Chapter 4 – Mountains

It was late in the afternoon when Engine 51 rolled up to a four-car pile up in the middle of a busy intersection. The police were already having a difficult time controlling the gawking crowd. As Evvy pulled a reel line to start washing the gasoline off the road, Squad 51 screamed up to the scene, making good time from a follow-up at Rampart. Only three of the cars had been occupied; the fourth had rolled from a parking space. From their positions, it was easy to see that the unoccupied car had rolled into the street, causing the second vehicle to jam on brakes and clip it. The other two cars, each coming from opposite directions at the posted speed limit, unavoidably smashed into the obstruction, spinning the whole mass of metal, glass, and rubber, and pushing the whole thing a few yards into the intersection.

Roy and John each took a vehicle, supported by Chet and Marco. Stoker jogged back to the Engine to get the K-12, as at least one of the drivers was trapped behind a crushed door. Evvy carefully swept the stream of water underneath the vehicles to dilute any fuel that might be leaking. At this distance, she could only hear snatches of conversation over the dull roar of the hose. Cap radioing for two ambulances. Roy asking Marco to grab the backboard. John's assurances to a victim that she'd be okay as he helped her climb out of the driver's seat under her own power. Their body language and facial expressions—carefully guarded when visible by the victims—were consistent with their voices, so it looked like there were only minor injuries.

She ran her eyes over the crushed mess, looking for anything that might ignite. Cap walked over and clapped a hand on her shoulder. "Okay, Evvy, looks good. We'll finish clean up once the ambulances are gone. The tow trucks will be here in a few."

"Okay, Cap," Evvy said, looping the heavy wet hose over her shoulder. The crowd had begun to thin a bit, now that the action was over. Evvy waited on the side for the tows to arrive; once the cars were moved, there'd be a ton of glass to sweep up off the street.

Roy's victim now had a C-collar applied, and the paramedic, along with Marco, was slowly maneuvering the man sideways out of the door opening. He was a large man, and not entirely calm about his situation. The couple from the third car were sitting on the curb near the engine, receiving basic first aid from Chet. All of these people were lucky; this could have been much worse.

A glint from the corner of her eye caught Evvy's attention. It took a moment to register what seemed out of place. The car at the center of the mashup, a blue Datsun, was leaking a liquid from the trunk. She narrowed her eyes and looked closer. This was not a residual drip from the wash-down, and it wasn't anywhere near the tank or the fuel line. It was a steady flow, puddling beneath the car and running in an iridescent rivulet down the gutter.

Evvy laid the hose down and trotted over to Cap, who was standing next to Stoker. "Hey, Cap," she said, certain that she was about to make a mountain out of a molehill, "I think there's some sort of liquid in the trunk of that blue Datsun that's leaking out. Looks weird."

Stanley looked at her sharply, then followed the line of her pointing finger. "Weird how?"

"Like, it's not clear. When the light catches it, it's got a kind of blue tint to it. It's not water, I don't think." Evvy was starting to second-guess herself, made paranoid, no doubt, by the arson reports and too many nights with Marco's flammable materials reference book. "I mean, could be a bottle of windshield fluid or something . . ."

Cap snapped the HT up to his lips. "LA, Engine 51. We have a possible solvent leak at this location. Respond another Engine." He raised his voice and called to Roy, who was struggling, with Marco's help, to extricate the last victim. "I need you to finish up there, pal. On the double."

Evvy saw Roy raise his eyebrows, but he didn't say anything except, "Okay, Cap." He and Marco took ten steps away from the mash of cars, the backboard level between them, and then the Datsun blew apart.

It was a violent explosion that knocked Roy and Marco off their feet, the two of them dropping the backboard. There was chaos – the controlled flurry of the firefighters moving in response to Cap's shouted directions, and the frantic scramble of the few remaining onlookers, as pieces of metal and glass shot out in all directions, along with flaming debris from inside the car.

Evvy felt her hose charge once again, a full blast that took all her strength to control, and she surged forward to attack the inferno that used to be four separate vehicles. Another car exploded, and she staggered backward but kept her feet. In her peripheral vision, she saw the paramedics shepherding the original victims, and a few unlucky spectators who had been just a bit too close to the action, around behind the Engine. There was a sizable dent in the waiting ambulance, and flames rose from the insurance company office across the street from her, its plate glass window shattered from the blast. Evvy's own ears were ringing.

Engine 10 roared up, its linemen already jumping off and dashing for more hoses.

It took another twenty minutes to subdue the main fire, the remains of the four cars now melted together. Three more civilians had been injured by flying shrapnel or burned by the initial burst of flames and superheated air. She saw Marco, his left arm covered in gauze, being helped into an ambulance. She didn't say anything as she helped roll up the hoses. Clean-up would have to wait until the fire investigators documented everything. She hauled her tired body up into her seat and closed her eyes, not wanting to look at the charred fireman-trap still blocking the intersection.

