June 18, 2018
Growing up, Al Jack wanted to be a fireman, but before he was hired in 1973, he had never stepped foot in a fire station. Before his career was over, he would serve in Pawtucket as a private on the line, as an officer, as a Battalion Chief, and finally as Chief of Department in both Tiverton and Seekonk. Always thirsty for knowledge, he was widely regarded as one of the most educated and tactically proficient Battalion Chiefs on the job. This interview was conducted at his home three years after he retired as Chief of Seekonk. Level-headed and measured, this is what he said ... TT- Why don't we start with what year you got on and how old you were. AJ- Funny story. I was at a wedding for a good friend of mine, and I happened to be at the bar. I was talking to a friend of mine's dad, who was a Pawtucket Policeman. He was a motorcycle officer. So I'd just come back from active duty, I was in the Guards, and he said, "What're you gonna do with yourself now?" I said, "I'm thinking about becoming a policeman." Because my MOS in the Guard was MP. And so he says, "Don't do that. Why don't you be a fireman?" I says, "Oh no way. I could never be a fireman." But I ended up taking the test a number of months later. They gave me a call the following year. I got on because of a federal program at the time, the EEA. Emergency Employment Act. They had hired some people under this EEA, and what it was was a federal job service for municipalities to help put people to work. There were some stipulations. I took the test. There was like 600-700 people there and I was very fortunate, I think I finished twenty-second. The city was working Kelly days, which meant 56 hours a week. We came on right as they lowered the hours to 48. After they created the Fourth Battalion. So they needed more fire guys. There was five guys waiting from that EEA program so they put them on. TT- What year is this? AJ- Those guys got on in either September or August of '72. TT- When did you go on? AJ- I started February 27, 1973. On the EEA program. I had no formal training. Had no fire school. Had never even stepped foot in a fire station before that. Ever. Very intimidating as a young kid. I was twenty-two at the time. I walked into the fire station, didn't know where to go, I went by where the old kitchen was. It was screened in. And there was a number of guys in there, because it was change of shifts. I prided myself on being punctual, so I was there at 7:30 AM. I didn't want to go in and just interact with anybody, I was very shy. I saw two guys way in the back. Ladder 1 was a tiller truck back then, a '65 Maxim. And there were two older guys sitting at a round card table. There was a long extension light hanging from the ceiling, like at head-height. Twenty-foot long cord from the ceiling right over this table. The two men sitting there were officers, which I didn't know at the time. One was the engine lieutenant, one was the ladder lieutenant. I walked up and said, "Excuse me. My name is Al Jack and I was told to report here today." One of them, who had his back turned to me, a kind of jarhead haircut looking guy, short, stocky guy-- TT- You remember his name? AJ- Dan Cronin. He turns to me and says to me exactly these words. "Who gives a fuck?" And now with that I just wanted to leave. TT- (laughs) AJ- (laughs) It kind of put me in my place immediately. And I didn't know what to say. Five seconds goes by and the other officer goes, "Ah, don't pay any attention to him. I was told you're supposed to start today. My name is Farrel Tuite." He was the lieutenant on the engine. And that was my very first day. I ended up working for Stretch, that was his nickname, on and off for years. TT- Talk about Stretch, because I hear different guys bring his name up. He was a character, right? AJ- Stretch was a real character. He was tall, very tall guy. Lanky, somewhat of a beer belly, mustache. Stretch was a great historian. He would tell stories about guys I never saw, never knew, back to when he'd started. Going back to guys in the 50's and 60's that were on the job. And telling stories that they told him. So he was a pretty unique individual. He taught me a lot. He was my first officer. Had a lot of respect for him. He made lieutenant when the hours changed, when they went from three shifts to four. He was at the Newport Avenue station, he had also been the chief's driver. The chief had a driver when I got on the job. So anyway, Stretch ended up being bid to Engine 2, B-Group, and I started there with him. TT- Who else was on the truck? AJ- Paul Keenan, great guy. I saw Paul at Firemen's Memorial Sunday. (Every year in Pawtucket, they read the names of every guy who has passed away for the last hundred and forty years). Paul taught me an awful lot about being a firefighter. Ernie Houle was on the truck at that time, but then he went to the ladder truck. I think I was the fourth spot initially. We're talking like February of '73. I can't remember if there was a fourth man assigned. Downtown, just like the 3's, was a double-house, and guys would bounce from the engine to the ladder. Downtown also had a rescue unit. So sometimes if there was a guy out, whoever was an EMT would have to go on the band-aid truck, as they called it back then. At that time, that was a suburban. A Chevy suburban. A '68 I believe. One rescue. The backseat would be folded down, and there was a cot there if we had to transport. We had oxygen and bandages but that was pretty much it. TT- Costigan did the rest, right? AJ- Costigan Ambulance transported just about everything. We used to have codes back then, a whole code chart, and there would be signals--"Signal 23" was send me an ambulance. TT- I just want to circle back to Stretch. And the older guys talk about this guy-- AJ- He was a real character. TT- Like you just said, had all the stories almost like a historian-- AJ- He very well could have been--in my opinion he didn't get the recognition he deserved. I had left the job and Stretch was still on. TT- Did he get on in the early 60's? AJ- I believe it was the early 60's, not sure though. I think he came on with Chief Thurber, Boisclair, and Lundgren. They were all in the same circle of friends. Stretch was ... we used to have the ticker-tape that would come in, street boxes, and Stretch knew, I mean we're talking hundreds and hundreds of street boxes and businesses. Stretch knew ninety percent of them by just listening to the clicks over the speakers. TT- Now the old school-- AJ- . There was no down time. If you weren't doing anything you were studying streets. And they made sure you knew your streets. If you didn't, and said you knew where you were going, they'd actually quiz you. We'd have street drills, and we'd do them not as a company, but as a house, so everyone was involved. People from both trucks would be involved in that. Even the rescue guys, when Rescue 1 was downtown, even they jumped in. There was always something to do. And if you passed all your street drills and still had nothing to do, you cleaned the truck. You never read the newspaper. Or if you did, it was in the afternoon after the officers were done with it. Back then, you couldn't hold a hand-light. Sounds ridiculous, but privates never touched a hand-light. That was for the officers. TT- Did you say hand-light? AJ- Hand-light. Flashlight. It was kind of an elongated standing vertical light with a lense on it. It was on a charger in the front of the truck, so privates never had access to it. If you were caught with one, it was a big deal. "Who the hell is this kid?" So you had your place in the pecking order, and I'm not saying it was the right thing, but it was how these guys broke in, and it was how they wanted to break you in. I got a lot out of it. It was good for me. Today, that wouldn't fly. Today, the fire service has a higher expectation of people coming on the job and they of you. Much more educated. So you try to tap into the knowledge they have and make better use of it. Back then, you did what you were told. Period. TT- Follow the senior man and keep your mouth shut. AJ- Right. TT- The ventilation stuff was new back then, right? AJ- It was very new. TT- Back in the day, I heard they would put the freaking master stream through the roof while guys were in the building. AJ- Right. No one should've been in there. Exactly. TT- Smitty and Chickie both told stories about getting pummeled by the master stream. AJ- They were nuts. And you would take an absolute beating. Especially if you were on a stairwell trying to make the third-floor--we had a bunch of second and third-floor jobs back then--and just trying to make a stop, all of a sudden you have 500 gallons a minute coming down on you, and it could kill you. The heat comes down with it, and a lot of guys got hurt. TT- How old were you when you got on? AJ- Twenty-two. TT- So you went from high school to the guard to the job. AJ- Yes. I had a couple of years of college, had an associate's degree. I was permanently sworn in October 21, 1974. TT- So you and Smitty are basically the same age. AJ- Yes. I went to the 3's and then came back downtown. I wasn't personally fond of the officer at the 3's, no disrespect to them, I just thought it was more of a relaxed atmosphere at the 3's, and I was a young guy chomping at the bit. I wanted to do more. So I came back downtown after 5 months and started on Rescue with Spike Levesque. TT- That's another character, right? AJ- Unbelievable. He, again--I have personally three people I tried to emulate in different ways--one was Stretch, with his dedication to the job, he was a party animal, and outside of the job everybody knew him. We had gone to a funeral in Chelsea, Mass, there was a bunch of us in the car. We stop by Fanueil Hall, we're just coming in the front door, and the bar was on the opposite wall, and there's maybe a dozen people at the bar. And that was all you heard. Swear to God. "Hey, Stretch!" We walk over and there's a bunch of firemen from New Hampshire. Never seen them before, didn't know them, but they knew him from other funerals. So he was a character, and he taught me alot. Another guy who taught me was Spike Levesque. He knew the street. He had a rapport with people on the street that was incredible. He could de-escalate anything. I mean you could have someone waving a gun around and he would talk them into putting it down. He was just able to work with people, any kind of person. He was a funny, funny, funny guy. And the third for me was Chief Thurber. He was Assistant Chief before he retired. As a Chief officer, I wanted to be able to lead people the way he did. I tried to model myself and my leadership capabilities the way he did it. It was difficult to get people to do what you want, especially with thirty guys on a shift. You've gotta sell people, you gotta get them to buy in, and Chief Thurber did that. Those were the three guys. You took the parts that were important to help you grow. I remember coming on in October '74, getting sworn in, and telling my mom, "Wouldn't that be great if I started at the very bottom and finished at the top? I'm gonna try to do that." It wasn't possible in this city, because of how the top job is structured (politics), but I was very fortunate elsewhere. TT- Were you born and raised in Pawtucket? AJ- Yes. Lived off Pleasant Street, Tidewater Street. That's where I was born. And then we moved to Blackburn Street off of Benefit street near the Checker Club. TT- Now, do you remember your first fire? AJ- Yes. Very first fire. There were a bunch of us that had just come on, we were all told to report downtown. That same week, it was an oven fire off of Main Street. I think it went out because all of us consumed all of the oxygen in the room. No kidding. Guys like Stretch were like, "Oh my God, here come the new guys." It had slight extension. TT- What about your first good fire? AJ- Um, there were a number of them. We were very busy back then. Pleasant Street, you know those apartments when you cross Division Street? Those weren't there. The Portuguese Social Club was there. That was a really good fire. And we burned almost every house up and down Pleasant Street. TT- Now this is from the 95 interstate project when they cut through the city. Literally taking people's homes and land to do it. This was a big deal. They pretty much ripped the city in half and gave them twelve bridges to make up for it. AJ- They did. Yes. I remember that as a child, when 95 was built. It kind of divided the area, as far as response? And the ability to respond? So it definitely changed that aspect of it. But back then we had so many fires it was crazy. TT- It sounds like Detroit nowadays. And the houses they took, they boarded up. Not all of them got demolished. Some of the closeby ones were probably worthless. Who wants to live ten feet away from a highway? AJ- "Plywood Alley." That's what they called Mineral Spring Avenue. Lonsdale, after that on the lefthand side, I had family that lived there. On Lonsdale Avenue. So I knew they called it Plywood Alley. And it just burned. Main Street? At Main Street and Lonsdale, opposite the mill up at Sterry Street, Sisson, all of those were burnt. All of those. The Teddy Bear Club, everything. I don't even have enough fingers to count how many house fires we had in that particular place. TT- Chickie was talking about the camaraderie, and how the bond between Pawtucket and CF is so strong. And back then, it was concrete, because you guys were all at the same things. AJ- We were at the same things, you interacted. When I first got on the job, the drinking establishment of choice was Sullivan's, but it's former name was the Boulevard Tap, it was Joe Marques Boulevard Tap, but it was called the Boulevard Tap. And Friday night, that's where you would go. And we'd make the loop and it would be with Stretch and Spike, make the loop from there to the Elks, and then, if it was really late, me and Spike would head to the Broad Street Tavern, I mean real dives and real dumps-- TT- (Laughs) AJ- There's so many funny stories. Some I can never repeat. Here's a very true story about one night with Spike Levesque. I was a kid, twenty-three years old, assigned to the rescue. It was Christmas Eve. TT- How old was Spike if you were twenty-three? AJ- I'm guessing probably early forties. We had a run to the Broad Street Tavern. It was a bar that we went to often. And it was a tough place. So we'd always go there and there would be fist-a-cuffs. This is Christmas Eve, nine o'clock. We go in there and there's somebody who got popped, they didn't need us. We patched him up, he didn't want to go, everybody's cocked. So Spike's interacting with someone, and it was Alice, and she was pretty much one of the most disgraceful people I had ever set my eyes on. Heavy, heavy lady, massive breasts, I mean just smelled, the whole nine yards, just sitting at the bar, sitting at the bar almost taking up two stools, and she was involved in this altercation. I don't remember if it was her that popped this guy initially, so anyway she's talking with Spike. And I've actually seen him put his own money on the bar for these people. You know? That's the kind of guy he was. She said, "Spike, who's this?" Spike goes, "Oh it's just my fucking partner." That's how he would talk. She said, "Oh, he's cute. He's young." So he goes to her, "Well, do you want him?" (laughs). She