Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [15]
Two doors down he came upon an apartment with light smoke drifting out of it.
“Fire department,” he said loudly as he entered.
Standing in a semicircle around the stove were three mop-haired children and an elderly Asian man. They were mesmerized by a sheet of flame flowing out of the back burner on the stove, consuming a pot and lazily working its way up the wall. Finney hit the pot with a blast from his dry chemical extinguisher, snuffing the flames in a cloud of retardant. He plucked up the pot and set it in the sink, then turned off the burner and opened a window to let in the autumn breeze.
“When the alarm goes off, you’re supposed to leave the building,” Finney said, turning to the old man, who smiled and nodded. In another minute or two it would have eaten into the walls and ceiling. Finney took off a glove and put his hand an inch above each of the burners to make sure they were off. Dropping onto one knee to address the oldest of the children, Finney said, “Tell him that first you turn off the stove, then you leave the room and call the fire department. Close the door but do not lock it.”
“Tapped food on the stove?” Sadler asked, walking through the door and sniffing.
“Tapped food on the stove.”
While Sadler code-greened the rest of the incoming units and tried to communicate with the elderly man, who continued to smile and bow politely, Finney looked out the double windows. Seattle sat next to Puget Sound in a huge basin a hundred miles across, mountains on either side. Even low-income housing had a panoramic vista. Finney admired the way the morning sun etched the container ships on the slate-blue waters of Elliott Bay. The angled October sunshine, brightening the whitecaps and making them look like sharks’ teeth, also highlighted the jagged mountains along the western horizon. Finney had always been awed by the snowcapped Olympic Mountains to the west, the Cascade range to the east, and especially Mount Rainier looming in the distance at the south end of Rainier Avenue, as if the city fathers had planted it there.
Funny. Peering down at the street, he was surprised to see no other units had arrived. Had he and Sadler followed protocol and waited downstairs, a simple food-on-the-stove would have escalated to an apartment fire. It was even possible it would have burned out the whole floor.
As they left, Finney tousled the hair of all three children. The oldest boy cracked a gap-toothed smile. The old man grinned and half bowed once again. Finney bowed back.
Downstairs they reset the alarm system and then Sadler chased down the building manager so he could chew him out for his hijinks with the elevator. In the short time he’d worked with Sadler, Finney had noticed the one aspect to the job Sadler relished: dressing down subordinates and civilians.
9. THE DANGEROUS BUILDINGS LIST
As a rule, Octobers in the Northwest are soggy, but several weeks earlier an unseasonable drought had developed, bringing with it clear, cold nights and cool, sunny days. When the rains came, the omnipresent dust in this neighborhood would transform into the kind of mud firefighters on Engine 26 had been grumbling about for as long as anyone could remember, the kind that reappeared as a sloppy film on the side panels after you washed them. At least they didn’t have to wipe down the apparatus with a damp chamois, top to bottom, every time it returned to the barn—the procedure during Finney’s first few years in the department, a mandate he assumed had originated from grooming sweaty horses after a run.
Finney stepped down out of the driver’s seat and began pacing beside the rig, anxious about his scheduled meeting in less than an hour with the chief of the department. He was number one on the lieutenant’s list, and everybody knew the first promotion was to be given out this week. He’d avoided taking the test for