Captain Steve Parent was on the Pawtucket Fire Department for twenty-five years. Having worked alongside the likes of Lt. Tomlinson and Captain Lemay, he earned a reputation as a hard working rescue guy. He was an officer on the rescue before turning in his pins to go back to the line, where he became a fire lieutenant, captain, and finally the Fire Marshal for the city of Pawtucket. After he retired, he got on the T.F. Green Airport Fire Department where he is now a lieutenant on the Airport Fire/Rescue service. This interview was conducted in his office at the airport on 11/15/2017. This is what he said...
SP- So we have four captains, four lieutenants, and eight privates. TT- Four guys on shift, right? So you got sixteen guys. And you run two pieces of equipment with four guys? SP- Three pieces. Two 3000 gallon crash trucks and one 1500. TT- These crash trucks are loaded with foam, right? SP- They contain enough foam ... the 3000's carry 420 gallons of foam. And that's enough foam to make four loads of finish foam. It's 120 gallons to 3000 gallons of water to get 3% foam. So the 1500 gallon truck carries 210 of foam. It's half the size, obviously. TT- So you're mixing foam and water in the trucks like our (Pawtucket) Engine 5 would. SP- Yep. TT- And to put that into perspective, those guys are only carrying 5 barrels on that thing? So we're talking about 25-30 gallons of foam. SP- But that foam that you guys carry in the city is different than what we use here. If I went to Pawtucket on Mutual Aid, I would never take any foam from you. Our foam and your foam don't play together. TT- Your foam is specialized for jet fuel? SP- Our foam is strictly AFFF. TT- What's that mean? SP- Aqueous Film Forming Foam. But our AFFF is military spec. It won't mix with yours. If it did, it would turn into a snotty mess. TT- Really? SP- It would block the metering devices in my truck. Nothing from outside, even if you were carrying your own AFFF, that don't get mixed with mine. All my stuff comes from here. TT- Now you guys are basically set up for crashes, or anything that happens on the airport grounds? SP- Yes. We're here because the FAA says if you do more than five flights of an air carrier aircraft, which is a commercial airliner, meaning people, depending upon the size and length of that aircraft ... you have five categories. A,B,C,D, E. We are an Index C airport, so we take up to 159 foot aircraft. Now, we're starting to get in larger 767's, so when we go up to the larger aircraft, that pushes up to an Index D. Which doesn't necessarily mean people, it means the amount of water that you carry and the amount of trucks you have on duty. All that Index corresponds, like A is the smallest class. You need 500 gallons of water and two trucks. B goes up to 1500 gallons and two trucks. C is two trucks with 3000 gallons of water and the appropriate foam to mix with it. Sometimes we bump up to an Index D, so we have to have another truck available and we usually add another guy. We also have a medical license. We don't do any transports, but we do all medical aids in the terminal. TT- So if anybody's coming in sick on the plane ... SP- Coming in sick on the plane, coming into the airport for departure. A lot of self medication goes on (alcohol.) But we don't transport. Warwick (Fire) does all of the transport. TT- Downstairs when we were going through the trucks, we were talking about Mutual Aid and how you guys get sent out. If you have enough personnel here you can send one of the trucks. SP- Yes. A few years ago we did. There was a big fire at Motiva, in the port of Providence, so we sent our foam trailer and one truck. TT- Are you guys part of the IAFF? SP- No. We're AFSCME. TT- So you're basically working for the airport? SP- Yes. AFSCME has a public safety union within their structure, but we just fall under the envelope of everybody else. I don't know why we could never be members of the state association, but a long time ago one of the Warwick guys was a big State Association guy, so that might have played into the ... TT- Politics. SP- Yeah. They could've had this. Warwick (Fire) could've had the airport years ago but they didn't want it. For whatever reason. TT- As far as your day to day operations, you guys do 24's? SP- Yes. 24 on, 24 off, 24 on, five days off. TT- Now as far as the setup at the airport here, when something goes wrong who calls you guys? Is it the tower? How does the chain of command work? SP- It's changed a little since I got here. The tower still notifies us if an incoming plane has an operational problem. But if something happens on the ground or in the terminal, 90% of the calls go through the police department, which dispatches us. For the most part, everything gets channeled through the police department. TT- Warwick Police runs the airport? SP- No. Airport Police are their own entity. Totally separate from TSA. TSA is Homeland security. They handle bringing people from the unsecure side of the airport to the secure side of the airport. Police, they'll assist them, they have the same powers of any other department in the state. State Police are here too. They still maintain a presence here. TT- Are they 24/7? SP- I believe they still are. TT- How many Staties? SP- I think two. Not sure of the necessity for them with a full department already here. TT- When you guys are training for this stuff, I mean how much fuel is on a 737? A couple thousand gallons? SP- Oh yeah, it's all of that. There's like close to 1300 in the wings, and 4200 in the center tank. TT- Wow. Jesus Christ. That's a weenie roast. 