The writer of these pages is blunt but tells a story of two locations NLFD and PGFD. Some will like the stories others may hate them I have only read a few chapters, But tells the events in detail. It's 15 chapters long. Surprisingly it has not showed up before. Its been around for a few years. www.pipenozzle.com is the site. Below is a section of one chapter.
As they approached the final right turn from Pequot onto Neptune Avenue that led across Ocean Avenue and down a short hill past rooming houses to the Ocean Beach Park entrance, Dembeck nudged the rookie and they all saw it at the same time. No one spoke. They didn’t need to. It was that sudden, as if the sun had popped up three hours early. They hung onto the back with one hand and with the other began to buckle their coats, check the straps on their helmets, get their gloves on. Still nobody spoke and everybody listened on that last turn to that unmistakable rumble of a fully involved structure fire, the kind that start in the middle of the night when no one is on the street to see the flicker of flame in the basement when a wire sparks where old insulation that should have been replaced years before finally wears completely through to the bare wire. Or maybe it was a leak in the oil furnace tank in the basement or maybe somebody smoked a joint in the basement and dropped a hot butt and at that moment it didn’t really matter. Whatever it was, and the fire marshal would try to make a determination after it was all over, whatever started it waited until everyone was asleep and built up enough heat to blow out basement windows, and boom, the flashover, and up through the floor, up outside the basement to light up the front porch, and then, with plenty of fresh air to breath, it rolled up over the porch roof, heated up the old glass in the second floor living room, blew out the glass, and entered unannounced and took over inside and outside.
The fire was having a fine time burning tons of the best fuel old New England rooming houses had to offer—wood, wood, and more dried out old wood. Plaster and lath walls with wood, wooden floors varnished again and again and again, clapboard siding, open interior wood stairs, curtains, overstuffed chairs, newspapers, and carpets. Oh my. The whole block was lit up and the conflagration produced enough heat as it soared over the peaked roof, melted asphalt shingles, and burned overhanging tree branches to ignite the Oldsmobile parked across the front lawn on the curb. Convection at work. The house was cooking that Oldsmobile without touching it with one bit of flame. You could have stood across the street and roasted a marshmallow.
And this is the point in the story where the narrator says, "And then their training kicked in." The lieutenant ordered Dembeck to take one man and start a search of the building from the back that wasn't burning yet to the front, and then the lieutenant ordered Wegel to drive the Seagrave down the hill, make a T turn, run back up the hill, then cross the street to stop in front of the hydrant a hundred feet past the house on the same side of the street. Perfect position to connect the soft suction to the four and a half port on the hydrant, and then the lieutenant, who called in the second alarm on the way back up the hill, could work with the rookie and the paid man to get a two and a half line on the fire. That was the first duty of a pumper crew to get water on the fire. When the first due truck crew arrived to take over the search, Dembeck and his backup would retreat outside to start another line.
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