Sit down, get yourself a coffee. Will be more detailed…
That evening the roast was sweating in the oven, the potatoes were almost done. Then the electricity in the kitchenette went off and the alarm light went on: „Operation for the HLF! Breslauer Straße, smoke development on the balcony on the 10th floor.” So we dropped everything and occupied the fire-fighting bomber. We could see from the alarm letter from the printer that the dispatcher had created the operation with the keyword „fire in the high-rise building“. That meant that the forces were now sent out from half the city area. But until they got there, we had to get by on our own for the first few minutes.
As the attacking party, I immediately started to put on my overpants: „Someone from the twelfth must have flicked away a cigarette butt that burned the peat in the window box of the tenth,“ I surmised. That happens more often than you think… „Or someone is barbecuing in the mild weather,“ assumed Jörg, who was my spanner today. So we left the station with the banners up on the roof while we continued to gear up. The drive didn’t take long, I had just tightened the straps of my breathing apparatus and was fumbling with the mask when we arrived. A waving pack of men seemed to know where the fire was. It often happens that the location descriptions when calling the emergency services deviate greatly from the actual filming location of fate, so the machinist followed the gestures of those who were apparently familiar with the area and steered the projectile around the back into the parking lot next to it. „Up there, see? It’s smoking like hell!” one of the waving men shouted. Far above you could actually see thick smoke rising from a balcony. An orange flickering could also be seen: the theories about the grill or the peat fire had been done away with. Our prison director rolled his eyes: “Crap! Back up, there’s no entrance back here!“ he instructed the chauffeur, and then told the men outside, who were looking horrified at the company car that was now backing up again, that we couldn’t really climb up the facade with our plaudits to get up to get to the balcony.
above hose basket as a line to the apartment door, below the „loop“ as an attack line and hose reserve
above hose basket as a line to the apartment door, below the „loop“ as an attack line and hose reserve
When the red colossus stopped in front of the house entrance, we jumped out and scavenged our equipment from the superstructure: Jörg grabbed the hose carrying basket, I put on the escape hood, took the attack loop and the fire brigade axe. Our boss informed the call center: „Confirmed fire on balcony. A team with a C-pipe ahead!” And to the machinist: “Feed in the riser! It’s over there behind the flower pot.“ (A riser is a pipe that is installed vertically in a house wall for the fire department and has a hose connection on each floor)
We had put on the masks and went into the house. „If there’s a fire on the balcony, we can take the elevator, right?“ said the colleague. I didn’t feel very well, but somehow he was right: If the stairwell had already been hit by smoke or been affected by fire, the control center would probably have received more reports from the building, and not just the one report from passers-by . We also saved a lot of time: 10 floors with 30kg of equipment each can be long in the stairwell! So everything stuffed into the narrow space, and up it went. Silence. We with masks on and steel bottles on our shoulders, hoses and ax next to us, we listened to the hum of the lift drive. Kind of surreal… „The trivial department store jingle is still missing,“ I blurted out.
A few moments later, to be on the safe side, we got off one floor below the destination floor and walked the rest of the way. The stairwell was built as an escape stairwell, which means it was separated from the individual floors by a smoke lock. There was no one to be seen in the hallway, but there was a slightly burnt smell. And right at the middle of five apartments, some smoke came through the crack in the apartment door. Little clouds even escaped from the bell button! „Well, that doesn’t just burn on the balcony after all…“ I remarked. „Perhaps we should send the other residents of the floor out first, before we open the door and everything here is thick with smoke,“ advised Jörg. He went left, I went right. The „fire brigade knocking“ rang through the building, we rang the bell. „Hello?? Fire Department! Open up, please! ‚ But no one opened. A few seconds later we met again in front of the apartment door: „No one there with you either? All booths are probably empty. So let’s open it”, Jörg decided. I ran the hose back up the stairwell to the tin box where the riser pipe connections were hidden. There I connected the hose to the coupling and slowly opened the valve. The water rushed into the yellow intestine. Back outside the door of the apartment that was on fire, we vented the hose line and screwed the regulators to our masks before we went to work on the door. Should she rise immediately through our powers of persuasion, a great blast of smoke and heat would immediately penetrate from the apartment! At first, Jörg tried to simply perform it, as it so often worked in the cheap apartment buildings. But this door made a very stable impression: security locking cylinder, expensive fittings and a solid-sounding door in a metal frame. Jörg put the specially shaped fin of the ax into the crack in the door and started to break: A strip that had been put on splintered out of the frame that held the door. Two more attempts to break: The door held. Only the gap became a little wider, more smoke now penetrated. I now took the ax from him and put the blade long into the gap, only to use the metal handle again. A leverage ratio of more than 1:10 is already a power of 900 to 1000kg when you hang your kilos of erotic flywheel and equipment on the stick! This bent under the force like a lightning bolt, so that I had second thoughts about breaking it off. Only the door didn’t care. We were already sweating on our rubber-armored foreheads. Official sweat is supposed to be so precious, and we just lost it here…