After the Engine came to a rest in the Station's apparatus bay, Evvy jumped down, stowed her turnout and helmet, and headed for the kitchen for a glass of water. Her mind was racing, and she felt like she was about to jump out of her skin. Were Roy and Marco okay? Why hadn't she noticed that liquid sooner? What else had she missed? Was the arsonist in the crowd of spectators, watching and counting the seconds until his—or her—trap was sprung? She wished she could take to the street and run for a few miles to calm her nerves and clear her head. Instead, she gulped down the water and filled the glass again. When she turned around, Captain Stanley, Chet, and Stoker were sitting at the table, watching her.

"You okay?" Cap asked. She hadn't noticed any of them come in. She paused, swallowing, then shook her head no. "Have a seat," he said gently. He waited until she drained the glass again and placed it on the table.

As she played with her glass, turning it around endlessly on the tabletop, Cap had her explain what she had seen, or thought she'd seen. She closed her eyes and, replaying it in her mind, described what she remembered. "The liquid didn't look like water or gasoline, it was kind of a watery blue," she said.

"Anything you recognized?" Cap asked. "Any odor?"

She shook her head helplessly. "I . . . don't think so. I don't know," she added, frustrated. "Everything just smelled . . . like a car fire. I guess I wasn't paying close enough attention. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Cap said, getting up. "You did fine. I have to make a few phone calls."

When the captain left the kitchen, Evvy dropped her head into her hands. After a moment, she heard Stoker's quiet voice. "There's a guy out there trying to harm firemen – and now, innocent bystanders. Stop beating yourself up for not getting inside the mind of a psychopath quick enough."

The rumble of the bay doors signaled the return of the Squad. Evvy felt her tension ease when John, Roy, and Marco walked in. "You okay, Marc?" Chet asked.

"Yeah, just a little first degree on my arm. Nothing major."

"The patient you and Roy dropped on his head might beg to differ," John observed dryly, heading, as usual, straight for the fridge. "Some of those words, I never heard before in my life."

"Well, five seconds later, he'd really have had something to complain about," Marco said. "I don't know what that was, but Cap sure sounded urgent."

"Evvy saw a booby-trap," Chet said. The three men froze and looked at her, as it dawned on them that someone had just tried to murder them. Evvy could see on Roy's face the moment he realized how close his wife, a lovely, friendly woman whom Evvy had met only three weeks before, had come to receiving that dreaded phone call, or worse, a visit from the Battalion Chief. He went pale, then red, and turned and left the kitchen. After a moment, John followed him out.

The crew went to bed on edge that night, and it didn't help that they were working their first 48 of the new year. Every call all day, no matter how minor, had raised the spectre of some trap or secondary explosion lurking, waiting for the firefighters to be fully drawn in before being sprung. Even the paramedics tensed up on their runs, fully aware that any call could be a false alarm. After dousing a grease fire at closing time in a burger joint, made worse by the fry cook foolishly trying to put it out with water, the crew turned in just before midnight. Lying quietly on her stomach in her bunk, her arms shoved underneath her pillow, Evvy listened to the strange quiet in the dim room. Nobody was snoring; apparently she was not the only one who couldn't sleep. John and Roy were talking softly. Chet was flopping back and forth on his mattress, trying to find a comfortable position, probably, and from time to time, she could hear Stoker sigh. It would almost be better if they all just got up and watched the Late Movie, she thought to herself, rather than torture themselves here in the darkness.

When the tones sounded and the lights went on, Evvy didn't know if she was relieved or not. She stuffed her feet into her boots and pulled up her bunkers as dispatch announced, Station 51, house fire, six-eleven Madison Drive, six-one-one Madison Drive, cross street, Franklin. Time out, two twenty-seven. She found herself crazily hoping that this was a real fire.

The small two-story cottage was involved on the first floor when the Engine arrived. There were no lights on inside, which made it easier to see the flames shooting out of the windows on the bottom level. A woman was standing on the sidewalk, wearing a sweater over her flannel nightgown. She advanced on Captain Stanley as soon as he hopped down from the Engine's cab, the strain of keeping herself together evident on her face.

"My brother Bobby is in there. He's on the second floor, in a bedroom in the back. He's not going to be able to get out – he never leaves the house. And," she swallowed convulsively, "you'll have a difficult time getting to him because of all the stuff."

"What kind of 'stuff,' exactly," Cap asked suspiciously. "Chemicals?"

"No, just stuff," the woman half wailed. "Newspapers and books and furniture, and just . . . stuff!" She started crying. "I couldn't get to him! He called me, and I came right over, but I couldn't get to him."

