Battalion Chief Richard Meerbott
Battalion Chief Meerbott is an unassuming man with a distinguished career. He never meant to stay in Pawtucket. Originally, he was waiting for a slot to open in the police academy down in West Palm Beach, Florida. But his plans changed one night when he was having a beer in a bar across the street from Station 3. Forty years later, his career was over. He was widely considered to be one of the most aggressive fireman on the job. He never stopped training either. In fact, two weeks before he retired he completed yet another school. He is credited with many of the changes our department underwent as far as modern training. He also led a team to New York the day of that catastrophe. Fifty years after leaving Florida, he still has a slight southern drawl. This interview was conducted in his living room in November 2017, nine years after his retirement. This is what he said ... TT- Why don't we start at the beginning. The way back days. DM- Back then I had no intention of becoming a firefighter. TT- Really? DM- Well, I'm not even from here. I'm from Florida. I already had a job as a cop. In West Palm Beach. I had it set up. I had the promise of a job. I was in the service, and went to school up here. I had to wait six months for a slot to open up in their academy. TT- What branch of the service were you in? DM- I was in the Army. TT- Did you go to Vietnam? DM- No. It was during Vietnam, but the job I had did not allow me to go to combat. I didn't really work for the army, I worked for the National Security Agency. That's how I got up here in the first place. The school for the N.S.A. is at Fort Devens (Devens, Ma.). I went to Basic Training with the guys from here, the 115th, that used to be in Pawtucket. They put me in Basic Training with them. Then I went to school up here for eight months. But I had no idea about becoming a firemen. TT- Are you able to talk about what you did with the N.S.A.? DM- Now I can. It took ten years before I could. TT- What were you doing with them? DM-I was an intercept operator. TT- So communications? DM- Communications, yeah, I spent two years in Turkey. TT- Really? That must've been interesting as hell. DM- Yeah. It was okay. Some of it was interesting, some of it was sort of okay. But I was waiting for a job down in West Palm Beach. There was a bar right across from the 3's, it was called Donato's, I was having a beer. I saw the truck going out of the station and thought, "That looks cool." Walked across the street and asked Joe Burns (who would later become Chief Of Department), how I could get on the job and he told me to go downtown and put an application in. And from the time the application went in to the time I was working was three weeks. TT- That's incredible. DM- That never happens. TT- What year are we talking about? DM- 1968. TT- 1968. You were already out of the army. DM- Yeah. TT- So back then it wasn't like it is now, with all of the physical tests, and academic tests ... DM- Well, they did. But not that particular school. Or the one before it. They needed guys so desperately, they came up with this on the job training thing. My first fire was my first day on the job. I had never touched a fire truck, much less knew anything about fighting fires until that day. No training at all. TT- That's crazy. DM- Nothing. And we had a fairly good mill fire. TT- (laughs). Holy shit. DM- Over behind Lorraine Mills. TT- That's day one. DM- The first ten minutes. TT- Did you have gear? DM- No, I took someone's. They said, "Just grab the guy's helmet and boots and throw it on." I jumped on Ladder 1. TT- Is this the tin helmet days? DM- Yup. Tin helmets. TT- And rubber gloves. DM- We called them melt-aways, because if you touched something hot they melted on your hand. TT- And the hip waders? Up to the mid-thigh? DM- Oh yeah. TT- And the long coat. You guys used to look like mafioso. DM- Canvas covered coats. TT- So day one, mill fire. DM- Yes. And it was going pretty good. They used to make rubber-covered products in this place. It was all that black, hydrocarbon smoke. TT- Ugh. DM- And I'm saying, "Boy, do I really want to do this?" And the lieutenant said, "Go up and ventilate windows." And I didn't know what he was talking about. TT- (laughs). DM- So I grabbed one of the guys, and he said, "Just come with me." So I followed him up the stairs. And then I got hooked. I loved it from that time on. I was on the job seven months before I even went to school. I think there was five of us. TT- So back in those days, what was the cycle like for you guys. Now, it's two days, two nights. DM- It was three days, three nights, three off. And that went on until sometime in the 70's. I don't remember exactly when that changed. TT- Now I had heard that you guys had air-packs back in the 1960's but never used them. DM- Not only weren't they used, you were picked on if you used them. TT- Right? DM- And we didn't have a lot them anyhow. TT- So you'd be made fun of for not being tough enough. DM- Well, you know, there was a question. If that guy needs to use an air-pack ... There was no mandatory Scott back then. If you felt like wearing it you wore it. I think the lieutenant’s bottle lasted twenty minutes. And the privates had a half hour. TT- Nowadays, it's not an option, I can't even imagine. So we're talking the "sponge" days. Chickee used to mention the sponge. DM- I never used the sponge. Chickee said he did, um, we never used the sponge, we just went in. Took a beating most of the time. And that's what you did. TT- It was a different day back then because houses were still made out of natural things. DM- I think it did make a difference. We had a lot of fires, Mineral Spring Avenue was being torn down, Pleasant Street was being torn down. We were busy. We were constantly busy. Because I think I went to thirty or forty fires before I even went to school. Of course I came in number one. TT- Now back in the day people were smoking cigarettes in bed, there were cigarettes everywhere. Couches being lit up, mattresses, that's one hazard that's been remediated a little bit. DM- But there are other hazards now. The worst are the chemicals they're making everything out of now. So you're really...I don't know how long we could have made it now without air-packs. TT- Yeah, well, I just did an interview with a Providence firefighter, Donna MacDonald, who got a rare sternum cancer from being splashed with a solvent at a fire. (She's one of five people in the world with this form of cancer.) And she had to have