goes, "Yeah." He goes, "Okay, you can have him." She grabs me, I turn to look at him and he's already picked up the medical bag and oxygen and he leaves. TT- (laughs) AJ- Now I'm--she's got me and I can remember everybody laughing. I was horrified. She's got my head between her breasts, and she stunk to high heaven, and literally I can remember trying to move my feet away--because it happened that quickly. He went outside and had a cigarette. TT- (Laughs) AJ- That's how long it was. And he comes back in and says, "Alice, you can't keep him." TT- (laughs) AJ- I remember they had to have an actual discussion. Like a five minute discussion about why she had to let me go back to work. And I just couldn't believe it. We got in the truck and he lights up another cigarette, and I'm behind the wheel, shaking, and I'm like, "I can't believe you just did that to me." And he just thought it was the funniest thing in the whole world. We got back to the station and everybody was laughing, he tells Stretch, he tells everybody, just buries me, so yeah, that was one night with Spike Levesque. TT- Was there ever a fire where you said, "Maybe we shouldn't be in here." AJ- We called it, "Going to the Shrine." It was a term we used back then for when you thought you were gonna die. There was only two of us on the truck, Stretch and I, and the fire was on Pawtucket Avenue, two houses before Sayles on the right hand side. And Engine 1 was in there. Timmy Holloran, a great great guy. Everybody used to use booster lines back then going into the fire. TT- Timmy Holloran was the officer? AJ- He was a private. He worked with Phil Healey. An old-timer. Jimmy Murray came on in that group of people before me, Jimmy was assigned there. I think he was on the truck that night with Timmy. They only had two people. You couldn't see anything. It was a first-floor job and it was a bedroom in the rear of the house. Stretch said to me--I'm driving-- he says, "We gotta go in and back Timmy up." Because he was alone. So I went in, followed the hose in, no SCBA, no Scott, because you wanted to show everyone you had a set of nuts. I went in, made it into the first room, started to find the second room, and that's it. I stood up, big mistake, got some heat, I tried crawling back out, and the only thing I remember is somebody pulling me. I made it to the door but I couldn't get out. There was a screen door. I remember someone pulling me but my wristwatch got stuck on the lever inside, the lever for the screen door. Finally they just pulled me out, ripped my watch, ripped the lever right off. And the next thing I remember was laying out front in the bushes, and it was a police officer that had pulled me out, and of course everybody starts arriving. Ray Naughton was on the rescue, because I hadn't transferred over to the rescue yet, and in the B-Section of the Journal back then was local news, and there on the front page of section B was a big photo of me spread out like this (mimics a beached carcass). I was unconscious. TT- So you took a blast of heat and smoke and went unconscious. AJ- Timmy came out fat, dumb and happy and was like, "What's the matter with this kid?" (laughs). Because that's the kind of fire guys they were. TT- Talk about that for a second. Guys like Timmy Hayes-- AJ- Oh my God. TT- Timmy Holloran-- AJ- There was a bunch of them. Leo Masse, those were fire guys. As officers, as firefighters, they, my God, they did superhuman stuff. As a kid, you wondered how they could do it, because I couldn't do it. Unfortunately, most of them paid for that. But they could go in and take smoke. Ray Murray, he was another one. He was my Battalion Chief. I remember we'd be in there and hearing him, and Ray, he sometimes, he was an old time fire guy. At the time I had taken a lot of classes and stuff, finding in my mind that there was a better way to do this, and Ray didn't want to hear any of that. As a Battalion Chief he told you to do something and you better friggin' do it. He would be standing in back of us while we were on the line saying, "No, I want it over here. I told you over here." And you were like, "Are you kidding me?" Timmy Hayes and these guys, they'd be smoking a butt on the way to the fire and come out--I smoked back then--and the first thing they'd do is put a butt in their mouth. You would look at them and be like, "I don't even know how they could do that." TT- What about other big fires along the way? AJ- Oh God. A number of fires. I was the chief of Tiverton when Greenhalgh Mill lit off. We sent an engine, I got here about four o'clock in the afternoon, Ronnie Doire was running the mill fire and actually had the Command vehicle lent by the Massachusetts Fire Marshal's Office. I ran the city. TT- Because you already knew it. AJ- I knew the city. So I took the city. They didn't have to worry about that. There was enough to worry about already. TT- So you retired from Pawtucket as a Battalion Chief, right? AJ- Yes. I retired at the end of June in '01. I made rescue lieutenant in '83, fire lieutenant in '89, captain in '92, battalion chief in '97, and retired in '01 to become the chief in Tiverton. TT- You stayed there until ... AJ- I stayed in Tiverton for three years. I loved it there, I'm still friends with all of them, I really did like it there. I didn't leave because I was disenchanted, I just wanted more. TT- So '93 was the Hargreaves time. AJ- Yeah. TT- You were in charge that day if I remember correctly? AJ- Yeah. I was kind of avoiding it, not because I don't want to talk about it, I just don't ... I've had a number of fires, as a Battalion Chief. There was a reporter that worked for the Times that would call me the "Black Cloud." We had more fires on the Fourth Battalion when I was Battalion Chief than all of the other shifts combined. For like two years it was crazy crazy crazy. So John Hargreaves lived in Rehoboth. And I was building a house in Rehoboth. Believe it or not John and I were not friends, we were in the same fire school, and he was a few years older than me, and he would stop by my house when we were building it. I was a captain on C-Platoon working Engine 1 on West Avenue. Loved it. That was my favorite truck. TT- Right? AJ- Loved that truck. Loved the station and loved the truck. Meerbott was the B.C. Well, Meerbott took vacation and that put me in charge. I was the queen for two cycles. And that was my biggest fire--not necessarily the biggest fire, not necessarily the worst fire, but the worst thing that ever happened in my whole entire career. TT- Lemay was saying that at one point during this fire, because we all know about the building construction. I mean this place was a fortress, like breaking into a bank vault. They finally got in, couldn't find the fire, the heat was so intense it would come and go in waves. I guess at one point, Lemay said Buchanon came out and you asked him, "How's it looking in there?" AJ- There were a couple of guys that you know, I mean you work with these guys. Buck was in my fire school. So I know John. We were friends, and John was a good fireman. There were some other guys, Roy Taylor was one, they called him Spud, he was on Ladder 2. Guys historically used to say they went to the 4's to hide, or bid Ladder 2 because they didn't want to do anything, but I'll tell you when the bell hit those were two guys I would always always rely on. And so I did ask Buck. He came out and there were a number of people I relied on because I didn't know what the fuck was going on. It was horrible. And I kept throwing people at it and back then it was "Special Signal this, Special Signal that" and when I became a B.C. I had more authority to change things, but back then I was a captain. So anyway, I said to Buck, "What's going on in there, what can you tell me?" I forget how he described it, but he did basically say it was hell in there. TT- Lemay said that Buck turned to you and said, "It feels like the devil's in that fucking basement and someone's gonna die." AJ- I don't remember it like that. Spud, you talk to him, there was two inches of rubber on that roof. And we were smoking blades trying to get through. I can't tell you how many blades we tried to put a hole in that roof. If I had that fire today, actually if I had it the following day, my approach would've been totally different. I would've backed the fire truck into and through that corner. I knew where the fire was, knew where the fire was, but we couldn't vent the building. I mentioned a good friend of mine, Rene Couto (Central Falls Chief). Rene comes out and goes "What do you got?" I was like, "Rene, I can't vent this fucking place. We can't open it up." He said, "What do you got?" He said try this. We already had. He said try that, we already had. I had people in there and Tom, I can tell you this much, I'm very comfortable in my actions that day. Could I have done things different? Yes. You know, you have to know, that everyday, every single day since then, I relive that fire. Every day. I was the second person to see John when he came out. Face to face. I grabbed him. The fire presented itself as being, the building presented itself being something that was impossible to deal with. Again, our approach back then was--and I'm not blaming anyone else--I was in charge. It was just different. John Hargreaves came on the last truck. Engine 6. TT- You guys were trying like hell just to get into this place-- AJ- I needed people. I can tell you this much. That was August 22, 1993. I had been on the job 20 years. The very first head count that I experienced on the Pawtucket Fire Department was the one I held that day. That one. I pulled everyone out of the building because I was looking for Greg Brulé who on the 1's. Greg was in charge of the 1's because I was in the car that day. Greg moved up and got lieutenant's pay. Guys were running in and I literally stopped two people from going in the building. I won't mention any names but I stopped them from going in the building. It was like on cue. Brulé comes bee-bopping out of the building, out the door I elected not to open. And the reason I didn't is because I didn't want to flash the fire. I had been part of seeing what happens when a fire flashes and gets oxygen from an unknown source, and that was back in the late 70's with Kevin Rabbit. Kevin had to leave the job because of the injuries he sustained that day. TT- Were you working that day? AJ- I was. We got Special Signaled. I was downtown on Engine 2 with Stretch. We went there and had missed Kevin. They had just taken him out and threw him in the back of a police car to take him to the hospital. Kevin was inside, found a dude, grabbed him from the bed, stood up, guys didn't know and introduced oxygen from another source and the second floor lit up completely. TT- A reliable source says that Rabbit got left up there alone. AJ- He did. His officer left him. And Ray Wallach, God rest his soul, Ray Wallach was at the top of the stairs and saw Kevin wandering around and grabbed Kevin, and the whole house was lit up. They thought Kevin was Mack Qualls, and Mack was a black guy, that's how much soot he was covered in. So anyway, at that Hargreaves fire, as we all refer to it, I didn't want to introduce oxygen, and Greg comes out of that door that guys wanted to open but I was like, "No. We have to vent it another way." I wanted to vent it where the fire was. We knew where it was. Contrary to what people say, we knew where the fire was. It took a while to find it but we just couldn't vent the building. What I should've done, and what I would've done today, is I would have backed the fire truck into the corner wall where we knew the fire was and vented the building. I had pulled everybody out before. It wasn't like I left people in there. We did a head count. Saw Greg, barked at him for a bit (he was freelancing), Greg was a great fireman. But it was after that, unbeknownst to me, that John entered the building. He should not have been, was told not to, he was told not to. They actually have him on film, there was people--there was an investigation. It was the most half-ass investigation I've ever been a part of in my entire life. TT- Meerbott said that same thing. He went even further and said the building was completely torn down within a day or two and put into dumpsters and trucked away forever. AJ- It was a couple of days later. TT- I mean this is a line of duty death. It doesn't get anymore serious than that. There was no investigation, and they just bulldozed the whole place into never-neverland. AJ- I just couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe it. Even our investigation on the fire department was nonexistent. Maybe you heard this, but I was interviewed later when the guys from OSHA came down, and their biggest concern was Steve Parent pumping Engine 2 without a helmet on. TT- Jesus Christ, I heard this too. Talk about ludicrous. AJ- And they asked me, they drilled me. "Well, how come your men weren't wearing all of their gear?" TT- Honest to God, the guy's pumping the fire. He's the safest one on the entire scene. AJ- I said, "Well, first of all I wasn't aware of that initially. I confronted him and he told me that someone on another truck had lost their helmet so he gave the guy his helmet. Steve gave him his helmet. Two guys were grilling me. They came after me for an hour and a half on gear. TT- Now this is a line of duty death investigation and these guys were worried about the guy standing on the street at the pump panel with no helmet on. AJ- John's Jacket was frayed in the back. His cuffs were burnt off. His collar was burnt. The heat damage to his coat was unbelievable. TT- Just for the record now, we're talking about the confluence of a number of horrible things all at once. We're talking about a building no one could get into, no one has radios except for the officer, and if the radio gets wet it doesn't even work, no one knows where anyone is unless they're on the radio-- AJ- You tried telling guys to stay together. I remember telling Kurt Richards-- TT- And also, not for nothing, but Hargreaves wasn't someone you'd have to normally worry about because he didn't have the reputation as an inside guy. AJ- John wasn't an inside guy, even he would tell you that. TT- It's almost like he wandered into an environment that he never should've been in. AJ- Shouldn't have been in there, he was told not to be, he was supposed to stay with the others. I instructed him to, I instructed his officer, which was Kurt Richard who was a captain, and he said, "Okay. chief." Kurt went inside with his guy, and the only way I knew John went in is because there was a person on vacation and we were able to seize the tapes. Honest to God, there's a picture of John walking up the walkway into the front door of the building, by himself, following a hoseline. I can't remember if he had his mask on but he was pulling his gloves on. The guy was on vacation taking pictures. He sees a fire guy going in and snaps a bunch of pics. So we know he went in, he wasn't supposed to, we don't know why, don't know where he was. I interviewed everybody later on, "Did you see him?" Not one guy saw him. TT- No one even knows what he did in there, right? AJ- He wasn't in the working group. He wasn't on the hose teams, he wasn't on the backup teams, he wasn't searching for a vent. He was by himself. TT- There's been a lot of crazy