Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [1]
“How the hell could we possibly be the first-in truck all the way out on Leary Way?” asked Captain Cordifis.
“I don’t know,” Finney said. But it had surprised him, too. There were thirty-three engine companies and eleven aerial truck companies in Seattle, and at least five of those truck companies should have been dispatched ahead of them.
As they traveled north through downtown on Third Avenue, the electronic whoop of the siren reverberated off the tall buildings. Finney heard the familiar clinking of the alarm bells on the MSA air masks Moore and Baxter were donning in the crew cab behind him. Then, from the east shore of Lake Union on Westlake, he saw smoke in the northern sky. Lots of smoke. They had a good one. This was what Finney was bred for, fighting fires.
He glanced at Cordifis, who was putting a piece of chewing gum into his mouth. Bill Cordifis had been to the Ozark Hotel fire, where they lost twenty-one civilians. He’d been at the Villa Plaza apartments, where eight hours of fire burned more than two hundred people out of their homes. He’d seen a woman jump six hundred feet off the Space Needle. Smoke in the sky didn’t bother Cordifis any more than it bothered Finney.
Engine 22’s radio report came over the air. “Engine Twenty-two at Leary Way Northwest and Eight Avenue Northwest. We have a three-story warehouse approximately seventy by fifty. Constructed of tilt-up concrete. Heavy black smoke coming from the rear of the building. Engine Twenty-two laying a preconnect and establishing Leary Command.”
Captain Vaughn was riding Engine 22 tonight, and if Cordifis didn’t take command from him, he would be the Incident Commander until a chief showed up.
The building was set back from the north side of Leary Way, a couple of blocks north of the Lake Washington Ship Canal in a neighborhood that was evenly divided between residential and commercial properties. When they got close, the smoke in the street forced Finney to slow to a crawl. He didn’t want to run over anybody.
Then the wind shifted, and it became clear that Vaughn had underestimated the size of the building by at least half. In front were several moving vans parked close enough to the loading dock that radiant heat would ignite them should the fire grow worse. But it wasn’t going to grow worse. They would go inside and put it out just like they always did.
2. THE GIRL WITH THE FAN
Although no flame was showing, heavy black smoke floated off the roof area, curled down the walls, and blotted out large portions of the street. As far as Finney could tell, nobody had approached the building yet. Engine 22’s crew was off somewhere in the smoke, probably looking for a hydrant. Standing in his thick yellow bunking pants and coat, the captain from Engine 22 was surveying the building and evaluating their resources. One engine company. One truck company. By now the street should have been swarming with units.
On the rig radio, Cordifis said, “Ladder One at.”
“Okay, Ladder One,” answered the dispatcher.
“Moore, Baxter,” Cordifis said, “get a door open. Reidel, follow me.”
After parking the ladder truck, Finney strapped on an MSA backpack and regulator with thirty minutes of compressed air in the cylinder. Then he grabbed a chain saw and a pike pole out of their respective compartments and approached the building, crossing paths with Diana Moore as she headed back to the apparatus. As the driver, Finney was almost always the last one ready. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“A fan. I got it.”
Baxter broke a large window in front of the building with the Halligan tool, the falling glass sounding like an armload of dropped plates. Captain Cordifis, who had been speaking with Captain Vaughn near Engine 22, turned and walked toward the broken window. “Supposed to be somebody trapped inside,” he said. “I guess a band practices in there all night.”
“Hell,” said Baxter. “We’ll never find them in that smoke.”
Near the