A/N: The day after I started writing this chapter, a barn in my town was leveled by a fire. The barn didn't store hay, so that fire probably had a completely different cause from this one, but still, it was a little spooky. Sadly, the barn was the most important structure in a key local organic food business, and the destruction of the barn has jeopardized the future of the farm.
As always, constructive criticism is appreciated.
Chapter 3.
Douglas Howarth wiped the sweat off his brow, and replaced his cap. The first round of haying for the season was done—just in time, he thought. He would have liked to have given the hay another day to dry in the fields, but it was likely to rain—rain!—tomorrow, so it was a good thing the hay was baled and in the barn. With a sense of accomplishment, he and his sons stowed all the baling equipment, and closed up the barn.
~!~!~!~
The barn was silent, save for the skittering of ever-present small rodents, and the barn cats who often made a meal of them. The bales of hay, packed together tightly in their area of the large barn, settled together. The pile of bales was huge, and tightly packed into the space it was given in the barn.
The next day was rainy, just as was predicted. The air grew heavy and humid. The hay, which was already slightly too damp from being baled earlier than it should have, started to heat up, as microorganisms that thrive in damp, low-oxygen conditions started nibbling away at the pile. The bales were packed tightly enough that the growing heat had nowhere to go.
So the heat kept building, and building. Condensation formed on the inside of the roof, unnoticed by anyone other than a few bats. After a few days, a musty smell developed in the barn, with caramel overtones. Doug noticed the smell, but chalked it up to a pile of canvas feed bags moldering away in a corner. He took them outside and tossed them on the trash heap, and left for the day.
That night, the Howarth family's world was turned upside down, when Doug started having chest pains and was whisked away to the hospital in L.A. Work still got done on the farm—it had to—but nobody stopped to wonder why the barn smelled so odd. A strange smell was the least of their worries.
A few nights later, the mice and rats started leaving their nests. The barn cats chased them, confused about the sudden exodus. But when the cats went to return to the barn, they, too, could tell something was amiss, and found other shelter, as tendrils of smoke started rising from the spontaneously combusting hay.
~!~!~!~
The two fans in front of the couch in Station 51's day room seemed to be doing nothing for the three men seated in front of them.
"Move your elbow, Marco—you're touching me!" Chet said, pulling his body into itself to try and make himself fit better on the middle cushion.
"I can't help it!" Marco snapped. "I'm all the way over in the corner of my cushion already. Move over towards Stoker if you think I'm too close."
"Stay right where you are, Kelly," Mike said. "You're already mighty close to my cushion, there, pal. Plus you're making the whole couch sag in the middle. I have to hold on to the arm just to keep from sliding down into your valley."
"Well it's not fair!" Chet said. "How come I always get stuck in the middle, anyhow? Gage is skinnier than me by a lot!"
"Well," Mike said, with far less than his usual patience, "he's not here, is he?"
"Probably lounging around in the air conditioning at Rampart," Chet said under his breath.
At the table, Hank Stanley unclenched his teeth and looked up from the newspaper he was failing to read.
"If I have to pull this fire station over, you kids are gonna be sorry," he said. "And for Pete's sake, if all three of you all insist on sitting on the couch in front of the fans—which, by the way, one could say you're hogging up—then shut up and play nicely."
"But Cap, he's on my side!" Marco said.
"I am not! Cap, make him stop touching me!"
Hank put his head down on the mercifully cool surface of the table. He thought again about the other captains' proposal to go in together on a window-unit air conditioner for the station's office, and resolved that he'd pitch in whatever it took.
"Are you twits purposely trying to annoy me for some reason that I don't understand?"
"No, Cap," Mike said. "It's just that—"
BWAAAAAAM, BWOOOM BWEEEEEEP!
"Engine 51, Station 8, Ladder 10, report as second-alarm assignment to a barn fire, 20487 County Route 281. 2-0-4-8-7 County Route 281, cross street Fire Tower Road. Time out: 1428."
