Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [35]
The old, dying building is a three-story wooden structure called a Queen Anne. It’s the kind of gothic house that Edgar Allan Poe would have delighted in writing about. It has a series of peaked roofs and widow’s walks, and many small rooms with spaces between the walls and between the ceilings and floors. This type of building is particularly difficult for firemen to work in. Fire spreads quickly in small enclosed spaces.
It was just a little over an hour ago that we were sitting in the firehouse kitchen. The radiators were hissing, and the coffee was steaming. We had already responded to twelve alarms since our tour of duty started at six o’clock, and, except for one, all had been small ventures into the night’s cold. Two were mattress fires, one was a burning abandoned car, and the rest were garbage fires or false alarms. The exception was a midnight alarm for a burning couch. We saw the smoke coming from a window on the sixth floor of a tenement building on Charlotte Street. It seems that most of the fires we have are on the top floor. Each time I drag hose up five or six flights of stairs I curse the designer of the building, and I think how much easier the job would be had he taken fircfighting into consideration. He could have put a standpipe in the building, or at least a well between the staircases so that the hose could go straight up instead of snaking around the bends.
We stretched four lengths of hose into the building, and five more lengths trailed behind to the fire hydrant. Nine lengths of hose for a rotten couch fire that could have been extinguished with a glassful of water five minutes earlier. The guy who lived in the apartment was sitting on the stairs in the hall, smoking a cigarette, and saying that he didn’t know how the fire started. He looked and sounded drunk, but who knows? And when you think about it, who cares?
The weather got to us on Charlotte Street. When we tried to uncouple the hose connections we found them frozen solid. Each of the five lengths laying in the street were bound together by the cold, the cold that now prevents my fingers from moving. We had to lift each 71-pound length of hose over the standing exhaust pipe of the fire engine to warm the connections. This kind of extra work is frustrating because there is no one to blame but nature.
Kelsey and Knipps had involved almost everyone in the kitchen in a plan to beam the ceilings in Knipps' house. Plans were being worked on, and a scale drawing was put on the blackboard. Knipps had asked Kelsey if he knew anything about installing overhead beams. Kelsey asked everyone else. And what had begun as a simple inquiry turned out to be a full-scale project where beam designs were being created for all his rooms. Firemen are like that. The slightest problem or question invites full participation.
That is what we were doing a little over an hour ago when a second alarm was sounded for Box 2317, Forest Avenue and 158th Street. Plans, drawings, coffee, and hissing radiators were left behind as we hustled our way to the fire.
Three engine companies were assigned on the first alarm, and two ladder companies. When the Battalion Chief saw the large body of fire he ordered a second alarm. Engine 82 was assigned on the second. We could see the red glare in the sky as we left our firehouse, which is about a mile away. As we turned the corner on Forest Avenue we saw that Engine 73 and Engine 41 were backing their lines out of the building. We knew then that we would be here for some time, because the faster you can get close to a fire, the faster it will be extinguished. But because of the imminent danger of a roof collapse it was impossible to get close.
Now I’m standing across the street from a burning building, and I’m hoping for its quick destruction. If the rest of the roof would only come down, then we could go in and put the fire out.
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