Free Firetrap by Earl Emerson Page B

had somebody inside searching. That placates a couple of them, but more keep coming. I believe this was the time…yes, this was when Captain Brown said he wanted to ladder the building. I told him no. My thinking at the time was you don’t declare a defensive fire and then put up ladders.
    By this time Engine 13 and Ladder 12 had come out.
    Now, I know later on, a week after the fire, the papers found a bunch of people who claim they told us there were people inside and we blew them off, but this is how it happened. We were told by the Latinos in the wedding party that the building was empty.
    So the cops disperse the blacks who are mobbing the command post, but they start to gather at the corner, and they’re getting louder. Finally they’re throwing bottles at my firefighters, and what we have basically is the beginning of a riot. More and more young black men and women showing up every minute, chanting, “Get ’em out! Get ’em out!”
    I can tell the police are not ready for this—maybe for traffic control, but not a riot.
    Then two things happen at about the same time. Captain Brown here gets on the horn and says they have a ladder up to a window and there are victims on floor two. At the same time, two young men come out the A side onto a small fire escape on floor two and start yelling for help through the smoke.
    I tell Ladder 12 to put up ladders to the fire escape. They get those two down, and then two more and then two or three more, and I’m thinking, Holy Christ! How many people are up there? It becomes clear there is some sort of party on floor two, because all these people are dressed for a night out. We rescue eight or ten, and that’s when I learn we have a missing firefighter somewhere inside on the first floor.
    Listen, I hate to do this, but I’ve gotta go now. My daughter has this appointment I can’t miss. There’s more—obviously—but you’ve got the beginning.

14. ARE WE GOING TO DANCE OR NOT?
    JAMIE ESTEVEZ >
    â€œJust a quick question before you leave,” Trey said.
    Chief Fish, who had already snatched a coat off a hook on the wall, did not appear pleased to be detained. “What is it?”
    â€œYou knew how bad the African-American community felt about the Z Club. Surely you must have guessed people would take issue over the fact that you accepted a promotion a week after fourteen people died there.”
    â€œMy promotion didn’t have a thing to do with the Z Club.”
    â€œ
We
all know that. You work hard, and you’ve been around a long time. You deserve a promotion. That’s not the issue. The question I’m posing is, Did it not occur to you or Chief Smith that people in the community would question the timing?”
    â€œYou said yourself I deserved the promotion.”
    â€œI’m asking if you had any second thoughts in view of the fact that it took place a week after the Z Club.”
    â€œIt didn’t have anything to do with the Z Club.”
    â€œThat’s not the perception in the black community.”
    â€œIt didn’t cause any uproar.”
    â€œOh, but it did. Your promotion is one of the key points brought up when people suggest the fire department is callous and dismissive of the black community.”
    Trey was correct on that front. People were outraged that Chief Fish had been promoted, instead of reprimanded or even fired.
    â€œI didn’t do anything wrong at the Z Club, and I resent the implication.”
    â€œYou preside over a fire in which fourteen people die, and a week later Chief Smith says, ‘Hey, I think I’ll make you a deputy.’ And it doesn’t occur to either one of you to put it off even a couple of weeks? That he maybe could have placed you in an administrative assignment in the wake of the Z Club, the way cops work at a desk after they’re involved in a shooting?”
    â€œListen, I didn’t shoot anybody, and my