conjecture about why he would even go into that building. I don't want to get involved with rumor mongering, but it just seems like it was a combination of events and this is what happens. AJ- It's a terrible--not for me to say his reasoning. There's only person who knew that and he can't tell us why. He did things he shouldn't have done. TT- When I was talking with Meerbott, I was like, "What the hell was in that building that was so important that demanded all this security?" Two inch re-enforced bulletproof glass, two roofs, it was like breaking into a bank and I've built banks. A couple of them, actually. They are not easy breeches. AJ- They had been firebombed before, the McBurney Law Office, and I don't know them well enough. I went to school with John (McBurney), young John, I went to Saint Ray's with him, but I don't know what the family was into or not, I just know the building had been firebombed before. There was some questions about it. I just find it hard to believe that I was interviewed by OSHA for over an hour and a half, and those two guys just grilled me about gear. I was like, "Are you shitting me?" Nothing about tactics, nothing about strategy, and then, to have the building be taken down within a week, I still can't believe it. Our Fire Marshal at the time, I'm not casting aspersions against him, but if it was me, I would've asked a lot more questions. Here's a guy who was fubared. I mean it was obvious to everybody that he was in very very serious condition, and we had gotten reports back in the following weeks that things were bad. Guys were taking watch at his house in case the family needed anything. The wife was given a car to drive to Connecticut, sometimes with a driver, police or fire. The police department really stood up for us. A lot of people don't know that, but John's family was--everyone tried to look out for them. But prior to the incident, John did not have a very good relationship with the city administration. It was ugly. But still the city stepped forward. The police department did, the fire department did, for him and his family. About a month later he passed away. He had been transferred to Boston. The burns that he had on his wrist, hands and neck were bad, but the thing that really killed him was the sepsis from the infections he had in his throat and lungs. It's unfortunate. It's a shame that it happened, but I'm good with it now. TT- It's a dangerous job. AJ- It shows. You can be-bop in and think, "Oh it's just a little hot, I got my SCBA on." John came out with his mask off. No one knows why. I can't explain that. His hands were burnt. I went through the building myself, assumed it was him, there was soot on the palms of his hands, and there were palm prints chest high down the wall along the corridor from which he exited. Handprints, fingerprints, not gloves. We kind of pieced it together that he had his glove off, made his way with his left hand down that hallway. Don't know why that glove was off, don't know why his mask was off-- TT- There are too many questions that can only be answered by one person. AJ- Like I said, I think about John everyday. I see him as he came out of the building everyday. I deal with it. John's in a shoe-box that I have. And when it bothers me to the point where I think I've got to deal with it, I'll imagine myself going to a closet, opening the door, and taking down a shoebox. I'll deal with it. Sometimes it's five seconds, sometimes it's five minutes. Close the box, put it away, close the door, I'm good. So that's the way that I have been able to-- TT- Everyone that's spoken on this blog has said the same thing. It was a bad situation made worse by the decisions he may or may not have made. It's just a tragedy. And that should be the end of it. Now, let's switch gears. As you went through your career, you held every position. And then you became Chief in two other places. You went through the hole spectrum. Aside from the Hargreaves incident, is there anything you would change? AJ- No. No. In my mind I got to fulfill a childhood dream. I remember I lived off of Benefit Street from five-years-old until I got married, running after fire trucks and only going as far as my parents would let me go. Never been on a fire truck, didn't know any firefighters, but I got to experience that. To start at the very bottom and work my way up. It didn't happen in Pawtucket, but quite honestly I'm more proud of that, that in my opportunity in two other towns, I had competition. It wasn't bestowed on me, I wasn't knighted, I had to compete with other individuals. And I had tried for nine other jobs. TT- What are you most proud of? AJ- The city of Pawtucket does accountability every twenty minutes on scene. Guess who started that? As a B.C. I just didn't like the way things were being run, so I did a lot of reading, and I picked that up from the Kansas City Fire Department. Every twenty minute time marks. The chief at the time said, "We're not gonna do that." I said, "Well, I'm going to do it on my shift." He said okay. That was Jim Congdon. He came on the job in the school before mine. We did it. Every twenty minutes. The Kansas City thing just made so much sense. You got a thirty minute bottle on. This way if you have a problem you address it before the problem turns into a crisis. It took a couple of years for me to enact that. Mike Levesque was another progressive BC. We were able to instill that in people. It just made so much sense. These are the type of things, positive things. A testament of a leader is what he leaves behind in others. And that's my job. It was as a rescue officer, a line officer, a B.C. or even as chief. It's what you leave in others after you're gone, what you've done. And I believe in that.
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Mike McMahon- August 5, 2018
It seems fitting that during a week where we said good-bye to one Vietnam War hero, that we might find the time to hear another patriot's story. Voluntarily enlisting in the Marine Corp during a war all but guarantees combat. Mike McMahon was eighteen-years-old when he arrived at Parris Island in 1967. Before that, as a Rhode Island native, he had only been to Long Island and nowhere else. Soft-spoken, but dead earnest and sincere, his eyes at times reflect that certain look only attained by people who have persevered through hardships 99% of us will never experience. Not expected to survive, he was told his life was basically over. He left Vietnam on a stretcher and began absorbing what would eventually become half a decade of pain and misery. But he's not the kind of guy that wants your sympathy. Far from it. Giving no quarter, this interview was conducted in his home fourteen years after his 2004 retirement. He was a dispatcher for thirty-six years on the Pawtucket Fire Department, and this is what he said … TT- Are we talking about Pawtucket born and raised? MM- Yes. TT- Where'd you live? MM- I grew up on Orth Street. On the corner of Columbus Avenue and Orth, up above Tomillini's Market. I lived there until I went into the Marine Corp. TT- Inducted what year? MM- 1967. TT- How old were you? MM- Eighteen. TT- Did you graduate from Tolman or Shea? MM- No. Vocational. I didn't graduate. I quit to go into the military. TT- Why'd you pick the Marines? MM- I always wanted to be a Marine. One of my best friends was in the Marines and on the same day I got hit in Vietnam, he got discharged. So every year now he and I go away with another buddy of mine who was in the Army. TT- So you showed up at Parris Island ... MM- Yes I did (laughs). TT- Talk about that. This is 1967, which is fifty years ago. Nowadays it's a tough place to be, but back then it must've been a real shit-show. MM- I was just talking to a woman. Her son's at Parris Island now. She said, "Oh, my son was going through the gas chamber today." And I went, "Well, how do you know that?" She goes, "Oh he texts me every night." And I go, "What?" (laughs). She goes, "Oh yeah. We text back and forth." And the mothers text each other about how their sons are doing. And I couldn't believe it. TT- Because back in the day, you had no contact with anybody. MM- None whatsoever. TT- Did you get one phone call a week? MM- No phone calls. The only time I got a call was at graduation. My mother came down, my aunt, and another guy who people probably, a lot of guys on the job today probably don't know this, but one of my best friends was Wayne Vignalli. He ended up on the fire department on Engine 2, and then he caught some rare disease and he died at thirty-years-old. TT- Shut up. MM- Yup. TT- What was the disease? MM- They never found out. I told his wife I thought it was Agent Orange. TT- Wow. So he was dead in '78, '79? MM- 1980. I had just gotten married to Mike and Matty's mother. TT- So Parris Island, you get off the bus, Drill Instructors are running around, The Round Browns, raining down hell-- MM- And I went, "What the hell did I do?" (laughs). TT- It's a different world, right? A different galaxy. Had you been out of Pawtucket before that? MM- Long Island (Laughs). That was about it. TT- So you went from Rhode Island and Long Island to Parris Island. MM- Yup. TT- Obviously, when you get there it's a chaos. Everybody's screaming, you get stripped down and they give you whatever you're gonna need for the next, how many weeks was Basic back then? MM- Twelve weeks. TT- That's a long road. MM- It seemed a lot longer. (both laughing) TT- When you were at boot camp, did you see anything crazy or funny? I mean it must've been a show. MM- The first week, there was three of four guys that tried to commit suicide-- TT- Jesus. MM- Whether they lived or not we never found out, but I walked out of the bay one time and there was a guy bleeding to death. He had taken a razor blade to his wrist. So when they took him out, the D.I. gathered us up and said, "If you're gonna do that, don't go this way (horizontal), go this way up your arm, we can't save you." TT- (Laughs). Way to share some instructional information. MM- (laughs). TT- Now is this because of the draft? How long had that been going on for? MM- There was always a draft. Since World War II. That stopped in I believe it was 1976. TT- That's right, I forgot there had always been a draft. MM- I was appointed to the draft board when I finally came back from Vietnam. TT- So four guys are trying to kill themselves just to get out of there the first week. This kind of place, you gotta dig deep. Or just be too young not to care, right? MM- Well, let me tell you. Vietnam was like a vacation comparatively. (Both laughing hysterically.) TT- Now as far as--I was never in the military, so pardon my stupidity if I ask stupid questions. So what time did the day start at Parris Island? MM- Five AM until eight o'clock at night. Then we got a shower, stood inspection, and then it was lights out. TT- Bunch of tired guys, right? MM- Oh yeah. You slept great. (laughs) TT- When you were done with the twelve weeks and graduated, did you get to pick your M.O.S. or specialty? Or did they just say, "This is what you're doing." MM- The night before graduation, they got us all up in the middle of the night and gave us our orders. We were all going from Parris Island (South Carolina) to Camp Lejeune (North Carolina) for more training. Most of us were going to 'Nam. There were very few that weren't. Most of us were going. TT- So it wasn't like you signed up thinking you were gonna be in communications but they handed you a rifle instead. They told you what you were gonna do. MM- Yes. That's right. I mean they promised you the world, but ...(laughs). That buddy I was telling you about, Wayne Vignalli, we grew up in the same neighborhood together. He went for electronics, but he ended up in 'Nam too (laughs). TT- All roads led to 'Nam. MM- Yes. It was him I joined the Marine Corp with, and I also joined with Dick Lemay's brother-in-law. Tommy Collins. TT- On no way. MM- Yes. So the three of us went in under the buddy plan. TT- You were eighteen in '67? So Lemay is two years younger than you? MM- Yes. TT- He went in in like '69, I believe. So after Lejeune, what did they tell you? You're a rifleman going to Vietnam? MM- Yes. TT- Infantry. MM- They call them grunts. Infantry is the Army. TT- Jesus, sorry about that. I told you I had no idea what I was talking about. What did you get put into? Give me the whole battalion, unit ... MM- Once I went to Camp Lejeune, that was just training. We were in the Second Battalion. Then when we graduated and I came home for twenty days, then I went to Camp Pendleton for more training, and then we went to Okinawa, and then to Vietnam. TT- Did they send you to Okinawa on boats? MM- Naw, naw. We flew TWA. (laughs) TT- Nice. MM- Once I got to Vietnam I was assigned to the Third Battalion, Twenty-Six Marines, K-Company. TT- How many guys in K company? MM- Thirty of us. Well, in a company there's a lot more, but in my section there was thirty of us. TT- So K-Company is made up of four smaller units? MM- Well, they're all the same. You got M-Company, K-Company, Bravo Company, Alpha Company. TT- How many guys in the Third Battalion? MM- A few hundred anyway. But half of them we never saw. They could've been in a different part of the country. I was up north. TT- How long were you in Okinawa. MM- Six days? TT- Now what did you show up with? What were you allowed to take? MM- Nothing. TT- Just a sack full of clothes? MM- Right. TT- And a gun? MM- No. We didn't even have a gun at the time. No rifle yet. TT- So you showed up basically with a sack of clothes. MM- Your sea-bag. One bag. You didn't need much when you went over there (laughs). TT- You're going to war, right? This ain't no disco. MM- (laughs) TT- Are you nineteen at this point or still eighteen? MM- Eighteen. TT- Wow. That's pretty big, man, right? Eighteen-year-old kid going to war? That's pretty fucked up, pardon my French. Now, were most of you eighteen, nineteen, twenty? MM- Yes. We had a few older guys, a couple of guys were a little bit older, but most of us were eighteen, seventeen. TT- Couple guys snuck in. MM- Yes. TT- What's the age limit to enlist in the Marines? Thirty? MM- Something like that, but now it's different. Like the fire department today, at one time the age cut off was thirty-two. Now there isn't one. TT- So six days in Okinawa and then what? They load you up and say, "See you later." MM- Yup. They give you your orders and we landed in Da Nang. And from there I took a helicopter to Hill 51. TT- Now Da Nang itself was the base for all incoming and outgoing soldiers? MM- Yes. That was the main base. When we got off the plane, we did a 360 around us, and the Air Force guys are laying on their jeeps getting some sun and laughing at us. (Both laughing) MM- We didn't know what to expect. TT- Chair Force. Those guys were chilling. (Both laughing) MM- That night before they shipped us out, all you could hear was the bombs going off. The 105s in the background. TT- The Howitzers and stuff. MM- Yes. It was ... It made you grow up pretty quick. TT- Now, this is '67, '68. Shit's turning bad over there, right? This is the time of the Tet Offensive. (9000 US and South Vietnamese deaths, 35,000 wounded) MM- '67, '68. It was getting bad. TT- So you get in-country when? Do you remember the date? MM- September of '67. TT- How long were you detailed? MM- Thirteen months. That's how long I