IDLH

The Chief asks a question as we pass in the yard on his way to the house.  I take the question to be rhetorical in nature but, just to be sure, I give him my best “I dunno” look.  Not a great look, for a quite excellent question– how was there fire on both floors?

There’s a longer answer above my (volunteer) pay grade but the short answer is fire is a voracious beast.  It exists to turn matter into energy, and it doesn’t much care what matter is being transformed.  Trees, the sofa, family photos, you.  Fire don’t care.  It consumes and destroys and incinerates until something, someone, stops it.  As adversaries go, it’s well past broccoli, several notches higher than bats, and just shy of one too many Portillo’s combos clogging my aorta as something to worry about. 

In the next hour or so, the house will burn to its stone foundation.  It is an old farmhouse, expanded over the years into the Trip Hazard Hall of Fame, with a series of abrupt floor level changes that must have dented many a forehead.  A new house is going to be built where it watched over the fields for decades, and the current owner has thoughtfully permitted the department to use it for fire training purposes.  A couple other departments have joined us on a rainy Saturday to do the wet stuff on the red stuff routine.

And it was routine, until it wasn’t.  Weeks of preparation, numerous safety briefings, redundant water sources and back-up hose surrounding the house.  Then a walk-through, so people would know the layout.  Multiple safety officers.  Ladders to second floor windows.  Double-checking all PPE.  Pre-entry radio and hose checks.  Rapid Intervention Teams (RIT) on standby if something goes wrong (hold that thought).  The works. 

Me, Captain Zach and James are first in.  Chris has started a fire in the upstairs A/B corner bedroom and it’s our job to stop it.  Through the door across the room up the stairs turn the corner and (anticlimax alert) wait.  We got there too fast and the fire isn’t rippin quite enough.  Hum a few bars.  Sing a little “Be Ready When I Say Go” to myself.  Make some minor strap tweaks to our most excellent new MSA G1 SCBAs, on their first fire. 

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  Fire in the bedroom.  Ready?  Let's go.  Check nozzle open door get low open bail have at it.  Check for extension.  None.  Fire out, exit building Par 3.

Next. 

And so it went.  Teams of three entering rooms on fire and leaving when the fire was out.  Beware the comfort of pattern and routine.

The plan was to do one more evolution on the first floor, and then burn the entire building, while keeping the outbuildings near it intact.  That was the plan as I understood it.  And we were promised pizza. 

What I am guessing was a dining room on the first floor was separated by glass panel pocket doors from what I am guessing was the living room.  A quite lovely feature of the house, albeit with one of those floor level changes likely paying for an orthopedic surgeon’s kid’s college tuition.  But just about perfect to set up a fire behavior demonstration in the dining room.  Set a fire, close the glass panel pocket doors and invite the probies into the living room to watch.  It would be hard to imagine a safer way for probationary firefighters to watch a real room on real fire.

I am guessing (because I was standing outside) that the glass panel doors were closed.  And I’ll be guessing at some of the rest of this.  Because I have imperfect recall and only know (or think I know) what I saw and heard (or think I saw and heard).

I know that me and James and an officer were either going to extinguish the dining room fire when the fire behavior demonstration was over, or be the RIT team if some other department wanted to do it.  I know that six to ten firefighters participated in the fire behavior demonstration and exited the house.  I knew that Chris and Zach were on the second floor of the house.  I knew the first and second floors of the house were connected by staircases landing in the living and dining rooms.  I watched the fire behavior group unhelmet and unglove and unmask and debrief for multiple minutes.  It must have been an excellent demonstration, because there were wide eyes, and animated discussion.

An animated and lengthy discussion, with no one asking the dining room fire to throttle back for a bit.

Minutes and seconds go by and then clamor and WHHOOOSSHHH.  In seconds, thick black smoke comes pulsing out of the house and either Chris or Zach says something like “we need help” over the radio.

I learned at 2:30ish this morning (after a CO alarm call with Zach) that the help call came when they had made it to the first floor, but neither James nor me knew that as we heard it.

All we saw was thick black smoke and all we heard was “help”.   We were RIT ready so we immediately entered the house.  I don’t think either of us or anyone else said a word.  If they did, I didn’t hear it.  James had the hose and I was on backup.  At best, I might have said “let’s go”, but James was already going.  We knew the dining room to the right was on fire and we knew there was a staircase to the left.  The tactic to force the fire away from the staircase and exit doors was so obvious we didn’t talk about it.     

Through the door can’t see go right damn it's hot hit the floor and crawl forward.  James cracks open the bail and starts tearing into a fire we can’t see.  Here’s a truism.  Battles are most often lost because you are fighting the last battle rather than the battle that is actually happening.  The battle we are in is the battle of the living room, not the dining room.

Of all the fires to worry about, flashover fires are the most worrisome.  They occur when a room gets so hot everything catches fire simultaneously. In entry level class you’re told if you are more than five feet from a door in a room that flashes over, you may not make it out the door.  A flashover is probably what happened in the dining room, with plumes of superheated smoke charging up the staircase to the second floor and flowing out into the living room.  To stop (or at least slow down) a flashover, you need to break the thermal plane by flowing water into the smoke above you. 

We are in a cocoon of blazing darkness.  One hand on the hose and one on James’ back, I can feel smoke flowing around me and hear the roar of the water hitting the ceiling and then fire and then the ceiling again, but I can only see one thing; a luminous pinpoint at the tip of James’ helmet flashlight.  It is a searing black hole of demise with a tiny battery-powered star.  

The funniest thing happens.  James shuts the bail trying (guessing again) to get better situational awareness.  Try to hear the fire, understand the smoke.  But nuance is NOT a thing in this room.  Everything is hot.  Just let er’ rip.  So he does.  The hose becomes a 150-gallon-a-minute metronome.  Fire. Ceiling. Fire. Ceiling.     

Who knows how long we’re at it.  A minute?  More?  Less?  No real idea.  But two things change.  The smoke starts turning grey, which is a VERY good sign, and another star joins the attack constellation, this one with a white helmet.  An Arlington chief (guessing in the moment) has arrived, and starts giving direction.  Another (I don’t know) short span of time goes by and more lights join the room.  Then the radio crackles.  Chris and Zach are out, everyone leave the building.

So we do, me tripping on the way out the door.  Not orthopedic surgeon level tripping, just a tumble.

I try not to be proud of anything, because pride is a trap and the next moment arrives anew whether you got the last multiple choice question wrong or right. But, for the record, I didn't do anything absurdly gleeful like fist-bumping James.  Unclipping my regulator, losing my helmet and unsealing myself from my mask, I breathed real air -- fresh Wisconsin forest air --  again.  Deeply, with gratitude. 

Everyone accounted for, I went for a little walk over by the woods -- on the way telling Chief Radewan as he passed, "I dunno".

And, just to tie up a loose end, the pizza was great.