Some guys have worked every aspect of the job. For Captain Thurber, a third generation Pawtucket firemen whose father was Chief of the Department, family roots run deep. A brother and son are still on our job. Thurber did ten years on Rescue 1 as Lieutenant before serving as lieutenant on Engine 2, and Captain on Engines 1 and 2. Burnt out from the toll of the rescue, he headed up the Division of Training for two years. He also served as Fire Marshal. A man not known to be overly sentimental, he, like Lemay, worked every inch of his career. This is his story of 9/11 RT: Another time, we get a stillbox off Lonsdale Avenue, in the 1's district. Three-decker going like a son of a bitch. Kraweic was the Lieutenant (on Engine 1), and I was on Engine 2. It was about a 100 degrees out. Lemay had to be there, he was on Rescue. Bobby Howe, he was a lieutenant on Engine 5. So we're crawling up there, me and Chickee, crawling up trying to get to the third floor. It was smokey, the smoke's banked down to the floor, it was hot, we're having trouble finding the fire. we were working our balls off. And the chief, orders a company to put a line in the window, and he just killed us, me and Chickee. We were in the hallway of the three-decker, nowhere to go-- TT: Basically blowing the fire right at you. RT: Right at us, killing us, and i find out it's Bobby Howe and I went fucking ape shit on him. (Laughs) TT: Right? Wasn't his fault, but thanks old friend. Talk about Chickee. there's another guy who did thirty years on engine 2. He tells stories about the sponge. The days of the sponge. RT: Yup. The old guys, when Chickee came on, they probably still carried a sponge. The older fire fighters, before the SCBA's came along, they would take a sponge, put it in their turn-out pocket, they would wet it before they went in, and that's what they would breathe off of. Now whether it worked or not, I don't know, and I'm not trying it. But yeah, that's part of the folklore of firefighting before the SCBAs. Funny story with my father. He came on in '57, so let's say 1960. And they only had one airpack and it was on the ladder. This guy, Ralph Lundgren, who retired as the assistant chief, was going into the building. He says to my father, "you crank the air for me." It was a crank. you had to crank it. So everytime you cranked it it pushed the air through a hose (to the mask). So my father's cranking it and gets tired and just stops. (laughs). Well, the mask sucked to Ralph's face and Ralph came out, "You fucking cocksucker!" (laughs) TT: So at some point (in all of this you ended up in training, a lieutenant. RT: You were in Rob's school, right? TT: Yes. It was you and Arrighie. RT: Was Bob Burns there? Did we burn a bus? TT: No. RT: Well anyway, I was sick of shagging rescue runs with Engine 2, so I went to training. Then I made captain and had to go right back out (to the line). But while I was there we--I'm proud of this--we developed the Mayday program for Pawtucket to rescue a downed firefighter--we were able to get a vacant house. We also built the maze in Union Wadding Mill, and we set it up to call a mayday. And it turns out Central Falls got wind of the maze and came over to check it out and then put all their guys through it. A lot to be proud of. And then 9/11 came, I was in training. Of course we were all glued to the TV. We were doing an EMT recertification program, and the guys were starting to filter in, We had the TV on. So when it was done, I was back at my desk and got a call from Smithfield Fire. A guy I knew says, "Hey, did you hear they're requesting firefighters?" So I go, "Naw, didn't know that." "It's all over the teletype." "We don't get teletype, I'll have to go next door to the cops." So I did. Went over to the police station, got the teletype requesting firefighters. It came in from New York City. I went and talked to Chief Condon and asked if I could bring some guys down there to help out. And he goes, "Ahhh, no." So I convinced him to let me do it. Finally he says I can take ten guys. So I went back to training and put a call out, and within--after the first couple of guys I called, people just started volunteering, "I wanna go, I wanna go." Ton of guys. So it ended up being 17 guys. I picked a battalion chief, a captain, three Lieutenants and the rest was firefighters. That way, we'd have a command structure set up when we got there. So it was Chief-- TT: You guys take a bus? RT: No, they