Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [48]
“I take it you discussed this with G. A. Montgomery?”
“The report or my coming to you?”
“Either.”
“We talked about the report.”
“What’d he say?”
“Well . . . I’ll be frank with you. He said it was basically your fault, but they didn’t spell it out because that wasn’t the fire department way.”
“It was basically my fault? That’s what he said?”
She nodded. “Don’t worry. I don’t believe that. If I did, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Thank you for your confidence.”
They listened as a floatplane landed on the lake. Dimitri stalked across the room in the way that some cats have, walking so heavily you could hear his feet strike the floor like padded hooves. Finney caught Emily looking at a picture on the wall, a photo taken five years earlier of the crew of Ladder 1. The six of them were in their dress blacks lined up in front of the truck on the ramp at Station 10, Cordifis in the middle with a somewhat bemused look on his face and Finney to his right looking serious as all get out. “I miss him so much,” she said.
“I miss him, too. He was a tremendous guy.”
“You’d think thirty-odd years would be enough of risking your neck. Enough taking the chance of contracting hepatitis or AIDS from a patient. Or TB. Enough of getting up three and four times a night to put out a bed fire or pick up some drunk off the sidewalk. But every time I brought up the possibility of retirement, he got mad at me.”
“He made that station a great place to work, Emily. Everybody there loved him. I’ll read it and we’ll talk.”
She kissed his cheek, and he walked her down the dock to her car, gave her another hug, and watched her drive off in Bill’s old Ford Bronco, the red IAFF union sticker in the center of the rear window.
The report was in binder form with three large flat staples buttoning it together along the left edge. Three-quarters of an inch thick, it was printed on regulation typing paper, eight and a half by eleven inches.
He began skimming the report while he ate dinner.
23. THINGS THAT DID NOT GO WELL
Oversized blue pages divided the report into sections: Table of Contents, Introduction, SFD Overview, Key Issues, Building History, FIU Report, FAC Report, Incident Overview, et cetera. The fire investigation unit report, G. A.’s investigation and determination that the fire had been accidental, as well as the Fire Alarm Center report that had been generated separately were included.
Within the Conclusion section was a page labeled THINGS THAT WENT WELL. Another page was headed THINGS THAT DID NOT GO WELL. Finney thumbed to the latter.
It was noted that the incident was short on manpower from the beginning. That heavy smoke in the vicinity obscured early reconnaissance of the buildings so that the first Incident Commander reported the building as being fifty by seventy-five feet, when in fact the warehouse portion alone was double that. The buildings on the north side of the complex contained the same approximate square footage. No other incoming units corrected Captain Vaughn’s initial miscalculation, probably because they had the same visibility problems he had, so that all night calculations were based on the original figure. It was mentioned that fans were put up and then taken down, thereby wasting valuable time. Nobody mentioned the lack of visibility inside the warehouse that the fans would have cleared.
Although the wind was from the north that night, Engine 22 set up the command post on the south side of the building, so that officers and firefighters were immersed in clots of drifting smoke for almost an hour before the command post was moved.
Nobody ever did a walk-around to survey all four sides of the building. Had they done so, the IC would have known early on that there were other buildings connected to the warehouse, that those buildings were also involved, and that the crews of Engine 31 and Ladder 5 were actually fighting a fire in those smaller, older buildings while Vaughn thought they were supporting his efforts in the warehouse. After Ladder 5 opened holes in the older building, Vaughn couldn’t figure