1300 on each wing? SP- Yes. TT- So it's 2600 plus another 4000. You got like 7000 gallons on that thing. What do you guys train for? To get the foam on the engine, the wing, the fuel...? SP- Depends. If it's an engine fire, that's one scenario. We can have wheel-brake fires, there's an APU (Auxiliary Power unit) on the back of the plane that runs the plane, we could have a fire in there. TT- I guess my question would be, obviously it's life safety first, but after that you're concerned with... SP- It's a Catch 22. We're mostly fire suppression because the thought process is the quicker you get the fire down, the least amount of people get hurt. Depends on the situation. TT- Right. With 7000 gallons on that thing-- SP- That's only on takeoff. Obviously, they're burning a lot of that fuel to get here from wherever they're coming from. TT- Do you have training on the engines themselves? SP- Generally. TT- Do you know how to cut the power? SP- Yes. You're assuming the thing's still manned, so the pilot is gonna be in control of that. We do train for that. The planes also have their own suppression systems on board. TT- The onboard suppression system, is it like CO? Is it like an extinguisher? SP- Yes. TT- So it's like pre-piped in there? SP- Yes. TT- As far as water goes, you're not gonna throw water on a fuel fire. So this is all foam. No water. SP- We also have dry chemical (extinguishing agents.) All the trucks carry dry chemical. Rescue 6 carries 700 pounds of dry chemical. The other two are 450 pounds of dry chemical. Rescue 7 carries a suppression agent called Halitron. It's a non-corrosive extinguishing agent. That's more for electrical fires. TT- Have you guys had--I mean I know there's been small plane crashes, but have you guys had anything bigger than that? SP- '08 was the last crash. Crash might be too strong a word. It didn't crash and burn, it crashed in the snow and spun off the runway. It didn't cartwheel, but it spun. TT- Like doing a doughnut? SP- Yes. (laughs) TT- It seems like it's a pretty efficient system. You guys a run a tight ship. SP- It wouldn't be good in a state this size to have a considerable crash. TT- People would know all the dead. SP- Yes. TT- Are they expanding the airport? SP- They just finished the runway extension. TT- Is it in service? SP- Yes. TT- So the goal here is they want to get bigger. They want to get bigger planes in here ... SP- And more traffic. The only thing that affects our rating is the size of the airplanes. Like our cargo aircraft are 767's. And that should put us up but cargo doesn't play in. It's all passenger rated. Like we just started getting in Amazon. They're landing cargo in here. TT- What're they landing here? How big are the planes? SP- 767's. But they're cargo, so that doesn't affect our index. TT- And the airport itself, the runways can handle 747's, 777's? SP- Oh yeah. TT- So it's mainly a question of do the airlines want to bring in those kind of numbers. SP- Yes. It's gotta be worth it to them. We got Norwegian (Air) going to Ireland, the Netherlands, and they want to do more. Cabo Verde, they come in from the islands. TT- So why don't we transition to the Pawtucket days. What year did you get on? SP- 1987. TT- And what were you doing before you got here? SP- I was working fulltime for Almacs Supermarket. TT- Oh yeah? SP- Started there when I was sixteen. I was a carriage-shagger. (laughs) Almacs was like a mom and pop supermarket in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. In their day, through the mid-50's, they were coining the term supermarket--from mom and pop sized markets to the actual supermarkets that you know today. When the Super Stop and Shops came along, that's what did in Almacs. They had a hard time adjusting to that. They tried, as they were kind of winding down, to expand their stores, modernize their stores. I started in the Seekonk store. I grew up on Central Avenue, Central and Dagget, so the state line was a quarter of a mile from where I grew up. We used to shop at that Almacs. TT- How old were you when you got on here? SP- Pawtucket? I was 21. I went to fire school in 1987, and got appointed in January. It was kind of funny. It was during a change of mayors. I was on a list from Henry Kinch. Dusty's father. I wanna say they put seven or eight guys on. The first list in 1985 I came out thirty-one. And they only took thirty guys in the school. TT- Ouch. SP- But, number thirty broke his leg before the fire school, so he couldn't go. I figured the way math works, if thirty can't go, and I'm thirty-one, I must be number thirty now. But it didn't happen. I missed the '85 school. Bob Thurber was at that fire school. When they ran the next test I came out twenty-six or twenty-seven. I also worked at Costigan's. It was a private ambulance company owned by the same people who ran Costigan's funeral home. Costigan Private Ambulance ran out of our city. Chick Costigan, one of the owners, was my godfather. TT- So they handled the transports... SP- They handled all of the transports for the city of Pawtucket. They (the fire department) had a rescue truck. They would go, they would assess, I guess they could've transported if they had to but they always called Costigan's. And they transported. So I was also working there. It was me, Bob Thurber worked there, and he brought over Bob Howe, who was working for Rhode Island Ambulance out of East Providence. Dusty Kinch worked there--his aunt was married to a Costigan. And a lot of other guys from our job worked there. Bob Barton, Steve Galuska, Mike Allen ... it was almost like a stepping stone to get on the job. I started there in '85. So I worked nights there. I worked at the supermarket during the day, and worked the ambulance mostly at night. TT- So when you first got on the job where did you go? SP- Well, three guys retired January 1, and I was number three. TT- Wow. SP- Yeah. That's how close it got. They weren't gonna put anybody on, but then they were told they had fifteen days by contract. So it was me, Russ Renzi, Dick Renzi's brother, and this other guy, Steve Poole, who was not a city guy. He came from Seekonk. I never knew what his connection was. So it was the three of us. Poole went out IOD within a year of coming on the job, which I think was his master plan from the start. Russ, obviously passed. he died of leukemia. So I'm the only one left. TT- So Russ died after he retired? SP- No, while he was on. Russ died in '05. I'm pretty sure. TT- I never met him. I got here in '08. SP- Russ was a funny guy. He was a quiet guy. He actually went to the same EMT class as me. He was unbelievably claustrophobic. You know how they used to do the extrication training for EMT-Basic? TT- Yes. SP- We had him just playing a patient and he was freaking wigging out. I used to ask him, "How're you gonna wear a Scott pack if you're this claustrophobic?" Of course, Russ' brother Dick, and his dad, Alfonse, who was a lieutenant, were both on the job. So Russ was a great guy, but he was just a guy in the wrong place. He was scared to the death of getting sick from being on the rescue. Scared to death about catching something. The