Weekend Fire Call

There are not a lot of structure fires in my part of the world, but this last Saturday we were toned out for a mutual aid call by Ellsworth.

The tone came in around 10:50pm with a call for station coverage that was moments later changed to a call for interior attack qualified personnel. Lamoine Rescue 403 and Engine 401 rolled to the scene as did a number of people in personal vehicles.

I got there about 11:15 and by that time the roof above the rear portion of the building had collapsed. A Lamoine crew lead by Kevin Kane (Capt. Ellsworth FD) entered into the forward section of the building in an effort to limit the spread of fire. I was part of that team. The entire forward portion of the building was smoke filled, but no fire was showing. We advanced a 1.75" line to the back wall of the forward section, breached a solid core door and found the room behind it completely involved. I was number two on the hose line with Mike Jordan (LT, Lamoine vol. FD) on the nozzle. We opened the hose up on the ceiling, taking down the drop ceiling tiles and discovered the fire was above us and advancing towards the front of the building in the attic space. On Kevin's orders we closed the door and withdrew to our point of entry.

At this point we did some recovery of musical equipment, speakers and amplifiers before the fire and water destroyed them. Next Mike and I assisted Kevin while he pulled the ceiling down so we could slow/stop the fires advance through the attic. While we were putting water into the ceiling a crew outside using a 2.5" hose line was doing the same. They had cut an access hole through the gable end of the building. A 2.5" will move a lot of water so it didn't take long for them to pump enough water into the attic space above us to cause the Sheetrock above us to fail. When the ceiling came down on us we got pounded by all that stored water all at once, then a continuous down pour from the stream. It was a tremendous impact when it let go.

At this point I was in need of a fresh bottle of air so I left the building to swap it out. By the time I returned to my area, Incident Command had pulled everyone out of the building and we were working the fire in a defensive mode. A few minutes later I went to rehab. At this point we stood by as other crews and the ladder truck worked the fire.