July 26, 2019
Around 5 P.M., just an hour after the last boot camp class for the week finished up, Chika and Riko were awoken from a short evening nap when Chika's pager rang. She quickly jumped out of bed and told Riko, "I'll be back." She then gave her girlfriend a kiss before grabbing her pager and running out of the apartment bedroom.
As she shut the door and ran down the stairs, Riko could hear the sirens from Stations 151, 152, and 156 go off. She said to herself, "I hope she's careful." The call was for a report of smoke inside a fruit wholesaler warehouse near the Uchiura Shipyard.
Chika rode a bike to the firehouse, arriving within three minutes of her pager ringing just as two cars screeched fo a halt in the parking lot, their drivers running in within seconds of stopping and turning their cars off. A gentle summer breeze blew against her as she ran past the apparatus and towards her gear locker, donning her soon-to-be discarded auxiliary gear, as she was moving on to the next part of her training next week and would be getting full bunker gear. She noticed Kanan donning her gear and running to Aerial 151, and said to herself, "I'll probably get on the ambulance."
As she finished getting her gear on, Ruby kicked off her shoes and put her boots on. She told Chika, "I think it's a real fire!"
Sure enough, their pagers rang again, an indication that indeed, it was a real fire. As the siren on top of the firehouse came to life once again, Aerial 151 left with a full crew, and Chika ran to the ambulance bay on the side of the station to board Ambulance 151A. Once she was belted in in the back, the ambulance left with herself and two other firefighters. She asked the two up front, "What do they have on scene?"
"A fire in the rear," replied the driver. "The police called it in."
"That's the Orange Center, right?"
"Yeah!"
"Damn, that's not good," Chika replied in worry. "I hope the fire's not too big when we get there."
...
Aerial 151 arrived right in front of Pumper 152. By now, Pumper 156's crew was assembling a 70mm large attack line to fight the fire while the driver readied a hydrant. Aerial 151's crew jumped out of the truck and immediately grabbed tools before they ran to Pumper 156, pulling off a ground ladder from the top and carrying it to the building to raise it to the roof. Among them was Kanan, who held a pike pole that she set down to raise the ladder up. She asked the paid lieutenant, "Now what?"
"Grab large-area search bags and assist with interior operations!"
Kanan and the other three interiors ran back to the truck fo grab a large-area search bag, which contained ropes and rings to allow firefighters to safely search a large room while tethered, and then ran back to the front. Another firefighter asked Kanan, "You ready?"
"Yeah," she replied as all three of them plus their officer went down on a knee and masked up before turning their SCBAs on. Once all three got their helmets back on, Kanan asked the officer, "Who's staying with the bag, Lieutenant?"
"Firefighter-Paramedic Miyashita will," he replied. "You, me and Firefighter Ohori will search!" The four then walked to one of the three large garages that made up the fruit wholesaler business and clipped their regulators in before the other paid firefighter they were with set the bag down just a few feet inside. The other three then crawled in, trailing behind the 70mm line stretched by Pumper 156's crew as the smoke reduced their visibility to zero.
After turning down a hallway, Kanan asked the Lieutenant, "When do we split off?"
"Right here," he replied. "Matsuura, Ohori, split off with your ropes!"
The two of them then hooked their own rope bags into the main line of the large area search bag and then began sweeping the area around them, feeling around for any potential victims and looking out for any fire. As Kanan ran into a rack of oranges, they fell on her and she yelled, "Shit, that hurt!" She then looked around and shoved the fallen oranges out of the way, noticing that there were some flames right behind the crate. She yelled behind her to her officer, "Lieutenant, I got visible flames over here behind these crates!" After crawling a few more feet, she reached the end of her line and began to turn back.
The Lieutenant yelled back to her, "Got it! Are you alright?! I heard you yell earlier!"
"I just had a crate of oranges fall on me," Kanan replied through her mask in the thick smoke. "I'm okay, though!"
As they continued their search, the Lieutenant then told her, "Open up the wall next to you, Kanan-kun! I got high heat in there! I'm getting another line brought to your location!"
Kanan turned around and replied, "Got it!" She then sat up on her knees and ripped down the wall with the pike pole she was carrying, also taking with it a few crates of food. Sure enough, as she began ripping into the wall, flames emerged. As she continued, she heard two firefighters approach from behind her. "You guys got the line?!"
"Yeah," replied the nozzleman. "Open right up?!
"Go ahead," she replied as she pushed several crates out of the way to give herself more room. As water hit the fire, the visibility was reduced even further by the steam that rose from the openings in the wall. "How much more of the wall do you want opened up?!"
"More to the right!"
Kanan immediately began ripping down sections of the wall to the right of the hand line, also shoving away crates of food, some of which was already on fire. Suddenly, however, as she was finishing, they all heard screaming behind them.
"Hey! Get out! We need to go!"
Sure enough, soon after the other firefighter that had been searching with Kanan yelled, all three turned and saw a sheet of flame envelop the ceiling above them. Immediately after, Commander 15 frantically radioed, "All units on the fireground, evacuate the building immediately! Evacuate the building immediately!"