funny part was he contracted leukemia and died. And that was his biggest fear all along. TT- How did he make out with the airpacks? I've heard his name before, guys have mentioned him, but I never knew him. SP- I worked with Russ up at the 5's, and I remember having a fire at Colfax Packing in a machine, and I can name a lot of guys over the years that couldn't wear a Scott pack, but he muddled through. But he wasn't a fan of having to wear it. He wasn't a zero, he was really trying hard. He worked part time as a bartender at Chelo's up in Providence, Spring Street, and that always seemed to be better suited for Russ. He was very traditional to it, the fire service, and he loved the job ... As an instructor, I taught at many academies. You gotta be kind of mechanical, and you gotta work with your hands, use tools. If you're a guy that shows up and can't even work a screwdriver, it's not an easy place to be. TT- No, it's not. There's a lot of common sense stuff you have to have as well. SP- I mean the medical stuff has grown considerably since I got on there. I say it here all the time. The protocol book is like a phone book now. When I started it was thirty pages (laughs). And we still carried it in the truck (laughs). You know, Cardiacs had been established, but it was, when they first started you'd see that old TV show, "Emergency," and they'd carry everything into the house. They'd do telemetry, send a strip to the hospital. that was starting to go away when I started. When I got on, I was lucky. Pretty much everybody ended up in dispatch. But we still had three civilian dispatchers--Mo Barris, Mike McMahon, and Ray Tattaglia. So those three plus the new guys, filled all the spots. On the job, they were still in the middle of this big union thing. They didn't have outside testing for promotions, it was always in house. And the city got involved with playing favorites, so the promotions were always political. The union was really pushing for the outside testing. So they boycotted a promotional test. There weren't a lot of lieutenants. And back then there were no captains at all. They hadn't been invented yet. We probably only had a handful of lieutenants left, maybe less than ten? On the whole job. So there were a lot of guys placed as acting lieutenants. There weren't really bid spots to go to because you had guys that were on trucks acting as the officer. So they would just kind of put you somewhere to be the third body. You didn't really bid to that pot, you were just a fill in. When I went on I got assigned to C-shift, and so did Russ (Renzi). Russ ended up at Station 6. With Kirk Richards, John Hargreaves, and their lieutenant was Frank Boisclair, who later became Chief of Department. Frank, because of seniority and the vacancies, was placed in the Battalion Chief's car on C-shift. So it was Kirk, John, and Russ. Kirk died, John died, and Russ died. And then Eddy Addison ended up over there and he died. All of that crew died. TT- What did Kirk die of? SP- Liver failure. TT- Ugh. That's a bad way to go. SP- Yeah. And Kirk was really in shape and always squared away. TT- Was he boozer? SP- Not that I saw. TT- How did he die of liver failure then... Hep C? SP- Not sure. Might've been a cancer related thing? I don't recall. TT- There was a cancer thing at the 6's. Guys were telling me--you just rattled off a bunch of names. What did Addison die of? SP- Kidney failure. John died in a fire. TT- So where did you go when you first got on. SP- I ended up assigned to C-group as a floater. TT- Nowadays we call them Transfer guys. SP- Yeah. There spots open. But at the time we still ran four man companies, so depending on who had EMT-Cardiac licenses, they went to the rescue. After I got on in January there was another group that came on in April. Rick Slater was in that one. John Karbowski, Gary Gould, and then in June there was another huge group that got on. That was Boisclair, Kean-- TT- As far as the old school guys, there were names that just kept coming up, like Timmy Hayes, Buchanon... SP- Timmy Hayes was on Engine 1. He was an old school fireman, a real smoke eater. Buchanon worked with my dad on Ladder 2. Jack was a great guy. When I got on the job, next door to Cottage Street, where Walgreens is now? That used to be a lumberyard. Diamond Lumber. And Jack worked in the yard over there. The guy that was running the yard, the yard foreman, had retired. So Jack took over as yard foreman. So I ended up going to work at Diamond Lumber. With Jack. Until the day we closed the doors. As a matter of fact, I put the lock on the gate for the last time in 1990. TT- Didn't that place burn to the ground? SP- Right after it closed, Landry and Martin Oil Company bought the property and they were taking some of it down, because there was big timber comprising some of the sheds, and one night we were at the 4s and the doorbell rings at two o'clock in the morning and Mike Fox gets up and answers the door. Now Mike Fox was kind of like the consummate joker. He goes out to answer the door and there's no one there. He looks out the door and right across from the 4s, in the yard, the Insulation shed was on fire. So Foxy comes in the dorm and says, "Come on, guys, we gotta go. The lumber yard's on fire." No one believed him. "Fuck you, Foxy. You're full of shit." But it was really on fire. By the time we hit the ramp, it already went from the insulation shed down a whole city block to where the office was already ripping. It was pretty extensive. I mean we had quite a bit if damage to the houses where John Wallace lives now on Kenyon Avenue. That neighborhood suffered a lot of mills and fires. We burned down Diamond Lumber, which was right across the street from the station, Greenhalgh Mills, which was across the street from the station, everything around that fire station burned down. TT- And Star Gas before that. SP- Star Gas before that. TT- And when these names comes up, like Timmy Hayes, I mean these are well-respected dudes. SP- I worked with Timmy Hayes quite a bit at Engine 1. And he was just one of those guys that you didn't give any shit too. Whatever he said, you did it. And he wasn't a hard ass. He wasn't a freaking mean guy, you just didn't question the guy. TT- Because everything he said carried weight. SP- He had a lot of respect. Dick Meerbott was an actual lieutenant who used to fill in in