her sternum taken out. She said the cancer rates were one in three now for firemen. That's the average. DM- It's getting scarier. We used to have a lot of minor fires, but there was always asbestos. All the old piping in the cellars would be covered in asbestos. They caught fire all the time. We just, with our hands, no Scotts or anything, ripped them down and threw them on the ground. There was no protection. TT- I guess every generation faces a new hazard. DM- Yes. TT- So you went to Ladder 1.When you got on were you a transfer guy? A bid spot guy? How did it work back then? DM- First of all there was no bids. Your Battalion Chief put you where he wanted. I went on Ladder 1, ended up on Engine 2, which was Engine 7 back then, because Ray Massee's father went into the service. I took his spot. And once he came back, they shipped me out to Station 8, which is now the 6's. And I stayed up there for about a year and finally put my resignation in from the Pawtucket Fire Department and joined Providence. TT- Come on. What year was that? DM- 69? 70? That was an old peoples station. And I was very aggressive. TT- Yeah, you were probably going crazy out there. DM- I was. So I went to Providence, put in my application, got accepted, and the chief came down to Station 8 and asked why I was resigning. I told him, I can't be up here. The guy next to me is twenty years older than me. I'm not learning anything, I'm not doing anything. Next day, he came back and said, "Okay, go downtown." TT- So back in the day you had no choice where you went? DM- Not really. It wasn't a bid thing, you were just kind of assigned places. TT- That sucks. DM- It did. But I stayed downtown the rest of my career. Thirty-five years or whatever. TT- Were you back on the ladder? DM- Engine 7, which is now Engine 2. I stayed there for eleven years before I made lieutenant. In those days, there was no such thing as a Rescue Lieutenant. TT- So we're talking 1980? DM- '79. All of the people on the rescue were acting lieutenants until 1979. When I made lieutenant, I went on the rescue. Not as a rescue lieutenant, but as a line lieutenant. You could bid off once a spot somewhere else opened up. I kept my rank, too. You can't do that now. If you hand in your pins as a rescue lieutenant you go back to being a private on the line. I was a line lieutenant on the rescue. In fact I think I was in the first group of actual lieutenants that worked on the rescue. They were all acting. Chief Doire was a line lieutenant on the rescue before he bid off, so there was a few of us. TT- Now back in the day, the rescue was basic life support stuff. Stopping bleeding, oxygen, not like it is today. DM- I was one of the first group of guys that were even EMTs. There were no EMTs before that. The guys on the rescue before that were Red Cross trained. They weren't EMTs. There were a bunch of us that were EMT-I's (Intermediate, which is above EMT- Basic but below paramedic), because we went to the EMT-I class as well. TT- So you were trained by the state? DM- I went to college. At CCRI, for Fire Science, and that was one of the courses. After I got my EMT, the EMT-I's were trained at Memorial Hospital, so I think the city paid for that. I think there were seventeen of us. TT- Were you guys doing IV's? DM- No. TT- So what was going on in the back of the truck? DM- Not much of anything. You packaged them, put them in the back of the truck. Before that, we didn't even transport people. Costigan Ambulance transported them. I think I was a lieutenant for six months before we started actually transporting people. TT- It's incredible what it's turned into now. I just did a cycle last week as acting lieutenant on the rescue, I got transferred over in charge. First run I had was a code. The protocol book is this thick (six inches deep.) It's just crazy. DM- I don't think we even had a protocol book. (laughs) As things progressed, the rescues got more busy. The EMT-I was a big thing. And then of course the Cardiac. (All firemen in R.I. have to be Cardiac level EMTs, meaning they can push drugs and do interventions that EMT-basics can not.) And by that time I had already bid off. I was on Engine 2. TT- So how long were on the rescue itself? DM- Three years. TT- So by '82 you were back on the line. DM- Yes. As a lieutenant. TT- Back in those days, a few names come up. Especially guys that mentioned you. You had protegés, like Brulé and Chickee and Lemay, they used to say--Brulé had a great story about how his lieutenant wasn't a go-getter, and if he saw you at a fire he would jump on with you and go in. DM- Sometimes I was too aggressive. Where, after I became Battalion Chief, then you said, "Hmm. I'm not sure I'd like to be in charge of me." (laughs). I'd also do a lot of things on my own. TT- Freelancing. DM- Freelancing. I was very aggressive. And Chickee would follow me in, so I got him to be aggressive, and the guys who worked with me--if they weren't aggressive, they weren't working with me. That's pure and simple. TT- Because they knew what they were getting into. DM- They also knew I was gonna take care of them. You can be aggressive but make sure your guys are okay. TT- When we talk about this, there are some guys that are here for the job, they do the job. Then there are other guys, especially on the fireground, they really enjoy it. And then there's a level above that, like your level, where it's--they're almost above the command structure. They're doing what they see needs to be done, whether or not their boss is with them or not. That's kind of the essence of free-lancing. You're not with your boss, you're not paying attention to all of the rules they give you to keep you safe, you're doing what you see in front of you that needs to be done. And everybody knows it needs to be done, but they don't necessarily think you should be doing it because it's usually very dangerous. DM- I'm not saying it was the best idea, because it wasn't. I used to scare the shit out of my Battalion Chief (laughs). I'd do things that ... TT- Kind of hairball, right? DM- Yeah. When I first started there was no such thing as accountability. I learned you could go into the building by yourself (another big no-no) because you had nobody with you. That lasted into the 70's. TT- Were you on Engine 2 the full shot? DM- I was on Engine 2 until I got promoted to Battalion Chief. They didn't have any captains back then. TT- What year were the captains? DM- I was already a B.C., so it had to be in the 90's, like '93. TT- So when did you make