Cows

Fire from Hell

This is the story of what I call the “Fire from hell,” not because of death and destruction, but because things went wrong that shouldn’t have. We know that shit happens through no one’s fault, and also because of attitude and stupid mistakes. This is a nice mix of the two.

Over the years, our job has expanded to include well-being checks. This consists of a full medical response to an address where someone can’t get in touch with or hasn’t heard from a friend or relative. Usually, everything is OK, but sometimes not. We were responding to a well-being check with an engine and the ambulance, when a call came in for a house fire on the other side of town. I was in engine 2 from station 2 with the lieutenant. The shift officer diverted us with the engine to the fire call and kept the ambulance on the well-being check. A mutual aid request for an engine to the fire from the next town should have been made. That crew could have been there first. This was not done. This meant another couple of minutes were lost before fire attack. As fire doubles in size every minute, time is a major factor in our business.

Police at the fire scene were reporting fire showing. As we arrived in the engine, the officer radioed for us to remember the recently adopted “Two-in Two-out” policy. We were ordered not to enter until a second company arrived, yet none was enroute at the time. This was a misunderstanding of the policy. Entry into the building should have been allowed, but not into the actual fire room. This would have still allowed fire attack. The door at the top of the driveway was a straight entry into the basement. The fire had started in a microwave oven in a closet in the partly finished basement playroom. The fire came out of the closet, climbed the concrete wall toward the unfinished ceiling, into the wall, upstairs, and vented out the basement window.

Since we had been ordered not to enter, I took a line around the side to the window to try and knock down the fire from there. After a long wait for water which never came, I went back around the house and saw my partner, the pump operator, backing the engine out of the now-destroyed garage. It seems that the operator moved the air valve to engage the pump much too fast and engaged the transmission instead. He then realized the attack line had no water. His answer was to keep throttling up. The truck over-rode the maxi brake and lurched forward into the center post between the garage doors. It collapsed the garage and destroyed the cab on our new, first-line engine.

This was a very senior man who should have known better and should have been able to troubleshoot the water issue easily. I reached into what was left of the cab, took the engine out of PUMP and reengaged it—slowly. Water problem solved.

The officer arrived with another piece of apparatus and crew. The attack line went to the door. Entry was made and the fire in that room was quickly put out. Too bad by this time the fire was in the wall and up to the first floor.

The second vehicle laid a 4-inch line from the hydrant to the original pump and parked. It parked on a hill with chock blocks in place, but it was winter and water was flowing and ice was everywhere. The truck slid backwards on the ice, down the driveway, caught the 4-inch hose and tore it out of the first pump. The hose flew across the driveway, hit a firefighter in the chest, and knocked him down. He went to the hospital. No serious injury though.

The sudden loss of water to the attack lines when the hose was torn away forced us to withdraw from the house until we got a new water supply. This was accomplished by an out-of-town engine. They caught a hydrant and laid in.

In their haste, the person at the hydrant opened it too soon, filling the 4-inch hose with water. Unfortunately, that hose had not been disconnected yet and was still in the storage bed on the engine. Somehow, that mess was straightened out, water was supplied, and the fire was put out. There was much damage to the house, which, as I hear it, was demolished and a new one built on the site.

That’s the end of the story, as I know it. At this “Fire from Hell,” there was:

• needless fire extension at one end of the house,

• a garage collapse at the other,

• a new fire engine demolished,

• a hose damaged,

• a man sent to the hospital,

• and a load of large diameter hose charged in the hose bed of an engine.

Some of these things wouldn’t have happened if training and understanding and attitude were what they should have been. I like to think that things have improved since then. I hope they have. I hope lessons were learned from this fiasco. Sometimes shit happens, but it should never happen because people don’t know what they’re doing or don’t care.