Chapter 22

I had a dream that I was watching TV when I suddenly felt a familiar presence. I looked over at the couch and Katie was watching TV with me. She still wore her blinding-white dress, but she looked nervous for some reason.

I said, “Hello, Katie. I haven’t seen you in a while. How are you?”

Katie said, “Hi. I’m ok, I guess. But I’m scared about something.”

I asked, “Why? What’s the matter?”

She looked at me and said, “I’m going to be on TV tomorrow and I’m scared you won’t see me. You have to see me!”

I tried to calm her and said, “I’ll watch as much as I can, but I have to work. Do you know what channel I should watch or when?”

Katie seemed confused and unsure how to answer before saying, “I think there’s only one channel to watch. I guess it’s an old TV because it’s small and there’s no color. But you have to watch it! Promise me you’ll watch?”

I said, “You mean I have to watch one TV in particular?”

Katie just nodded her head.

I asked, “Do you know where this TV is? I don’t know of any black and white TV’s that only get one channel.”

Katie said, “It’s at the fire station ... I have to go now.”

I said, “But we don’t have any TV’s like that at the station house.”

She repeated, “I have to go...” and she was gone.

I woke up and found the dream so strange yet seemingly important that I made a note about it before going back to sleep.

The next day Cherry called Olivia from work to tell her our decision. Olivia was really excited and said that they would start getting some necessary paper work together and we’d schedule a session at a later date—once everything was in order. I had no idea what paper work they had in mind (seemed like such a simple thing to me) but I didn’t argue the point. It was their ‘show’, after all.

It was just after noon when we got called out to assist another station house with a structural fire. The structure turned out to be a higher end apartment complex. I never liked apartment fires for several reasons. For one, it was ‘close to home’ since I lived in an apartment.

Also, because of so many different types of people living there, neighbors frequently knew nothing about each other; preferring to keep to themselves. Subsequently, you couldn’t rely on them to know who was home and who was not. That meant door to door searches for smoke inhalation victims—human and pets. Some pets were friendly; others—not so much.

Another reason I disliked them was management. Managers were frequently uninformed or, worse, misinformed about important details like ‘is the power secured?’ or ‘is the gas main turned off?’ or ‘what is the construction of the building?’

We rolled to a stop and got to work. The primary team was on scene before we got there and had command. They were working on clearing the apartments and laying out hoses to combat the fire. The fire was isolated to the kitchen in one apartment on the top floor, so it looked like we would have it under control pretty quickly.

The manager (as per usual) couldn’t say for sure what the construction of the building was—he was new. But he said for certain the power was off and they were working on the gas main. ‘Super’...

I grabbed a device known as a fire finder and only then did I remember my dream from the night before. A fire finder would seem sort of like a black and white TV to a kid Katie’s age. In actuality, it’s a thermal camera that displays a black and white image on a small video screen.

It can see through the thickest, blinding smoke with ease and clarity by sensing differences in temperature. Not only is it great for finding where the flames are, but it’s perfect for finding passed out victims!

We were told to assist in clearing the top floor and once clear, to ‘put the wet stuff on the hot stuff’. But we had to wait to get the word about the gas main being secured first before entering the space to combat the fire. We could hear the roof man cutting the hole through the roof to give the fire a path to draw oxygen (which is how you avoid a face full of flames when you open the door to enter the apartment—also known as a back draft).

The word on securing the gas main seemed to take forever, but when we got it, we entered the apartment to start doing what we do best. From the hole in the roof and the now blown out windows, the apartment was clear enough that the fire finder was not needed and I let it hang from the wrist strap.

Brian was the nozzle man and he opened the bale to start fighting the fire. We got low to the floor to dodge the sudden rise in temperature. Most people don’t realize that it actually gets hotter inside a building when you start putting water on the fire.

The heat flushes out along the ceiling and hits you right in the face if you are standing up and, even with the air pack on, it’s suffocating! But if you get low, the heat just rolls along the ceiling—passing over you.

What happened next occurred so fast, I couldn’t say what happened first. There was a whistling sound that I first thought was the wind coming through the open window. But the pitch began increasing rapidly until I couldn’t really hear it anymore. The fire in the kitchen suddenly shot up like a laser to the ceiling and it sounded like a small bomb went off on the floor below us.

Something was wrong and I could feel it. I looked through my fire finder and was astonished at what I saw. The screen was mostly white from the heat and there was flame spewing out from behind the stove like it was under pressure.

I keyed my radio and yelled, “Are you sure the gas main is off?! I got flame shooting out from the walls in here!”

I looked again in my fire finder while waiting for a response and couldn’t believe what I saw. Right in the middle of all that white was a black area about four and a half feet tall. Having black on my screen made no sense because black indicates a cool spot.

As my mind tried to wrap around it, I suddenly recognized a clear shape—it was Katie. She stood rigid with her arm extended out straight; her finger pointing the way out while she was screaming and all I could hear was the whistle of escaping gas.

I saw her mouth clearly form the words ‘GET OUT!’ as jet black tears flowed down the cheeks of her panic stricken face. The sound of creaking wood filled the room.

I dropped the fire finder and grabbed the handle on Brian’s pack, pulling him backwards while shoving Garry (who was behind me), yelling, “OUT! EVERYONE GET THE FUCK OUT!”

Brian and Garry simultaneously asked, ‘What the fuck?!’ while trying to retreat with the hose.

I yelled, “LEAVE IT! RUN!!!”

Brian instinctively threw the lever on the bale forward; killing the water flow from the hose. They did as I ‘suggested’ and we all ran for the door. The moment we cleared the doorway, the entire roof collapsed in a massive pile of burning debris on top of where we had been fighting the fire. The gas main had not been secured after all and was super-fueling the fire, burning through the roof far too quickly.

The apartments were constructed of what is known as light wood. It’s a cheap building material that just crumbles easily when it burns. Whoever gave the ‘ok’ to use it for an apartment should be in prison: the only thing it’s good for is a bonfire in my opinion.

Moments after the roof came down the floor fell through, too. We made a hasty retreat from the apartment which was now fully out of control.

We regrouped outside and Chief asked, “What the hell happened in there?”

He already knew what happened, of course. But I answered anyway, “Gas is still on. Roof and floor caved in.”

Chief replied as calmly as he could, “No shit,” but I could see he was pissed and wanted to find the guy that said the gas was off. But now was not the time; there was still a lot of work to do...

Before the fire was out, three more stations were called in to help get control. It should have been a simple call out, but because of shitty (no other word is appropriate in this case) building materials and equally lacking quality of knowledge on how to turn off the gas main, nearly 30 families lost everything and were homeless by dinner time.

Thankfully, no one was injured in the calamity but, for certain, there would have been three deaths if not for Katie. Surviving that collapse would have been impossible.

By the time I got home that night, the story had already been the lead story on the evening news. I called Cherry to tell her what was going on, that I’d be late and not to worry. But she stayed up anyway. And, even though I had a shower at the station house, she still noticed the smell of smoke on me. I went to get a second shower so she wouldn’t have to smell smoke all night long; she joined me.

Standing under the hot water, Cherry just wanted to hold on to me for a while, her head resting on my chest. Eventually she grabbed the body wash and gently began soaping me up so I did the same for her in return. When we finished washing, Cherry finally asked about my day.

She said quietly, “Something is bothering you; I can tell. Is it about the fire today? Was it bad?”

I answered, “It had the potential of being bad. But no one got hurt so it wasn’t that bad.”

Cherry thought for a second and said, “You don’t want to tell me. Do you?”