As Cap waved the paramedics over, he asked the woman, "Is your brother sick? Is it possible he's hurt?" She was weeping so hard now, she could only shake her head, and it was anybody's guess which question she was answering. "John, Roy, we have one person inside, second floor, back bedroom, name is Bobby. Apparently, he's a hoarder, so getting in and out is going to be a challenge. I'll have Evvy go up with you in case the fire's in the walls, but I need Marco and Chet to knock down the first floor and buy you some time."

Evvy followed the paramedics into the house, dragging an inch and a half. The three of them were almost immediately stopped inside the front door. John, in the lead, pulled out his flashlight and flicked on the beam. What should have been an open room of at least eight feet square was reduced to a path no more than eighteen inches wide. On either side, walls of haphazardly stacked newspapers, boxes, and books, several feet deep, leaned precariously over their heads, blocking access to the windows. A tiny path led off to the left toward a fully involved kitchen, and the main path ended at a rickety, unstable staircase filled with boxes of clothing and fabric on every step. Evvy didn't know how the linesmen were going to be able to attack the flames in the kitchen, since they could barely get into that room, and, once the mountain of refuse ignited—which it probably already had—soaking the bottom of it would eventually cause the whole structure to collapse and trap them all. She took a deep, calming breath and fixed her gaze on Roy's bright yellow air bottle, barely visible through the unlit room and the increasing smoke, and followed it up the stairs.

The two bobbing beams of light located an open door on the left, crammed full with furniture, including a full sized bed, two large armoires, and an overstuffed wing chair, all pushed together and taking up most of the floor space. There was nowhere to walk; the only access into the room was by crawling over the furniture. A lone figure huddled in the corner of the mattress, amid large garbage bags of who knew what, face hidden behind upraised arms.

"Bobby, it's the Fire Department," John shouted through his airmask, "we're here to help you get out." Bobby, clearly petrified and overwhelmed, shook his head "no." As John continued to try to coax the panicking man to come toward them, Evvy noticed the tell-tale signs that the fire was spreading from the kitchen below into the walls and floor of the bedroom. She tapped Roy on the shoulder and pointed out the problem. He nodded and began to crawl across the mattress toward the victim. Between John's verbal coaxing and Roy's gentle manhanding, the two paramedics managed to get Bobby to the door. Evvy had radioed Stoker to charge her line and was alternately pulling the fragile drywall apart and blasting the resulting hotspots with water.

The first floor was impassible by now, the fire finding endless fuel in the tightly packed newspaper stacks and dry, crumbly pillows, and thick acrid smoke billowed up the stairs. John pushed Bobby back into the bedroom and as far away from the door as the mash of furniture would allow. Roy put his shoulder up against the armoire, trying to shift it from in front of the window. Evvy pulled her HT from her turnout pocket. "Engine 51, HT 51. We need a ladder back of the house, second floor. Roy's about to break a window." Bobby wasn't much help; coughing and crying, he picked up random books and knick-knacks and clutched them to his chest. John and Roy managed to move the bed forward by a foot or so, then slid the armoire several inches sideways. Roy smashed the glass with his helmet, and cleared away the remaining shards with his glove.

Evvy was concentrating fully on beating back the flames now consuming the walls and ceiling. She couldn't make out the words as the paramedics, shouting, maneuvered Bobby to the ladder that had appeared at the sill. Bobby wasted precious seconds grabbing more books and other items, trying to save his treasures. She was losing the battle, just biding time now to give everyone a chance to get out. The house had been a loss from the moment it had gone up. John tapped her on the shoulder and gestured to the window. The urgency in his eyes told her they had to move now.

Roy went first, stabilizing Bobby as the civilian inched down the flexible ladder. John followed as Evvy continued to fog the room. As John's helmet disappeared, Evvy closed the valve and left the charged hose on the floor. She had just stepped off the bottom rung when what was left of Bobby's bedroom exploded in flame. Bobby lay on a yellow blanket next to the Squad, sobbing uncontrollably. His sister knelt nearby as the paramedics assessed him, murmuring soothing words in a voice choked with tears.

Cap quick-stepped over, his eyes sweeping her from helmet to boots. "You okay, Evvy?"

"Yeah, fine, Cap," Evvy responded, trying not to shake. She looked around; Engine 10 had responded and had relieved Marco and Chet on the first floor to surround and drown.

Bobby was now prone, with an O2 mask on and an IV started. He stared with a vacant gaze as his home and all of his possessions burned. Chet appeared at Evvy's shoulder, his expression grim. "It's going to take three hours to overhaul this, with all that junk inside," he complained.

Turned out, he was shy by an hour, and the winter sun rose over two companies of firefighters digging through and thoroughly soaking the two decades' worth of life that the homeowner could not be persuaded to throw away.