The race was on. In such a crowded city the fire stations are separated by only a couple miles. This means that everyone will be nipping at your heels trying to get to your fire faster than you. As we approached the final turn the radio crackled..."Engine105 on scene single story commercial building with smoke showing. Engine 105 going into attack mode, next in engine establish a water supply." That was us.
As we approached we noticed that the last hydrant was quite a ways from the address. My captain decided to drive up to the other engine and to do a reverse hose lay. As we came to a stop I jumped out of my seat. I swung around the tail of the engine and grabbed the 5" hose sending my engine to go get the hydrant, almost 1000 feet away. As soon as the LDH was connected to engine 105 my captain and I were tasked with assisting the fire attack crew.
I masked up and started feeding them more 2 1/2" hose. Once another crew showed up I bumped up the line to back up the firefighter on the nozzle. It was a room and contents fire started by a pump of some sort on one of the machines. It was fairly smokey but not too hot. Once truck 110 got a hole cut in the roof visibility most of the smoke cleared.
Once we had initial knock down of the fire we decided to pull out the 2 1/2" hose and to use the booster line (a much smaller hose) to finish off the hot spots. There were still a couple of boxes of paper that were on fire up on a mezzanine that we missed on the initial knock down. Once the flames were out we overhauled the place checking for hot spots.
It took about a half hour to load all of our 5" hose back into the engine. We cleared the call and returned to quarters. As soon as we stepped off the rig the tones went off again.
Engine 51, respond for a person with chest pain......
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