the Battalion Chief's car, and eventually became the Chief of C-Shift. And there was another guy, Lt. Naughton, he was in the car a lot. He actually ended up going to Florida to become a cop. I think he's back up here now. You had Boislcair, who was moving up to become chief, and Bob Thurber Sr. who was the Assistant Chief, and he was another guy you just didn't question. Of course I knew them all. For me it was a little different. I knew the guys from the job because I grew up on the job. If you go to Station 4, in the trophy cabinet, there's a newspaper article from when the station opened in 1974. In the picture is Engine 4 and Ladder 2 parked on the ramp. And at the pump panel of Engine 4 you can see a kid standing there and that was me. And when I went on the job I was driving Engine 4 (laughs). I would bounce back and forth from Ladder 2. Joey, Roy Taylor, who was called Spud, Spud was a great guy. TT- When you were younger, as far as the transformation from the old school to you guys, Bobby Ogle's name came up a lot... SP- Bobby Ogle was a top notch firefighter. He was one of those friggin' Vietnam Vets, a great guy, not a bragger, another type of guy that if he liked you he liked you. You know the rumor mill on the job, and I never worked with him that much but I remember this specifically. I was on the rescue and somehow I ended up on Engine 1. I forget how. I might've been working for somebody. Anyway, I was on Engine 1 and we had a fire. I don't know the particulars, or how he thought I didn't know what I was doing, but I remember Thurber saying to me later, "Oh, you know Bobby Ogle was really impressed how you knew how to run the truck." I was always mechanical, worked on cars since I was twelve. TT- You're a licensed plumber, right? SP- Yea. Master-pipefitter. So I knew the trucks. I used to go as a kid. My father was always on Ladder 2. He got assigned to Ladder 2 when it was on Broadway, and he closed the Broadway Station when they opened Station 4 on Cottage Street (1974). When Ladder 2 got a new truck, it was a '72 Maxim, he used to take us to the plant in Middleboro where they were building the truck. I watched the truck being built as a kid. He knew every nut and bolt and grease fitting on that truck. Unfortunately for him, he always struggled with the promotional tests. But he knew that truck. He used to take an ass-kicking for staying on Ladder 2, but he was there with old man Halpin and he was in a brand new station he helped open, and we lived right down the road at Dagget and Central. He could walk to work. Why would he leave? He was on it when no one wanted to be on it. Ladder 3 was actually the slowest truck. We had three ladder trucks at one time. TT- Was Ladder 3 an aerial? SP- Yes. It was Ladder 1's old tractor drawn aerial. TT- So Ladder 2 was ground ladders only. SP- Yes. Ladder 1 was a '65 Maxim tractor-drawn, one hundred footer (ladder). Ladder 3 was an eighty-five foot tractor-drawn aerial, and Ladder 2 was a '48 Rio. I got pictures of all that stuff. TT- Brule said he went out to Phoenix, Arizona, and they have a museum out there. SP- The Hall of Fire. TT- He said the Haycart's there (one of the country's oldest firefighting apparatus). He said the minute you walk in it's the first thing you see, with Pawtucket right across its side. SP- We have an Aherns Fox that's in an upstate New York museum as well. TT- What about the Flower Pot? SP- The Flower Pot was a hand-drawn, 1800's pumper that used to run out of Engine 3. It's funny because the back of that--they call it the Flower Pot because the back had this big wooden chamber on the backside of it, and on the back was painted the city seal. And somebody sent my father a picture of that painting in the late 70's but I don't know where it came from. And where that truck is now I don't know. It might be in private hands or a museum somewhere. The Aherns Fox which was bought in '37 for the headquarters station, it was the most modern setup of the time. Our Aherns Fox was the only fully enclosed engine they ever built. They built one. TT- Why? SP- Originally I could never understand how the city of Pawtucket ended up with such a unique piece, but I heard from a guy in Seekonk who had a bunch of antique fire apparatus. The story was, at the time, they couldn't determine, because they didn't normally build fully enclosed fire trucks? They couldn't determine the bid price of the truck, so it was kind of an open-ended bid? So the extra money got funneled into the mayor's campaign coffers. They bought an enclosed engine and an enclosed ladder truck because they couldn't estimate the cost of the construction of the enclosed bodies because nobody built them. That was the rumor about why they bought the enclosed trucks. TT- So they could skim off the cost for the campaign coffers. Incredible. That's the one that's up in Buffalo? SP- Middletown. Middletown, New York. Fully enclosed sedan piston-pumper. The piston-pumpers at the time had a great reputation for moving a lot of water. But the City of Pawtucket had a completely operational water system with hydrants. Those piston-pumpers were more designed to draft than they were to be like today's centrifical mounted pumps. So how we ended up with a piston-pumper in a city that had a tremendous well run water supply system was odd. Matter of fact, when it arrived in '37, they didn't have the personnel to open another station. When they opened headquarters, Station 2 was on Main Street where the Senior Center's now. That was headquarters. When they built today's headquarters, that was our seventh station. The 6's now was the eighth station. The 1's was at West Avenue, the 2's was Main Street, the 3's was Prospect Street, the 4's was Broadway, the 5's was Mineral Spring Avenue and Smithfield Avenue. Where the driveway is for the Dunkin Donuts on Smithfield Avenue? That was the ramp for Station 5. Station 5 was the exact same building as the Hose Company on Central Avenue, without the round tower on the end. If you took the round tower off Central Avenue, that was Station 5, the exact same building TT- Now the hose company was just carrying hoses, right? That's all they had? SP- Yes. You had your pumpers and your steamers, and you had to have a hose company to bring hose, because there was no place on the steamer to carry hose. Engine 2 ran the steamer. Engine 1 was