Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [90]
Benny has gone into an apartment on the fifth floor. He makes a careful search, but the apartment is empty. He opens the hall door, and he is hit with a hard wind of heat. He drops to the floor, and the heat passes over him. The smoke is thicker than he has ever experienced it, and he coughs almost uncontrollably. His first impulse is to get back out to the fire escape and air, but he puts his nose to the linoleum floor and tries to relax. As his coughing stops he can hear soft moaning coming from the hall. He listens carefully for the direction, and it seems to be coming from the landing between the top floor and the roof. He crawls on his stomach through the hall, and up the stairs. The heat is unbearable and he feels that all energy has been drained from his body. He reaches the landing, and sees before him an incredible mess of human beings. They are piled on top of one another, and some are thinking the last conscious thoughts of life while exhaling the sighs of death.
The landing is an inferno. There are seven people—five adults and two children—lying there. They tried to flee the burning building, and they went to the roof door. But the roof door was chained closed to keep the drug addicts from entering from the roof, and the heat from a fire five floors beneath them had nowhere to go. And seven human beings lay there with the heat, before a chained bulkhead door.
Benny can hear the desperate thump of the axhead hitting the halligan tool as he grabs for the nearest body. A two-inch hole was cut into the bulkhead brick and into the steel-covered door, and the chain was run through both holes, bound by a lock on the inside. The links are heavy, and the firemen on the roof cannot break them. They work instead on the hinges.
Benny has a two-year-old girl in his arms again, but this one isn’t breathing. He carries her down into a fifth-floor apartment. He closes the door behind to keep out the smoke, and lays the girl gently on the kitchen floor. He wants to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but he has to think also of the others on the landing. He blows two hard, hopeful puffs of breath into the girl’s mouth, and returns to the landing. There is a large woman there, made even larger with a pregnancy. He grabs her under the arms and pulls, but she is heavy and Benny is sweating a last resurgence of power. He is pulling hard, but it is of no consequence. He is close to collapse, and gasping with the heat and smoke. Then, like a deus ex machina redemption, he feels an arm swing around him, grabbing the woman’s arm. Artie Merritt has vented from the roof, and seeing the door chained he came down the fire escape from the roof to search the floor. He and Benny drag the woman down the stairs. She is still breathing, but badly burned. They leave her next to the baby in the kitchen and return to the landing. Artie cannot control a coughing seizure, but he partially lifts a man, and drags him down the stairs. As Benny lifts the other child the bulkhead door swings open, and hangs down, caught by the chain. The heat and smoke rush out to the midday air, and the firemen fight their way down the stairs. Benny and Artie know now that the worst is over, and they minister to the people whose lives were worth more than their own.
Engine 45 is in the apartment extinguishing the fire that has come up through the walls. We are waiting in the hall, but we know that the men of Engine 45 won’t need us to relieve them. Kevin, Cosmo, and I follow Lieutenant Collins to the street, where he confers with Chief Niebrock. The Chief wants us to make a secondary search of all the apartments in the building.
As we re-enter the building a man stumbles out. He is burned on the face, and bleeding heavily from the mouth. A large black man, he is wearing a light cotton shirt that is now red with blood, and he has only one shoe. He falls in front of us, and I catch him before he hits the ground. The others go in the building, and I stay with the man.
About fifteen minutes have gone by, and I have tried to clean the man as best I could. I used