“Shit,” Hayes mutters.
There’s a rambler to one side and a square structure with a dilapidated van taking up the entire driveway of the other.
Hickman parks alongside the curb in front of the blazing house.
“I’ll do a three-sixty,” Scotty says as we file out of the engine. “You and Hayes are my first attack crew.”
I get Hayes pulling hose lines while I take the tools to the hydrant and get connected and Hickman works the pump on the engine.
Scotty returns as I’m laying our attack hose line to the front door. “Let’s try to knock it down from inside,” he yells over the engines and the steady roar of the fire. “A secondary team will do a sweep.”
Hayes joins me with the axe and the battering ram at the front door. “Ready!” I call out to Hickman standing by at the pump. The limp hose in my hands goes rigid as water pumps in. Hayes mirrors me pulling on my mask and tugging my flash hood up, then after a nod from me, he rams the door open.
A wall of heat and thick black smoke blasts me while the gust of cold oxygen from outside sucks past our legs into the fire. In the updraw, I get a split-second view of the empty living space floor. Then the black cloud of smoke blinds us again, billowing from the back of the house—likely the source of the fire.
We move left, the hiss of my respirator loud in my ears. We pass through an empty dining room to a kitchen space with peeling linoleum flooring and cabinets that look chewed by some kind of animal. The rest is black smoke. If there’s carpet involved, it burns like a grease fire—hot and stubborn. There’s also the possibility the fire had help from an accelerant. I’ll know as soon as I hit it with water.
Sweat is soaking the inside of my flash hood and down my back.Past the kitchen is another open room, filled with black smoke. Flames licks up the walls and ceiling.
I open the nozzle and aim for the closest wall. Steam hisses and the smoke explodes, thick and gray. I take another few steps forward and sweep the hose up, framing the opening of the room. Flames walk across the floor. We move in a little more, with Hayes behind me dragging the hose. The heat doesn’t break, even as I fill the room with water. I step into the room but the floor flexes beneath me, like it’s unstable. From the fire? I think about those cabinets. Have rats eaten away at the floor too?
The secondary team enters the house behind us. I hit the window at the back of the room. The spray and the fire are so loud I don’t hear it shatter. This will help depressurize the system and vent some of the heat. The last thing I want is for the house to flash with us inside it.
Details of the room come in bursts of split-second visibility as I attack with the hose. The shape of a couch. An external heating unit. The frame of a bicycle. A second window.
What started this fire?
The second team attacks from the right side of the room, creating more smoke. We gain on the walls and ceiling but the source of the fire in the center of the carpeted floor just dances around. I move closer, testing my weight on the flexing floorboards. Hayes swings behind to my left, dragging more hose. I aim at the base of the flames.
“We’ve got a victim!” someone says over the radio. It sounds like Jensen, the crash truck lieutenant.
I block out the radio chatter and advance another few feet on the fire. I can’t see to the other side of the room because of the smoke. Where’s the victim?
Though I want to help, that’s not our role. Hayes and I advance a little more. With the combined efforts from both teams, within a few more minutes, we get the flames knocked down.
“We’ve got a glow in the upper floor,” the chief barks into the radio. “All teams retreat!”
There’s no way to save the victim if we have to switch to an exterior attack, but I don’t hesitate to follow orders. If this house is abandoned and structurally compromised, we’re at risk of it coming down with us trapped inside.
“What about the victim?” Hayes calls out as we turn back.
There’s no short answer, so I don’t try. Outside, Finn River Sheriff’s Department vehicles are parked and I spot Everett and Sheriff Olson talking with the chief. While my crew regroups, the medic rig from Evergreen arrives, but the chances of them finding a live patient in need of medical attention are slim to zero.
A news van sets up outside the police perimeter and the assortment of onlookers has grown to a small crowd. It takes another thirty minutes of attacking from both front and back of the house and the help of breaking a hole in the roof to finally put out the flames.
While the medics enter the house, our crews poke holes into voids and check for pockets of heat that would indicate fire still smoldering. Dawn breaks, melting away the darkness.
When I come around the corner of the house to start packing up our gear, Hutch and his partner step from the house and return to the ambulance empty-handed. Coupled with the presence of the medical examiner’s van now parked near the chief’s rig, I know the status of the victim.
Fuck. What the hell went down inside this house?
Did the victim accidentally start the fire? A few years ago, I was on a structure fire that killed a homeless person who had been squatting in an abandoned home. We pulled him out alive but the smoke inhalation killed him before he reached the hospital. He’d been passed out drunk when a couple of kids thought it would be a good time to experiment with Molotov cocktails. News flash—theywork.
Is that what happened here?
Or did someone intentionally start this fire to cover their tracks?
I’m loading hose back onto the engine when Everett appears, his notebook and pen in his hand. He sets his left foot on the running board so he can use his leg as a writing surface. “Reports so far point to arson. Do you agree?”
