Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [40]
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m a firefighter. I’m going to get you out of here.”
Now flames were crawling across the ceiling and banking down along the outer wall toward the window, sealing off their escape. It might already be too late.
The victim, whom he initially took to be a child, swatted at his facepiece and shrieked just once before going limp. This was no child. Too large. Too strong. It was a woman.
Half-carrying, half-dragging her limp body across the room to the window, Finney saw that the entire wall was now blocked by flame that had banked down from the ceiling. Fire lapped at his helmet, scalding his ears through the Nomex hood, roasting the back of his neck.
“Stay calm,” he said. “I’m getting you out of here.”
Then, as he gripped the windowsill with his gloved hand, he felt a water stream rush past his helmet from outside. He was instantly engulfed in it, the room boiling. A gallon of water produced 550 cubic feet of steam. It smothered the fire, but it also scalded his wrists and his cheeks around the edges of his facepiece. Even the helmeted figure outside backed away. Lord only knew what it was doing to the victim.
Finney did his best to shield her with his own body, but he knew his bunkers were hot enough that a mere touch would burn her. Moments later, as the heat from the steam subsided, he got up off the floor, picked up the victim, and passed her through the window. As her limp body plugged the tiny window, he knew that should the fire come back on him now he would be trapped. In rescues, the rule of thumb was to keep the victim from blocking the rescuer’s egress, yet it was a difficult rule to follow in the field. He’d violated that rule and now his exit was blocked.
A hot, wet heat tightened the room down around him.
And then the victim was outside, taken away by the other firefighter. As soon as she had cleared the opening, he wedged his head and one shoulder through the tiny space. He could feel flame creeping up the trousers of his bunking pants. For twenty seconds he twisted and tried to swim through the aperture. Then, like a chunk of Crisco on a hot skillet, he began skidding on his stomach down the steep roof.
He thought surely something would arrest his slide, somebody would come to his aid, because if not, he was going to drop into the yard on his face. But he continued to skid with agonizing slowness, and then, just as the free fall was about to begin, his outstretched hands caught the gutter in front of him. The gutter creaked and he could hear the screeching of nails. Though he couldn’t see the ground through the fog and smoke, he knew he was inches from a twenty-foot drop. Slowly, carefully, he turned around and got to his feet.
Traversing the roof, he reached the ladder a body-length ahead of the other firefighter, who was now struggling to carry the victim. Finney stepped onto the rungs and together they carefully transferred the weight of the still-unconscious victim onto his shoulder.
A minute later she was lying on a heavy canvas tarp at the edge of the yard.
When Finney set his helmet in the grass, tiny droplets of moisture on individual grass blades sizzled as they brushed up against it.
By the time he got his bottle off, he realized only one other rig had arrived. Ladder 1.
The firefighter who’d been on the roof with him was now in the yard, facing away, removing helmet, hood, gloves, facepiece. It wasn’t until a mass of hair shook loose that he realized she was a woman. She turned around and met his eyes. Diana Moore. She’d obviously left her partner and gone to the roof by herself, the same as he’d done. She’d scrambled up the ladder and across the precarious roof lugging a charged hose line, no easy feat. She’d saved the victim and she’d saved Finney, too.
“That was kind of close,” she said.
“Ooooh, yeah. Thanks for showing up. You saved my behind.”
“McKittrick told me you were up there, but when I got up and saw all that flame, I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t even get close to that window.”
“It didn’t feel so wonderful from inside