B.C.? DM- That was all the same thing. At the same time they made the captains rank. So it was '93 I think. What they used to do was have like an acting captain. That's what I was as the senior lieutenant until they actually made the captain's rank. I had responsibilities for the station as a captain would without the actual rank. TT- From '93 you stayed until 2008? DM- Yes. TT- So we're talking about a thirty-nine year career? DM- Forty. TT-That's pretty amazing. Now in that time, injury wise, did you have any problems? DM- There were some. Nothing I couldn't deal with. Like most firefighters I had a back injury. I think I was out six weeks. Smoke inhalation, bruises. The same things. The back injury kept me out the longest. I got to the point where I just came back. The doctor said no and I said I don't give a shit. TT- Because you were probably going crazy at home. DM- Nuts. I'd rather suffer the pain at work. TT- That's the thing people don't get either. Guys with high motors, putting them at home, it's almost even worse. Because now you're hurt and you're at home and you're not doing your job, and the only thing you're thinking about is going back to work and you can't. DM- It just drives you nuts. TT- Nuts. DM- We went out everyday. We trained all the time. On Engine 2 with my guys, we were always doing something. Sitting at home doing nothing drove me nuts. TT- Once you made Battalion Chief, you were on like twenty-three years, and I'm guessing you saw some pretty horrific things. Especially in the late '70's. There was a lot fires. Dick Lemay dropped off three garbage bags of newspapers that I chronologically ordered at Station 4. Guys were helping me, the whole dorm was filled with newspapers. Before you know it, dudes were sitting in chairs reading newspapers. And we just went through and read and it seemed like every other day there was a triple-decker burning. DM- It was pretty busy. If you look at the records, we were busy, but this was before the rescue exploded. We didn't do all the runs you guys do now, but there were more fire runs. TT- Were you at the fire in '79, where the two guys died trying to get people out? It was by the G and C Tap? DM- Yeah, that was my fire. TT- Oh Jesus. That sounded like a horror show. A total nightmare. DM- If you think about it afterwards, yeah. When you were there you're doing your job. You're just gonna try and get the job done. The week before that we had a high rise fire. The fire you're talking about happened on a Friday, so the Friday before we rescued 65 people. Nobody got seriously hurt. But they should've. Everything worked out just right. TT- Sixty-five rescues? Were they above the fire floor? DM- They were above and on the floor. What happened was a woman lit her apartment on fire somehow and ran out the door. Left the door open. Well, at the time it was all rugs, so all the rugs caught fire. So we had most of that hallway on fire, so they couldn't get out. And everything above that, we were either able to throw ladders up or make sure they were safely in place. We pulled some out, some stayed, but altogether we pulled sixty-five people out without an injury. I think the most injured person was the lady who started the fire. And then a week later you lose two guys in a freaking triple-decker. Actually it was a deuce and a half that, technically, was illegally cut up. After the fire was out, the state fire marshal said it was an accident but I didn't sign off on the report. And when we went back, we proved it was an arson fire. And the people didn't have a shot. The guys (two civilians) that went in didn't know what they were doing and it flashed over. They got caught on the third floor. TT- That was it. DM- That was it. I know the guy that got twenty-five years in jail for that. TT- No way! What was he lighting it up for? Insurance? DM- Girlfriend. It was drugs. It was a crack house, they went to get the drugs, she didn't give it to him or something. TT- Wow. So that's why he lit it up. DM- So he lit it up. TT- Where did he light it? In the basement? DM- He lit it on the second floor. In the bedrooms, he poured gasoline everywhere. And it just went Whoompf! I was there in two minutes from the alarm and it was already coming out of all the windows. TT- You guys were right around the corner. Jesus Christ. DM- Right around the corner and it was already coming out of all the windows. It was going good. TT- Lemay said he saw fire blowing out of six windows when he pulled up. How did you get your arson training? DM- I'd gone to the schools. They had seminars too. TT- So you wouldn't sign off on the fire marshal's report. DM- No, because I knew it was wrong. Absolutely wrong. It was political at the time, fire marshal. I used to like him, he was a nice enough guy on Ladder 7 in Providence, but his conclusions were screwed up. I went to bed and when they woke me up at like two o'clock with the preliminary findings that night, I said, "That didn't happen." They said, "Well, it started over there and went to there--" I said, "That didn't happen. I'm coming back down there." We went back down there, and I went through it with our own fire marshal, and the state fire marshal, and showed him. TT- So the guy from Providence was the state marshal? An active duty guy? DM- Yes. TT- Is that the book with all of your certificates? DM- Yes. Even when I was Battalion Chief I still took classes. Confined Space Rescue, Hazmat Tech, Rope Rescue, I did it all with my guys. I figured, if they were gonna do it I was gonna do it with them. TT- You never spent time in the office upstairs? In Fire Prevention? DM- No. I couldn't have dealt with that. TT- When you would pull up and size up the scene, I mean there are certain guys that are intuitive about this stuff. Your name comes up a lot as far as being good at judging certain situations, and knowing who to trust. On the fireground, the Battalion Chief's outside, he's watching different colors of smoke etc, explain what you're looking at. DM- You're watching a lot of things. Smoke is the one you can tell what kind of fire you have by the color. How bad it is, sometimes even by the smell of it. It's instinctive. Sometimes someone would say, "How did you know that was gonna happen?" And I'd say, "I really don't know, I just sort of knew." I was there. You watch the smoke, you smell it, feel the heat, you can pretty much tell what's going on." T- Kraweic used to say that he would watch and wait for it to turn a certain color, either good or bad. He also said he would