was supposed to be there. TT- Did the Army do the same thing? MM- I think the Army was twelve months. TT- And most of the guys drafted had to do what, two years? MM- Yes. I joined for four. TT- You signed up for the whole bit. So you were a gung-ho dude. I mean people don't voluntarily enlist into the Marine Corp during a war and expect anything else, right? MM- You knew it when you joined. That's why you joined. TT- So you ended up on Hill 51? Where's that at? MM- Up north. Near the DMZ. TT- Where was the DMZ? In the center of Vietnam? MM- That was right near North Vietnam. Our orders were we couldn't go over that line. TT- So you had to hold whatever that line was, that position. Your area. MM- Right. TT- How big an area are we talking about? MM- Well, I don't know because half the time they sent us out we had no idea where we were. We did what we were told. We would have firefights, and lost a lot of guys. TT- You're in K-Company. Did all thirty guys go out on patrol together? MM- Sometimes we would, other times my squad would go out. Which was four guys. TT- Four guys in a squad? MM- Yes. Squad leader and three men. TT- That's pretty hairball, right? I mean what did you guys have? You had a radio and a gun, right? MM- Yup. And half the time the radio didn't work (laughs). TT- The radio gets wet and fries out. That's crazy. MM- The worst part as far as I was concerned was the L.P.'s, the listening post. They'd send you out at night, basically 500-600 yards from the main group, and you'd be out there all night long, alone, just the four of you. And you'd be watching for the enemy. And now when the enemy, when you could see them, we would call in and say, "We can see the enemy." And they would say, "Wait for contact." (both laughing) MM- Yeah, right. We're gonna wait for contact? We're gonna be in the middle of where you're shooting at. TT- Right? Did you guys have Claymores set up? As a defense at night? MM- No. TT- Jesus. Wow. That's crazy. So you'd be around Hill 51, right? This was the perimeter watch? MM- Yes. Well, I was at Hill 51 for a short amount of time, and then I was on convoys running from Quan Tri up north, to Phu Bai down south. And other times, my main camp was Camp Evans. After Hill 51. We'd just go there for the day. Clean our gear, try and catch a little sleep, a shower if we could, then go back out to the field. TT- Wow. Now driving convoys can't be safe, right? MM- No. Especially if you were going through mountains. You'd drive through and all they would do is lob down hand grenades. But November 10th is the Marine Corp birthday. And we'd be doing a convoy and they'd be having a big celebration back at Phu Bai. We were gonna have a nice meal. Well, we got attacked. So we spent the whole night out in the wilderness. TT- That doesn't sound like a very good party. MM- No. TT- Now, for people who don't know, or guys like me who never served, walked the line with an M-16, when you get into that first moment of contact, the first time you--I mean what is that feeling like? It's gotta be freaking intense. MM- You're scared shitless. (laughs) And if anyone tells you they're not they're full of crap. TT- I guess it is like the fire department in a whole lot less deadly way, where you would follow someone who knew what the hell they were doing, right? MM- That's right. TT- Because you don't know. MM- Right. And two months down the road, you're the old guy showing the new guys. TT- Imagine that? Two months in and you've already seen so much that they're following you. MM- It's churning over. Who gets shot, who gets killed, and who goes home. TT- As far as, do you remember your first firefight? MM- Oh yeah. TT- What happened. MM- It was around sundown. And they started lobbing in mortars and firing, and now it's just holy hell. You know when they say don't look down, always stay up? That's not true. When those bullets are flying you might stick your head up once in a while but ... (laughs). TT- When you were in the bush, on the hill, how often would you come back to the base you were talking about to clean gear and eat? MM- Like every week and a half. TT- So we're talking like a day and then you'd be going right back out. MM- Yes. TT- Now what was the recreation? Were guys sneaking in booze? MM- No. One time, this guy that I grew up with in the same house, he was in the Army at the same time. His mother had said, "Joe is in Phu Bai." So, when we were making convoys to Phu Bai, I spent the whole day looking for him. And as I'm going through the Army base they had beer. And they're like, "Have a beer." "Oh, sounds good." It turns out he wasn't at Phu Bai he was at Foolung, so I spent the whole day looking for him and he wasn't even there. TT- So the Army had beers and you guys didn't? MM- Not all of them. This was their main camp, so they had a few beers around. But out in the field no one had anything. We were supposed to have two beers a day as part of our rations, but out in the field forget about it. And half the time, by the time we got up to Camp Evans, everybody had already stolen everything. TT- (laughs). Now would you guys interface with the Army a lot? Or were the Marines on their own? MM- We didn't see much of those guys. TT- Were they in the same area as you? MM- Yes. Another guy, Ray Mathieu, who was the job as well, he went to Vietnam two years after me. And Camp Evans, which was a Marine Corp base, by then it was Army. TT- Vignalli. What happened to him? Where did he go in Vietnam? MM- You know, I don't know. We never talked about it. I never spoke about Vietnam until a couple of years ago. It wasn't a war where you bragged about it because people spit on you, some people hated us. My buddy Joe had to sneak out of a hotel when he got back because he had his uniform on. TT- That is fucking crazy. MM- Well that's how it was back then. I got my purple heart up there, I never... I put it in a box. My second wife, Jackie, she said, "You take it out. You be proud of it." I am. I'm very proud of it, but back then it was a different story. TT- That's a tough part of our history. What the America public did to its own sons. A disgrace really. MM- It was a tough time. They called us baby killers. It was a tough time for our military. That's why today, if I see a military man, I walk up, shake their hand, and say, "Thank you for your service." Just like the fire department. It's the same thing. TT- People forget about that aspect. Today, they're welcomed home like heroes. Back then, they were sneaking you guys back in. Flying you in at night. That's pretty crazy. MM- Even some of the guys you knew, when you came back--except for me, I was in the hospital for couple years when I got back--but guys you knew would be hanging on the corner, and you're saying to yourself, "Wow, these guys have changed." Well, it wasn't them, it was you that changed. You're not a kid anymore. TT- You can't get a more transformative experience than war, right? MM- Right. TT- So Vietnam was going along, getting worse, things are getting worse. At this point, are you guys holding your positions? Trying to advance? It sounds like a ground game. Like a stalemate. MM- The Ho Chi Min Trail is how they would bring their supplies down. From the north to the south. And we would try and cut those supplies off. So everyday, you'd go out looking for the enemy in certain places. If they had enough guys you'd have a firefight. If they didn't--they had a great--we found one of their camps one time and we had to crawl for a like a half mile through the jungle. And when we got there they had more C-rations than we had at our camp. TT- Wow. MM- When it came to booby traps and hiding places, they'd been fighting there for thousands of years. TT- That's their backyard. MM- Right. We could've really wiped them out, but it was a politicians' war. "Don't shoot here, don't do this, don't do that." TT- They tied your hands. You could've carpet-bombed them into the stone age. MM- Yes. TT- I think that might be the first political war, right? Where's it's not really a war, it's like a conflict. MM- That's what they called it. I had one of the radiomen, when I was working at fire headquarters downtown, tell me, "I was in the Big One. WW II." Because someone had told him I was in Vietnam. So I said, "Well, how did they die in that war. Is it different than the 'conflict' I was in?" (both laughing) He just looked at me. Does it matter if you call it a war, a conflict? You're still dying the same way. TT- I never really looked at it like that but you're right. That war could've been over in a week. Now, when you're over there, and you're ground pounding with the grunts, and you see these guys going down around you, you're buddies, what is the process with this? Immediate evacs? Did they pack up the wounded guy's stuff and send it to him? MM- Nobody sent me anything after I got hit, so the guys probably helped themselves to my stuff. And God bless them. When we got hit, we were in the field. When I got hit, they had to clear jungle so the helicopter could land and take me out. TT- Jesus. Were you on a patrol when this happened? MM- Yes. TT- Explain that day. MM- It was December 8th, 1967. We were making sweeps through the Ho Chi Min Trail. My best friend over there, I've always known him as Wade. So when I used to go to the Wall, because I heard everybody got wiped out. And I always looked for him but my memory was shoddy. Turns out his real name was Jim Wade. I thought Wade was his first name. Anyway, we're making the sweeps. You walked flank. There was a main column, and then you had the flank-men. Two on the left, two on the right. TT- How far away from the column are they? MM- Maybe fifty feet. TT- So they're watching the sides making sure there's no one sneaking in. MM- Right. So there was this big open spot. The flank-men were covering the column. Well, this Jim, he was out there, and we stopped for a break. He had about twenty minutes left on his shift on the flank but I told him, "Don't worry about it. You go in the column and I'll do the flank." I was second flank-man and the guy in front of me set off a booby-trap. And when I walked I looked down and that's when I saw it--then it went boom. TT- Wow. Holy Jesus. Any idea what it was? MM- They said it was a Bouncing Betty. TT- Did he live? MM- Yeah he did. He got a little shrapnel, but I got the worst. TT- And you were behind him. MM- Yes. What they do is, they have a delay. So if it was the column, they don't want the first guys, they wanted the middle of the column to get everybody they could. TT- Jesus. So this thing goes off. Are you knocked unconscious? MM- Oh yeah. I remember a little of it. I was told my whole outfit got wiped out. And I thought that for thirty-five years. When I found out they didn't, this guy Wade told me, he goes, "(After the explosion) I heard you calling for me. So I came up and you go, 'Gimme a cigarette.' So I placed the cigarette in your mouth. It went in your mouth and came out here." My throat and chest had been blown open, so the smoke was just seeping out. After that, I woke up in the operating room and then I went out again. I don't remember how long I was out. TT- Now the injuries themselves, what're we talking about? MM- The whole front of my body. My hand. TT- Right hand, right leg, torso, throat, the face-- MM- Part of my chin and ear got blown off. This is my good leg-- (At this point Mike McMahon lifts his pant leg to reveal a scarred shin. There are deformities and divets.) And this is my bad leg (this shin as well is scarred and pockmarked, but it looks as if someone took an ice cream scoop and scooped out the front of his leg.) I still have shrapnel come out even to this day. TT- That's what Lemay said. He said every now and then a piece shrapnel works its way out of your body. MM- It does. Fifty-one years later. (Both laughing) MM- Here's a quick story. When my mother-in-law was dying downstairs, I had an operation. One of many. I've probably had seventy-five operations-- TT- Did you just say seventy-five operations? MM- Yes. So I'm laying up here, my wife is now taking care of her mother downstairs, I'm up here in pain. So she comes up to take care of me and as she's leaving I go, "Jac." She goes, "What?" I say, "Come here, come here feel this for a second. What's this?" She comes in and feels the top of my head and goes, "Mike, it's just a piece of shrapnel." She gets downstairs and stops dead in her tracks. She says, "It's just a piece of shrapnel? Like it's normal?" (both laughing.) TT- From what I heard, your injuries were so severe, so extensive, that they flew your parents to Hawaii so they could say good-bye. MM- They flew my father to the Philippines. They had given me the last rites. TT- Holy shit. So from the explosion to the Philippines, how long are we talking? MM- I'm not sure, because I was in and out. I think it was sometime after Christmas that they sent my father. Not my mother, just my father. He came with the parents of two other injured guys. And out of the three of us, they said I was the one that wasn't gonna make it. The other two had a chance. Well, the other two died, and I made it. TT- Wow, that is so completely crazy. So you weren't even supposed to leave the Philippines alive. MM- Nope. They gave me the last rites, and then they came in one day and said, "You got company coming in." And I went "What? Did the priest come and see me?" The guy goes, "No, your father's here." Now, my father wouldn't even go to Ann and Hope. (laughs) He was not a traveler. TT- He's a Rhode Islander, right? They can't drive anywhere longer than twenty minutes. MM- God bless him. He got on that plane. They had to get him a passport and everything. The Red Cross sent him. It was a new program. And if they hadn't sent him, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you now. TT- Why do you say that? MM- Because I would've died without him. I was pretty bad. I would go into convulsions, I was all torn up, and he'd just yell, "I told your mother you're a fighter!" TT- Wow. He was your rock, right? MM- Yes. TT- How long was he there for? MM- Well, he was only supposed to be there for a couple of weeks, and they said, "When are you leaving?" And he goes, "I'm not leaving until he goes with me." TT- Wow. Holy shit. MM- While he was there, General Westmoreland, who was the general in charge of the war, and his wife, they lived in the Philippines. So his wife used to have my father over for supper every night. Not only did my father take care of me, he took care of everybody else on the ward, too. He was taking care of everybody. So one night General Westmoreland's aide, I think he came from Boston, he came in and said, "You mind if we take your father out? He's been here two or three weeks." I didn't want him to leave even though they were only going out on the town. So they go out, they're picking up this nurse, and they get jumped by a bunch of Philippinos. So my father goes, "Here I am, they got knives and they're coming for us." And the nurse, she got out and cooled everything off. He says, "They took me right back to my room, because they grabbed a bunch of guys and went back..." TT- Payback. Now, so how long was dad there? MM- Four or five weeks. TT- You went home too? MM- Well, I couldn't walk. They flew me to Chelsea Naval Hospital. TT- Chelsea, Mass? MM- Yes. TT- How long were you there for? MM- Just about a year? TT- A