Another troop joined us now. The turntable ladder that had arrived in the meantime was too short to possibly break through a window up here. It only went up to about the eighth floor. So we had to get that door open, whatever the cost! Jörg now tried to punch a hole in the door. But what the ax left on the door panel any carpenter could fix with a little repair wax and a few squirts of furniture polish. The apartment was secured like a safe, which admittedly didn’t really fit into the overall concept…
In the meantime, so much smoke had penetrated through the widened gap that the smoke detectors went off in the hallway. While the two colleagues who had joined us were noisily trying to get at the door, I felt the time on my neck and, through the beeping of the smoke detectors, transmitted a radio message: „Team leader of attack squad, come! – We can’t get through the door, need a chainsaw!” But the radio in this building was terrible. I had to repeat the spell again. „Yes, chainsaw. Roger that. Send you one up,“ came the reply. I gave the tip: „The elevator still works…“
Again and again, the colleagues took turns trying to break the door and threw themselves against it, until the lift door opened at some point. A saw stood alone inside. Without accompanying staff. Almost like in a computer game: *Pling!* – „You have unlocked: Chainsaw“
I took her out and yanked on the starter rope until she snarled sullenly. I made the cut across below the door lock. If I divided the door leaf like this, I had imagined that the lower half would open up like a horse box. The saw went through a solid wood door more than two inches thick! I cut until the chain on the door frame broke and figured we had an easy job. One kick, two kicks: the hatch wouldn’t swing open. Bomb Festival! And the clock was ticking. Jörg also stepped in front of the door, then put the ax in the cut again to pry open the lower part. The door laughed at us. „You can’t do that!“ he cursed. Apparently a metal band ran through the side of the lock, which now held the position. „Start the saw again, once from top to bottom!“, Jörg asked me. I did as ordered: dipping my sword as far up as possible, I cut down. Halfway up I became cautious: If there was also a strong crossbar behind the blade, the saw could strike back immediately! Luckily the saw went well through the door leaf. I became even more cautious further down, pulling the sword back so that only the point penetrated the back. Maybe someone else was behind the door? Then I didn’t want to be the one with blood splattering off the saw onto his mask like in a bad horror movie. And the clock was ticking. The smoke was still seeping through the slits. If there is also a strong crossbar behind the blade, the saw could strike back immediately! Luckily the saw went well through the door leaf. I became even more cautious further down, pulling the sword back so that only the point penetrated the back. Maybe someone else was behind the door? Then I didn’t want to be the one with blood splattering off the saw onto his mask like in a bad horror movie. And the clock was ticking. The smoke was still seeping through the slits. If there is also a strong crossbar behind the blade, the saw could strike back immediately! Luckily the saw went well through the door leaf. I became even more cautious further down, pulling the sword back so that only the point penetrated the back. Maybe someone else was behind the door? Then I didn’t want to be the one with blood splattering off the saw onto his mask like in a bad horror movie. And the clock was ticking. The smoke was still seeping through the slits. blood spattering from the saw onto the mask like in a bad horror movie. And the clock was ticking. The smoke was still seeping through the slits. blood spattering from the saw onto the mask like in a bad horror movie. And the clock was ticking. The smoke was still seeping through the slits.
I cut all the way into the baseboard and flooring, wanting to make sure the sheet was cut all the way through. Screw the chain, it might get dull if I bang it into the floor. The door had to open now, it probably held us up for about a quarter of an hour. We had to go in there now! Our air, which we were already breathing out of the bottles when we started raping the door, didn’t last forever either.
When I put the saw aside again, Jörg kicked the homemade western saloon door again. The wing on the lock side still resisted, but gave back a little. But the hinge side could finally be pushed open! Hot gases leaked out of the opening, and the moisture contained in the panes immediately fogged our masks as we crawled into the pitch-black apartment. My helmet light beam only pierced the smoke a few dozen inches before it died out. A pile of clothes blocked our passage in the narrow hallway behind the door, I rioted him and a shopping trolley on the opposite wall to the side. Messi apartment?