Mike had to consult the map to make sure he was going where he thought he was. He had a near photographic memory for named roads in the parts of the county he'd ever driven to, but as soon as the road had a number, he was unsure of himself. With a finger on the map in the bay, he traced the best route, mumbling directions to himself.
On the way to the scene, Mike and Cap listened to the radio chatter on the channel that their incident was using. It was clear from what they could hear that the barn was going to be a loss, as was often the case, and that the goal was going to be to contain the fire as much as possible and keep it from spreading to other structures, or the vegetation around the barn.
Just after Mike passed Fire Tower Road, Cap called in to the incident commander—Captain McGinty from Station 110, who was first on scene—that they would be arriving shortly.
"Command from Engine 51, our ETA is two minutes."
"Copy that, 51. Engine 8 is getting started drafting from a pond at the northwest corner of the property. Come on up the driveway and go past the scene to get there. You'll lay a supply line from Engine 8 to the scene. I'm gonna have you run a master stream to the northeast corner of the structure," McGinty ordered.
"10-4," Cap replied. "Rendezvousing with Engine 8 at the pond, and laying supply line from Engine 8 to the northeast corner."
Chet and Marco held on for dear life in the cab as the engine bounced and jounced up the driveway, which was better suited for tractors than fire engines. It was several hundred even bumpier feet to the pond. Mike stopped short of Engine 8, and did a neat three-point turn so he could back towards Engine 8. As soon as the engine stopped moving, and the air was no longer flowing through the partially-enclosed cab, the heat once again became oppressive, and within seconds, the men were sweating heavily inside their turnout gear.
Even with their own diesel engine chugging away, the men of Station 51 could hear the unmistakable sound of Engine 8's priming pump, which shrieked like a wounded wildcat as it expelled the air from the engine's fire pump, letting the fire pump begin drawing water from the pond through the hard tubing their crew had laid from the pump's intake into the pond.
Chet and Marco jumped out to pull the supply lines from the back of Engine 51, wrapping them around the bumper of Engine 8 so they could drive off, laying the lines out behind them. They drove slowly back to the scene. The flip-flopping sound of the hose deploying off the back of the engine, and the 'clunk' when couplings hit the ground, were masked by the sounds of the diesel engine and the wheels on the gravel-and-mud path.
"Engine 51, take the northeast corner. Run a two-and-a-half onto the structure at that corner, and cool the exposure with an inch-and-a-half," McGinty ordered, as the engine entered the scene.
It was immediately clear why he wanted them there—a silo, unattached to the barn, was in danger of being overrun by the fire in the nearby barn.
"Cap, we could probably pump a master stream and an inch-and-a-half if he wanted. We're downhill from Engine 8, so that'll give us a boost," Mike said to Captain Stanley.
Cap nodded. "I'll check on that. Go ahead and set up that way," he said to Chet and Marco. "Kelly, you're on the master stream; Lopez, you take the exposure."
Chet and Marco nodded their understanding. Mike pulled the remainder of a length of supply line off the back of the engine, and laid it out so it wouldn't kink when the water flowed. Chet took the master stream device from the storage area on the top of the engine, and hooked it up to a length of hose. Marco pulled the pre-connected inch-and-a-half towards the silo, and they were ready to flow.
Mike radioed Engine 8's engineer, and water started flowing to Engine 51. Her pump churned into action, and Mike pulled out various controls, opening valves to flow the water where he wanted it to go. He kept a continuous eye on the pressure he was sending to each device. Chet's master stream would need everything he could give it, minus what Marco's line needed.
Vast quantities of water flowed from the nozzle on the tripod Chet had set up. It seemed like the deluge should be quenching the flames, with hundreds of gallons per minute spewing from the tip of the nozzle, but the heat was so intense that it looked like nothing was happening. Even though the master stream sprayed the water far enough that Chet had some good distance between himself and the fire, he was close enough that he could feel the heat pushing out from the barn. All he had to do was stay by the master stream device and make sure it didn't move around behind the pressure of the water it was spraying, but the heat was intense, and he was quickly drenched in sweat.
