Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [88]
We drag the hose back down the stairs, and begin to fold it onto Engine 50’s pumper. It is easy work, and we are all silently satisfied that the line wasn’t charged, and there is no water to drain. I am not paying much attention to what I am doing, for I keep thinking of Louie Minelli. His eyes, heavy and watered, staring at me through the lifting poison. Tired and blank. “I got the first two rooms.” His body robbed of energy, he barely mustered the strength to turn his head. “Mike Roberti will get the rest.” His words, though barely audible, were filled with pride. Engine 50 can do the job. Engine 50 can put out any fire. I want to yell as I pass the limp, empty hose forward, “But Louie, the goddam building is vacant. We should let it burn.” We won’t let it burn though. I know that, and Louie knows. We have a tradition in this department of going where the fire is. And we know that two or three fires will be set in this building every week, until the city tears it down.
There are five Fire Department vehicles parked on 166th Street. The engines are running, and the radio volumes are at their highest. The rigs sing like a chorus as the dispatcher asks: “Engine Eighty-two. Ladder Thirty-one. Are you available?”
Jim Stack is sitting in the cab of the pumper, He yells over to Lieutenant Collins, “We’re available. Huh Lou?”
Benny lays the nozzle over the hose, and Lieutenant Collins nods to Jim. We can hear Jim’s voice blare over the radio as we run to our pumper: “Engine Eighty-two is available.”
The dispatcher replies: “All right Eighty-two. Ladder Thirty-one?”
The Chief of the Seventeenth Battalion answers: “Ladder Thirty-one is in the process of taking up. They will be slightly delayed.”
“Ten-four Battalion Seventeen. Engine Eighty-two, respond to phone alarm Box 2509. Location, 1335 Intervale Avenue. Did you receive, Engine Eighty-two?”
Jim comes over the air: “Engine Eighty-two, ten-four.”
The fire engine races and wails away from Louie Minelli and the smoldering abandoned building. 1335 Intervale Avenue is right up the street from the firehouse. We could have been there in thirty seconds. Now, it will take us three or four minutes.
We can see the smoke five blocks away. Our boots are up, and we are ready. Finally, we pass the firehouse and the sizzling hamburgers. The doors are open, and the house is empty. I look over the side of the pumper, and I see the men of Engine 85 stretching into a five-story tenement house. They are not assigned at this location, and they must have been special-called since we were operating elsewhere.
The fire is roaring out of two windows on the ground floor. Benny and I, and Kevin and Cosmo are off the pumper and running before Jim Stack brings the rig to a stop. This would be an ordinary fire, except that the fire escapes are a circus of people yelling desperately at every level. There is no ladder company at the scene, and we all know without speaking that we have to think about life. Engine 85 will think about fire.
“Aqui, aqui,” the people cry fearfully. The drop ladder on the fire escape has been let down, but it is not secured well, and it shakes. I make a quick wish, as I climb the thin, narrow bars, that a ladder company will get in soon. Benny is before me; the others behind. There is a man yelling in wild frenzy on the third floor, and we are trying to reach him. But the fire escapes are crowded with fleeing people. Please hurry. Hold the handrails. Watch your step. Let us by. Let us by.
The man on the third floor is holding an infant out of the window. His arms are outstretched, and it seems he is offering the baby, as even Abraham offered his son. Benny nests the child in his arms. It is in its first month of life, and cries the high violent cry peculiar to its size. The man turns and bends down to the floor. He picks up another infant, and hands it to Benny. It is the sixteen-inch twin of the first. Benny cradles it in his other arm, and begins to descend the fire escape. There is a light