let us take fire cars and Cerrone auto gave us two vans, two brand new vans, and we loaded up all our shit, SCBAs, all kinds of hand tools, ropes, we didn't know what we were getting into. Took a couple of fire cars and off we went. Left here 6 pm on September 11th, and we arrived there ten o'clock. It was very eerie once you got to the Connecticut/New York line. There was nobody on the streets. Nobody. The highway was open. No cars. You know New York City. TT: Where'd you go first? RT: Meadowlands for a staging area. Then Fort Lee New Jersey, and it turned out to be a high school. There was all kinds of food there, bunks set up, so we smoked and joked for a little while and then turned in, waiting for the call. Buffalo, New York was there, a couple of big cities, and then a lot of volunteer guys. So we woke up like 3 or 4 in the morning and said "Fuck this." We piled into the cars and drove to New York City. We stopped along where the Intrepid is, the West side highway, and we went into the command center and asked what we could do. They sent us to a fire station, took down our names--what we're certified in, rope rescue and collapsed buildings--and we ended up with this ladder company. So I went to the Captain and said we were from Pawtucket, we got 17 guys, you want us to do anything? He says, "a city bus is coming to get us, come on the bus with us, but once we get to Ground Zero you're on your own." So we went to Ground Zero, Vesey street, and this Battalion Chief was setting up a command post, and after he was done making fun of our yellow turnout gear, he asked us to set him up a base camp for his command post. So we broke into an office and took out desks and chairs and set them all up, and for our next task, he wanted us to gather up some hose, hook up to a hydrant, and start wetting down that dust. It was just terrible terrible dust. It's killing everybody now. So we did that. We ended up right at the collapsed towers. There was a ton of fire in the buildings--it was unbelievable. Never seen anything like it. All the buildings that were damaged...so we grabbed some hose and started putting out the fires in one of those buildings and then they started blowing airhorns to evacuate the area and we actually got yelled at because we weren't running fast enough. He came up to us after, "We blow that fucking airhorn you run!" "Well, what does it mean?" "It means another building's gonna collapse!" (laughs). We stayed, we worked until like 6 that night. We came out, took a break, and a lady who lived in the area, we went up to her apartment and she made us sandwiches and gave us drinks, anything you wanted. We ate, started going back to work, and Chief Meerbot says, "I don't think we should be here." So the group of us, the officers, got together and decided it was unsafe. New York was still unorganized at that time, of course they had just lost 343 firefighters, and they weren't really accepting us being there. They wanted to rescue--it was still a rescue mission at this time, not recovery. They wanted to rescue their own people. But what was happening, we found out later, they were sending New York companies back to their firehouses to rest and cleanup, and then come back. So they didn't like having these out of town guys working on their mission. And then the funerals that followed afterwards, I personally went to thirteen funerals, traveling back and forth to New York. I had just started the Pipe and Drums band here, the day before, September 10, I had the first meeting and invited everyone from around the state. We were gonna get started that next week but then 9/11 happened, so we had to put it on the back burner until all these funerals were done. The first anniversary of 9/11, 2002, they had a big memorial in New York City, and we were able to take the band there and it was like our first performance. TT: So on 9/11, you worked that full day and after that Meerbot said we shouldn't be here. RT: Yes. there was too much danger for our guys. I agreed with him. The other guys were pissed. I know Joe Cordiero was pissed off. And again, everything was unstable at that time. They thought buildings were swaying, gonna collapse, and they had their reasons. And plus, they had just lost all of their command staff. They had people just acting as Battalion Chiefs, so they didn't really have a sense of direction either because they had just lost everybody--chiefs--all their higher ups are dead.