Marco's line sprayed a fog onto the silo, cooling it and the air around it, protecting it from the intense heat of the fire in the adjacent barn. Sweat poured down his face, but was washed away by mist that deflected off the silo and bounced back towards him.
All the while, Mike kept an eye on his gauges, and on Chet and Marco themselves. Chet's master stream would need everything he could give it, minus what Marco's line needed. Mike needed to make sure the pressure on Marco's line was just right, as well. It was only an inch-and-half, but Marco would be handling it by himself, possibly for quite a while. Plus, he'd need to move it around a lot, to cover all parts of the silo. Too much pressure, and the line would be hard to handle. Too little, and the stream wouldn't reach as high as it needed to on the silo.
The men kept at their tasks. There was a brief interruption in water flow after about fifteen minutes, when Engine 8 had to shut down the pump because the strainer on their suction hose had gotten clogged with something from the pond. Cap took that opportunity to swap Chet and Marco's positions, just before he himself was given an assignment to briefly rotate in to back up a man from 110s on a two-and-a-half. That assignment was a good call on the incident commander's part, Cap thought. Chet and Marco's tasks didn't require full-time supervision, so Cap was glad to have an active task for a change, even if it was only for fifteen minutes. And in this heat, men doing the heavy work would need to be rotated out frequently.
Cap wasn't so glad, though, for the steady trickle of sweat that ran down the valley of his spine, or for the fact that, after only fifteen minutes of work, his uniform was completely drenched with sweat under his turnout gear.
After half an hour, the structure of the barn looked more and more precarious. The corner where Engine 51 and her crew were working started to lean towards the rear of the building—a lucky accident, considering that the silo they were protecting was located more towards the side of the barn.
The building made a particularly ominous groaning sound. Cap trotted up to Chet and thumped him on the shoulder. He shouted to be heard over the din of the fire scene.
"Back up five yards or so," he said. "I don't like the looks of this."
"You and me both, Cap," Chet said. He signaled to Mike that he was shutting down his stream, and Mike signaled back his acknowledgment.
Marco noticed the exchange, and Cap gestured to him to back up as well.
An instant later, Captain McGinty gave a general order for everyone to get outside the collapse zone. The radio order was followed by three long blasts on the air-horn of Engine 110. A flurry of activity ensued, as each team retreated.
Then, with a sound that was somewhere between that of a landing 747 and a Fourth of July gone terribly wrong, what was left of the roof of the structure fell in, followed quickly by three of the four walls. The wall nearest Engine 51's crew hovered improbably, seeming to defy gravity. Almost in slow motion, the final wall tilted away from the rest of the burning heap of timber and hay bales.
"Move, move, move!" Captain Stanley shouted instinctively, even though Chet and Marco were already outside the area that it looked like the wall was going to hit.
A huge barn beam landed right where Chet had been positioned, sending chunks of flaming wood in every direction. Marco turned his line to the fiery debris that now littered the area between the former barn and Engine 51.
"Marco!" Mike hollered. "Hit the hosebed!"
All eyes of Engine 51's crew turned to their apparatus. Licks of flame showed from fragments of debris that had made it all the way to the engine. Cap dashed to the Engine, pulling on his thick fire gloves, and climbed up to the hosebed. Marco's stream of water quickly doused the flames, and soaked Cap thoroughly, as he tossed chunk after chunk of debris off the top of the engine. Chet pulled the reel line, and Mike charged the line so Chet could hit some of the debris in the area between the engine and the barn.
"51 from command, what's your status?" McGinty asked.