ask the guys he could trust, who were coming out of the building, "Hey, what's it looking like in there? Do we have a shot at putting this out?" That was his biggest fear, making the wrong call as far as moving guys in and out if the building. He would talk about the color of the smoke. DM- If it got lighter it was pretty much knocked down. Black smoke is never good. Or even the smell sometimes. You can smell whether it's plastic burning, it might be horrible black smoke but you could smell a certain thing and be like, "That'll be knocked down in a second." TT- When you're the B.C. in charge, it's different than being a lieutenant in charge of two guys. When you're the man, you're in charge of thirty guys and the safety of 80,000 civilians. As far as these things spinning out of control, there are plenty of examples. Star Gas was one, were you on that day? DM- I was off-duty but I got there even before the last engine did. I was right here looking out the window. I had the scanner on and I knew seventy or eighty percent of the guys were at a golf tournament that day. So I jumped in the car. I was a lieutenant then. I wasn't a B.C. I think I got there before Engine 5 did. TT- Reports from that day, it's a miracle nobody died, as far as these canisters and tanks being launched into the neighborhood. DM- It wasn't the canisters that was bad. I didn't think--it was me, Ray Mathew, Chickee, Joe Gildea--I didn't think we were coming home. Because they had just backed in a rail car with 65,000 gallons of LNG (Liquified Natural Gas). Actually, I think it was LPG, Liquid Petroleum, and the valve had already gone off. The relief valve. That means you have ten minutes, if you're lucky, and when I got there nobody had any water on it. I grabbed Engine 3 and got the guys to put water on it, because it was gonna blow up. TT- Brulé said he was on a master-stream in front of that thing and he was convinced he was gonna die. DM- Greg and Joe Gildea were on one side, and I was with Ray Mathews. We had 2½ inch lines wetting this thing down. And after the pressure relief valve went, we knew it was gonna go. Period. I don't why it didn't. It was just one of those things. Gildea afterwards, said, "You were a lot closer than I was." And I said, "Yeah, Joe, you were barely fifty yards behind me. We all would've bought it." I don't think I was ever more concerned than Star Gas. Really, we thought it was gonna go. TT- Now if 65,000 gallons of LPG ignites, we're talking about ... DM- Well, it's 800 to 1 when it expands. TT- We're talking massive devastation. DM- It would've taken the school out and many blocks. (the school was loaded with kids that afternoon.) So we just decided we were gonna stay. TT- And the four-foot canisters are being launched like rockets into the neighborhood, like I heard as far away as Broadway. DM- Yeah, they did. It was interesting (laughs). TT- Engine 4 melted. How long were you guys there that day? DM- It came in like two o'clock, and I think it was like six or seven that night? Once we got it under control and things knocked down, and the tanker wasn't gonna go, we-- TT- What exactly was burning when you pulled up? What was on fire? DM- When I got there, you couldn't see because of the smoke. The building was burning, and it was infringing on the tanker. Everything was burning. TT- Did they determine how it started? DM- Somebody was filling something wrong, from what I understand. TT- So like a seal got blown? DM- Whatever it was. Not sure what. TT- Were other companies brought in from out of town? DM- I honestly couldn't tell you but I'd assume they were. I was busy and really concerned I was gonna melt (laughs). TT- Another one was Greenhalgh Mill, 2004. DM- That was mine too. TT- I heard guys at Station 4 just looked out the door and said send everybody. Were you downtown that day? DM- I was not downtown, I was on the Industrial Highway. I pulled in just as Engine 4 did. And I looked at it and said, "Oh, this is going." And Engine 4 had already put in for a third alarm, and I said this is gonna be a General Alarm, because it was already at the point--we found out later it was illegally packed with chemicals. Although we could never prove it because everything was burnt. TT- The story I had heard was that there might've been a scrap team in there stripping pipes? DM- I think that's what they were doing. I think they were taking the copper piping down with blowtorches and it got away from them. There were chemicals that weren't supposed to be in there. Because technically it was a knitting mill. They had some kind of nitrates in there. I can't prove it, it came from other people, but everything was against us that day. TT- Sixty mile an hour winds ... DM- Fortunately, I had taken my whole shift over there the week before. We did an inspection from the outside to prepare. Just had a feeling (laughs). TT- Some of these places you do have a feeling. Right? You walk in and go, "If anybody comes in here in the middle of the night they're gonna die. They're not getting out of here." We did a walk-through over across Newport Ave, on Carter, there's a mill complex over in there, and it was all cut up, different doors slid one way, others this way, there was no power to half the building and it's like a block long. Total death trap. We were like, 'If anyone comes in here they ain't coming out." It was terrifying even in the middle of the day. Anyway there are certain buildings you look at and say-- DM- "My guys aren't going into it." TT- Exactly. Now when you're in charge of a scene like that, that's turning into an inferno and taking out a neighborhood ... Like at one point I heard there was talk of this thing blowing all the way to Attleboro. DM- It was because of the wind. The embers were blowing all over the place. And then we had a firestorm and the wind gusts must've been 80 mph. Just before it collapsed. I mean it really went. TT- I read a weather report from that day, and it actually created its own weather system above the city. DM- It does. That kind of fire does. And when the building went down, I was with Bobby Thurber and them. We were on Kenyon Ave near Engine 2, and we all laid on the ground because it looked like a wave, a wave of pure flame. It went right over us. TT- That's what he said. DM- It looked like you were at the beach, except it wasn't water, it was fire. And it went right over our heads. We were lucky no one was standing up. TT- That is crazy. Thurber was saying you guys turned the master streams straight into the sky just