One fifth floor family tied their pajamas together and attempted to climb down in their underwear. The father went first, but one of the garments ripped. The crowd of onlookers gasped as the man fell four stories to his death. The family screamed and huddled together, nearly naked and exposed.
On the backside of the building, Derek saw Carlos and Ricky on fourth floor balconies with their families. They yelled for Derek, smiles on their faces because they knew their friend would save them. Derek told them to hang on, that they were getting a ladder, and had to rescue the lower floors first. Unfortunately, the balconies were offset, making it impossible for people on the upper balconies to hang and drop to a balcony below. The boys and all the upper floor residents were trapped with only one exit.
Derek and Gino finished the second-floor residents, and the bearded man returned with the orchard ladder.
“What now?” Gino asked, staring at the approaching fourteen-foot tall A-frame ladder. “That’s not any taller than the bucket.”
“Where do you want this?” the bearded man asked, huffing and puffing as he arrived on the scene, carrying the ladder on his shoulder.
“In the bucket,” Derek replied. “We’ll be able to reach the third floor now.”
The bearded man’s eyes went wide. “That’s crazy.”
“Trust me. It’ll work. You two just have to hold the ladder and let people climb down.”
The bearded man looked to Gino, who nodded and said, “It’ll work, Bear.”
Derek didn’t know if Bear was his real name or not, but it was fitting for the strapping bearded man. “You’re gonna have to stand up and hold the ladder upright. It’s too heavy and long to stand it upright in the air. I’ll raise you up nice and slow.”
Derek moved the tractor into position, under a third-floor balcony. Gino and Bear stepped into the loader bucket and positioned the ladder upright. Derek raised the bucket slow and steady. The crowd of residents watched Derek and the rescue crew from a safe distance. The building continued to snap, crackle, and pop as the inferno raged inside.
Gino and Bear leaned the ladder against a third-floor balcony. A father with a child holding on to his neck climbed down the unstable ladder. A teen girl was next, followed by her mother. The mother took one shaky step after another, but she made it. When she stepped into the bucket, the crowd cheered. With the bucket filled, Derek lowered the front-end loader. They stepped on solid ground and ran away from the building, the parents clutching the children.
Derek, Bear, and Gino repeated this process at several more balconies, the fire getting worse with each passing second. Some balcony floors caught fire, and a woman jumped, plunging four stories, her head crashing into the concrete sidewalk, blood splattering in a jagged starlike pattern. The crowd shrieked in horror.
The desperate screams intensified. People hung on to the wrought-iron railings, the flames eventually heating the iron, scorching their hands, forcing more people to plunge to their death. Derek tried to block out the screams and to focus on the residents he could help. He moved the tractor to another side of the building, hoping to rescue the last of the third-floor residents. All three third-floor balconies here were jam-packed.
Derek parked under the one with the burning floor and four people hanging on the railings. He coughed, his lungs and eyes burning from the smoke. Carlos and Ricky cried for help, but Derek ignored them, focusing on the more immediate concern before him. He raised the bucket as fast as he could without bucking Gino and Bear.
In the back of his mind, he knew he couldn’t reach the fourth floor, but he held out hope that the fire department would arrive soon.
A teen girl tentatively set her foot on the ladder, then climbed down. A teen boy followed. The mother struggled to hold on to the railing. She placed her feet on the edge of the balcony to hold herself up. She tried to reach for the ladder, but she was too far to the right.
Gino and Bear moved the ladder toward her, and she repositioned her hands on the railing. She touched a hot piece of wrought iron, her hands instinctually letting go. She plunged twenty-four feet to the ground, an old hedgerow breaking her fall. Two men from the crowd came to her aid. The husband climbed down the ladder, and Derek lowered them to the ground. The husband hurried to his wife, who was scratched and bleeding, but alive.
“The fire’s comin’!” Carlos shouted from the fourth floor.
“Help!” Ricky shouted.
But the other two third-floor balconies on this side of the apartment building were already on fire, the residents climbing over the railing. Like a triage nurse, Derek went to the next most pressing balcony. An old couple fell before they set up the ladder, the railing too hot to handle. Then everything combusted at once, the balconies no longer safe from the heat.
Residents jumped one by one, most falling to their deaths, some surviving with massive injuries, and some were engulfed in flames prior to jumping, becoming a human fireball. One person hit the side of the bucket, flipping their body sideways on the way down, nearly knocking Gino and Bear from their perch. The aroma of burning flesh mixed with the burning wood and plastic smells.
It was a gruesome concoction that smelled like burned pork from the muscle and fat, sulfur from the hair and nails, charcoal from the skin, and coppery-metal from the blood. Underneath the screams and shrieks of human suffering was a sizzling sound, like a plate of fajitas at Chili’s.
Derek backed the tractor away from the building, knowing it was over. Gino and Bear kneeled in the bucket. Gino leaned over and vomited on the asphalt. In the chaos, Derek didn’t see the boys jump from the fourth floor, thirty-four feet up, but he saw their bodies, twisted, eyes wide open, limbs at odd angles. Derek swallowed hard, and tears slipped down his cheeks. Gino and Bear hung their heads as their neighbors dropped from the sky. Some of the residents on the ground sobbed for their neighbors; others watched in a fog, as if they couldn’t believe the carnage.
The fire department and two ambulances arrived a few minutes later, nearly ninety minutes since the original 9-1-1 call. EMTs tended to the injured. Firefighters sprayed the smoldering concrete shell, but there was nobody left to save.
Derek parked his tractor in the parking lot, a safe distance from the fire. He leaned on his steering wheel, his head down. Gino and Bear stood with their neighbors, watching the firefighters. A reporter approached Derek’s tractor with her cameraman close behind.
She said, “People are saying that you helped them off their balconies. Would you mind doing an interview?”
Derek lifted his head from the steering wheel and looked down at the woman. “I just drove the tractor.” Derek pointed to Gino and Bear. “Talk to those two guys. They’re the ones who got the people off their balconies.”
38
Jacob and No Leverage
The conference room table was occupied by the upper crust of Housing Trust. Jacob, the CEO, sat at the head of the table. Next to him was Ramesh Patel, his CFO. The head of PR was on the other side of him. Four members of the legal team and various VPs rounded out the attendees.
The news played on three drop-down screens, everyone in the Housing Trust conference room watching in silence. The headline at the bottom of the screen read Five Housing Trust Fires. The date and time read, Friday, 12-6-2050, 11:12 a.m. Stock tickers scrolled across the screen, HTI with a red down arrow indicating the fall in the stock price.
A male reporter stood in front of a burned husk of a concrete apartment building. The reporter said, “I’m standing in front of the Hillside Grove Apartments building in Luray, Virginia, where at least seventy-six people lost their lives this morning and over one hundred were injured. It is one of five Housing Trust–maintained buildings that caught fire this morning. According to the fire chief, lack of furnace maintenance and repair was the cause of these five fires. He stated that, ‘Furnace fires are very common during the first cold morning of the season.’”