"The east side collapsed outwards, with wide scatter of debris. We're hitting the debris right now, but we should be able to get the master stream up and running shortly," Cap replied, breathless from his sudden flurry of activity. "The engine got hit by some debris but can remain in service. We're no longer cooling the silo off the northeast corner, while we handle the debris between the engine and the barn."
"Copy that," McGinty said. "Bring your master stream back on line when you can. I'll have another team take over that exposure for now."
"Received," Cap replied.
Chet and Marco quenched and cooled the debris that was in the way of their resuming the containment of the fire. Two men came over from the rear of the building, and resumed spraying down the silo. Cap used a pike pole to separate and turn debris that Chet and Marco were cooling, to make sure that each surface of the smoldering chunks of wood got cooled sufficiently.
"That should do it, men," Cap said, after about ten minutes of work on the debris. "Marco, you can get back to the exposure, and Chet, get that master stream going again." He radioed McGinty again to inform him they were getting back to their original assignment.
An hour and tens of thousands of gallons of water later, the huge conflagration had been reduced to a pile of smoldering and steaming beams. The fire was under control, but their work wasn't yet done. What was left of the barn could still flare up again if every pocket of fire and heat wasn't cooled sufficiently, which could be tricky with thick barn beams. The barn itself was a total loss, but they didn't want to risk the adjacent buildings, which through great effort and skill on the part of the group of firefighters at the scene had remained relatively intact.
The control of the fire had happened not a moment too soon, from the next transmission that Cap heard on the radio.
"Command, from Engine 8."
"Go ahead, 8."
"This pond isn't gonna give us much more. There's a stream about a quarter mile away that we could dam up, and do a tanker operation off of, but I think this pond is only gonna give us another twenty minutes or so."
"Copy that," McGinty replied. "I had dispatch move some tankers up towards our location. You stay put, and I'll put another engine on the stream."
Cap knew it wouldn't be Engine 51; they'd pulled almost every foot of hose off the engine, and it would take them far longer to repack all of that and get to the stream than it would for an engine that had only had one line pulled off it, and didn't have nearly a thousand feet of supply line lying on the ground.
Twenty minutes later, tankers were shuttling water from the nearby stream into artificial ponds set up at the fire scene. Ten minutes after that—longer than Engine 8's engineer had predicted—Engine 51s water supply from the pond, via Engine 8, dwindled.
"Command, from Engine 8. We're running into the end of the clear water from this pond. Shutting down in two minutes."
"Command copies. Engine 51, you can suspend your master stream and inch-and-a-half. This fire is under control. Engine 51 is dismissed. Ladder 10 is dismissed. Engine 8, report to the scene for overhaul when you're wrapped up at the pond," McGinty said.
Cap breathed a sigh of relief, and imagined that he heard his three men do the same. The barn was reduced to a heap of steaming, smoldering rubble, with licks of flame still popping out here and there, but the silo they'd been protecting seemed to be safe. The roaring inferno had been tamed, but everyone knew there was still plenty of work to be done in overhauling the scene. Every piece of rubble had to be turned and doused; every pocket of heat cooled with the water now being ferried in by the tankers. It was miserable work, made an order of magnitude more miserable by the hot, humid conditions.
Cap delivered the good news to Marco and Chet, who looked equally bored with their tasks, both of which probably could have been suspended fifteen minutes previously. But better safe than sorry, Cap thought, with a fire that had gotten as hot as this one. The thick barn beams could easily be holding on to unexpected amounts of heat. Nobody wanted the fire to flare up again, either in half an hour or the next day.
"No such thing as too much water on a barn fire," Cap said to himself, as he returned to the engine to inform Mike of the plans.
"What's that, Cap?" Mike said.
Cap stared at Mike, and shook his head in disbelief.
"Shouldn't you be deaf, like the rest of us, after years and years of standing there with your head right next to a fire pump?"
"Well, I didn't hear what you said. I just could tell you said something, is all. Trust me, I'm plenty deaf," Stoker replied, wiping the sweat from his brow. "But was it anything important?"
