Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [96]
The powerful voice of Charlie McCartty awakens me from my wondering. “I heard three rings, men.”
I sit up in the bed, and listen for the housewatchman’s voice. It could be for Engine 85, but the command travels up the pole-hole from the floor below: “Eighty-two and Seven-twelve. Chief goes. Fire at the corner of Home and Union.”
“So long suckers,” Charlie says as men move to the poles.
As I slide down the shining brass pole, I can hear Bill Kelsey say, “You’re just jealous it’s not for you, McCartty.”
Bill slides the pole, but Charlie’s voice, deep and raspy, follows right behind him, “Listen Sonny, I have more time sliding this pole than you have in fires, and don’t you forget it.”
We are all laughing on the back step. Kelsey insists that Charlie would follow us down Intervale Avenue in order to have the last word, and the chuckling continues. But as Valenzio turns the pumper up Home Street the faces on the back step become serious. There is an abandoned one-family, wooden frame building on the comer of Union and Home, and the second floor is completely ablaze. The fire is so intense that it has reached out and burned the overhead electrical wires in the street, and a line lies on the sidewalk in front of the building, arching, and leaping.
There is a wooden crate in a lot beside the burning frame, and John Nixon rips a side off to lay across the exposed wire. Chief Niebrock is here, and he orders a man to stand watch by the fallen hotline, as John rushes into the building to make his search. But the man is more interested in the fire than babysitting over a wire, and another fireman almost steps on the thing—500 volts strong. Fortunately, Chief Niebrock sees him, and cries a desperate warning, as I pass by dragging the hose. The fireman, a man from Engine 50, redirects his step, and Chief Niebrock scolds the man who was assigned to stand watch.
The fire is going in three rooms, but the large amount of water pouring from the two-and-a-half-inch hose makes easy work of it. Kelsey has the nozzle, and is moving in fast. The smoke is dark and putrid, and the inevitable mucus flows heavily from our mouths and nostrils. Lieutenant Welch begins to cough, and realizing the effort Kelsey must be making orders Willy Boyle to the nozzle. Knipps, Royce, and I hump the hose from behind, where the smoke is not as bad.
Kelsey bails out to the lighter air, but as he passes through the hall Kenny Hing pulls back his halligan tool to take a swing at a rear door. Kelsey is hit with the end of the weighty, metal tool, and his eyelid opens up.
The fire in the last of the rooms is out, and the room steams. The men of Ladder 712 enter to pull the ceilings. Tony Indio walks to the far corner of the room, but the flooring gives way. His six-foot hook flies to the ground as he tries to catch a beam, but he isn’t quick enough, and disappears to a room below. Nixon and Mike Runyon hustle out of the room, and down the stairs to where Tony lies.
It is eight o’clock now. Knipps is cooking breaded veal cutlets for dinner—McCartty calls them motorman’s gloves, and Boyle calls them elephant’s ears. Kelsey is still at the hospital getting his eye stitched, and we heard that Indio has two broken ribs.
Knipps is cooking the cutlets by threes in the deep oil fryer. As he lays three finished products into a brown-paper-lined pan, he announces to all in the kitchen that there is just enough food for the meal, and if he catches anyone trying to steal a piece of knosh he will cut their hand off.
“You can shove your meal,” someone remarks, but