doing the same.
I worried about our air supply.
We’d been in five minutes. The smoke was thick. Somewhere, a window blew out, but the smoke didn’t thin.
We kept crawling. I could only see filtered light down low and blackness up top.
Soon, I could see flames rolling across the ceiling.
It was going to be time to get out soon. I’d been in bigger fires than this, and hotter fires than this, but I’d never been so ill equipped. I remembered an old-timer back in Austin telling me when I was a rookie, “It’s an emergency until you get there. Then it’s just work.”
Somehow, this felt like an emergency.
Sixty more seconds, I thought, and then we’re out of here.
That’s when I heard Owen’s voice over my radio. Laughing. Actually, more like giggling.
“What’s funny, rookie?” I asked.
But no answer. Only more laughter. Why was he on the radio?
I turned back to reach for him, but he wasn’t there.
“Rookie?” I said. “Rookie, are you on the guide line?”
“I think I see a bunny rabbit,” Owen said, through the radio. Or—that’s what it sounded like.
“What is he babbling about?” DeStasio shouted, still moving forward.
More laughing through the radio.
There was no reason—at all—for the rookie to be laughing. Firefighters do plenty of laughing, but never, ever when they’re working a fire. “It could be cyanide poisoning,” I said. I’d learned all about it when I applied for the antidote kit. “It makes you kind of drunk at first before the real symptoms kick in.”
In theory, Owen had been breathing the air from his canister. But we’d moved fast getting in here. His breathing apparatus could have been ill fitting. Or leaking. Or knocked loose without his realizing it.
“Rookie, where are you?” I couldn’t see him. I beamed my flashlight behind me. But he wasn’t there.
I felt a sting of panic in my chest. “DeStasio, stop! The rookie’s off the guide line!”
DeStasio stopped.
I panned my flashlight around. Nothing but smoke. “Rookie, where are you?” I said into my radio. “What can you see?”
“Fluffy stuff,” he replied.
I tried to make my voice so authoritative that he would obey me. “Look for the beam from my flashlight and move toward it!”
Then I saw him. Crawling toward me around the end of an aisle, maybe ten feet away.
Relief. Visual contact. All I had to do was get to him and bring him back to the perimeter.
I started to move toward him.
But then two things happened, one after the other. The rookie—who must truly have been not right in the head to do this—stood up, like he was just going to walk over.
And then the ceiling collapsed.
Twenty-five
THE SOUND WAS unreal—like a thousand cannons going off at once. The ground shook like in an earthquake for much longer than it should have.
Then stillness—and the room went white.
I couldn’t see anything. Not even my hand in front of my face. I crawled toward where DeStasio had been, but I found an overturned shelf. I shouted into the radio, “Are you conscious?”
“I’m okay,” he shouted back. “But something got my shoulder.”
“Stay there, okay? I’m getting the rookie. I’ll come back for you.”
As I crawled through the whiteness, my radio crackled with a long blast of static—the captain, asking everyone in the crew to report their status. I reported in as I kept crawling, though I suspected the captain couldn’t hear me.
Next, another blast of static, most likely the captain calling a Mayday—and then, seconds later, the sound of all the engines outside blowing their air horns at once for forty-five seconds. The sound that means, Get the hell out. Now.
But I was focused on another sound.
Because in the seconds before the air horns started, I heard something more urgent. The rookie’s PASS device started going off. PASS devices let out a shriek if you’re still for too long.
I’d heard the sound before, but never like this.
It meant he’d been still for at leas
t thirty seconds.
And that could mean anything.
I kept crawling, unable to see anything at all in the whiteness, navigating my way through the space using my memories of what I had seen before the collapse to form a mental map. Was I going the right way? I had no idea. Had I passed right by Owen without even knowing it? Anything was possible.
But I couldn’t change the visibility. All I could do was focus like hell. I could have been off by aisles, but there was nothing to do but try. If I was right about the cyanide poisoning, every second counted.
People say that emotions muddy your decision-making, but that wasn’t my experience that day. How I felt about Owen—and the sound of that PASS device—sharpened my purpose to a knifepoint. It’s like an article I once read about a teenage girl who’d lifted a car off her father after an accident and saved his life. Those were some pretty herculean feelings.
I thought about my mom saying, Love makes you stronger. And then I couldn’t help but understand—clearly and brightly and inescapably—right there in the middle of it all, that I loved Owen. I loved him. And it wasn’t stupid, or girly, or a waste of time. It was the thing that was going to save his life.
I was going to get him out of here.
Or die trying.
The white powder was starting to clear. Through the fog of it, with my flashlight, I caught a glimpse of what looked like Owen’s boot. I felt it to confirm, and then I felt all around.
It was him.
Ceiling debris had come down on him, and I had to shove it aside before I could start dragging him back toward the exit.
It’s a little bit ironic that the “fireman’s carry”—that iconic image of firefighters throwing victims over their shoulders—is not actually a technique we use in fires. Heat rises, after all. You have to stay low. You’d never stand up with a victim over your shoulder.
So how do you get people out of burning buildings?
You drag them.
That’s what I did with Owen.
Bunker gear even comes with a built-in strap behind the coat collar for that very purpose. Pull it, and webbing in the coat tightens around their body. I’d never had to use the strap before, but I found it in seconds and pulled.
Things You Save in a Fire Page 24