originally on the corner of Brown and Washington, and they closed that in 1911 when they finished building the 1's we know on West Avenue. The 6's was Central Avenue. And that was it. Then they built the 7's, which was headquarters, and the 8's, which is where the 6's are now on Newport Avenue, because after World War II that neighborhood started to grow. So that's why that station came into existence. TT- Now the steamer itself, it was obviously run on steam. SP- Just like a locomotive engine, that's what powered it. TT- So if the fire came in they'd have to fire up this steam engine from scratch? SP- They used a coal. There was a coal burner. The whole back of that steamer was a boiler, a regular water boiler like you'd find in any house from that time frame for heat. And it would produce steam that turned the pump. TT- Wow. No shit. So how long's it take for this thing to fire up? SP- I would have to think they kept something burning, because coal's not easy to light. You have to have a pretty good fire to light coal. So, you either had to keep it--now all of the stations were coal fired too, all of the heating systems. So whether they would grab some hot coals from the boiler, because you couldn't leave it running all the time because where would the exhaust go? How exactly they would light it up on the way to a fire to make enough steam, who knows. TT- What kind of water are we talking about with these trucks? How much did they carry? SP- The steamers? They didn't carry any water. TT- Oh, so they hooked right up and pumped from the hydrant. SP- Yes. Static water supply or drafting. That's why they call hydrants fire-plugs, because before they actually invented a fire hydrant, all it was was a plug in the water line. You just pop the plug out and it would fill where the opening was and you'd put your hard suction line in that. That's where your water source was. Because the water mains were originally made out of wood. You just had a big wooden plug in certain spots. TT- We're talking the 1830's and 40's when they were building the city, because I actually found some documents about how they-- SP- 1870s Union Wadding factory burned down, just like when we had it 140 years later. The other thing that was big in Pawtucket was that we had a chief get killed. Collyer. That's the monument at Collyer Park. He got killed when his Chief's cart tipped over and killed him. That was 1886? That was still fresh in the minds of guys as the 1900s came up to motorized apparatus. They always pushed for the department to go motorized, to get away from the horses because the horses were a lot to keep, to maintain, it was cheaper to run a fire truck. I think our first motorized truck was 1910. It ran out of Engine 2. And then the 1's got a truck. You know, it was always a myth that there was horses at Station 1. There were never horses at Station 1. It was actually one of the first stations built in the state of Rhode Island that housed motorized, modern apparatus. TT- So the pre-Station 1, before 1910, that station had the horses? SP- Yes. That was at Brown and Washington Streets. When they knocked that down, I have no idea. There's a house there now and the house is pretty old, like from the 1920's. Then the other Station 2, where the senior center is now? If you look across the street there's a building called Coyle Appraisal, that's the original Station 2. That building was the same architectural design as Station 1 at Brown and Washington Street. TT- Let's switch gears and talk about the Hargreaves fire, because you were on C-Group, right? SP- I was the first truck there at the Hargreaves fire. I was on Engine 2. I was the chauffeur. It was a sunny, warm, August afternoon, beautiful day. If memory serves me right, the first call came in from a cell phone, which was still kind of in its infancy. TT- Yeah, right? This is 1993. SP- Somebody on I-95 called it in. And the building was brick, kind of square, flat roof, had a chimney on the west side, and somebody called it in because there was smoke coming out of the chimney. Which, you know, I can remember coming up Exchange Street, and of course you have to go around Underwood to get around the highway, and John Buchanon was the lieutenant, Bobby Howe was in the backstep, and as we're turning the corner it was just a little whiff of smoke coming out of the chimney as if it was a boiler backfire. We didn't know the building had gas heat. So that's how it got called in. TT- You were driving, so you're pumping? SP- Yeah. TT- I hate pumping. You don't get to break anything. SP- As we pulled up there was a hydrant right in front. No Knox boxes at the time, or very few, so we smashed in the glass front door and there was a tremendous amount of heat. Their windows were smash proof, bullet proof, you couldn't look in any of them. I remember the guys going in and being down there through one bottle and they never really found any fire. But it was like, you would walk down the hallway and you'd feel heat, and then no heat. And then heat, and no heat. And nobody could really understand why that was going on. But it was because the fire started in the kitchenette in the basement. There was a big open conference room, and there was a kitchenette and a utility room where the heating system was. And the fire was in the kitchenette and it was feeding into the boiler room and it was a forced hot air furnace. It was feeding into the duct-work. Every place you walked by and felt heat was because the heat was coming out of the vents in the ceiling. TT- Jesus. SP- So they had no visible fire. Lot of heat and smoke but no fire. And then of course all the other trucks started showing up. And then I guess, Hargreaves, who was on the rescue quite a bit, before he ended up at the 6's, he was on Rescue 1 with Doc Lennon for a long time. He ended up at the 6's and I'll be honest with you, I don't know what he was doing in there because he wasn't one you'd find in a fire that much. Just how it was. TT- And freelancing on top of it. SP- Yeah, well, it was a lot different back then. There wasn't all this accountability training. We didn't even have enough radios. The officers had the radios. So, it wasn't like the building was ablaze, because no one could even come up with where the fire was. And on the opposite end of this conference room was a stairway that went up the back of the