Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [9]
I do not advocate cutting off the child’s hand, but I do think he should have been institutionalized for a year. I understand the sad social conditions in which this child has been forced to live, but I have lost sympathy for the cry that poverty founded the crime, not the boy. Anyone found guilty of pulling a malicious false alarm should be sent to jail for a year, or, if under sixteen, to a reform school. But, in the eight years I have been a fireman, I have seen only one man jailed, and I have responded to thousands of alarms that proved to be maliciously false.
In the city of New York last year, firemen responded to 72,060 false alarms—an average of 197 daily. Yet, the courts and the Police Department do not look on the pulling of a false alarm as a serious offense. Few are arrested, fewer are found guilty, and fewer still are punished.
Besides Mike Carr, I know of two other firemen who were killed en route to false alarms in New York City in the past eight years. But, it is not just firemen who are victimized by false alarms. Often while firemen are answering a false alarm at one end of their district, a serious fire breaks out at the other end. Time is the most important factor in fighting fires. I can remember many fires where, had we been there a minute or two sooner, we probably would have saved someone’s life. Three hundred and seven people died in New York City fires last year. Statistics are not available, but you can be sure that some of those deaths could have been avoided if firemen had not been answering a false alarm minutes before.
Mike Carr is dead, and his widow will have to make it on just half the salary she was used to. It’s strange, but had Mike come through the accident with a disabling injury, he would have been pensioned off with three-fourths of his salary. His wife would have been happy to have him alive. But he died, and she gets half his salary to support his family. The same will go to the widow of the man who fell through the roof yesterday.
We don’t talk about Mike Carr in the firehouse. We think about him often, but we don’t talk about him. Words of sentiment and emotion do not come easily.
The day following Mike’s death the firehouse was busy with journalists and television news camera crews. Marty Hannon and Juan Moran were not working, and the television people decided to film an interview with Charlie McCartty, who is the biggest man in Ladder 31. And he is as tough a fireman as he is big. He is respected around the firehouse, not only because of his size and his ability as a fireman, but also because he is known to do the right thing—always. Never pretentious, McCartty is willing to stand up for anything or anyone when he thinks the cause is right.
Charlie applied the mechanical resuscitator to Mike Carr as the ambulance careened its way to the hospital. He stayed with Mike the whole time the doctors worked on him. He tried to make small talk with the members of Engine 85 at the hospital, to take their minds off Mike. He tried to console Nick Riso, who was punishing himself because he was driving the apparatus from which Mike fell. He said, “God Almighty, Nick, how many times did you turn that corner before when nothing ever happened? The Big Guy upstairs called the shots, that’s all. You gotta look at it that way.” But Nick just sobbed, with his face in his hands.
Charlie understood what was happening, and he had full control over his own feelings. Now, though, the television people wanted to film him, and I could see his lips moving in that uncontrollable way a person’s lips do when he is nervous.
“You knew Mike Carr?” The television commentator pushed