.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
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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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