‘Every fireman knows’
Chicago Fire Department personnel evacuate an injured firefighter at the scene of Wednesday’s deadly blaze. (E. Jason Wambsgans, Chicago Tribune / December 22, 2010)
On the icy morning of Dec. 22, 1910, Chicago firefighters rushed to battle a fire in a meatpacking warehouse in the Union Stockyards on the city’s South Side. The equipment of the day included horse-drawn steam fire engines. The firefighters had only one way to attack the fire: Leap onto a 4-foot-tall loading dock with a rickety wooden canopy, leaving them little room to maneuver.
They leaped. The fire seethed. A wall collapsed, sending six stories of molten brick cascading onto the firefighters. Rescuers needed 17 hours to pull the bodies from the ruins of the Nelson Morris and Co. plant. The staggering death toll: 21 firefighters and three civilians. No U.S. conflagration claimed more firefighters until the World Trade Center towers collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001.
One hundred years later to the day, Wednesday morning, another blaze bloomed to life. An abandoned building in the 1700 block of East 75th Street. Seven miles from the scene of the infamous Stockyards fire. Another generation of firefighters, facing the same dangers. Knowing that some things don’t change: Fires are unpredictable – but they find shrewd ways to kill. Without warning, because there rarely is much, a section of roof collapsed. Two Chicago firefighters – Corey Ankum, 34, and Edward Stringer, 47 – were killed; 17 others were injured.
One big change since the Stockyards tragedy: television.
TV coverage from the vantage of a helicopter hovering overhead immersed morning viewers in Wednesday’s search for survivors. That remarkable intimacy – we in complete safety, watching firefighters dig for the lost as snow swirled about – was at once unsettling and heartening. Black-coated, black-hatted, soot-faced rescuers swarmed as if in a hive, heaving pink bricks this way, hauling rubble down a bucket line that way, hefting charred roofing in hope of discovery beneath. The drama evolved with measures of desperation and selflessness: One firefighter’s decision to plunge head-first beneath piled debris in search of his colleagues took our breath away.
In the impersonal realm of statistics, the modern era of better training, sophisticated equipment and fire-resistant buildings has made firefighting less lethal than it once was. But it’s still lethal. On Aug. 9, Chicago firefighter Christopher Wheatley, 31, slipped off a fire-escape ladder at a West Loop <http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/us/illinois/cook-county/chicago/west-loop-PLGEO100100501259300.topic> restaurant. He became the first Chicago firefighter to die while combating a blaze in more than a decade. (Other firefighters, however, have died in the line of duty, owing to such causes as traffic accidents.)
Wheatley was the 569th firefighter killed in the line of duty since 1857, according to the Illinois Fire Service Institute.
That list grew by two on Wednesday.
In the aftermath of the Dec. 22, 1910, fire, the Tribune said: “Every fireman knows what a stockyard fire means. The men knew of the treachery of the ancient shells of grease soaked wood and shaky brick walls. … Chicago firemen cherish no illusions when they go in to strangle a big fire at the yards with their hands.”
The same could be written today. Firefighters know that every call – any call – can end instantly. Tragically.
Two deadly fires, 100 years apart.
Two fires to remind Chicagoans that charging into a meatpacking plant or the World Trade Center towers or a Southeast Side building requires one thing above all: courage.
From John Gariti, 2nd. District relief, CFD,
Running into a burning building sounds crazy. Watching firefighters disappear into the black smoke sometimes even a vacant building because maybe there could be a homeless person. (It’s what we do!)
Cutting a person out of a car that’s on fire and then crawling inside of it to extricate someone! Why would anyone? Because it’s what we do!
Crawl into a hole in the ground where there is a collapse, confined space, trench ? Are these people on a suicide mission? Not quite! It’s just what we do.
Diving into Lake Michigan when the waves are 6 feet or diving into the Chicago river at 2:00 am with zero visibility some watch and probably think “Wow fireman do that too? And probably wonder why would anybody want to disappear into those waters and risk their lives? Because that’s what we do.
Use your imagination, come up with your worse most unsafe scenario and wonder who is going to clean this mess up and then the Firefighter and paramedics and police pull up and you feel good when they do and then you say Thank God someone is willing to do these jobs and possibly not return home to their loved ones to save someone else and you ask yourself, why!
Because that’s what we do.
To all of our brothers and sisters who have given their lives in the line of duty for all of us who critique and wonder if they or we could have done something different would they still be there ? The bottom line is they were doing their best and giving their all to make a difference in an ugly and dangerous scenario!
Don’t always question whether or not they made a mistake or maybe someone else made a mistake. But believe that God decided that this special person’s time on earth was complete and it was their time to go to a divine place. And just be aware that what they have done might have made a difference in another’s life and just ask Why Did they? And then answer Because it’s what they do!
John Gariti
