Saturday,
After being on duty at the Fire Dept.all day
Dawn and I were going to go to the movies to see
Book of Shadows:Blair witch 2
As we were on our way there the tones for E.T.F.D. went off
and there was the report of a structure fire.
Dawn turned us around hit the lights and sirens
We were the first ones in the door of the station.
Followed soon after by Tony,Randy,Dave and Brian
I am not sure what I was thinking, I thought there was another person coming in so I told dawn to wait for the next truck or the Squad, so we could fit another Firefighter
on board, but no one else made it on that truck.
(she doesn't have her card yet)
She did make it there relatively soon after,and because she don't have her card yet was assigned to the Deck gun on the engine.
I was on the 113 which is the first in truck and as we pulled up on scene it was one of the most spectacular sights I have ever seen.
There ware flames 50 feet in the air and Explosions and Tony and I pulled the hand line to the door and kicked it open, we could see down the hall and tony yelled to see if anyone was in there, there was no answer and you could see the smoke getting thicker and moving right at us fast.
Brian Did a walk around to establish Just how far the fre has spread and to locate the hydrants.
Randy and Dave put the pump in gear and began to send us water.
Brian established that the fire was burning the most on the south corner and was spreading in all directions the building was actually several buildings shaped like an L and the fire was in the corner heading out quickly.
There were delivery trucks parked right against the building which were now burning and the second due truck was the 115 they arrived on scene and brian directed them to the other end of the complex. The next in engines were from sheffield township and they were to hook up and supply our engines with water.
The Fire was spreading Rapidly and an interior attack was out of the question. the building was old and built to be a slaughter house in the 50's, since then it has been a food manufacturing facility for several different companies. It seems that there was addition after addition added to the building over the years and no one was confident in the layout or construction...
In short I wasn't going in!
After 20 minutes on scene the fre had done alot of damage and was spreading into the north end of the building right where Tony and I had started to fight the fire, by this time we had several hoses going and we were in the process of entering the loading dock to try to stop the fires progress. as we moved toward the loading dock there was a huge explosion, it knocked down three or four of the sheffield firefighters, and blew flames and burning debris 50 feet out of the windows. and caught a boat that was being stored there on fire. No one was injured and I put the boat out before anything but the cover was damaged.
The Fire had spread to all of the buildings and there was a possibility of saving one of them a pole barn that was new and was only burning on the east wall.
Amherst had their tower there and were doing a great job of putting water on the building to halt the spread and with a coordinated interior attack we were able to push the fire back out of the building, although the roof was damaged the building is still standing and the trucks and cars that were inside are undamaged.
The Fire raged hot and bright for at least 5 hours and just when you would have it knocked down on one side the other side would erupt in flames and smoke.
The fire was burning hot and in the part of the building on the north side the fire was impossible to access, The door to that part of the building was hidden under burning roof debris and there was a smallaccess hole about 4 feet high by 3 feet wide, this part of the building was the meat handling room of the slaughter house and was well insulated, therefore it was acting like an oven.
The interior walls are glazed brick the exterior wall is cement block and in between was 8 inches of cork.
Cork is low density wood that has lots of air spaces and once it's on fire it will continue to burn until it burns out.
Anecdotally I stated to a fellow firefighter that
"if you took a block of this cork that was burning and immersed it in a bucket of water, the water would probably boil before the fire went out."
Now I don't know if that is true but it illistrates exactly what fighting this fire was like.
The north end of the building beyond the room full of cork was an addition that was made of plywood and a truss roof. as the fire broke through the roof of the meat handling section it was likely to get hotter and burn the rest of the building down. This part of the building as it turns out is where the owner stores plastic bottles, and if the fire spreads here we would have to abandon all efforts because it would likely burn down quickly and colapse in all directions .
Thanks to Dawn on the deck gun the fire never made it to that part of the building and we were able to save the owners unused stock.
At around 3 in the morning the fire wasn't exactly under control but the chief was able to let those of us who worked a 24 hour shit in the morning go, Brian, Tony Dawn and I walked out at 3:15. the rest of the departments were on scene till about 6 am. then it was just E.T.F.D. and the fire marshall.
The fire is still under investigation as of 11-4-00
For the next 5 days we were called back for rekindles due to the large volume of cork and wood that were still hot and would periodically burst into flames.
Good Night
I am barely visible in this photo but i am on the left side behind th fierfighter in the yellow helmet.
notice I am the only one wereing an scba, and the 4 others are the ones who could have been killed in the explosion.
