Town Hall Fire

It was just a regular night at the house. Mom, dad, and I were sitting upstairs watching TV when around 9:37, the tones dropped for a 10-70, structure fire, fully involved. That was all the information dispatch put across the pagers. I immediately jumped up, ran down the steps and put my shoes on, and was out the door, after telling mom and dad I loved them and would be home later, of course. Upon nearing the fire hall, the night was awoken by thick black smoke, and the reddish orange glow of a fully involved fire. When I pulled into the parking lot and parked, it became obvious what the structure fire was; it was the town hall. Truck One, Truck Two, Ladder One, Rescue One, and Truck Five had done left and was on scene. Therefore the only truck left was Truck Three. We marked in route at 9:41 PM.

    When we arrived on scene, Ladder One done had the aerial set up, with a five inch line connected to the hydrant, and Truck One had entry lines charged with an entry team done inside hitting the fire from the heart. It also had a two inch line connected to the hydrant,which was greatly needed. I was ordered to start dragging filing cabinets, computers, laptops, papers, and anything with important information out of the building, and across the parking lot into the grass. We ended up dragging nine full filing cabinets out of the burning building. After we got out as much stuff as we could, me, Evan, Jarrod, Zack, and Jakob became a second entry team, and pulled a crosslay and began our trek from the front of the building. We knocked down as much of the fire as we could, but to little effect in the great big scheme of things. We were hitting the ceiling while the Ladder Truck was hitting the roof. We worked our way as far back as we could until we were stopped by a collapsed ceiling blocking the way. We pulled out and was told told to go to the back and make entry there instead. By this time, it was a little past midnight and it was so cold that the excess water, which there was a bunch of, started to freeze all over the ground. It was literally impossible to walk five feet without slipping.

    As we started around the side of the building, the side wall fell and smoke blocked the vision from everything. We continued around to the back of of the town hall and entered into the core sampling room. There was core rock samples on shelves from the ceiling all the way to the floor, in the biggest room of the building. The core samples were so hot, they burnt my turnout gear and burnt a hole in my rubber boots. We decided to pull out and just spray from the outside. We continued to spray, and work around the building, and make entry, and pull out for the majority of the night. By the time we got the fire knocked completely down, with just a few open flames and many hot spots, it was nearing 7:30 in the morning. We decided to pack everything up, roll hoses, load up, and leave the scene for a few hours to go home and get some rest. I went home around 9:00 and slept for about 4 hours, then got back up and went back out to scene to hit all the hotspots and put out all the rekindled material. I spent another five hours soaking everything down and hitting all the hotspots. It was definitely an eventful two days that will not be forgotten anytime soon.