want is a bearskin rug in front of
an open fireplace.”
“Say no more,” says Benny laughingly—an expression he always uses for agreement.
Kelsey, Knipps, and Vinny Royce will back Benny up on the line. It’s my turn to get lost for a few minutes. Lieutenant Welch
is standing nearby watching, waiting for the roof to cave in. I tell him that I’m going to look for a place to get warm. The
water has frozen over his rubber coat, and it flares at the bottom like a ballerina’s dress. Because he is an officer he has
to stay with the men on the hose line at all times. He is jumping from foot to foot trying to get his blood to circulate.
He looks at me and nods his head. He doesn’t talk because he knows words don’t mean anything at fires like this. He only cares
about putting enough water on the fire. Tom Welch has been working in the South Bronx for over fifteen years, and he knows
there is no challenge in this fire. If we were crawling down a hallway or fighting our way into a cellar, he would be talking
all the time. He would be saying the words that give us the confidence to move into a building everyone has run out of. But
now we are just standing in front of a building, pouring water on it. It’s cold, and our bodies are being beaten, and Lieutenant
Welch just nods.
As I walk down the street in search of a warm hallway I hear a soft but distinct crashing noise, like someone dropping a steel
safe on a pile of thin balsa wood. As I turn I see a giant mushroom of fire surge toward the sky. Part of the roof has fallen,
and the new oxygen overhead acts like a magnet for the fire.
The old, dying building is a three-story wooden structure called a Queen Anne. It’s the kind of gothic house that Edgar Allan
Poe would have delighted in writing about. It has a series of peaked roofs and widow’s walks, and many small rooms with spaces
between the walls and between the ceilings and floors. This type of building is particularly difficult for firemen to work
in. Fire spreads quickly in small enclosed spaces.
It was just a little over an hour ago that we were sitting in the firehouse kitchen. The radiators were hissing, and the coffee
was steaming. We had already responded to twelve alarms since our tour of duty started at six o’clock, and, except for one,
all had been small ventures into the night’s cold. Two were mattress fires, one was a burning abandoned car, and the rest
were garbage fires or false alarms. The exception was a midnight alarm for a burning couch. We saw the smoke coming from a
window on the sixth floor of a tenement building on Charlotte Street. It seems that most of the fires we have are on the top
floor. Each time I drag hose up five or six flights of stairs I curse the designer of the building, and I think how much easier
the job would be had he taken fircfighting into consideration. He could have put a standpipe in the building, or at least
a well between the staircases so that the hose could go straight up instead of snaking around the bends.
We stretched four lengths of hose into the building, and five more lengths trailed behind to the fire hydrant. Nine lengths
of hose for a rotten couch fire that could have been extinguished with a glassful of water five minutes earlier. The guy who
lived in the apartment was sitting on the stairs in the hall, smoking a cigarette, and saying that he didn’t know how the
fire started. He looked and sounded drunk, but who knows? And when you think about it, who cares?
The weather got to us on Charlotte Street. When we tried to uncouple the hose connections we found them frozen solid. Each
of the five lengths laying in the street were bound together by the cold, the cold that now prevents my fingers from moving.
We had to lift each 71-pound length of hose over the standing exhaust pipe of the fire engine to warm the connections. This
kind of extra work is frustrating because there is no one to blame
an open fireplace.”
“Say no more,” says Benny laughingly—an expression he always uses for agreement.
Kelsey, Knipps, and Vinny Royce will back Benny up on the line. It’s my turn to get lost for a few minutes. Lieutenant Welch
is standing nearby watching, waiting for the roof to cave in. I tell him that I’m going to look for a place to get warm. The
water has frozen over his rubber coat, and it flares at the bottom like a ballerina’s dress. Because he is an officer he has
to stay with the men on the hose line at all times. He is jumping from foot to foot trying to get his blood to circulate.
He looks at me and nods his head. He doesn’t talk because he knows words don’t mean anything at fires like this. He only cares
about putting enough water on the fire. Tom Welch has been working in the South Bronx for over fifteen years, and he knows
there is no challenge in this fire. If we were crawling down a hallway or fighting our way into a cellar, he would be talking
all the time. He would be saying the words that give us the confidence to move into a building everyone has run out of. But
now we are just standing in front of a building, pouring water on it. It’s cold, and our bodies are being beaten, and Lieutenant
Welch just nods.
As I walk down the street in search of a warm hallway I hear a soft but distinct crashing noise, like someone dropping a steel
safe on a pile of thin balsa wood. As I turn I see a giant mushroom of fire surge toward the sky. Part of the roof has fallen,
and the new oxygen overhead acts like a magnet for the fire.
The old, dying building is a three-story wooden structure called a Queen Anne. It’s the kind of gothic house that Edgar Allan
Poe would have delighted in writing about. It has a series of peaked roofs and widow’s walks, and many small rooms with spaces
between the walls and between the ceilings and floors. This type of building is particularly difficult for firemen to work
in. Fire spreads quickly in small enclosed spaces.
It was just a little over an hour ago that we were sitting in the firehouse kitchen. The radiators were hissing, and the coffee
was steaming. We had already responded to twelve alarms since our tour of duty started at six o’clock, and, except for one,
all had been small ventures into the night’s cold. Two were mattress fires, one was a burning abandoned car, and the rest
were garbage fires or false alarms. The exception was a midnight alarm for a burning couch. We saw the smoke coming from a
window on the sixth floor of a tenement building on Charlotte Street. It seems that most of the fires we have are on the top
floor. Each time I drag hose up five or six flights of stairs I curse the designer of the building, and I think how much easier
the job would be had he taken fircfighting into consideration. He could have put a standpipe in the building, or at least
a well between the staircases so that the hose could go straight up instead of snaking around the bends.
We stretched four lengths of hose into the building, and five more lengths trailed behind to the fire hydrant. Nine lengths
of hose for a rotten couch fire that could have been extinguished with a glassful of water five minutes earlier. The guy who
lived in the apartment was sitting on the stairs in the hall, smoking a cigarette, and saying that he didn’t know how the
fire started. He looked and sounded drunk, but who knows? And when you think about it, who cares?
The weather got to us on Charlotte Street. When we tried to uncouple the hose connections we found them frozen solid. Each
of the five lengths laying in the street were bound together by the cold, the cold that now prevents my fingers from moving.
We had to lift each 71-pound length of hose over the standing exhaust pipe of the fire engine to warm the connections. This
kind of extra work is frustrating because there is no one to blame
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