Hank shook his head. "Nope. Just talking to myself. And all I said was you can't put too much water on a barn fire."
"Too true," Mike said.
"Anyhow, we're dismissed," Cap said.
"I figured," Mike said, as he throttled the engine down. He surveyed the scene. "Man, it's gonna take forever to get all this hose packed up again. And we're definitely gonna have to spray it down and hang it up back at the station."
Cap clapped Mike on the shoulder. "Well, the sooner we start, the sooner we're done."
"Gonna hafta flush the pump and the tank out but good, too. I hate ponds. You never know what's getting in your pump," Mike said, literally shuddering. "I mean, just think of all the stuff that's small enough to get through the strainers on the hard suction—weeds, mud, slime, tadpoles and … little fish, even!" Mike's pitch rose as he became more agitated than the situation seemed to demand.
"All right, all right—calm down there, pal," Cap said soothingly, while trying not to laugh at his fastidious engineer. "We'll be sure to give our engine a nice flush-out back at the station. No harm, no foul."
"And speaking of foul—or should I say fowl—did you see that chicken? I mean, did you see it? It flapped right up onto the top of the cab, and I'm sure it took a crap up there," Mike said, as he started disconnecting the supply line. "I didn't even think they were supposed to be able to fly!"
Cap shook his head. "Mike, I'll say one thing for sure. Nobody's ever gonna mistake you for a country boy. C'mon. Let's start breaking down this supply line."
It took nearly an hour to drain and repack eight hundred-foot lengths of supply line, the inch-and-a-half, and the length of hose Chet had pulled for the master stream. Since they were finally out from under the pressure of fighting an active fire, they took plenty of breaks to drink from their canteens in the sweltering heat.
It was nearly supper time when the crew returned to the station, knowing they still had a good bit of work ahead of them to take care of the filthy lengths of hose they'd put back on the engine. Every length of hose would need to be rinsed, and hung to dry. The engine would need washing, and Mike would need to take it out to the apron in front of the station, and use the hydrant there to flush any remaining pond water from the tank and the pump.
"All right, we're stood down for a bit to get ourselves back in service, so everyone get some water, hit the head, do whatever you need to do for ten minutes, before we get back to it," Cap declared, as they pulled into the bay. "Don't bother getting changed, because we're just gonna get all hot and sweaty again cleaning up."
The squad was parked in its spot, and good smells were coming from the kitchen.
"Hm, smells like Gage and DeSoto found the dinner supplies," Marco said, as the men trooped into the day room to get something to drink.
They opened the door to the day room, and entered one after the other.
"Man, it's great in here!" Chet said. "So nice and cool, after that hellish fire."
"I'll second that," Stoker said, opening the refrigerator and pulling out the pitcher of orange juice. "It was miserable out there, and I was a lot farther away from the fire than you guys."
"Hmph," came the retort from the area of the sofa.
Four sweaty heads turned to the couch area. Roy and Johnny were sitting sullenly on the sofa, each with a fan in front of him.
"What's the matter with you two?" Captain Stanley asked. The frowns coming from the couch were apparently contagious, as Stanley's eyebrows were furrowed.
"Nothing," Roy said, uncharacteristically laconic.
"It's just too darned hot, Cap," Johnny complained, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
The other four men in the kitchen paused in their actions for a moment, and then all laughed at once.
"What's so funny?" Johnny asked, scowling hard enough that two tiny droplets of sweat on his forehead coalesced into one and trickled down the side of his nose.
"Never mind," Cap said. "I guess you just had to be there."
End of this vignette
Series TBC
A/N: Even though we never see it used in the show, Engine 51 carries the equipment for drafting (getting water from a static, unpressurized source of water such as a pond, versus using a hydrant). If you look at a driver's-side photo of the engine, you'll see two long black tubes—the suction hose that is used for drawing water out of a static source. You can't use normal supply hose for that, as the suction from the pump would collapse a regular hose.