year? Oh, man. MM- And then they discharged me and sent me to the V.A. Another story, after I got hit, I weighed seventy-six pounds when I got back. TT- Oh dear God. MM- They had given me bad blood, it was hepatitis, so anyways they put me on a two beer a night ration to put some weight on. Every night I'd have my two beers, I get over to the V.A. where they're operating on me again, and they realize I'm not twenty-one. They had to call my mother and get her on tape so they could operate on me. So, like three days later after I was feeling better, I said, "I think I'll have my beer now." And they go, "You can't have a beer. You're not twenty-one." TT- No. MM- I go, "Are you kidding me?" (laughs) TT- That is crazy. MM- Isn't it? TT- So, it's easy to lose track of this, but you were like only nineteen at this point, right? MM- Yes. I had my nineteenth birthday over in the Philippines. TT- In bed. Jesus Christ. So you got home, you were in the hospital for a year, and you're basically re-habbing all these injuries, right? They fix one thing, there's another operation, they do this-- MM- Altogether I was in almost two years. TT- That's a long road, man, right? You have to be a fighter to do that. I'm sure there were guys that were like, "I'm out. This is too much." Right? MM- There was a lot of overdoses, because they were giving out pills. I mean if I ever told you how many pills-- TT- These guys are horribly wounded, right? They're trying to get them as comfortable as possible. But the side effect is death. MM- Yes. And all of a sudden they're hooked. TT- It's a horrible situation. How much pain-- MM- See I'm not, for me, I'm not one for taking medication. Sometimes my doctor's get mad, they're like, "You gotta take it or you'll--" but I've just seen so many guys get hooked on drugs. TT- Right? The lessons are right in front of you. So basically you're eating pain for three years. Rehab on its own is bad enough, but throw in a couple dozen surgeries to boot. So you get home, you're discharged from the Marines. MM- Right. TT- Honorable discharge. MM- Right. Well, uh, that's not really accurate. It's a discharge, but not really. You're always a part of the Marine Corp. Because you were wounded. TT- Those hospitals, I've seen 'Born on the Fourth of July--' MM- Yeah, I don't watch any of those movies. TT- But the hospitals themselves, was it sub-standard? MM- Yes. Chelsea Naval Hospital was condemned in 1952. TT- Jesus. MM- The main hospital wasn't bad. But when you--even when I got up, even though I had a cast on, they gave me a job during the day. I worked in the nursery signing in kids there. TT- Really? MM- Oh yeah, you were still in the military when you were up there. TT- They probably wanted to get you up and moving around instead of-- MM- Laying in bed. Yes. But that part, when you left the main hospital? That's the part that was condemned. The first shower I took, I had a plastic bags covering (my wounds,) and someone flushed a toilet and I got burned. TT- Jesus Christ. MM- It was terrible. TT- So you get back to Pawtucket. You're nineteen. What happens now? MM- I was saying to myself, "What the hell am I going to do with my life?" I wasn't doing much but then a buddy of mine, Joe Marx, said, "Hey, I work with Frank Sylvester, Bob Thurber, Tom Magill. They're on the fire department. Why don't you see if you can get a job driving the fire truck." My main thing after the Marine Corp was that I wanted to be a State Trooper. That was my dream. But I knew at that time I wasn't gonna be a State Trooper. So I go down to city hall and say," Hello, I'd like to get a job driving a fire truck." (laughs) Personnel says, "We don't have any jobs like that. But we do have a job opening up dispatching." So I says, "That sounds good." I take the application, I go home, put it on the bureau, I'm in Margaret's Ice Cream Parlor when I run into my buddy Joe, Joe Thomas, he was a Pawtucket cop. I hung around with his son. He came in and goes, "Hey, Mike, how you doing?" I go, "Not bad, not bad." I said, "I put in for a job as a dispatcher for the fire department." He goes, "Oh yeah?" He leaves. He calls me the next day and says, "Mike, where's your application?" I go, "On my bureau." He flips out and says, "Get that thing and get down here. I'm over here talking for you and they're telling me 'who the hell is this guy?'" (laughs) So I went in, Vinny Doyle, Jimmy Doyle's father (Jimmy Doyle would later become mayor), he was a retired cop. He became Public Safety Director. I went in to talk to him and he says, "You know, Mike, since you were in Vietnam, I'm gonna give you the job." I said, "Thank you, sir." He says, "Go talk to the chief." Romeo Monast was the chief at the time. So I go over to Romeo and he wouldn't talk to me because he had somebody else in mind. TT- He wanted to give the job to his people. MM- So I went back to City Hall and say, "Well, what do I do now?" Doyle goes, "Go home, I'll call you tomorrow." So he calls back and says, "You start Monday." Chief Monast, for a year, didn't talk to me. Stretch Tuite, who was his driver at the time, I was talking to Stretch and I said, "Boy, he can't stand me. He never even talks to me." Stretch goes, "Are you kidding me? When I pick him up in the morning and he hears you on the pipe, he says, "Good. We got Mike working today." And I'm figuring this guy hates me. TT- But you knew what you were doing. Chiefs like that, right? MM- Absolutely. Best thing that ever happened to me. TT- There's gonna be a lot of names in this, because this Stretch Tuite guy I just found out about. I heard he was a character. I heard he was one of these dudes that was just into the history of the job-- MM- He knew everything. TT- Knew the dudes, knew the city-- MM- Knew every box. That's when we had street boxes. TT- I'm not sure how to talk about all of this. We'll start at the box stuff. Now, the story I heard about Stretch was, was that if a box would come in, it would open--like the radio and speakers would open up, and you would hear the clicking of the box? And he knew what box was coming in by the clicks. MM- Yes. That's right. TT- That's crazy (laughs) MM- When I retired in 2004, I bet I knew every street in the city. When Matty (his son) started working for Medtech Ambulance, if he had a run he would call me. I'd tell him where to go. Now, it's reversed. After a while, your memory ... But Stretch Tuite, he was a hell of a guy. Chief Thurber was another one, one of the greatest guys in the world. TT- These are guys everyone speaks highly of. People loved Chief Thurber. And Stretch, but I never met Stretch. MM- With Stretch, whenever he went on trips, it wasn't how many miles but how many beers it took to get there. (both laughing) MM- Back in those days everyone had a cooler in their car. You wouldn't dare do it today. TT- Back then things weren't like they are now. Everybody is a busy-body. Now, Stretch went from driving the chief to lieutenant. MM- That was a bid spot, driving the chief. Iggy Carrol, Chickie's dad, he became the cheif's driver after Stretch. TT- So is this when they went from three battalions to four? MM- Yes. Like 1973, '74. They went from working three-three-and three, to four-on, four-off. TT- When you were dispatching, what were your hours? MM- Two-two and four. TT- So you were doing our schedule--two days, two nights, four off. MM- Yes. Every shift was different. And every Battalion Chief ran his own ship. So things could change depending on who was in the car. TT- Now at this time, we're talking about the Paul Keenan's, Massee, Smitty, Heaney, Dan Cronin was running around-- MM- Dan Cronin. Now there's a name I haven't heard in a while. Great guy. TT- People loved that guy. What was he like? MM- He would've made a great Marine. He didn't take any bologna, but he was so respected. You must've heard of Frank McVeigh? TT- Yes, but I don't know a whole lot about him. MM- He was on Ladder 1 A-Platoon. Same thing with him. TT- Now this is back when the city was burning. They rammed I-95 through the city and they boarded up a lot of stuff. MM- There were no sprinkler systems yet-- TT- I've looked at some of the logbooks and it's just incredible the amount of code reds you guys had. Like every other day was a two or three-bagger. So, you get on in 1970? MM- 1969. When I got on, I think I weighed 80 pounds. TT- Jesus. Now this is in the beginning of your rehab and surgeries and followed by more rehab, and all of this took years. It's a miracle story, a miracle you survived, and even more of what you turned yourself into. Now, at this point, dispatch was all civilian? MM- Yes. When I started, everybody was like 60-65. TT- And you're a twenty-year-old kid. (both laughing) MM- That's right. A year later I was like number two in seniority, and a year after that I was number one. TT- That's some turnover. Now, you were also teamed up with another legendary character named Moe Barris. MM- Great guy. TT- And you were partners for years, right? MM- When I started off, I was working with Leo Delaney. He was on Engine 4 and when he got older he bid into Fire Alarm. Ray Tattaglia was my partner as well, then I bid off his shift. TT- So if nobody bid in, they would take guys off the line? MM- Yes. When Ray Tattaglia was working with me, a lot of times he would have Moe work for him, because he owned a fence company on the side. Moe was on B-Platoon, I was on D-Platoon, and we both ended up bidding to C-Platoon. TT- Now Moe, I mean we're talking about a guy who went to D-Day, right? MM- Oh yeah. You know what? He never told me anything about it. I never even knew until someone else told me he was there. The best part of the story is that he had met up with his brother on the beaches by accident. I still, maybe once a week or every two weeks, his son will call me, and we'll meet over at Quinn's for a couple of beers. He goes, "You know, I don't have my dad anymore .." TT- How old was Moe? You were twenty, and if Moe was in WW2 he had to be in his forties by the time he met you. MM- Yes. He got on under the Emergency Employment Act, in like in 1973, so he had to be forty-one or forty-two. When we got into the union, he was too old by then to get into the pension plan. So he stayed in the state pension. TT- We're talking about a salty bastard. I heard stories about him, that he kept ground beef in his locker and that it would turn green and he'd still eat it. MM- I went in one day and they had a two and a half inch hose blasting out his locker because he had left a bag of moldy potatoes in there. He was the biggest character. His son was at home one day, and the chief calls up and asks, "How's your father feeling?" And Kenny goes, "I guess he's feeling pretty good because he's still on the cruise." Up in the office Moe goes again. (both laughing) TT- What did he do before he got on? MM- He worked for Dottie's Catering, Rome Vending, he was a hustler. TT- Then he got on the fire department, he's eating good knows what out of his locker, just an old-school, hardcore--was he in the Army? MM- Navy. TT- What was he doing at D-Day? MM- He was driving the landing craft. TT- Jesus. Imagine that? MM- Yup. And he met his own brother on Omaha beach. I think Moe was eighteen, only a kid himself. TT- That's nuts. Dear God. Any other Moe stories that are funny? MM- There's a lot of them, but not a lot I can tell here (laughs). TT- So he was just a chainsmoking-- MM- Boy, could he smoke. And he drank Heineken like it was going out of style. TT- And he lived into his eighties, right? MM- Eighty-six. And weighed like a buck-ten soaking wet. TT- Chainsmoking and pounding brews and he lived to be eighty-six You gotta love it. MM- I was just dating Jackie at the time, and I had to come over and get her car. We were working that night. He picks me up, I lived on Cala Drive, over near Pinecrest. So some guy cut him off, the guy's swearing at us, Moe's giving him the finger, I go, "Oh, great. Here's what's gonna happen. He's not happy. He's gonna stop. And do you think he's gonna hit you? (Moe was older, and by now Mike McMahon, who stands an easy 6'2," would likely become his target. Other than a few missing fingers and a couple of scars, his past is indiscernible.) So he drops me off in front, and you can hear the guy at the wheel screaming. So Moe takes off, I come in to get the car, and I go, "Where is he?" Because now I'm like legitimately concerned the guy's after him. So I'm trying to find him in case he needs my help. So I guess, he lived in that little white house over here on Halliday? He goes around the corner and his neighbor's like 6'6". Moe's there with the neighbor. The guy pulls up, the neighbor goes, "Oh, no. You get out of here." So he took off. TT- Moe was no dummy. Sometimes it's good to have 6'6" friends. MM- Another time. Almeida's Liquor Store? Over on Main Street? The JK Club was across the street. So coming in--I was smoking at the time--so I stopped to get some cigarettes and lottery numbers. Moe's across the street having a few beers in the JK Club. So he comes over and I go, "Come on, we gotta to get to work." He goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." He goes to leave, and I'm talking to the guy. Meanwhile, some Hispanic guys had parked behind him. Moe comes in and yells, "Hey, move that car!" Oh great. Now it's on. So I go, "Guys, calm down. Let's calm down here." They're like, "We'll take him out back and kill him!" Well all of a sudden a couple of Irish guys jumped in and said, "We'll help you." So they ended up moving the car. The way Moe walked in, you would've thought he weighed 280. TT- He wasn't afraid of nothing. Probably came back from D-Day and was like, "Fuck it, it's all gravy now." (both laughing) TT- How tall a guy was he? MM- Like 5'6." TT- Oh, he was a little dude. MM- Oh yeah. He was skinny. TT- I didn't know he was that small. That's even funnier. Now, he worked until when? MM- Until I retired, 2004. January 20, 2004. He said, "I don't want to go." I went, "You know, we're starting to work with the grandchildren of the guys we started working with." I was always used to having a coffeepot on, all these guys are drinking Diet Cokes in the morning. I said, "It's time to move on." TT- It's funny because guys say that. Greg Brulé, I talked with him-- MM- Another great guy. TT- Yes. I was talking with him and he had the same realization one day. He's like, "I used to come in, and there would be two shifts at the kitchen table, and everybody's hanging out having coffee and talking shop, and now I walk in and there's one guy on his phone, another guy on his iPad, and nobody's talking. I knew I had to go." MM- When I married Michael and Matty's mother, I lived on Charles Street in one of the apartments. We bought a house near Fatima hospital. The day we moved, I bet there was fifteen pickup trucks out there. And I'd say, "We gotta take this, load that ..." and by the time I got over to the house with the last truck, pictures were up, the beds were made, everything was unpacked. If you needed help--and I don't know about today, because we always think our generation's better, but if somebody needed help-- TT- They got it. MM- Yup. If somebody was sick, they were there. TT- It's a different day now. MM- A lot of guys, like Chickie Carrol, Matty loves Chickie, because when the kids would come down to visit me at Station 2, Chickie would let them play