building. It was a concrete stairway, you know, poured down. It was open from the outside, and when you walked down it there was an exterior door at the bottom. And that's the door he came out of, but the only thing anybody--because nobody knew what happened. Nobody ever talked to him after he got injured (John Hargreaves died at Mass. General two weeks after suffering severe inhalation burns.) It was kind of like a split-level building. You came in the front door and you weren't on a floor. You had a couple of steps to go up to be on a floor, or a couple of steps to go down to be in the basement. But at the main entrance you were not on the floor. And down at the bottom of the basement stairs, around behind it, was the door to the kitchen area. And the only thing they came up with was that he was down there doing whatever, and opened that door to the kitchenette. And when he opened that door, he gave it a breath of fresh air, and off it went. Because when we went back to the scene later, the next day, that door was burned off. So like, when you opened the door, the door was burned off the top like you could see where the flames had been shooting out of the door. Now, if that door was open when we got there we would've known it. It had to have been closed. Nice big solid wood door. And the fire was in there, feeding into the heating system, so that's why the smoke was coming out of the chimney. And when he opened it up, it just took off. TT- Now I heard from a pretty reliable source, because when we went over this in our academy, it always struck me as being a really strange thing that this law firm had bulletproof windows, a double roof, all kinds of physical security, what kind of law were they handling, who were their clients, why was that building so protected? SP- There was a rumor that they had had some kind of death threats. From some case they handled and, you know, this is going back to the day when the mob was a little more involved with what's going on then it is now. Of course he was a senator, McBurney, and we never really got a great story as to why that building was constructed the way it was. My personal feeling, and it's always been since the day it happened, was that they burned that building on purpose. That was an arson fire, it wasn't an accident. The whole theory was that there was a toaster in the break room, and that it overheated, because it did burn through the countertop. The countertop was burned through. But what kind of electrical system would allow a toaster to draw enough juice out of a breaker panel to get hot enough to burn through a countertop before it would pop a breaker? You know most toasters, if the thing's on the way out, when you push the lever down it will instantly blow a breaker or a GFI outlet. This thing stayed on, sucking enough juice to get hot enough to burn through a freaking countertop. And of course, one of the relatives of the McBurney's was an electrician. TT- Someone else was saying that they had never seen a building, especially one involved in a line-of-duty death, be torn down the day after. SP- Two days after- TT- I heard the next day. SP- Well, within a week the building was completely gone. TT- Gone. Packed up and shipped out. And that was it. There was no investigation done-- SP- Well, there was a very limited investigation. Steve Johnson, who was in Fire Prevention at the time, you know, Steve was a pretty smart guy. And he had his theories of what went on there but if that fire happened today, that building never would've come down as quickly as that building came down. TT- Right? And there was also another rumor that I had heard that actually one of the lawyers was seen at the scene that day and went through the police lines and was trying to access the basement or something. Or he opened a door and flashed the place over... SP- There was a rumor that there was a guy who was friendly with one of the McBurneys, I don't know what his role was, but he wasn't an attorney. He was supposedly in the building that day. And he supposedly said that he was the last one in the building that day, and that he was the one that had used the toaster. I personally think he was the guy that set the fire. But nothing ever ... TT- Nothing. Isn't that crazy? SP- Because, I think their theory was that on a Sunday afternoon, that if they lit that thing, as tight as that building was, it would've burned down before we even got there. It would've been a surround and drown since nobody would've been in there. But it never really took off. If they had left the door open to that break room--I think they closed it--that was their fatal mistake. Closing the door choked it off enough. TT- So it just sat there cooking and steaming. SP- Right. TT- Dick Lemay told a story about that day where Al Jack was acting B.C., and Buchanon came out of the basement and was switching bottles, and Al Jack was just trying to get a handle on what it was you guys were seeing and finding in the building, and he went up to him asked, "What's it like in there? Do we have a shot?" And Buchanon--this is directly from Lemay--Buchanon turned around and said to Al Jack, "The Devil's in that fucking basement and he's gonna kill somebody." SP- Because they couldn't find the fire. Jack (Buchanon) was a good firefighter. They just couldn't find the fire. The place was smoking and choking and puking and you couldn't even open the building, couldn't vent it. The only vent was the freaking door we went through. TT- Did they end up putting the ladder through the wall? SP- No. It was still the old Ladder 1 at the time. That frigging thing couldn't knock down a rumor much less a wall (laughs) TT- Now as far as the job goes, like, everybody has near misses. Brule was telling the story about Star Gas when he was on a master stream pointing at that rail car-- SP- He must've been brand new if he was at Star Gas. TT- Brand new. This is like his first six months or something. But, they had him manning the master stream on the nose cone of the tanker railcar that was getting ready to blow up. (laughs) He was like, "I thought we were all gonna die that day." Then he brought up the Hargreaves fire where he got lost in the basement... SP- Yeah, actually the funny part about the Hargreaves fire was that he came out that stairway, Greg (Brule) did, before John. The theory was that he (Greg) opened the