A Last-Minute Decision Meant Stand and Fight--or Die

When the raging fire in the First Interstate Bank building first showed signs that it could be beaten, the firefighters in the heavy smoke, superheated air and advancing flames on the 16th floor shared a common thought: “If I don’t stop it here, I’m going to die.”

The critical point in the battle to save the 62-story building came shortly after 1 a.m. when Assistant Chief Robert R. Ramirez first started to back his firefighters out of the inferno on the 16th floor, but then decided to stay because he sensed a chance to hold it.

“I was scared,” Ramirez later told Deputy Chief Don Anthony, who directed the fight into the early morning hours and talked about it in an interview Thursday.

The firefighters pressed their bodies to the floor, pouring water into a hot blackness beyond the few feet they could see. Many had exhausted their bottled compressed air, Anthony said, so they held their faces close to the nozzle spray to breathe cooler air. Two gulps of that 700-degree smoke, and they were dead.

The noise was deafening and disorienting: wind-fanned flames, glass breaking, ceiling tiles falling. Firefighters couldn’t hear each other above the roar. Temperatures reached nearly 2,000 degrees, hot enough to melt aluminum.

“They felt that the only way they could live was put out the fire,” Anthony said.

The fight was a close one, said Anthony, a 31-year veteran who heads the Fire Suppression and Rescue Bureau. If the fire had not been held on the 16th, 17th or 18th floor, he said, “there was a good chance it would take the building.”

About 40% of the department’s available men and equipment had been committed at 2:20 a.m. when Anthony told Fire Chief Donald O. Manning, “We got it (under control), chief.” About 300 of some 760 firefighters on duty had been thrown into the 3 1/2-hour fight.

From the first alarm at 10:37 p.m., the battle went according to the Fire Department’s plan on high-rise firefighting, which sent Task Force 9 and 10, Engine 3 and Squad 4--a total of 34 firefighters--speeding toward the fire about three minutes away. As he approached, Battalion Chief Don Cate radioed the Operations Control Division that fire was showing on the 12th floor in about half of the windows on one side and in all the windows on another. Cate asked for five additional task forces--50 more firefighters--and 15 pieces of equipment.

His request for more aid triggered the automatic dispatch of two helicopters from Van Nuys Airport. One flew to Fire Station 88 at Sepulveda and Ventura boulevards to pick up members of Airborne Co. 78, firefighter-paramedics who are trained to do rappelling. The other copter, an observation ship, took up station, circling the fire scene within 15 minutes.

The first-in crews established lobby control and the first attack team, carrying 25 pounds of breathing gear and 60-pound fire hose packs, struggled up a stairwell. It took them about eight minutes to find the fire on the 12th floor.

Crouching low, they trained their fire hose on the door and slowly pushed it open.

“It was like a big cauldron boiling in there,” Anthony said. “They needed more help. They were overwhelmed, and they backed out.”

As the first team started the attack, a staging area for men and equipment was being set up on the 10th floor. Another team moved up a stairwell to the 13th floor, and more firefighters were dispatched to help the stalled team on 12. They attacked the fire with double hose power.

Flames lapped out of the broken 12th-story windows up to the 13th floor, then spread to the 14th, 15th and finally the 16th floor as more and more men moved into the staging area and finally up to the fire floors to fight until their air packs ran out.

When Anthony arrived about 11:30 p.m., he said the fire was completely out of control and he was “extremely concerned” about where it could be stopped. He called in Assistant Chiefs Ramirez, Jerry Schnitker and James Young and gave them assignments, placing Schnitker in charge of staging, sending Young to take over on the 14th and 15th floors and Ramirez to the critical 16th.

“I’m willing to give up the 15th floor, but I’m not . . . the 16th. You’ve got to slow the fire on the 14th and 15th, so that Chief Ramirez can keep it from going above the 16th,” Anthony told them.

Despite his determination to stop it at 16, Anthony also ordered firefighters to the 17th and 18th floors. He was afraid that if the fire were not slowed, it might overwhelm the tired firefighters.

Anthony never realized his fears because Ramirez decided to stand and fight in the deadly conditions on 16.