Free Firetrap by Earl Emerson

morning she’d been taking potshots at me whenever she had the chance: I was “throwing” fire victims out the window; I was ungrateful for the damned award. On the good side, she was empathetic with each individual we spoke to and put them at ease, so each of the interviews had gone without a hitch.
    Chief Fish, in his fifties, a slight, timid-looking man with heavy black-framed glasses, was the last chief I would have nominated to lose fourteen people at a fire.

13. A FISH STORY
    DEPUTY CHIEF FREDERICK FISH;
FORMERLY BATTALION 5 CHIEF, C SHIFT >
    Look, I have to leave in about twenty minutes to meet my daughter, so I’ll cover as much territory as I have time for now, and if we don’t finish, you’ll have to come back at some later date. I find it best to go through that night with the run sheet and computer printout in front of me. The printout contains the time of the first unit’s arrival, their radio report, the time we got water on the fire, the results of the initial search, all that.
    I arrive just in front of Engine 13, park across the street from the south side of the building, and establish the command post there because I initially think this is the front of the building—but later I discover the main entrance is on the east side where Engine 33 has set up. When I first arrive, the smoke seems to be blowing away from us, but as the night progresses, the wind switches directions and there are times when it virtually engulfs us. At one point we’re using flashlights to see the status board.
    Lieutenant Smith from Engine 33 comes over shortly after I arrive, and we do a face-to-face. While Engine 13 begins setting up lines, two of the Latinos who’ve been milling around outside run over to the building. There is a fair amount of smoke pouring out the doorway on my side of the building, and I can tell from the color of the smoke and the force with which it’s coming out that we have a good fire. Both these Latino guys are overcome almost immediately. I mean, they just go down. That’s when this guy from Thirteen—I think it was Voepel—walks over and gets them out.
    I find out later they were having a wedding reception. Not my idea of a primo spot for a reception, but to each his own. What do I know? They’d done a head count in the street and realized one of their little girls was missing. I’ll give them two points for guts, and I think we should take away one point for stupidity.
    I have Ohman and his crew take a line through that same door, and then I send Ladder 12 in behind them to do search and rescue with a thermal imager. I ask Ladder 12 to ventilate the building, which they accomplish by putting up a gas-powered fan in the doorway. The fan turns out to be a disaster, because it isn’t up a full minute when I get a call on the radio from Engine 33 saying the fire is coming out the front door onto them and is pushing them into the street, so I have somebody shut it down. Of course that doesn’t help Engine 13 or Ladder 12 doing their search, because as soon as we shut the fan down, the smoke and heat just slam down on them.
    About that time Ladder 7 shows up, and I have a face-to-face with the lieutenant and tell him we need some ventilation, but tell him what happened with the fan. Now we’re in a bind. We put the fan up where it was, we’ll burn Engine 33’s crew. We go around and put it up where Engine 33 is posted, we’ll blow the fire onto Engine 13 and Ladder 12 and maybe that little muchacha who’s missing. It’s a pretty big building with a lot of smoke in it, coming out around the windows and in the pipe chases in the bricks on side A. What we probably should have done, in retrospect, was put the fan back up and have Engine 33 go defensive, pull them out of the building. But then they give an additional report. Yeah. Here it is right here. “Command from Engine 33. We’ve found fire in a stairway