so you wouldn't burn. DM- Oh yeah. It was hot. I wasn't in the command post, I was at the scene. TT- Where was the Command Post? DM- They set it up on Cottage Street. Chief Doire, I think he was acting Assistant Chief because Renzi was Acting Chief. As soon as I got there I called and said for Chief Doire to take command because I had to stay on Kenyon. I had to be there. Because I've always been that way. I had to be there. Some of the Battalion Chiefs didn't want to be there, but I had to be there to feel it, to see it, and then make my decisions. TT- Were you ordering evacuations of the neighborhood? Did the police do that? DM- I had a good shift. My Rescue Lieutenant was Tomlinson, I'm not sure if Dick Lemay was there that day. But once they saw what was happening, they automatically started to evacuate people. All I asked was that someone make sure the school was empty. And that the kids were taken away. I was pretty sure we were gonna lose the school. TT- Now this was at 2:45 in the afternoon right? DM- Yes. TT- And kids were still in school. DM- The kids were just getting out. TT- I heard there was three hundred firemen from all over the place. DM- There was. TT- Sixty Engines, twenty-seven ladders, twenty-three rescues ... DM- It's always better to have people there than not. TT- Now at the point you're on the fireground just basically taking care of that immediate area? DM- I was taking care of my six engines and two ladders. I didn't even know what was going on other than that. We were gonna stop it from taking out Kenyon Avenue, and whatever else was happening wasn't my business. TT- So defensively, you just set up to try and hold it back from running over everything. Kind of like trying to stop the ocean with your hand. DM- Yes. TT- Thurber told a funny story about taking a beating, taking a beating, and then pausing to have a smoke. He said he thought you guys were getting a handle on it until he turned around and saw everything was on fire. (laughs) DM- That was from all the chemicals in there. When we did our preplan the week before we never entered the building. We checked the hydrant placements and where we would be setting up just in case. On the west side of the building it was all vacant, so of course the wind was blowing the opposite way toward where everything was. That's where we lost all of those houses. The only thing we didn't plan on was a 60 mph winds. That wasn't part of our planning. (laughs). TT- Right? There's no way to train for that (laughs). Someone that taught my academy said something that always stuck with me. If you come to work on a nice sunny day and it's windy, don't think it's just a nice sunny day (laughs). DM- That's true. TT- Were you working the day of the Hargreaves disaster? (FF John Hargreaves died in a fire in 1993). DM- I was on vacation. TT- There are certain milestones through the years, where you kind of ask guys if they were there or not. DM- No Hargreaves, that was my shift. I was in Florida. I got home that day, that afternoon, and somebody mentioned something happened but I didn't know. I knew that building. There had been fires there before. TT- From what I heard about that building, it was a law office that was basically turned into a fortress. Double roofs, like an actual roof build over a roof-- DM- Windows that were shatterproof and bulletproof. TT- What were they protecting in there? DM- No idea. TT- And I wonder who they were working for that required that kind of security? DM- Forty years on the job, and we had a fatality. Forty years and I've never seen a building torn down the day after. TT- Wow. DM- Totally torn down. And I always questioned that. TT- I wonder who made the call on that? DM- I have no idea. TT- So they literally showed up with the wreckers-- DM- The next day. TT- Picked it up and hauled it away. DM- More or less, yeah. TT- No kidding. DM- Without a real thorough fire inspection or anything like that. TT- Nothing? There was no investigation? DM- Not much. TT- That's incredible. And that's '93. We're not talking about the 70's or 80's. DM- It went down and taken away pretty quick. And there was not a lot said about it. TT- Do you think it was because of the gravity of the injury, where they just wanted this thing taken out? They didn't know he was gonna die (Hargreaves died at Mass General a three weeks after the fire). DM- I don't know. I can't really tell you that. TT- That does seem kind of suspicious. No investigation after a line of duty of death? DM- If there was a story, and this is just between you and I, but one of the lawyers went past the (police barricades), down the stairway on the side, and John (Hargreaves) was still in the building (everyone else had been evacuated but Hargreaves had no radio). They were still trying to ventilate and he (the lawyer) opened the door. It flashed over because of him but they couldn't prove it. TT- Really? Wow. Jesus. DM- But they did catch the lawyer there. TT- I wonder what was in that building. When you hear about how hard it was to get in there, you almost needed a battering ram, a tank to get into this place. DM- I think as a private I had a fire in that building and as a lieutenant I had another. It took forever to ventilate and break the windows to get in. TT- They didn't want anybody getting into that place. DM- Nope. Whatever was going on ... TT- Were the people that ran the place the same afterwards or did it change hands? DM- They're the same. TT- It would be interesting to talk to them-- DM- They're not gonna tell ya (laughs). TT- Right? I was in construction for fifteen years and never heard of a building construction like that outside of a bank. DM- No, they tore it down really quick. And it was so protected, nobody seems to know why. There were never any real answers. TT- Everything just kind of got brushed away. And that's the last line of duty death due to fire that we've had. Are there any fires in your mind that stick out? I know the big ones, but I don't know the ones along the way. What about grabs? You must've had, especially in the 70s and 80s with all that fire ... DM- Well, there was but a lot of times you don't want to think about them. (visibly unamused). TT- You just kind of put it away. DM- There's a couple. We grabbed a kid, he died, he came home from La Salette, and he went upstairs to the third floor, an illegal third floor bedroom, and it caught fire and we couldn't get to him. I was the Battalion Chief. It just so happened, Dick Lemay found him, pushed through back to the second