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.I recently started sitting down with retired guys and downloading the horrors and triumphs of their careers. The following is an excerpt from a towering figure on our job. It's only one of a thousand terrifying events he saw over 36 years on the job. A combat infantryman in the US Army during Vietnam, Dick Lemay came home and then spent over 30 years on Rescue 1, a record that will never be broken. Humble, compassionate, I never saw him treat anyone with anything other than respect and dignity. This story is from 1989 and truly awful
TT: Let's talk about specific stories. I remember when i was with you a couple times, we'd be driving around at night, and you would bust out a couple of great stories, i mean not great, obviously they're awful, But one of them was a story of a massive three-decker house that caught fire, and two guys that were drinking in a bar had left the bar to get people out of the building. To let them know it was on fire ... why don't you explain that story... DL: It was March of 1989. Early in the night shift. Maybe six-seven o'clock. Dark out. Rain mixed with sleet, cold, miserable night. We got a call for a fire at 167 Dexter Street and I knew the building well because it was an old tenement, three-decker cut into one room jobs, like a rooming house with a bathroom down the hall. That type of situation. Bottom of the economic ladder kind of people. A lot of them were drinkers...druggers, anyway, it was right next to the G and C Tavern which is no longer there, but anyway we pulled up and there was fire pouring out of the second floor windows in the front side of the building. There was fire showing in like six windows. At least. There was two guys hanging out of the third floor window on the Dexter Street side. Well, actually one guy and uh, there was a fire escape. so we threw a ladder up to the escape, ran up to the third level. and meanwhile the fire is coming out of the second floor underneath us-- TT: And rolling up the fire escape.. DL: Yes. So somebody had to put water in the second floor window to keep us from roasting. This guy was still conscious, but he seemed disoriented and we're trying to pull him out, and there's all this hot smoke pouring out of the window behind him. TT: Thick black smoke... DL: Yeah and then all of a sudden it lit up. the smoke turned to flame-- TT: It flashed over. DL: Yup. The room flashed, and uh at that point he collapsed. And as I grabbed his belt to try and pull him through the window, everything came apart in my hands because he was burning up. And that's when i noticed there was a second guy behind him wrapped around his legs, and we didn't know it at the time, but they had run from the bar next door to try and help people TT: Those were the two guys who went in to help. DL: Yep. They got trapped on the third floor and the fire came up the stairwell behind them and rolled into the room, flashed it over, and they died right in front of us. TT: Now the story you told me was that this guy was literally- the skin was coming off DL: Yeah I remember his fingers, the skin was melting off. And the same thing with his face. It was right in front of us. And it was horrible because we were right there but couldn't do anything to help. Then we realized he was more or less being held by the guy behind him. TT: who was with you that night? DL: I was on Engine 2, no I was on Rescue 1. Bill Hennault was on rescue with me, but he had gone to help people that had jumped from another second floor window. So I was on the fire escape with Ray Mathew, who was on Engine 2, and some Irish kid. Can't think of his name. anyway there was three of us on the fire escape trying to pull those guys out... TT: Now how many people died in that fire? just those two? DL: Those two guys. and three or four others were injured. TT: Now the story was they had left their stuff on the bar, literally their keys, their drinks-- DL: Cigarettes. on the bar. TT: And no one came back to get anything. DL: Right So i dug up a book about the colonial era. Neighborhood volunteer fire companies were rewarded for putting out the flames by tavern keepers with free booze. Soon enough, the firemen would be drunk and fighting each other for the booze instead of putting out the fire. With guys working and dying for free, there was no accountability. It's one of the reasons paid departments came into existence. Cincinnatti, of all places, is the first paid department in 1853. Providence was second in 1854. Boston soon after, NYC in 1865. Ours, Pawtucket, went paid in 1874. It's the 19th oldest paid department in the U.S. In the early 1800s, cities originally used hollowed out logs as underground pipes to get water from the reservoirs or cisterns to people's houses. Soon enough, because of the horrendous fires in Boston and Providence, where whole neighborhoods would disappear in flames, 20-60 buildings at a time, the fire department eventually cut into these logs and installed "plugs" (precursor to modern hydrants) to be pulled and to allow them access to water if needed. Every resident was ordered by law to have two leather buckets filled with water at all times. These were to be carried to fires and dumped into the earliest engine comapnies if needed. The IAFF sent me a great video of the olden times .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PRuUnGQTXM .
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AuthorTom Trabulsi was born in the Midwest, attended high school in Rhode Island, and graduated from Boston University with a degree in American History. He was a bike courier in Boston and New York City, worked construction in the mountain west and east coast, and is currently a firefighter in a northeast city. Archives
August 2022
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