Rennie positioned himself at the front door, nozzle in one hand, an axe in the other. I stood right behind him. My job was to bear most of the weight and clumsiness of the thin, unyielding hose so that Rennie might move more freely. We both also had flashlights available.
Buster ran up and shouted, “We’re ready to ventilate if you’re ready to go.” He suddenly recognized me behind my face shield. “What the hell are you doing?” Rennie thrust his head forward, shouting through his mask. “Paul won’t go in.” Buster eyed me sternly, “You been trained for Scott use?” I merely nodded but Rennie’s face clouded. “I wouldn’t have him in it if he hadn’t been.” Buster smiled, gave a thumbs-up, and began shouting orders. I could hear upstairs windows being broken by ladders. This would encourage the flames to course through the house, but it would also draw out the smoke, a fire’s primary killer. If Rennie and I could hit the base of that fire during our search and rescue, then the flame problem would be eliminated also.
It was a standard best-laid plan that rarely went as hoped.
We crouched to one side of the door as Rennie turned the handle and pushed hard. The door flew open and a bright orange tongue of flame spat out next to us. We waited a second for it to recede, and then entered the building, bent low.
The scene before us, especially as viewed through our plastic lenses, had the unlikely look of a Hollywood inferno. Overhead, the ceiling was totally occluded by a thick, roiling cloud of orange and yellow smoke. About twenty feet ahead, at the foot of the stairs, the wood stove Rennie had criticized earlier lay on its side, caved in and white hot, its contents the heart of an angry, noisy, air-sucking fireball. In its midst lay a darker shadow, and from that shadow, extending out beyond the center of the blaze, was a human arm, charred and twisted.
The heat, especially compared to the twenty-degree temperature outside, was almost instantly unbearable. The flames columned straight up from the destroyed stove with a cyclonic ferocity, flattening against the ceiling and shooting up the stairway like an upside-down waterfall.
Rennie opened the nozzle to a full-fog pattern, putting a curtain of cooling water between us and the fire. The downside to this lifesaving maneuver was expected and dramatic; the water instantly turned to steam and knocked out our vision with the abruptness of a plug being pulled on a lamp. Of the split-second sharp picture I’d had upon entering, all that was left was a world of smoke and steam with a blurry heart of orange. We were reduced to crawling forward, dragging the hose along, groping with outstretched hands and relying on our memories of what we had toured a few hours earlier. Rennie led us straight to the fireball. The sound of water hitting white-hot material was like nonstop thunder, but the effort paid off. We quickly got to the body on the floor-or what was left of it-and progressed to the foot of the stairs. There, Rennie rolled over and aimed the stream overhead, at the sloping ceiling above the stairs. The splashback soaked us with soot-stained warm water. He cut back on the water after the flames went out above us and shouted through his mask: “How many rooms are downstairs? Do you remember?” The noise of the steam, the fire still crackling upstairs, and the water trickling everywhere blocked off his already-muffled voice. I responded with the one word most frequently uttered by firefighters inside a burning building: “What?” He repeated his question. I held up three fingers and pointed at the nearest door, just to the left of the stairs, which led to the kitchen. I realized I was panting and made a conscious effort to slow down my breathing.
It probably took us ten minutes to crawl along the walls of those three rooms, arms outstretched, feeling for more bodies. That was faster than it should have been, but we both knew we were doing it for the benefit of the doubt; through it all, our minds were on the bedrooms upstairs, dreading what we suspected lay ahead.
By the time we regrouped near the still-sizzling remnants of the stove, there was no question of where we were headed-upstairs, where both bedrooms faced each other at opposite ends of the landing, with a bathroom in between.
We quickly crawled to the top. Here, too, the ceiling was on fire.
Rennie hit it with water, showering us once again. Through the gaps the fire had burned overhead, we could see an ominous glow in the attic.
we could also hear the sound of a chain saw being applied to the roof, the fire to exit and the water to get in from outside. The flames temporarily contained, we quickly crawled to the left, where we both remembered the three children slept. Rennie reached the bedroom doorknob and turned it. “It’s locked.” I crawled to one side to give him room to swing his axe. My knee, ready raw and sore from abuse, landed on something sharp and inful. I let out a shout and shined my flashlight at the floor. There as a old-fashioned door key. I picked it up and handed it to Rennie. “Try this.” He slipped it in, turned it, and twisted the knob again. The door swung back.
There was no fire in the room, not even much smoke. Enough, though-just enough. With our flashlights and the red and white flicking light filtering in through the window from the trucks below, we could make out four human-sized bundles clumped together on one of e three beds. They were huddled under a blanket, the one woman and three children we’d visited before, their arms around one another, eking protection from an evil that had already sealed their fate.
We peeled back the blanket and felt for signs of life. There were none. The smoke, what little there was, had killed them.
Rennie moved to the window and broke it out with his axe. The sounds of men shouting, the roar of revving engines and of water under pressure filled the room. And on top of it all, a sound I’d missed while concentrating on the search-a dull rumbling, as of a freight train far away; that, from my experience, meant a fire someplace was getting the upper hand.
Rennie banged the outside wall with his axe to attract attention.
heard a voice from below. “Get the hell out of there. The attic’s about go.
Rennie pulled back his mask just enough to shout back. “We’ve of victims here. Get a ladder.” “They’re all being used.” “Well, unuse one, for Christ’s sake.” “All right, all right.” Rennie replaced his mask, already coughing. “Let’s check out the first bedroom while they’re getting the ladder.” “What about the attic?” I shouted back. He shrugged. “It’ll hold.
This won’t take long.” We backtracked onto the landing. The rumbling was louder, the train getting closer, the threat more imminent.
I pounded him on the back as he crawled across to the other door.
“Rennie. Let’s get the hell out of here. Something’s not right.” He didn’t turn around; he just waved his hand back at me and continued. I noticed that the heat seemed suddenly worse. My ears began to sting. I looked around, stabbing at the smoke-stained walls with the feeble yellow shaft of my flashlight. I became suddenly aware of a fearful creaking in the walls. Rennie put his hand on the doorknob and turned it just as I felt the hose in my hand go flat a firefighter’s worst nightmare. We were out of water, and I knew for a fact we were out of luck. The explosion behind us was like a tidal wave of flaming air, lifting us up off the floor and hurling us through the doorway.
The roar of the train was now complete and all-encompassing, surrounding us and making our bodies vibrate with its thirst for oxygen. Through my plastic face shield, all I could see in every direction was a spectrum of swirling red and yellow patterns, curling and lapping like some volcanic river of fire. It was the color of heat, of death in the midst of fire, the last thing a body experiences before it is cremated. And through the din, as from a small boat on an enraged sea, I heard a bell madly ringing the alarm on Rennie’s Scott-Pak, warning of the few remaining minutes of air still trapped within his cylinder.