Kanan told the other two firefighters she was with, "Let's go!" As they all frantically crawled their way out, following the guiding rope Kanan had used, they could hear the sirens of the fire engines outside roar to life, which was used to indicate an immediate evacuation to crews inside. The firefighter on the nozzle frantically battled back the flames as they came ever closer to the three of them. Eventually, it became too much, and Kanan yelled, "Drop the fucking nozzle! Come on!" She quickly threw down her pike pole and grabbed the nozzleman, dragging him a few feet before they both sprinted up and ran as fast as they could.
He told Kanan, "Holy shit, I can feel the heat!"
As the two frantically made their way to the front, the fire inched ever closer to them. When they ran outside, the fire flashed behind them, and Kanan was blown to the ground by a force of wind from the fire while the firefighter on the nozzle tripped and fell on a hose line. Meanwhile, the other firefighter who had backed him up had just escaped several seconds prior, his gear still steaming from having been enveloped in high heat. Kanan yelled as she crawled on the ground, "I need help!"
A large group of firefighters immediately ran to her aid, ripping her gear off of her body and dragging her away as a stretcher was rushed over to her by Chika and a career firefighter. Among them was her own father, who rushed over and yelled, "Hey, hey, what the Hell happened?! What's going on with her?!"
"I think she may have been burned," another firefighter told him. "Shouhei, is your wife here, too?"
"No, she's out of town." As Shouhei approached Kanan, he told her, "Okay, listen to me, Kanan, you're gonna be okay. You're gonna be okay. You're not hurt too badly, alright?"
"Okay," Kanan replied as a firefighter cut off her shirt With a pair of trauma shears and threw it to the side. "Rip off all you guys need."
"Yeah, I see some minor burns on her back," said one of them. "Looks like first-degree to me."
...
Half an hour later, as Kanan was at the hospital, the efforts to fight the fire continued, though now they would only take place from outside. The fire had extended to a house behind the wholesaler building, and was now at three alarms. As Chika and Ruby manned a hose line shooting water into the marketplace/warehouse from the rear, Ruby asked Chika, "Is Kanan-chan gonna be okay?"
"I think so," Chika replied as she aimed a bit higher on the nozzle. "I think her burns were just first-degree. Her gear's probably gonna get thrown out, since it's compromised from the heat."
You then walked over to them, asking them, "You guys need a break yet?" She had rode in on Rescue 151 to the scene, and had helped Kanan get on the ambulance before returning to firefighting duties.
"I think we're good," Chika replied. "I can't believe the whole market is gone. It sucks." The general mood among the three of them was grim, largely because the market had been a staple of Uchiura for years, and now, it had burned to the ground.
"Yeah," You replied as she adjusted the straps on her air pack. "Word on the fireground is that they'll declare a fourth alarm soon just because so many guys went down due to the heat. Kanan-chan ain't the only one who had to go to the hospital. They sent like three other guys already, and a whole bunch more are sitting in rehab."
Ruby then wiped her forehead of sweat as she maintained control of the nozzle. "You're not kidding. It's way too hot, and the fire's making it worse."
"It's hotter than Hell," You replied as she took her helmet off and shook it to get the sweat out as she also shook her head to fix her hair. "After this, we'll go check on Kanan-chan at the hospital if she's still there."
...
Around 10:30 PM, a full five and a half hours after the fire had broken out, You, Chika, and Ruby finally returned to the firehouse, all three of them exhausted and tired from fighting the fire for so long. Ruby said to the other two as she grabbed her belongings, "I gotta go back home and do summer work for school. How's Kanan-chan doing?"
"She just got discharged from the hospital," You replied as she got off the phone with Kanan. "Her dad's picking her up. She's still a bit shaken up from what happened, but she'll be good to go back to fighting fires by Monday."
Meanwhile, Chika and Masako both took apart Kanan's ruined gear and SCBA, which had burn marks on the back. Masako told Chika, "Alright, I got the inventory numbers for the gear."
"Are we gonna throw this out?"
Masako then got a text on her phone from Shouhei and looked at it. After reading it, she told her, "I was gonna say yes, but Chief Matsuura says no. They're gonna keep the gear at home or something. We can throw the air pack and bottle out, though. She's keeping her helmet and her mask, but nothing else."
"Got it," Chika replied as she grabbed the air pack and put it on without tightening the straps so she could drag it to the dumpster out back.
Out front, Rentarou was waiting for Ruby with his car. As she approached, he waved to her and said, "Need a ride?"
"Yeah," Ruby replied. "Thanks. I'm really tired."
"Same here," he replied as the two got in. "We got back about half an hour ago. So, you need any help with your school work? I was a third-year once."
Ruby then yawned and rubbed her eyes. "Fuck it, yeah. I need help, but only because I feel like at any moment I could collapse."
She then received a text from Dia that read, "heard about the fire at the orange center r u ok?"
"im fine," Ruby texted back before she took a picture of herself and sent it to Dia. "tired as hell tho"
"what happened?!"
"the entire thing is gone, & it took 2 houses with it"
