Heroic Battle by Firefighters Goes by the Book

They crawled on their hands and knees in heat so intense that it melted some of their helmets.

On their backs, they carried 100 pounds of bulky equipment and oxygen tanks up one stairwell after another. They made their way through smoke that turned the usually neon-bright corridors of the Los Angeles County Health Department building pitch black. And as they burst through doors along the way, flames swiped at them, consuming the little oxygen that was left.

Their singular mission was to knock down the worst high-rise blaze in downtown Los Angeles since the First Interstate Bank Building fire in 1988--a formidable task made harder by the confusing tangle of hoses and equipment.

As one spent and sooty-faced battler of the blaze put it: “You couldn’t see the firefighters, you couldn’t see the walls, you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.”

By all accounts, it was a heroic effort by dozens of front-line firefighters, who, while encountering temperatures as hot as 1500 degrees, managed to extinguish the fire in less than an hour, preventing more serious and widespread damage.

Saturday’s fire was fought by the book, and the fact that firefighters stuck to the plan is one reason why the high-rise fire--considered the most treacherous kind of fire--was contained so quickly, without lives being lost or serious injuries, said Fire Chief Donald O. Manning.

Here is how the drama inside the 21-year-old building unfolded:

The fire was first reported at 10:06 a.m. Within seconds, nearby companies dispatched crews, who headed toward two entrances of the Figueroa Street building. Dodging chunks of glass and metal raining down on them, they burst inside and headed for the stairs.

By 10:30, the hooks and ladders were coming by the dozens from throughout the city. But in a high-rise fire, the stream from the department’s most powerful hoses cannot reach the target. This one would have to be fought from the inside.

The firefighters bounded from their trucks, strapped on their cumbersome gear packs and followed the lead of the crew that had disappeared into the building only minutes before.

They went in with oxygen tanks and masks, radio transmitters, axes and chain saws to cut down doors and open up avenues of escape and attack. Some brought generator-powered fans, to keep the smoke moving and to restore the air pressure that had been sucked in by the heat of the fire.

And they were all carrying portable packs of fire hoses up to the fire zone, so they could tap nearby water supplies.

Some headed for the floor above the blaze and aimed their hoses at the flames that licked up from the outside of the building. They also waited for flames to break through the floor. When they did, the firefighters fought them back repeatedly with barrages of water from houses hooked to water mains inside the building.

By staring the flames in this way, they prevented the fire from gaining a foothold on another floor, blocking its natural progression upward.

Other crews helped in the logistics, turning the fifth floor into a staging area where weary firefighters could take a breather while fresher troops headed upstairs.

Still more firefighters were dispatched throughout the building to look for victims and those paralyzed by fear. Slogging through the water-soaked stairwells and dank, smoky corridors, they knocked on every door, looked under every desk and scoured every nook and cranny where someone might take refuge.

“You look for people hidden, people burned, people who had heart attacks,” said one search and rescue worker, Gregg Olsen from Engine Co. 44 near Mt. Washington.

But most headed for the seventh floor, and before long, there was bedlam.

“It was a zoo,” said one fire captain, hours after the fire was contained, as crews were still dousing smoldering hot spots.

In all, there were dozens of firefighters in the heart of the fire on the seventh floor.

“It was pitch black so we found everything by feel,” said firefighter Ruben Navarro, who went up with the first crew. “We just looked for the glow, and went toward it.”

“We couldn’t see the firefighters in front of us,” said Bill Carter, 23, from Station 30 in Echo Park. “But we knew they were there just by feeling them.”

Firefighters are taught to feel their way out of the fire by following the hose they brought in. But on the ground lay dropped oxygen tanks, pickaxes, and “spaghetti,” or the tangles of hose lines that could potentially block their way or send them gasping for air and right back into the thick of things.

When it was all over, one fire captain lay draped across a desk in the staging area. He was too tired to move or to speak. He heaved and gasped for air, his fingers splaying in all directions and his face blackened by soot. One paramedic stuck an oxygen mask on his face, another took his blood pressure, and a third brought in a stretcher to take him downstairs and into the fresh air.

In the end, only two firefighters suffered injuries--one smoke inhalation and the other a hurt wrist, after he was hit by falling debris. All in all, everything went off without a hitch.

“This is our specialty,” said a weary Capt. Chris Burton, commander of one downtown firefighting unit, “and our guys performed to a T.”

After the chaos had subsided, the Fire Department led some reporters through the seventh floor, where so many firefighters had performed so well. It was charred almost beyond recognition. There, in the smoldering aftermath, twisted steel beams and melted plastic computer terminals bore silent testament to the ferocity of the flames that had roared through just hours before.

“I would describe this floor as devastation,” said Fire Capt. Steve Ruda, as he surveyed the blackened husks of what used to be work stations. “It was an inferno up here.”