We crawled further into the apartment. Heat. Smoke. You could hardly see your hand in front of your face. I scanned my surroundings, looking for bodies lying between the furniture, occasionally wiping moisture and soot from the mask. Jörg pulled the bulging hose into the hallway, I dragged him behind me further into the darkness. Apparently the dwelling wasn’t very big, because barely three or four meters into the room I noticed a reflection of my helmet lamp beam in front of me: probably already a window pane. We had already searched the right side of the room with it. I turned left where a chair was in my way. As I squeezed past him, about two meters in front of me, an orange flickered over an area of about two square meters: Heat source found! I saw a wooden skeleton glowing in the flames: sofa fire. full expansion. Irreparable… The upholstery was almost completely consumed. If anyone was still lying there when the fire broke out, it would be difficult to recognize them as human beings, I thought. After all, we were held up long enough by the wrong briefing and a safe door!
I straightened up and threw a few jets of water at the scraps of furniture until I could no longer see the flames. „Jörg?“ I called my colleague who had to be somewhere behind me. „Jorg? Are you there?” I squatted down again. Now that the luminosity of the fire was gone and the room began to fill with water vapor in addition to the smoke, one could no longer see anything. The mask fogged up again. „Behind you, I’ll pull the hose after you,“ came the voice from about two meters away. „The sofa must have burned here,“ I replied and turned back to the scene of the fire. The fire had partly revived, hadn’t had enough yet. I went closer to the sofa and watered the part again. Suddenly I heard something nearby. a groan? Or squeak? Was that George? Or was there a dog in the apartment? I closed the nozzle and listened in the darkness. But I only heard Jörg, who had already started looking for people again because he had pulled enough hose lines into the apartment. Well, he’s not the youngest anymore. You’re allowed to groan while crawling into strange shacks… pipe open, more water on the flames. But there! That sound again! I stopped the rushing water again. Now I heard it again: A sigh, or wail, came from the area to the left of the fire! I wiped the glove over my dirty mask glass and shone in the direction. Bent over, I saw a pile of clothes through the dense smoke. He lay in the narrow niche between the burning sofa and a cupboard, standing about 1 meter away. Had an animal escaped into it? Another groan. And then I saw it: a foot was sticking out of the pile of clothes! Naked, skin peeling from the red flesh – it wasn’t a pile of clothes at all, there was a person, curled up in a fetal position, with their back to the burning sofa only about a foot away!
„Jorg! person found! Someone is lying here!” I yelled through my rubber mask. „Jorg! Help me, give me a hand! Person found!” My regulator hissed frantically with every breath as I grabbed into the bundle of clothes and yanked it up. A torso appeared, long silver hair hung tangled from the head of an old woman. Apparently she was wearing knitwear made of synthetic fiber, because large holes could be seen on the back and arm, under which the bare, ragged and partly soot-blackened skin could be seen. In the darkness I heard Jörg send off the radio message: „Operations control of attack squad!“ – „Operations control hears.“ – „One person found. Rescue service to the entrance!” I recognized a hand in the beam of light from the helmet lamp. Here, too, the partly red, partly blackened flesh, the knitted cuffs destroyed, the first spots were already bloody. It had to hurt like hell. Anyway, the woman had to get out of here quickly! I grabbed her arm, grabbed the second one, and yanked her out of the tight corner. „Jorg! Where are you?” It crossed my mind for a moment: Should I put an escape hood on her? But that would be a waste of time. By the time I opened the pack with the hood in the dark and slipped it on, we would have been out of the small apartment long ago. So keep tugging! I could see that Jörg, whom I had already crawled past in the dark, began to push his legs while I crawled backwards on all fours and kept pulling at his burned arms. Just lift up? One meter higher, temperatures were probably beyond good and evil, which cannot be survived without protective clothing. If the lady hasn’t burned her lungs yet, she’s guaranteed to injure them with her next breath. I was amazed that the lady was still alive! I thought of the security squad outside the door who should still be waiting there. We were on our way back anyway, the apartment was spacious, so he was free to lend a hand. „Hello out there!“ I shouted frantically. „Hello! We need help! Let’s have a hand!” But nothing happened. Jörg pushed on the legs, I pulled. Any radio messages I didn’t understand. „Hey, out there! Lend a hand! person found!” Don’t you understand me? Didn’t they feel addressed? Or were they just taking their break, which the unions had fought so hard for? We were maybe two meters from the exit. Then the answer: „What’s going on?“ – „Let’s get involved! Take your hand.” Someone grabbed my shoulder and a glove slipped past me and grabbed my wrist. „Have you! Come through,” he instructed me. I squeezed past my colleague in the narrow hallway and crawled backwards under half the door. You could see something outside again, and I waited until my colleagues had pulled the ill-looking woman past me into the hallway. Other colleagues who were now waiting in front of the door immediately carried the lady away. Then I slipped back through the cat flap into the apartment that was on fire. Jörg hadn’t even left the booth, but immediately went back to the jet pipe. I crawled straight through the apartment to the balcony door. We needed better visibility, so I wanted to create exhaust vents. When I tried to open the balcony door, broken glass fell to the floor with a clatter. The pane had long since burst and only fragments were left. That’s why the passers-by were only able to see the smoke from the apartment: at the time of the emergency call, the heat in the room had already destroyed the balcony door.