floor, and he was coming down the stairs with him giving him CPR when he tripped, and I was there, I caught him. I can remember taking him to the rescue doing CPR and burning my lips. TT- Oh God. DM- Having his skin ... in fact I had to go the ER to get his skin pulled off my lips. And that sticks in my mind. There's always the good grabs. We had the Bagley Street fire, I was on the rescue that day. I think there was twenty-one people we pulled out of there. One of the cops, it was really going, and I said to him, "You really shouldn't be in here." He didn't belong there. There was a lot of smoke. I was starting to run out of air and he said, "Well, there's people in here." The next thing I know he's gone. TT- The cop? DM- Yeah. On the ground. I had to carry him down the ladder. TT- (Laughs) Oh Jesus! DM- And Mike Souciar (?) and I pulled a kid out of the second floor. They said everybody was out. Mike Souciar and I were upstairs. We're getting ready to start overhauling when we heard the moaning. We went in and found him beneath the bed. We pulled him out and he lived. In fact his sister came by and wanted to see us and we weren't there. But they're still in the city. You should talk to them. That was the week after Mayor Lynch decided that we didn't need all the ladders. TT- Oh this is the Ladder 3 story. DM- Ladder 3. TT- It's amazing how these decisions come back to haunt everybody. DM- The week after. When I was on the scene and asked for a second ladder Fire Alarm refused me a second ladder. TT- Why? DM- Because the mayor didn't want proof that we needed the second and third ladder companies. TT- Oh my God. DM- I think eventually they sent the second ladder only because the fire broke through the roof, but at first they were told not to send a second ladder. TT- That is crazy. DM- It wasn't Fire Alarm's decision, they were told by the administration not to send that second ladder. TT- That is absolutely crazy. DM- I think it was twenty-one people. One guy set it. He lit all the entrances on fire, all the exits. TT- What was his motive? DM- I don't know if they ever caught him. TT- It's amazing how these things start over love or drugs or money. Just burning people out, it's crazy. Now as far as the job itself, especially when you talk to different guys about how they were able to compartmentalize and not take it home, not turn into an alcoholic, not abuse the wife, were you just able to wall if off-- DM- You can't. That's impossible. TT- What did you do to process it? DM- Drank. (laughs). I didn't become an alcoholic but I became a divorcee because of it. Cause we used to go see something that wasn't so good, like someone's brains on the ground, and you drink afterwards. You know, to a point where ... TT- It affects the marriage. DM- Yeah. TT- And you come home. You've been at work for two days on top of it. And it's hard to forget that these people out in the real world have no clue what the hell you're doing. DM- And you've also got guys like me, as you know, that really loved the job. And unfortunately that came first. It did. TT- And by the time you look around everything else is gone. DM- Gone. TT- All your personal relationships... DM- That was number one. The job. TT- So for the most part you were able to deal with it by whatever you did. DM- For the most part. I'm dealing with it now. TT- That's what Lemay said too. DM- I can't, we went, I was down at 9/11 (approximately 19 Pawtucket firemen went to Ground Zero the night of the attacks). I can't watch those videos. It bothers me. It really does. TT- Now 9/11 itself, you had organized-- DM- Bob organized it. I think he was the Training Officer back then. TT- So you, Dave Reed, Thurber- DM- Joe Cordiero. TT- So you're pretty much talking about the heart of the department. DM- There was a lot of us that were the go-getters. TT- These were the guys that did everything. They did every aspect of the job. And when Thurber talked about it, he said you were in Jersey-- DM- For a little while. And then we just said, "Screw this. We're going." We were supposed to wait and we were like, "Well, we're not waiting anymore." TT- So you packed into the vans. DM- Packed into the vans and went to the George Washington Bridge. We told the cop that we were all needed down at the scene because we were all trained in the IRIS (thermal imaging cameras). And FEMA needed IRIS trained guys. So they said okay and let us through (laughs). We weren't supposed to, but we just couldn't sit there any longer. TT- Now from what you remember about that day, I guess you left Jersey in the middle of the night? DM- Yes. TT- And the whole place was unstable. Things were still collapsing, on fire. You guys were basically a mop up crew. Like putting out fires... DM- We didn't do a whole lot of handling of hoses. We were able to get to Ground Zero and start searching. But after a while word came down that it was no longer a rescue. There was no rescues anymore. That's why we left the next day. Our chief said, "you're not staying there to recover people, you're there to rescue people." Once it was confirmed that there was nobody left to rescue, we weren't really needed there. TT- Now when you were looking at was happening in front of your eyes, you must've--It's gotta be a disbelief factor, where you just can't believe what you're seeing. DM- Yes. TT- That pile, the enormity of what's happened...there's no way to describe it, am I right? DM- You couldn't take it in. You couldn't take it in until after you got back home. It didn't compute then. At the scene, we were just trying to do our job, hoping to find someone alive. And once we found out we weren't going to, you process it then. TT- Thurber also said the New York guys might've gotten a little touchy having all these out of town guys running around. Did you get that impression? DM- From some of them, yes. Yes I did. I think they thought they could do it themselves--because of the way they're trained and the way their mentality, but they couldn't. And I think eventually they needed the help. There was a little bit of something there. You could see it. TT- Nobody wants another city coming into their town, but you're right. This was an unprecedented event. DM- Well, this wasn't like a hotel fire or something. Everything was gone. Like I said, you didn't process it that day. TT- You guys stayed for the day-- DM- Day and night and then we came back. Once it was confirmed there were no rescues, there was no point to us being there as a recovery team because we had our own city to