door (to escape,) and when it lit up, Greg must've just went out, and whether he (John) saw the light of the door being opened, and then headed that way--because that's the door he came out too--but of course when he came out of it this place was ripping. He walked right through this thing venting out--that was the freaking vent hole, the opened door. So he (John) went through a ton of heat. Now, by this point he wasn't wearing his Scott. He didn't have his mask on. The thing nobody could figure out was did he run out of air and take his mask off? Did he panic and take his mask off? Because, obviously, if he didn't hit the regulator, the bottle would've emptied. TT- Right? SP- There was no explosion or back blast, or any of that type of thing, so that theory of it blowing it (the mask) off his face, that didn't happen. TT- So they didn't even examine his gear afterward? SP- The biggest problem with outlying, not too busy companies, was that they were not well-versed in wearing an airpack. There wasn't a lot of training back then. Guys didn't understand enough about how it operated, and slower companies that didn't have a lot of fires didn't have a lot of experience wearing airpacks. And that might've been some of the issue. We had newer gear, not the best gear, but better gear than when I got on, but the back of his (Hargreaves) gear, because I was on the Safety Committee back then, his gear was all heat damaged, like his back was to the fire. He must've opened that thing and she must've lit off right behind him. It must've lit off at the ceiling. I think he opened the door and it just got that breath of fresh air and rolled out across the ceiling. He panicked, got disoriented, because normally you'd go out the way you came in. But Greg came out that stairway ... It was really starting to charge with smoke. So they started to evacuate the building, pull everybody out, so Greg comes out and then the next thing you know Hargreaves is coming out. TT- He was cooked. Brule said he doesn't even know how he himself found that door. He was down there, his vibe alert went off, got panicked, was trying to find the way he came in but found the other one instead. SP- Those were the only two ways out. The stairway we came down, and the one they came out. Because you're in a basement. Yeah, he found it by accident. But he still had his pack on. Now, if Hargreaves had his pack on going up that stairway-- TT- They don't even know if he had it on. They don't even know if he had air in his bottle, they don't know nothing. SP- Well, that was what happened. And that's how he ended up getting those inhalation injuries because he walked up through this super-heated air. So he had his pack on, but was he not wearing it because he panicked and took it off, or did he run out air--technically I think in the time frame he should not have run out of air, might've been tight, but he shouldn't have been out of air. I think he might've panicked and pulled it off. My theory. TT- It's a mystery. Every theory counts. SP- I didn't get to see a lot of that because I was pumping Engine 2. I got an ass-kicking because there was somebody there with a videotape, which we didn't have a lot like today where everything's videotaped. Back then, it was odd to have a videotape, so I'm on scene the whole time with no helmet on. TT- (laughs) And you're pumping too, I love that. SP- They were all flipped out that I didn't have a helmet on. Well, the reason I didn't have a helmet on was because John Karbowski showed up on Engine 3 with no helmet. It was back in the station. So I gave him my helmet so he could actually go in the fire (laughs). TT- What the hell do you need a helmet on if you're pumping? SP- Normally, I would've worn it. But he didn't have one. This is how shit gets blown out of proportion. "Oh, he didn't have his helmet on." "Well, he didn't have it on because he gave it to somebody else." (laughs). That was a fucked up year because I had just left Rescue 2 and went back on the line. TT- Now you did five years on the rescue? SP- Yeah. I was a driver for a couple of years and then I was an officer for three. And the biggest problem with that at the time, and it's still a problem today, it's a dead end job. So if you want to move forward and learn the fire end of it, being a Rescue Lieutenant, the only way I could get off the rescue and become experienced enough to become a Fire Lieutenant, was to give up my officership on the rescue. Turn in my pins. So that's what I ended up doing. TT- Who was your boss when you were chauffer. SP- Tomlinson. TT- Oh yeah (laughs). Seems like he and Lemay trained half of the job. SP- Dave Tomlinson. You know what the funny part was when I rode with Dave Tomlinson? I was the Cardiac. He was an I (intermediate). He wasn't a Cardiac. I would drive him to the scene and then I would ride with the patient in the back and he'd drive because I was the more higher-level EMT. I liked working with Dave. He was a good partner. I had a lot of good times with Dave. Then he ended up--see what happened was they couldn't get guys, you had to be a Cardiac to take the test to be rescue officer. And those guys weren't Cardiacs--Dave Tomlinson, Tommy Feeley, John Smith, they let them take the lieutenants test because we had such a big turnover, there was such a big group of guys that were Cardiacs, like me, and those twelve that came on, we were all Cardiacs but we didn't have three years. (Pawtucket requires three year minimum to be in charge of any apparatus). So the guys that had three years were the '85 group, which was the Tomlinsons and all of those guys, Smitty. So they let them guys take the test without being Cardiacs and then they let them get it afterwards. So that's how Tomlinson became a Rescue Lieutenant. TT- In your career, you saw enough fire. Was there ever a particular fire where you got jammed up? SP- There was a couple. When I first got on the job we had a highrise fire downtown, 10 Goff Ave. TT- Meerbott told me about this. Was this the one where you guys rescued 65 people? SP- Yes. So, I'll never forget it. I had literally walked in the door from Cardiac school. I was in the officer's room talking to Al Deroche. It came in. And it was a big deal to have an actual high rise fire. The thing that was a benefit for us was that the fire was on the first-floor. So hauling shit up to the upper