on the trucks. TT- Your kids grew up with Chickie. MM- Yup. When Matty got sworn in, he went over and said to Chickie, "I'd love to have you at my swearing in." And he came. TT- It's like a changing of the guard. These guys' kids coming onboard and now even some of them are retiring. MM- I worked with Ray Massee Senior and Junior. That was a shocker when I got the call that he had passed away. TT- I heard that was a real kick in the teeth. MM- It was. TT- As far as guys with huge reputations, and I never met Tom Heaney, but nobody's said a bad word about him. I've never met him, but he's another-- MM- There are so many great guys from that era. Heaney, Paul Keenan, Ronny Sweeney, he ended up living with me for a year, him and his wife had a little problem, they got back together. He was in my wedding party, and when I got back from my honeymoon, he was helping Mike Szczoczarz (So-zarz) put in a driveway, and he had a heart attack. After that he had other problems and he ended up dying. Great guy. TT- You've seen the whole generation. Now, you have two sons? MM- Three. One of them is from my previous marriage. He lives in Bristol. TT- I know Mike and Matt. You raised them right. Their work ethic is impressive. Any regrets? MM- Not one. People sometimes ask, "Do you wish you could go back and not go in the Marine Corp?" No. That's what I wanted. Thank God that I'm here. All the guys I met, like Dick Lemay, when you talk about a rescue guy, Dick Lemay to me is number one. TT- He said that you sent him on more runs than anyone else. MM- Not only did I send him on more runs, even when I wasn't sending him he took them. (laughs) (Lemay was notorious for taking runs before he was even clear of the hospital.) He'd be going, "Rescue 1 transporting to Memorial." "Roger." Then we'd dispatch another run and tell the engine company, "We'll get you an out of town rescue," and immediately you'd hear, "Rescue 1 will take that." (laughs) How he did that--people ask me, "How the hell did you spend thirty-five years in Fire Alarm?" How the hell did he do it on the rescue? You know what I'm saying? TT- Forget it. It'll never happen again. MM- Mintsmenn was another one. TT- Mintsmenn, Tomlinson, twenty-eight, thirty-year guys. It'll never happen again. MM- Dick, though-- TT- The sheer load of misery that that guy absorbed, and he told a story about you guys. About how after he retired, Vietnam came back. MM- Yup. TT- And he hadn't expected that. He was so busy doing his life that he never had to deal with any of it, and now he had all this free time, and it came back. So he ran into you, and you guys were at a bar one day-- MM- Quinnie's. TT- Yup. And he's like, "Mike McMahon did more for me than the V.A., and everybody else." MM- I'm glad to hear it helped him. TT- You were able to put it into a certain perspective. "You had two jobs, got your ass kicked at both of them for years, raised a family, didn't have a free second for anything, and now it all came back." He said after he talked with you he was able to put it to sleep. When I first got on the job, I didn't have any fire background. I wasn't a legacy, didn't have any family on the job, didn't grow up with Chickie, so when you got here you started seeing the guys who knew the right thing to do. Regardless of the situation--fire or medical--those were the guys you needed to follow. Whatever the situation was, they knew what to do. They went out of their way for people, treated everybody with respect. MM- When you think of it, the fire department is like the military. You want to be trained the best you can, because when you go into a fire, you want to make sure the guy behind you, just like in combat, is ready to go. TT- You don't want to be with an idiot. MM- That's right. That's why, sometimes they have to get rid of a guy. TT- They're out there. Some guys get on this job and seem to have no idea what they signed up for. MM- This is why I always said, "You didn't get hired to sleep. If you can, great. But that's not what you got hired for." TT- Dispatch back in your day, I mean I was in that room, and it terrified me. Mainly because I had spent my adult life in the trades. So I didn't have to deal with phones and computers and people. So I was way behind the eight ball. But I was on C-shift. MM- Chickie, Will Maher,-- TT- Kraweic, Callahan, Marshall, Reed, Robin--C-shift downtown--you know--was a lot of fun. MM- We had such a ball as a shift. TT- I was lucky in dispatch. I had Rob Thurber and Pacheco, Biz as partners. Thank God. MM- When we were over on Armistice Boulevard, they started with the computers. Of course they never asked anybody that works on the job. So they were gonna put them in service, and they say, "If you get box 1234, and it's Zone 0, everybody goes." And I go. "No." "What do you mean no?" "Well, you have Zone 1, Zone 2, Zone 3, Zone 4..." "Well nobody told us that." "Well, did anybody ask the people that work in there?" So they couldn't put them in service. When they finally did, it was twenty minutes. Upstairs. The training. And I said to the guy who was supposed to teach us, "Are you telling me that you can get the trucks to a fire faster than I can?" And he goes, "No, I'm not telling you that. I'm telling you somebody downtown is probably going to lose their job because of the paperwork." "Isn't that great?" TT- Lose their job for what? I don't get it. MM- Well, at that time, everything was log sheets, and somebody had to write them in. Moe and I, towards the end, it was very unusual that I would even have to look up who was going. I always did it after I sent them, because in case you had a Code Red you wanted to see who was going next. But the computers didn't make it any quicker. TT- Now the day of the Hargreaves fire you were in the room, right? MM- Yeah. It was a Sunday. TT- From what I heard it was a nice sunny day-- MM- Yup. It was quiet that day until two o'clock when all hell broke loose. TT- When you're in there, and you're listening, and it's just getting worse and worse, it's just one of those events where it's not getting better. MM- You knew that something was going on. TT- Now that day itself, when the guys came back from that, Hargreaves wasn't dead. He was in Connecticut and then went to Boston. MM- He died like four weeks later. TT- No one knew he was gonna die. They just knew he was really hurt, right? MM- Not really. They knew he was pretty bad. TT- First and second degree burns on his hands and face-- MM- They said when he came out smoke was coming out of his mouth. That he was burning from the inside. TT- Brutal. That's probably the worst day you ever had in there, right? MM- For people we know, yes, but we had a fire on Japonica Street where we lost a whole family except for one boy. TT- Oh yeah. That's right. They got stuck, right? Upstairs? MM- Guys came back, they had kids that were melted to the floor, the tile floor. That's when I seen, besides myself in combat, when I've seen grown men crying. That's something you're never prepared for. TT- Now that was a night fire, right? MM- Yes it was. During the night. TT- Winter, right? MM- I believe it was. Something to do with the heating system. TT- Four kids, a mother, a father. MM- Nightmare. TT- There were a couple of other awful events. Were you working during Star Gas or Greenhalgh Mill? MM- No. Greenhalgh Mills, I was supposed to be working but my mother was in a nursing home, and I was with her. I worked Newel Coal and Lumber, over on Taft Street. That was a bad one. TT- I heard there was just oceans of black toxic smoke from that place. MM- That was, we didn't even know who we had in the city. The radio system was absolutely terrible. I went to a union meeting one time and said, "I'm telling you guys. Someone's gonna be calling me for help and I'm not gonna hear it." TT- Talk about the room itself. Back in the day, these are street boxes. There isn't any 911 yet. MM- When I first started. 911 came on line soon after. TT- So these street boxes would get pulled, it comes into Fire Alarm, and is this the Stretch Tuite thing with the clicking? MM- Yes. It was big circuits. When you walked in, to your right, that was all big circuits. The bells would go bing bing bing. At night you could lay down and you'd never sleep in there. That's why so many guys had heart attacks. Out of nowhere, bang bang bang. TT- Really (laughs) Jesus. So the box comes in. Is that when you heard the clicking? MM- No. For us, the bells would be going off. The clicking was in the stations. They could hear it very feintly. TT- So you guys got the bell. MM- At that time, you had over in the corner, it was like a round disc. So say you had you a box at Broad Street in front of Kennedy Manor. You'd go over and whatever box, you hit it to reset it. You'd pull the lever and it would set off sirens. So back then they had beat cops, and when they heard the sirens they would stop the traffic. TT- Get out of here. MM- We're talking like 1969. TT- So when you're pulling the lever, what was that doing? MM- It was setting off a horn. Say, if it was at Montgomery and Exchange Streets, if there was a cop on the beat there he'd know enough to stop traffic. The box would come in on the teletype, and you'd read the teletype. After you sent the box out, the other guy would pull the lever. A lot of guys stopped using that because eventually half the horns and sirens weren't even working anymore. TT- So the horns were up on poles? MM- Yup. They used to have boxes for the cops to call in too. TT- When did 911 come into play? Late 70's, 80's? MM- I was married to Mary Ann, Mike and Matty's mother. You ever hear anything about 911 with me? I'm working, Moe and I, and we get a call. 540 Wilcox. It's Engine 1's district. We send them out. I'm going, "Wilcox doesn't go that high." I said, "The only street I know of that goes that high numerically is Walcott." Engine 2 was clearing the city garage. I told them to take a ride by 548 Walcott just in case. They get over there, Code Red. TT- Uh-oh. MM- Boisclair was the chief. I'm going, "This is gonna be a problem." I wait until after the fire, like 6:30, 7 o'clock, and Chief Boisclair comes in and I go, "Chief, I gotta talk to you. I think there's gonna be a problem." He said, "Let me listen to the tapes." He goes, "No, Mike, you did everything right. Don't worry." I said, "Okay." I go home, next morning I'm in bed. The wife comes up and says, "Your father's on the phone. It's important." "Yeah, dad, what's up?" He goes, "What the heck happened? It's all over the news about this fire." I go, "No, everything's all set." "No it isn't." So I get up, we were living in Cranston, so I drive down to headquarters. Well, the democrats wanted 911. The republicans didn't want it. So now it's a political mess. I'm listening to one of the talk shows and they had the guy who's in charge of 911 saying his dispatchers didn't do anything wrong, and they're trained for it for like eight weeks. I'm like, "I've been on twenty freaking years." (laughs) Anyways, they finally made a deal. When they listened to the tapes objectively, it's right there. He says Wilcox originally. Engine 2 got there quicker than Engine 1 got to Wilcox. TT- That's thanks to you entirely. MM- So they said everything was gonna be forgotten, but I says, "Yeah, chief everything's gonna be forgotten, but on the radio they're making me out to be an idiot." He goes, "Mike, Just let it calm down." TT- Everything's always been taped. So 911 goes in in like the early 80's? MM- Had to be the mid-80's because I had built my house in Cranston in 1985. So it had to be '86, because I'm sure Michael had been born. TT- You got anything else? MM- Another bad fire was Dexter Street. When those two guys were melted together in the window. There were so many bad fires back then, I'm sure after you leave I'll remember a whole bunch more. TT- Lot of people died in 70's. Joe Gildea was talking to me-- MM- Did you ever hear about the St. Joseph's fire? TT- No. MM- Well, I got an award for that. I was at Murphy's Lounge (laughs), and as I'm going home I look down Division Street where St. Joseph's is, and there's smoke. I'm thinking the guys must be on scene and maybe they need a hand. So I get there but nobody's there. The priest had pulled under the carport, went in to the rectory, and I guess the car caught on fire and lit the place up. So now I'm banging on the door, screaming, I hit the street box. Finally the priest gets up and gets the Host from the church. I ended up working there all night long. Almost lost my car, because I had it in front the church and the steeple was getting ready to tip over. TT- There's a lot of history. MM- I used to tell the young guys, "You just hit the lottery." Because, while you're not gonna be the richest guy in the world, you're gonna make good friends and have the greatest job in the world. TT- Can't beat it. Especially for the guys who went out into the world. These twenty-year-old kids don't know how lucky they have it. MM- Most of the guys would come through Fire Alarm. And I would tell them, "This guy never even had a job." Get a job, go work construction, drive a truck, cut a lawn, get some perspective. TT- Thank God there wasn't any age restrictions or I never would've got on. I was fortunate to have the jobs I did because they kept me in great shape. I was old enough to be some of these young guys' dad, and was in better shape than half of them. (both laugh) TT- This has been an honor. If you think of anything else please call me. Lemay came back three or four times and spoke for hours, so if you think of anything else, do not hesitate. MM- Sure thing. TT- You're one of the strongest people I've ever met. Thank you for speaking with me. MM- Thanks for coming over. Lt. Steve Smith
