52

The Last Big One

ONCE I’D FINALLY DECIDED TO retire and picked the actual date — February 28, 2017 — I emptied my locker at work over a period of a few weeks and moved out junk I hadn’t used in years, like my boxing gloves. I hadn’t punched a bag in twenty years. The foam padding in the glove turned to dust in my hand. If I actually hit some dude in the yapper while wearing them, his teeth would have flown out of his mouth because my knuckles would have broken through the glove.

Thirty-two years is a long time to dedicate to one career. I’d had highs and lows, but I was hoping I would be able to end my firefighting life with a bang instead of a whimper. I wanted a good burner that everybody would see on the news so I could say, “I was at that one!”

On my third-last shift, we were dispatched to a fire call at a racquetball club. En route we received updates on the truck’s computer: the caretaker of the club had found smoke coming from a receptacle on the second floor and had put out the electrical fire with an extinguisher.

The first-arriving crew (we were the third due) would investigate and report back the status of our electrical fire. Cool. I was betting on a nothing kind of call and I made that declaration to my crew. I’d seen that kind of stuff before. No biggie.

The first-crew captain radioed to dispatch, saying there were no outward signs of smoke. They had indeed liaised with the caretaker and would investigate further. See? No biggie. A minute later, the captain indicated that there was light smoke on the second floor. Okay, it was a something call, but still no biggie.

The building was situated down an alley behind a row of restaurants and office buildings. It had originally been constructed as a streetcar barn in the early 1900s. Streetcars no longer used the facility, so it had been closed several decades before. Since then, the building had become surrounded by a wall of stores, restaurants, condominiums, and office towers as a result of development in the area. The streetcar barn had been renovated, expanded, and was now a posh racquetball club and athletic centre.

We arrived and jumped off the truck. Smoke was now pushing out the top of the building. It was no little electrical fire; this baby was rolling! I updated dispatch about the smoke coming through the roof. Okay, I sucked a bit at the prediction thing, but I was giddy at the prospect of it being a biggie. The game was on!

Our crew made its way to the front door. The initial truck, Pumper 311, was hooked up to the standpipe connection, and the pumper operator, “Ducky,” directed our crew where to go in the building.

At the top of a grand set of stairs inside, the crews from Pumper 311 and Rescue 134 were hooking up to the interior standpipe (hose cabinet) and advancing a line to a mechanical room above the second-floor auditorium. When our crew entered the auditorium, it was filled with light smoke. We helped set up the attack hose line and grabbed a backup line to protect the initial crews.

The smoke quickly got thicker as my crew, Pumper 344, dragged hose up a set of narrow metal stairs to the mechanical room on the third floor. Halfway up the stairs, the heavy smoke blacked out our vision.

P311 and R134 were in the mechanical room playing water, to no effect. I could hear shouting and, a short time later, the low-air alarms on the firefighters’ masks. The initial crews would have to evacuate soon, before their air ran out. The P311 crew soon exited the mechanical room. P344, my crew on the stairs backing them up, had to move down to the landing so P311 could get to the second floor and then out for fresh air cylinders.

My crew ascended the stairs again and was now backing up R134. Visibility was zero. The air was filled with the sounds of firefighters banging on the roof and the crashing of materials inside the mechanical room. My nozzle man, Robin Earl, yelled that, just a couple of steps up from where we were crouched, the heat was extreme. The guys inside the mechanical room must have been taking a beating.

I was the captain on the backup line and I couldn’t see a thing. I couldn’t tell if the crew inside the mechanical room was hitting fire or just blasting water into the heat. I yelled through my mask to the captain of R134, “What’s going on in there? Are you hitting it?” No answer. Just the sounds of banging and shouting between the crew members inside.

I pulled up more hose to get in deeper towards the fire. My flash hood, a fire-resistant thermal-barrier balaclava, hooked on something hanging off the wall, pulling it back and exposing the side of my face to the heat. A flash of pain pierced my jawline. This was one hot fire!

I was carrying a thermal imaging camera (TIC) — Toronto Fire had placed one on every truck — strapped to my mask as I directed Robin where to spray the water. The visibility was still zero and no flames could be seen. Robin used the TIC like the screen of a video game, focusing on hitting the hot spots. (Thank you, Toronto City Council, for approving this essential and life-saving piece of equipment. TIC technology, which was developed in 1947 and provided to Toronto firefighters only seventy years later, enables the firefighter to see through smoke and allows meaningful visual readings beyond 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s like night and day to be able to see through the smoke instead of probing around on your hands and knees searching for a deep-seated fire.)

“It’s too hot! Back out! We gotta back out!” The mechanical room was fully involved. With the extreme heat, getting close enough to the fire to extinguish the blaze was becoming impossible.

At that point came a radio announcement from the captain of one of the crews on the floor below us. The ceiling of the second floor — the ceiling below our feet — had collapsed into the auditorium, exposing a large mass of fire. Time for us on the third floor to get the hell out before we also ended up in a pile in the second-floor auditorium. We retreated down the stairs and, protected by another hose team, out through the now fully involved auditorium.

Once clear of the fire room on the second-floor landing I used the TIC to check the ceiling temperatures outside the auditorium and down the hall. The pot lights were pushing smoke. When I pointed the camera at them, the entire ceiling flashed in the red zone of the temperature range. The fire had gotten past the interior crews and extending back through the rest of the building.

I updated the incident commander, reporting that fire was running across the ceiling of the second floor. Another collapse of the structure in the auditorium, and a firefighter rolled out onto the second-floor landing, shouting, “I can’t find my captain! He was right behind me!” A mayday went out about the missing captain. Thirty seconds later he was found and led out to get medical attention, dazed and covered in debris. The call was made to go defensive, to pull out all interior crews and fight the fire from the exterior.

Outside, we met up with the initial crew at the air-refill truck. Their nozzle man was pressing snow onto the blisters on his wrists. He had developed second-degree burns as a result of trying to extinguish the fire in the mechanical room. We grabbed some Gatorade, exchanged the air cylinders on our masks for full ones, and went back to stage in front of the building, waiting for reassignment.

At this point about a dozen trucks were committed to putting out the fire.

Fire crews had commandeered the standpipe system of the condo high-rise to the rear of the racquetball club and were spraying water from several balconies on to the burning building a short six feet away. Three ladder pipes were set up, extending over adjacent storefronts, blasting water into the flames that danced across the roof of the building. An emergency tone blared over the radio. “Attention all crews! Attention all crews! Roof is compromised! Roof collapse on the south end of the building!”

At that moment an elderly lady, who had somehow circumvented the entire battalion of firefighters, walked gently over the bulging hoses and past the dozen fire trucks. She was next to one of the aerial towers that were pounding water into the raging fire before she was finally caught by an incredulous firefighter and escorted back to safety. Apparently it was membership dues day, and by God, fire or no fire, she was not going to pay a late fee! Seriously, I’m not making this up.

About six hours into the incident, we were relieved by fresh crews. P344 returned to the fire hall to clean up the equipment and grab a hot shower and a bite to eat before putting the rig back into service to run calls. After changing into fresh fatigues, I started typing up my report and lay down for a bit. I was exhausted from the fire, but quite pleased with myself. Yes, I had indeed gone out with a bang. Ultimately, the damage from the blaze was reported to be in excess of ten million dollars.