floors wasn't necessary. The smoke had spread throughout the building. Of course Fire Alarm was getting inundated with phone calls because everybody in the building was calling. I remember being brand new on Ladder 2 and Meerbott telling me to vent all the upper windows, to smash them out. And I remember saying to myself if I start smashing all them windows on the upper floors there's gonna be a lot of glass falling. When I went up the ladder to the first one, they were big giant sliders. So I slid the window open and then went around to each apartment, sliding windows open rather than breaking them. I remember taking a lot of people out of there. It wasn't so much a dangerous fire, but we didn't train a lot on highrise operations. We started to after. But the benefit of it was that the fire was on the first floor, so the ability to attack it--not on upper levels using standpipes--they could use the line off the engine to reach it. It made it easier. But the worst one I think I had was that year I was on Engine 2. We had Hargreaves, and then, just before Christmas, we had just switched from the bigger Scott bottles to the smaller ones we use today. Literally just switched. It was about 11 o'clock at night. Vale Street. Engine 1's first due. Lot of phone calls. It was a second floor building fire. And a lot of radio chatter on the way over. A lot of confusion stuff. Engine 1 was Al Jack, Brule, Lemay was on Rescue 1, Conroy was with Lemay, and Bruno Maravelli was on the 1's with Greg and Al. They got jammed up in a stairway because the old school, when they had the old Scotts, you'd only crack the bottle. Well if you crack the bottle on those new 4500s, they ice up. You get no air. So they're in the stairway, they got no air, they can't get out of the stairway. Their Scotts aren't working. So we're supposed to be the water company. Engine 2's second due. So I hear Jack Buchanon yelling back to me, "They're calling us to go to the fire! We're not laying a line." So we pull up and it's burning out of the front living room--venting, ripping out the front. He says, "We're gonna stretch a line down the driveway and go up the back stairway." I'm not brand new, I got five years on the job, and I was a rescue officer before that. I'd gone to fire school on my own through the state because we didn't have 1001 class run for us so I went on my own. So I'm stretching the hand-line down the driveway and I'm looking up and saying, "Well, at least it's vented, so I'll be able to see." It's in the front corner and I'm coming up behind it, so I can push it out. And of course we're also looking for a seven-year-old. I get up to the apartment and I get in the apartment and I get fucking hit with this fucking huge wave of heat, smoke, like I'm on the kitchen floor. Now I'm alone, because Buchanon's at the bottom of the stairs feeding line to me, so I'm by myself. And my mind's going, "What the fuck is going on here?" This thing was just free-burning a minute ago. It was already vented. Why am I getting killed up here? Am I in the wrong apartment? Now, I got hot water coming back at me. I'm searching around, I find the kid, bump into him, so I go to bring him down and Meerbott meets me at the bottom of the stairs. The two of us--now Rescue 1's jammed up. It was right around the corner from the 1's, so they came with Engine 1. Rescue 2, Tomlinson's truck, is two blocks down the street because the street's filled with fire trucks and apparatus. And Vale Street was tight. So we run down the street with the kid. As I come out the front, there's Ladder 1 with the master stream pouring into the apartment. Meerbott had Ladder 1 knock the fire down and almost killed me. And probably killed the kid. Because the heat, it was already venting, you wouldn't have had a lot of heat building up. I think it would have been survivable if he hadn't had all that heat and nasty smoke blown back on him. So that was pretty shitty. But I was always of the attitude, "I'm just a firefighter. I didn't light the fire." I felt bad the kid perished in the fire, but it's part of the job. It happens. It's gonna happen. It was shitty but what're you gonna do? That was 1993. 2001 I was in Fire Prevention with Jeff Johnson. And we had another one in the 1's where a kid died in a fire on Pawtucket Avenue. Same age, like six blocks away. That was a fucked up fire too. The mother came home, it was a rainy night. She had one of those gas on gas stoves? It was a heater and a stove. She hung her coat on the stove and the night got cold, the thermostat on the stove came on, the heater came on, and lit the coat on fire. It set off the smoke detectors. She gets up, she takes the coat, she had one of those plastic trash barrels, and she throws the coat into the trash barrel, then throws a pan of water on it and goes back to bed. The kid's in the room with her. Like a half hour later she wakes up and finds the kitchen ablaze because the coat was still burning. So, she panics. There's a fire escape right by her window. Instead of putting the kid on the fire escape, she runs through the fire. Maybe she thought she was gonna put it out or something. But the kitchen was ripping. She gets burned, severely, and now is trapped on the other side. TT- Oh man. And the kid's in there. SP- He cooked. It was fucked up because she couldn't talk. Finally, when she started to come around, she was afraid that she was gonna be arrested for the fire. She wouldn't talk. So I ended up going down there and she ended up telling me the whole story. Because we could not figure out how this fire started. We had the can that was burned down to the floor, we had the kitchen burned, there was nothing from the stove, meaning nothing cooking on the stove, she wasn't a smoker, and you could see the fire started in the trashcan but nobody knew how or why. She told me the whole story. And then, she had some mental issues to begin with, so I'm in a Dunkin Donuts seven or eight years later and she still knew me. TT- Wow. SP- "You're Lt. Parent from the fire." I couldn't believe it. TT- Jesus. SP- It was crazy. I mean there she was. TT- What an awful story. There are so many. Thank you for taking the time to sit down. SP- No problem.
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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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