Visibility was now a little over a meter again. Now I searched the small dwelling again thoroughly. Also the part that Jörg had probably already searched. It was a one-room apartment with a kitchenette and a niche in which the bed was. The faucet was on in the sink. Maybe that’s where the high humidity came from, which we had already noticed when entering the apartment. Did the woman want to try to extinguish it again? If only she had run away! The inventory was a bit messy and untidy (for which we were only partially to blame), but contrary to my first impression, it was not a Messi apartment. So the second search was quickly ended without success. When the smoke source was extinguished and the air swept across the apartment, you could also quickly see more details in the lamplight. The situation relaxed.
After we were certain that no other people were there and that the colleague was still looking for embers, I sat down exhausted for a moment in the chair that was in my way before. My breathing slowly calmed down again. Jörg also laid down the jet tube, put his hands on his sides, looking at the charred remains, and sighed dully through his mask: „Yo, that’s enough. Your colleagues can do the rest. I’m done.” Again the silence was surreal: I sat there quietly, fully equipped with breathing apparatus, the demand valve hissing with every breath. Plumes of smoke drifted through the lamp’s beam. In front of me the colleague, also wrapped up, who thoughtfully looked at the charred beams, like a farmer looking for the seed in the field.
I got up again when the relieved respiratory protection team entered the apartment a few seconds later. „Take over. We’re going to stop here,“ I handed over to the deployment site. A look at the pressure gauge, which showed just before reserve: „Come on, Jörg, we’re going. Our air is used up.” In the stairwell I radioed our boss that we had retreated. I noticed that Jörg’s helmet was smeared with black. The clothes were also dirty. „You look like a pig!“ I reproached him, and after an artificial pause I added: „And you got yourself dirty too.“
2015-12-24 19.23.04 The elevator was now switched off because the hallway was now full of smoke. The descent over the ten floors was long. Outside the building entrance, colleagues from the rescue service were still fighting to make the rescued person transportable. So she was still alive. At the fire engine, the operator helped us to take off our breathing apparatus and handed us two bottles of apple spritzer. We could see them taking the victim to the RTW, equipment being carried into the house and more SCBA crews entering the house. Hectic but choreographed bustle. An armada of red cars was parked in front of the skyscraper, and the whole area was flashing blue. Our shoulders were white from blown ash, my helmet gray from smoke. Jörg looked at me: „Flower tubs on the balcony… Of course. we can be happy that we took everything upstairs and didn’t just stand in front of the door with a bucket sprayer!” I nodded. „The fact that we immediately flooded the riser and took everything we needed for a firefighting attack was worth its weight in gold.“ I looked down at myself. Hair from the rescued woman, which was probably lying on the apartment carpet, was still stuck to my knee. “However, I would have preferred a different door in front of the booth. We were already broken when we finally opened them. – Where were you actually for so long when I found Grandma? It seemed like an eternity!“ Jörg grinned: „When you called, I first pulled the hose to the side so that it didn’t get in our way. And while I was replying you crawled past me scolding! That’s why I pushed my legs. You were already over with her. “Well, you can be wrong. Time is relative: Under stress, seconds turn into minutes…
The operations manager approached us: The police wanted to have the first questions answered. Jörg gave information to the policewoman, who had followed the boss with her pencil case, and drew a rough map of the apartment, on which I showed where and in what position I had found the woman and what we had changed in our work. Luckily that wasn’t much. Well, we left some marks on the door…
Later, the guard leader informed us that the door had a triple lock, i.e. a bolt at the top, in the middle and at the bottom. That’s why half the door still held up reliably. In addition, it consisted of glued solid wood, which is why it could not be destroyed with an axe. As a lesson from this, we will immediately take a chainsaw with us on future assignments in the 20-storey building in which all apartments are equipped with these doors.
Tooth gap…
Tooth gap…
Back at the station, while cleaning the saw, we discovered that I had thoroughly ruined the chain: I had broken four teeth on the door hardware! We also found a torn fabric hem in the chain case. And then I also knew why this pile of clothes was behind the door: I had probably brought the sword through the door to the cloakroom during my first cut, the chain had gotten caught in a coat and plucked it from the wall together with the cloakroom. So the lady in the apartment wasn’t as messy as we thought. Incidentally, the drive pinion of the engine had said goodbye at the same time. The saw had to be replaced. When firefighters break something, they do it right.
The woman from the apartment will probably not have survived the matter. Maybe the burglary protection cost her her life.
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