protect. TT- Can you think of any other big events in your career? DM- New Coal and Lumber. Across the river on Taft Street? TT- What was that? A big lumber company? DM- Oh yeah. (laughs) We knew the guy who set it. He used to live right here. And he had set a small fire next to another mill. I knew it was him. I went by him and said, "Is that the best you can do you asshole?" An hour later this thing was roaring. TT- Did he have a motive? DM- He just liked setting fires. The whole family was nuts. His brother lived two houses down from here. They used to live somewhere around Pleasant Street. Chickee would remember their names. But there was a whole mess of them. They just liked setting fires. TT- A family of arsonists (laughs) DM- Yup. TT- Was there ever an arsonist who lit a string of fires? Like terrorizing people? I can remember 2010 we had a guy running around lighting shit up every other night for a while in the same area. DM- Mineral Spring Avenue. We use to go there a lot. They used to call it Plywood Alley because of all the boarded up buildings. Whether or not it was one person or a group, we never knew. Fire Prevention (the office of inspectors and Fire Marshal) wasn't much in those days. It was sort of casual. When I got on the job we didn't have any jaws, or spreaders or airbags, we had a K-12 and a crowbar. That's how you used to cut people out of cars. TT- The old school. DM- There was a bunch of us. Myself, Chief Thurber, Chief Boisclair, and one of the training officers. We went up to New Hampshire and looked at their Jaws and learned how to use them. Then we came back to our city and said, "Hey, we need these." TT- What year was this? DM- I wasn't a lieutenant yet, I was a private, so in the '70's? TT- Were they hydraulic then? DM- Yes. Same principle. They're a lot smaller and easier to use now. We went up there and they showed us how to use them. We came back and convinced the Training Officer that we needed them. TT- How old were you when you got on Pawtucket in '69? DM- Twenty-five. TT- And how old were you when you left? Sixty-five? DM- Yes. TT- So you maxed out. DM- Yes. TT- You had to go. Would you have stayed? DM- Yes. (laughs) I say that, but I don't know. Probably yeah. I don't how much longer, because I had a problem with my back, old injury, in fact I had surgery two months before I retired. TT- That was the attitude back then. Lemay said the same thing. He was like, "If they hadn't forced me out ... but I'm glad they did. I wasn't happy when I left but I needed to go. Enough was enough." DM- Well, you get tired. I know a lot of guys go, "Oh the Battalion Chief's job's easy." Because you don't do as much physical work. But once they move up they find out it's not really an easy job, because you got a lot more responsibility. TT- It's not even commensurate with what the job entails. DM- I think they make a little better pay nowadays. But Dick Lemay made a buck less than me as a Rescue Captain. TT- Right? I think they make like thirty bucks more. DM- Well, I made a buck more and was in charge of him (laughs). TT- In charge of the whole city. It's not a joke. DM- My whole thing was, my guys were gonna go home. They were gonna go home safe. Period. TT- So as a chief you didn't appreciate the freelancing as much (laughs). DM- No, no, no. (laughs). TT- So you had to keep an eye on Chickee... DM- Well, you had to keep an eye on everybody, but I was able to...I had a great shift. And I learned as I grew as a Battalion Chief who could do what. I had guys that weren't gonna go into fires. They weren't. I bet you still have them today. They're not gonna go into fires. But I knew what they could do, so I used them for what they could do. Whether it would be setting up lights or dressing hydrants, I used them for what they could do. Some guys would say, "Well, how come he gets to stay out there?" Because if you put him in there he's just gonna sit by the door and not do a damn thing. If I have them outside, at least he's doing the job. I expected guys to do the job I expected them to do. The guys that weren't as aggressive were gonna handle everything going on outside. TT- They were gonna do something. DM- They were gonna do something. I knew the guys who were aggressive. Knew the guys that were in between, and you worked it out. TT- It's almost like you're a football coach or a baseball manager. You know it's the ninth inning and I need that guy. Or it's the middle of the fifth and blah blah blah. DM- I was thinking more like someone who takes care of a kindergarten. (laughs) TT- That too. From what I've heard, you were very... as far as a fireground tactician, we have McLaughlin now. He's able to move pieces around strategically instead of guys just running in and turning it into a disaster. You were the forerunner to that, as far as pulling up, sizing up what's going on, how to use your resources... DM- That's important. That's what you did. TT- That's the job. DM- I took offense if one of my guys got hurt. It bothered me. It offended me that I might've done something wrong or let them do something that got them hurt. But thankfully I never had anyone who got seriously injured. Bumps and bruises but I didn't like it. TT- You took it personally because that's your job. DM- Yes. TT- So you completed forty years. Thirty is considered long now, but forty, that's a long time. DM- It was a good forty years. There was some ups and downs, some sadness. Like I remember when Dick Lemay lost his son, he came back to work. And the very first day, I was a lieutenant on Engine 2, he had worked for me before he went on the rescue. And we had a run over on Roosevelt Avenue and I got in there before him. Walked into the bedroom and it was a crib death. Just like his kid. Twins. One twin was alive and the other was dead. TT- Oh my God DM- It always stuck in my mind. And when Dick pulled up I would not let him in. TT- Thank God. DM- I said, "You're not going in there." He goes, "I'm the rescue, I have to-" "It's all set, Dick, you're not coming in this building." "Well, why not?" "Because I don't want you here." "Well, I'm the rescue lieutenant, and the rescue lieutenant has priority when it comes to rescue work--" "This is not a rescue anymore. There's not anything you can do, and I don't want you here." TT- Good for you. DM- And I sent him away. TT- I'm sure he didn't like it but ... looking out for him like that was huge. DM- I remember how traumatic it was for me, those two little kids, you know? One was alive, one was dead, and especially