May 1, 2018 When Steve Smith got hired, he was the youngest man on the job. In a twenty-seven year career, he served on the line, as a lieutenant of Engine 2, the department Training Officer, and finally as the city’s Fire Marshal. He raced motorcycles, kick-boxed, and was one of the founders of the department weightlifting team. We all meet people in life who say what they mean, and mean what they say. Steve Smith is one of those guys. If he said he was going to punch you in the mouth, chances are you were getting punched in the mouth. Sitting across from him now, it's almost like he's still on the job. This interview was conducted at his wife’s insurance office seventeen years after he retired in 2001. This is part of what he said ... SS- What're you looking for? Like history? Stories? TT- Exactly. Like what year you got on and how old you were. SS- November, 1974. I had just turned twenty-one-years-old. I got sworn in with three other guys. Two of them are dead. One was John Hargreaves, who died in a fire, and the other was Wayne Vicnally. He was in Vietnam. He had a problem with Agent Orange, so his esophagus was burnt out and he died. So John Buchanon is the other guy I got sworn in with. He's still retired, he's doing pretty well. And here I am. I did twenty-seven years. I came in on Engine 2 downtown on B-Platoon, and I spent fifteen years as a firefighter because we were refusing the promotional examinations. Which was probably the beginning of the end of the fire department as far as I was concerned, because they gave a 70% buyout for guys to take early retirement. Well, the senior guys retired, so nobody was in charge of trucks, nobody was in charge of fire stations, nobody was in charge of anything. Everybody was freelancing. TT- It was chaos. SS- Chaos. So eventually, we went five years without taking a lieutenant's test. When we finally did, by that time it was just nuts. I got promoted. Out of 75 guys that took the test I came out like fifth or six. So I got my choice, which was Engine 2 B-Platoon. I was on that truck fifteen years, stayed there as a lieutenant another seven years, and then I decided to do something different. The chief asked if I would go to training. So I was a Training Officer for a while, did that for a year, then he asked if I was interested in being Fire Marshal, so I said, "Yeah, you know..." I had broken my ankle. I had two knee operations in the meantime, I broke my ankle, had like four surgeries on that, so kind of like, climbing ladders and stuff, it was coming to the end, you know? So I said, "Yeah, I'll try it out." So I went to school to become the Fire Marshal. I think I was the Fire Marshal for a couple of years. Then it came to a point where I was running my own business doing excavation and stuff, so I left, did that full time, then I bought this (the insurance company) about the same time. So I've had this for like fourteen, fifteen years now. It's been a whirlwind career kind of thing. I enjoyed it. Especially being downtown. I loved being downtown. TT- Now you got on in '74. You did like fifteen years before you made lieutenant, so you made L-T in like '88, '89? SS- Yup. TT- So you were basically downtown the whole shot. SS- My whole career. Because even when I became Fire Marshal I was still downtown. That's it, you know? I loved being downtown. TT- When you got on in '74, what were you doing before you got here? SS- I was unloading tractor-trailer trucks in Woonsocket and doing house foundations. A couple of friends of mine had their own business doing that, and I was working my butt off and racing motorcycles, acting like a lunatic, you know? My grandfather was on the job, so I always wanted to be a firefighter. My father always wanted to be a firefighter, but my mother wouldn't let him do it because he wasn't making any money. They were making like $45 a week. Even when I came on in 1974 I was making like $127 a week. Gross. I was taking home like eighty-seven bucks. Honest to God. So you're looking at that, it's like $5600 a year or something like that. TT- Like Ralph Domenici said, with six kids he qualified for food stamps one year. SS- Yeah. Imagine that? So I went back to work humping forms, you know, putting foundations in because I couldn't make it. I had my apartment, my truck payment, I couldn't make it. So I went up to the office after I got my first paycheck and I said, "This is eighty-seven bucks here. Is something wrong?" She says, "No, that's probationary pay, pal." Guys on the job were making $147, $157, that was gross pay for a firefighter. That's for forty-eight hours. While I was applying and going to the fire school, they were working three days, three nights, two days off with a Kelly Day. We were in the school for three months when they changed it to two-two and four. I thought the three-three-three was great. I could do whatever I wanted. Ride my motorcycle, work. When they switched I said, "What am I gonna do with four days off?" I know what I was gonna do, I was gonna get another job. That wasn't much fun. Putting in house foundations is not fun. TT- Lot of work. Construction's great because you're outside all day, which I loved, but you're earning that money, boy. SS- I heard that. Heard you've had a career doing all kinds of things. TT- When you got on, these are the World War II guys that are still around, right? Training you? SS- Yes. TT- We're talking old school. SS- Old school is right. When I came on I was the youngest guy on the fire department. I had just turned twenty-one. I got sworn in the second week of November. There was a little court case going on back then. They didn't put three guys on that they were supposed to, so everything else got held up while everything went to court. Nobody got sworn in while this was going on. TT- What did they do with you when you got here? You came on with three other guys, right? Was there a transfer pool? SS- No. The day I got sworn in, Chief walked over and says, "Congratulations, you're on Engine 2. Go home, change your clothes, and you're coming back to work." (Laughs) The other guy, John Hargreaves, they put him on A-Platoon on Engine 2. Another new guy went to C-Platoon Engine 2. TT- Now as a new guy back then, you were on your toes, right? Cleaning, studying your mapbook... SS- Oh yeah. Oh man. We had a guy in charge of the station. When you walked in the station in the morning you had to have your uniform cap on. If you walked across the street and didn't have your uniform cap on he would meet you at the door. When you went to get gas in the truck, you had to put your uniform cap on. TT- We talking the Class A dress hat? SS- Yup. My grandfather, when he came to work, everyday he had to put his dress blues on. TT- Wow. SS- They would stand at attention and then go upstairs to switch into their khakis. Then, if you were the young guy, they would send you out to do Crossing Guard duty. You had to put your dress blues back on, go out and cross the kids, come back and switch into your khakis, and then go back out in the afternoon in your dress blues to cross the kids again. Then, when you left at night, you had to put your dress blues back on and stand at attention. TT- That's amazing. Now, your grandfather, what years are we talking about with him? SS- Probably, the 1930s. He and my father were both in World War II together. My father quit school at seventeen, lied about his age, went to World War II. He was in the Navy. My grandfather was a SeaBee. He was a captain on the Pawtucket Fire Department at that time, so that would've been 1944, '45. TT- That's crazy. SS- I think my grandfather passed away in 1954, '55. Bad heart. Young man, fifty-one-years-old. TT- Did you know your grandfather? SS- No. Saw pictures of him and heard the stories. TT- Wonder what kind of stories he had about the job? SS- One can only imagine. There's some crazy stories from back then. There used to be a trolley through the city. This guy I worked for when I came on the job, Stretch Tuite, his name was Farrel Tuite but they called him Stretch because he was like 6'4". He was a big guy. Like three hundred pounds. He used to be the chief's driver for like twenty years. So he could tell you stories. We would sit around the kitchen table, and I'm a young guy barely twenty-one, this guy was probably like forty-eight-years-old, and he told us so many stories. This is one of my favorite stories of all time. This guy, I won't give his name out, the chief would send you home for lunch because you were there like all the time, right? So the guy goes home for lunch, takes the trolley home, and he's late coming back from lunch. So Chief meets him at the door, he's like an hour and a half late. "Where you been?" He says, "Well, Chief, this is what happened. I hadn't seen my wife in a while. I took the trolley home, and my wife and I started fooling around. I was coming, my wife was coming, and the trolley was coming, so we both decided to let the trolley go." (both laughing). These were the kind of stories that got passed down for generations. One after the other. You spend a lot of time in fire stations. TT- As far as the old school, when you were in that station and stuff, Chickie was saying nobody read the paper before the lieutenant, new guys were always out cleaning... SS- Nope. We were always cleaning. But you know what? It was enjoyable. It was their lifestyle. I think nowadays it's a job for most guys, but back then it was your life. Back then you were a firefighter for life. Everybody lived it on the job, off the job, guys would meet on a Friday night, you'd get thirty or forty guys in one barroom, all firefighters hanging out and drinking, fighting, mental stuff. It's always craziness when firefighters get together, right? We used to leave work on a Friday night, go to the Celtic Pub or somewhere, and the entire shift would be there. Our entire shift. Every person. TT- Sadly, that would never happen now. Last year, there were eight guys at my shift Christmas party. SS- We would all come in and throw ten bucks on the counter, the beers came out of that pile, and when the money was gone we all went home. TT- C-Shift comes close to that, they have a pretty close group, but nobody else. SS- We used to have Christmas parties and other shifts used to go, that's how many guys were out. Everybody just hung out together. TT- Now, the airpacks were around but no one put one on until what, the 80's? SS- No one put those things on. We had rubber boots and a canvas jacket, you know? And a freaking tin helmet. That was it. We were wearing freaking tin helmets in fires. The ladder guys painted theirs red, they were the red-tops, and the engine companies were the black-tops and they were tin, they had just a little bit of cloth inside to protect your head, but when those things got hot they got hot. We probably didn't go in as far as you do today, you know what I mean? Back then, you went far enough in to get hurt. Today, you can go far enough in to get killed. Because you don't feel the heat until it's too late. You know. You've been on nine years. You keep pushing in and further in and then get to that point where you say, "Whoa." And what's that bunker gear good for? Eighteen seconds of direct fire contact. TT- That's it? SS- That's it. Then it catches on fire. TT- Talk about that for a second. These guys that're are going in further--Lemay, Chickie--they talked about not wearing the Nomex hoods. SS- We never had them. Even when we did I never wore them. Too much of a pain in the ass to put them on. TT- The reason they gave was the same one you just said-- SS- Feel the heat. TT- Right. Your ears. Chickie used to say when he could feel his ears start to melt it was time to go. SS- We came out with a little sunburn (laughs). I never wore gloves either. And I should've. After every fire my fingers and hands were torn up and bleeding. Guys who wear gloves today are smart. You know how tough it is, once you take a wet glove off, try and put it back on, it's ridiculous. TT- You can't. The gloves they give us now are like oven mitts. You can't even feel your fingers. Can't grab anything either. So in the 1970s-80's, everything was still burning, right? Cigarettes everywhere, it sounds like you guys were laying feeders every other day. SS- They were burning down Pleasant Street one house at a time. Mineral Spring Avenue was called Plywood Alley because of all the burnt out and abandoned houses. We'd go to the same house fire three times in one night. Every night of the week. I'm not kidding you. We had a family, the second we left they went back in with a can of gasoline and lit it back up. We wouldn't even be in the station two minutes re-packing hose when the tones would hit and you'd be going right back again. You gotta put it out, you can't just let it burn. TT- So they were burning down Mineral Spring Avenue-- SS- Especially Pleasant Street and Taft Street. Oh my God, every night of the freaking week. TT- The way it sounded was that you guys were awful busy with Code Reds. SS- When I came on, the truck I was on was the busiest in the city and we were doing like 900 runs a year. But they were fire runs. Fires. Ladder 1 was doing 1250 runs cause they filled in on Box Alarms. Most of the time they sent two and three ladders on a Box Alarm when I first came on. Three engines, two ladders I think? Anyway, Ladder 1 was doing 1250 and Engine 2 did 900. When I left, I think we were doing 3000 runs a year. Mostly rescue runs. That drove me off the job, basically, doing rescue runs. TT- Sounds like the job started shifting in the early 90's toward the EMS. SS- All EMS. I hear they want to go for a fourth rescue now. TT- That's the word. They're probably gonna have to. Memorial Hospital closing killed us. Everything goes to Providence now. We average seven out of town rescues a day in the city even now with three rescues. I was in charge of Rescue 2 last week and on a ten hour day shift saw the station for forty minutes. I wanted to ask you about Kevin Rabbit. We saw his gear in the fire academy after the flashover that nearly killed him. SS- Kevin's a good friend of mine. We grew up playing baseball together. They were a bunch of brothers. Steven grew up with me, John grew up with my brother B.J., and then there was Kevin. John was the cop. He's retired now. Steven was my age. He was a musician. Kevin Rabbit was on Engine 3. Good guy. Funny guy, a great guy to be in the station with. A genuinely funny guy. TT- Can you tell us the story? SS- I'm not sure who else was on his truck that night. They were in that old 1950's FWD piece of crap. I got transferred to Engine 1 that night. Cold cold night. So Engine 2 went, Engine 3 went, Engine 4, Ladder 1 and 2. Kevin--I went to see Kevin in the hospital and he told me what happened. He was pretty much burnt up. TT- How long had he been on before this happened? Did he come on before you? SS- After me. Probably five years? He was a good worker. A good firefighter. So, supposedly there was a guy in the house. Second-floor. So he goes upstairs alone. Finds the guy. Grabs the guy. Starts carrying him out. At the same time Ladder 2 is getting ready to pop some windows. They do and the place goes up. This guy, Ray Wallach, who was on Engine 4, he's coming up the stairs. He kept going up and gets upstairs. Kevin ran out of air. So with all the heat and stuff he was delusional, he had no hood on. He drops the guy, staggering around, delusional--remember he had just gotten roasted in a ball of fire. Ray Wallach grabs him, helps him down the stairs. His helmet had fallen off in the apartment. They get downstairs and take his jacket off, his canvas coat, the whole back of it was totally burned. We kept it. I have no idea why they threw out that jacket. I was a Training Officer later on and we looked everywhere for that thing. TT- I think they found it. We saw it in my academy. SS- His helmet had melted to the floor. Those plastic helmets? It was a puddle this big (motions with his hands) TT- Holy shit. That's as big as a large pizza. SS- That's how hot it was up there. We kept his gear for the longest time. TT- So basically what happened was he found the guy and was carrying him out when the whole place flashed over. There are moments, and they don't happen that often on this job, but there are moments where you have to step into situations where you're-- SS- What are you here for? Just the pension? What're you doing here? You don't want to do your job? TT- Do the job. SS- It's all about doing the job, man. I can't even imagine that. It doesn't even compute. TT- So it flashes on him but he doesn't go down. SS- He was walking. Wallach found him-- TT- The other guy was already dead, right? SS- Dead. But that's the way it happens. We had a fire, I was with Al Jack and Stretch Tuite. We had a wicked blizzard going on. Stuff like this happens all the time. The fire comes in over on Barton Street, it was an auto body place tucked in the back, and we get there through two feet of snow. Snowing like a bastard. I