Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [57]
Ian would place the apparatus near the building but not so near as to get scorched if the fire got out of hand, nor so far away that the hose lines wouldn’t reach inside. He would get the pump running, open the lines for the firefighters who would crawl inside under the heat, and help hook up a supply line from the tanker.
House trailers, even double-wides, tended to have fewer exits and smaller windows than wood-frame homes. They also burned hotter inside. In the past ten years, North Bend Fire and Rescue had lost two elderly home owners in trailer fires. You had to worry about losing a firefighter in one, too.
Karrie Haston and Ben Arden would take in the first hand line. Ideally, I would go in with Karrie, because she was still on probation and so far had been to only one good fire. Crawling inside alongside her would allow me to make sure she didn’t get into trouble and would also give me a chance to see how she reacted to heat, stress, and lack of visibility. Her skills on aid calls were exemplary, and except for her constant questioning of authority around the station, something I viewed as a habit she’d picked up from years of bucking her father’s heavy-handed authoritarianism, she’d acquitted herself well in most arenas. But so far I had yet to see her fight fire. It was pretty simple: you couldn’t fight fire, you couldn’t have the job.
“It’s Caputo’s place, all right,” Ian Hjorth said again. As we pulled into the driveway and stopped, low-hanging branches tore at the paint on our fire engine and slapped loudly against the light bars on the roof.
A large maroon Chevrolet sedan blocked our approach.
The driver, a doughy woman of about seventy, stood thirty feet in front of the idling car pointing at the burning trailer as if we couldn’t see it. It was impossible to hear what she was shouting over the sound of our motor and the stream of radio chatter crossing the airwaves.
“What we got here is a nickel holding up a dollar,” I said, trying to push my door open against the bushes. Ian inched the rig forward to help.
“Caputo’s mother,” Ian said. “She was here when he hacked his toe off with the maul last fall.”
Something first-in fire personnel always thought about was what the next-in units would see when they got there. Arriving at a fire, each unit got an indelible look at the structure and the work being performed or not being performed, and when the next-in units found us stuck in the bushes, they would laugh their heads off.
Stalling around outside a fire building was not a reputation I wanted to carry to my grave.
“You guys stay on board,” I said to Karrie and Ben. Branches shrieked against the door as I worked it open.
Beyond the Chevrolet lay a small grassy swale and beyond that the trailer, black smoke pouring from a partially open window on the right-hand side. Less concentrated plumes of smoke issued from cracks and seams in the trailer.
Still facing the domicile, the old woman backed up unsteadily, tottering in a clump of weeds. I asked if this was her car, but she couldn’t hear me over the rumbling of our diesel engine. When I spotted the keys in the ignition, I slid the seat back, got in, placed the car in drive, and parked on the sod just past her, leaving the keys in the ignition.
“I know he’s in there,” she said, her voice tremulous. “I came over to bring him some greens for dinner.”
I, too, figured Caputo was in there, since his flatbed truck was parked where he always parked it on the north side of the driveway.
Our diesel roared past, and I missed the rest of what she said. Ian, Ben, and Karrie disembarked and went to work. I yelled that there was probably a man inside. Behind us, a volunteer jogged into the driveway. “Grab the next guy and lay a backup line to the front door,” I said.
Then Morgan and my daughters showed up on foot. I caught Morgan’s eye and pointed to the old woman in the bushes. “Don’t move from there.” The three of them went to their assigned position, as cute as porcelain