since I had twin boys myself. TT- Really. How long were you married the first time? DM- I was with Jackie nineteen years. TT- And you have four kids? DM- Five. TT- Did any of them become firemen? DM- No. They took the test, but they didn't seem really interested. TT- It wasn't in the blood. DM- It wasn't. I don't know why. My granddaughter, she wants to be one. She took Seekonk's test and flunked it by millimeter. She was pulling up the hose that third time and the rope was all sweaty. They didn't give her gloves and it slipped out of her hand. And they flunked her. She's small, like 4' 11", 110 pounds, but she's tough. TT- She must be if she was dragging that 250 pound dummy around (at the physical test run by the state.) DM- She already has her EMT, so I'm sure something will come along. The boys, one went in the navy, the other in the air force, and the third became a cop. The other one's a cook. They never showed a lot of interest. TT- Like you said, it's in you or it's not. DM- I didn't know it was in me. I didn't want to be a firefighter. When I was in the service a couple of guys were putting in for fire departments in New Jersey, but I thought they were nuts. "What do you want to be a firefighter for? They don't make any money." (laughs) TT- Right? And then you get there and you're like, "Wow. This is what they do?" I had no idea what the fire department even did until I ran into a friend of mine who was a lieutenant on Warwick. I was in construction, a framer, for years. And finally I was like, "I’m getting ready to kill myself." and he said, "Why don't you become a fireman? You already use all the tools. You're a roofer." And I was like, "What do you guys do all day? That's gotta be some boring shit." He goes, "Come for a ride-a-long." The next night I was on the Hazards with him at Station 8 and I was blown away. "This is what you guys do everyday?" "Yup." I signed up for EMT (at CCRI) the next day. DM- Most people don't. They think we don't do anything. Until they need you. TT- Right? They have no idea. No clue. DM- "You guys sit around the station watching TV." Yeah, sometimes I have sat around and watched TV, but not that often." TT- "And other times I'm peeling someone's dead skin off of me." There are slow days, and then there are days you can never forget. DM- I think Dick ... he wasn't a Rescue Lieutenant very long, he might've just left me. And we had an accident. Five kids. And they were all torn up. I pulled in on the engine and saw him doing CPR on a guy and told him, "I got four other guys laying here, stop with the CPR." He goes, "I got to do CPR--" "Dick, every time you push on his chest his brains are coming out of his ears. Didn't you see that?" He goes, "Oh." "He's gone, Dick. There are other people that need you." We pulled a guy out of a car one time, me and Chickee. And he was talking to us. We had to use the Jaws. We slid him out of the car. And as we slid him out, his legs fell off and he bled to death just like that (snaps his fingers.) But he was talking when we first got there. I guess the pressure kept him alive for a few minutes. Those things stay with you. TT- When you were young on the job, who were the older guys you were following? I hear names. Buchanon, Timmy Hayes... DM- Buchanon got on after I did. Timmy Hayes, wasn't really on my shift. I guess my lieutenant, Lt. Lundgren, we were friends until he crossed the picket line. Dan Cronin, a lieutenant, he was a good lieutenant. One of the guys you kept your eyes on. My lieutenant, he gave me a lot of leeway right away. TT- Do you have any regrets? When you look back at the 40 years? Anything you'd change? DM- Yeah. I probably wouldn't want to be Battalion Chief. If they had Captains then, I probably would've stayed a captain. People thought being a BC was easy but it wasn't. There was a lot of things. I got a reputation of being able to take care of a lot of things. Dumb things that guys did. I would get called at night, off duty, to go somewhere if someone was in trouble. There was a couple of guys I definitely put myself on the line for, I could've lost my job maybe, but I took of them. TT- You always looked out for your guys. DM- Yes. TT- Now these books you have here, are they all scrap books? DM- Those are just a few of them. There's a lot more. TT- What else do you want to talk about? DM- There's too much. I think if anything, they only started counseling after the Dexter Street fire where the two guys died. That was the first time we got to talk to anybody. Before that you just lived with it. You just lived with it. I remember we when we had the wall collapse over at the Stop and Shop. Chickee's wife's boyfriend at the time was cut in half. Me and Chickee pulled him out. Just half his body. Those are the things you remember. TT- Just let me thumb those real quick (the scrapbooks.) Lemay had a ton too. Like from the 70's straight through. DM- We had a fire right next to Station 1. I don't know how it got going but it was ripping. We went in, and on the first floor they said someone was trapped. We couldn't find him, but we crawled in. Couldn't find him, and as we crawled back out we found the body. And the roof was collapsing. We picked him up, started dragging him out and I remember his arms breaking because we had to get him out before the roof collapsed. It always stuck with me. Jesus, we had to break the guys arms to get his body out. That's the stuff the public never thinks about. TT- We had a code once, guy weighed over 400 pounds in this tiny bathroom. There was no other way to get him out and do CPR other than just yanking him out. And we broke both his shoulders. He was dead anyway, but it didn't make me feel any better. DM- We had a floater one time whose head came off as we dragged him to shore. He was wedged beneath the pylons, and the only way we could get him was to tie a rope around him. The Medical Examiner was already there, and he goes, "Where's his head?" "It must've come off when we pulled him out." We never found it. TT- One thing these scrapbooks show us is how dead real reporting really is. I mean i'm so used to meaningless blurbs, it's refreshing to see real reporting. DM- True. TT- This has been invaluable. I hope one day we can get everyone's scrapbooks digitized. Make a real history of the job. I want to thank you for taking the time. It's been a real honor. DM- Thanks for coming over. Good to meet you.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
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
Categories |