wasn't driving so I jumped off the truck and this guy's yelling, "My buddy's still in the house!" I'm like, "Oh, that's not good." So I'm walking around back through two feet of snow and look through a window and the whole place is just ripping. I mean there was fire everywhere. I see the guy on the floor and I'm like, "Oh, son of a bitch." I gotta get in there. I'm by myself. So, somebody walks by--I'm not gonna say the name of who it was--but he walks by and I go, "Hey! I gotta go in. This guy's on the floor here!" So I smashed the window, the lower one, and I jump in. I don't have a Scott on or nothing. Crawling on the floor, I grab this guy. When I grabbed this guy, I'm not kidding, the flames were rolling over me and going out the window. So I yell to him, "Break the top window!" I was hoping the fire would jump up to it so I could bailout of the bottom window with this guy. Gone. There's nobody there. Now I'm dragging this poor bastard, his face is blistered, and now all these aerosol cans start exploding. It was a car shop. I'm like, "This is not good." (laughs). I get to the window, I'm as low as I can get. I got this guy right here and I got him up high enough to get him out the window. Chris Cute comes over. I came on the job with Chris back in the day. Good firefighter. Engine 4. I yell, "Chris!" He reaches through to get under this guy, I'm already lifting him up, and we just dumped him out of the window. See you later. I dumped him and then jumped right out into a snow bank. Me and Chris started doing CPR on this guy right there on the ground. TT- You talked about a lot of names so far, and I've only recently heard the name Tommy Heaney. SS- Tommy Heaney was a great firefighter. TT- Chickie said he had balls as big as his head. SS- Another guy who never got promoted to lieutenant but should've been. Great firefighter. He was on Engine 2 A-group. He was with Ray Masse senior. He was another great firefighter. TT- These are the guys--guys like you--who taught the dudes who taught us, right? SS- They found him (Masse) dead in his bed one morning. Never showed up to work. It was a real shame. TT- And he was only in his forties, right? SS- Oh yeah, young guy. You know what happened? He had a fire at the Log Den. It was a bar over on Central Avenue? And he told me after the fire, "I tried to pick something up and felt a pull in my chest." Obviously, as we know now, that was probably the beginning of the heart attack. So I talked to Tom Heaney about it. I said, "Tommy, he says he felt something pull in his chest?" Tom goes, "Yeah, he was ripping a ceiling down and felt something." He went outside and swore it was a pulled muscle. Now that was three or four days before he went--he always used to go to this place on Columbus Avenue for fish and chips. He lived by himself. And he told people there that night that he didn't feel too good. The girl told us it was strange, because he ordered the fish and chips to go. He usually would stay there and eat the fish and chips and pound a hundred beers. Well, he left. Took the fish and chips home. The next day he didn't show up for work. So as we know now, he probably had the heart attack during that fire and, being the hard ass that he was ... TT- This is in the 80's right? SS- Yeah, something like that. TT- And Ray junior, they're getting ready to pension him off because of the damage to his lungs. SS- It's sad to hear. TT- It's a toxic job, man. SS- It is, at least today you have the opportunity to wash your gear. We never washed our gear. Not once. Until it fell apart and then we just got a new pair that we never cleaned. Imagine the crap on that? I have a pair of my old gear that at the very end I hung in my barn. Imagine what's on that. TT- Toxic soup. Talk about the Fourth of July, because people that have never lived here have no idea about the pure mayhem that used to occur. Kraweic said it happened for eighty years until they started arresting people. SS- And they opened up the night court. They started arresting people and taking them right to court and people would be like, "Oh no, they're taking this serious now. It used to be fun." TT- What made them start cracking down? I mean it seems like it was a community event, to stockpile all the crap you could all year long and then drag it out into the middle of the street and throw gasoline on it while eating a hot dog and drinking a beer. SS- All year long. Just to create the biggest bonfires you will ever see. I'm totally serious. Like as tall as utility poles. And they'd light them up like forty times the same night. Just kept pouring gas on them. We'd put it out and they'd laugh and say, "See you in about fifteen minutes." Engine 1 would do the most runs. They had this old FWD with no power steering, no air brakes, and they would do forty, forty-five runs--fire runs mind you--a night. TT- Wow. SS- That truck was a beast. And downtown, we'd do between twenty-five to thirty-five runs depending on the night. TT- All fire runs. SS- Oh yeah. Pulling hose, wetting it down, then you'd go back to the station, fill up, and as soon as you did you knew you were going back out. Probably to the same fire. And we went all night long, til like four or five in the morning. It was unbelievable. But it was fun in a way. You know what I mean? We had so much food, families used to come down to the fire stations and we'd cook on the grill, it was a family event. It really was. It was unbelievable. TT- Chickie was telling a story and goes, "Oh yeah, and one year the neighborhood paid for a band to come down to the station, so as we were going out eighty fucking times at least we had some music playing." SS- It was bananas. Back then it was more of a family event. Guys downtown used to have Thanksgiving dinner on the apparatus floor. Pull all the trucks out, all the guys would cook, and all the families and kids came down. Big giant tables. On duty. We did it all the time. It was pretty cool. TT- That is. Too bad it's a different job now. SS- Yeah. Nowadays, guys will grab a turkey sandwich by themselves and sit in the corner on their phone. (both hysterically laughing) TT- As far as Central Falls goes, you're on Engine 2. Back in those days-- SS- If they had a fire, we had a fire. They had some tough ones. TT- Those guys take a beating. SS- They dispatched us with them on the first card. They were great firefighters. I don't know what they're like today, but back then, they worked their asses off, boy. TT- We have guys coming over to our job from C.F., it's like a feeder tube right now, and everyone one of these guys is put together. There isn't a single problem with any of them. They know their shit, they work hard. SS- They used to train so much over there, Dick Tanny was the Training Officer, and they trained all the time. He was in Vietnam, one of those rat guys running around all those tunnels. He was nuts. TT- I've heard stories about that guy. Chickie said he was crazy. I'd love to talk to him. So you guys were basically with them all the time. Chickie also said you all knew each other-- SS- Oh yeah. If we had a party in Pawtucket, Central Falls was there. If Central Falls had a party we were there. We'd go back and forth. It's a tough town. TT- Work ethic-- SS- I used to say to guys, "You came on the fire department. Do you know what the fire department's about? This is not a cushy job. You went to school to become a cardiac and get all this training and now you want to sit around and do nothing?" I don't get it. There are guys who bid to the 6s and stayed there their whole career and you don't even know who they were. They were on the job, they left, and no one even knew. TT- You mentioned Timmy Hayes, and that guy was revered. I haven't met anyone who said anything otherwise. SS- He was at the 1's. He was a great guy. A little Irishman that nobody messed with. TT- I heard whatever he said guys did. SS- He took no crap at all. He was a helluva firefighter. When his truck showed up on scene, you never saw him. He was inside. And a lot of times he had no helmet on. No gloves on. He'd be soaking wet like a rat and taking a beating. He was unbelievable. Great guy. His was the only truck I ever wanted to bid to, other than Engine 2, because I was having problems with the administration back then (laughs). It was uncomfortable. And I was gonna bid to the 1's. But I just couldn't leave downtown. TT- His reputation is ridiculous. SS- He had a few kooks with him too. John McConaghy, a great guy, and Richie McDowell and Bobby McGeehan. TT- That is some list of names. What shift was Ogle on over there? SS- Ogle was on C-shift. He was another one. Vietnam guy hard as nails. He got shafted (Ogle was forced off the job in a dispute with the administration.) TT- I heard that. Kraweic couldn't say enough about him as far as tactics and reading the fire. SS- Bobby was a hard worker. Wasn't scared of nothing. Nothing or nobody. He was a weight lifter and a strong kid. They screwed him good. TT- I wanted to talk about self-policing. There was a lot of self-policing back in the day. On the job. If you stepped out of line guys weren't afraid to call you out. SS- We always went downstairs. I heard a story recently. I'm glad you brought that up. And there was self-policing. If you had a problem with a guy, two guys had a problem, you went downstairs, punched the shit out of each other, and if someone got hurt they went to the hospital because "they fell down the stairs." They would never rat you out. I heard of a recent situation where someone ratted to the chief. That's not good. I've had some situations where I flipped over a table, might've thrown a guy across the kitchen, picked him up by the neck, bounced him off the kitchen walls a few times (laughs), yeah, believe me. (laughs) I was the Training Officer. We were doing drafting down at Parent's Marina. I had my white officer shirt on. So I was showing the guys how to draft (drafting is when you pump water directly from a river or lake), and how to pump the aerial with it. I just brought an engine and ladder down because I didn't want the whole shift down there. We had three or four guys that had never done it before so I made sure they all did it. The whole thing. Shut the truck down, blah, blah, blah. So I made everybody do it. Well, this guy goes up on the tip of the aerial ladder, he thought it would be hysterical--we're pumping like a bastard, the guys are with me and I'm shouting over the pump, all of a sudden, guys are getting knocked down, thrown around, I jumped in the cab, I thought we had blown a line, like the LDH blew up. Water everywhere. The water slows down and there he is up there on the ladder laughing his ass off. Well, everybody else was laying on the ground, soaking wet, my shirt is covered in that black crap at the bottom of the Blackstone River, and I stood there. He walked over to me. He still had his boots on. The only reason I didn't punch him in the mouth is because he still had his boots on and he probably would've drowned in the river and they would've got me for murder. Well, he and I got into a thing and everyone scattered because they figured I was gonna beat his ass. I said, "The only reason I don't pick you up right now and throw you in the goddamn water is because I'm afraid you might drown." And that was a situation where I could've gone to the chief and gotten him suspended for doing something that stupid. But I told him what I told him. "If you ever do anything like that again, you and I are going at it. Be ready to go." And that happened to me many many times over my career. If you do something stupid, I'm ready to go. Win lose or draw. I'm not backing down to anyone in this entire world, man. Never did. Which is probably not the smartest thing in the world to do, but it was just the way it was. A lot of guys were like that back then. If you had a problem you went into the basement to straighten it out. You don't go running to the chief like a little girl. "You hurt my feelings." TT- Feelings ... SS- If somebody grabs you by the throat, you punch him in the mouth. Whatever happens at the end of the fight, happens. If you lost, you got up, shook hands, because at the end of the day you were still working together. It was just a disagreement or something. And that's the way it was. TT- It stayed in the basement. It never left. SS- It never left. TT- That's the policing, right? The offending behavior starts, and guys will start chirping on it, chirping on it, and after a week or two, if that person doesn't correct the offending behavior, then it's just a free-for-all. Dudes will be all over your shit, riding you-- SS-."You can't be doing this, man." That's how you police this thing yourself. You don't go to the chief. You threaten him. You say, "Listen, man, Steve's not happy with this. Something's gonna happen, man, and he's gonna end up punching your lights out." (laughs). See you later, man, let's go. TT- But that's the way it was. SS- Don't ever backstab me. TT- But you had a reputation as far as what you expected, and then when things would happen against what you expected-- SS- There wasn't much gray area (laughs and laughs). I'm not a politician. TT- I've heard the name Spike Levesque... SS- He was on rescue most of his career. He loved it too. He lived it. He used to have a picture of a bulldog on his wall, and that was him. He was a bulldog. He was 5'8", about 250 pounds, grumpiest guy. He was a lieutenant, and if you went on a rescue run with him in the middle of the night, and you asked him a question, he'd answer but he always mumbled. And if you asked him again he'd bite your head off. You had to know where you were going, too. He was tough. He owned this place called the Monitor Club. Well, it was a little bar over on Meadow Street. And his father owned it before him. And if that place could tell you stories, man, we used to go in there--we'd have fires at night, like that one I told you about in the blizzard? We went back to that place first thing in the morning. If you had a night fire, everybody on the shift would go to a bar in the morning. Seven o'clock. And we'd stay there until noontime. And most times it was the Monitor Club. It was a little crappy bar about the size of this kitchen and hallway. It was an old house that they made into a bar. And I had more fun in there than any other place in my life. It was unbelievable. TT- When did the Celtic come into play? SS- It was the Blue Bonnet originally. We used to get food there once in a while. But this guy from Cranston, a cop, bought it and turned into Jack McMahon's Irish Pub. They called it the Celtic pub from there. Like the 80's or so. And Tommy, the guy who owns it now, he helped fix it. Build the bar. He didn't own it. But Jack used to go out with Tommy's sister. They were both from Ireland. Eventually, Jack didn't want to run the bar anymore, so he moved back to Ireland with Tommy's sister and sold the bar to Tommy. That's how he got it. Quite a place, lot of history. TT- What about the motorcycles? What were you racing? SS- I used to race in the woods. Enduros, cross-country, a little motocross. I did that every single day I had a free minute. Loved it. I still ride. I just went over the handlebars a couple of years ago. Broke this wrist, severely injured this one--somebody had dug a hole in the trail. And I'm blasting along until my frontend hit this hole, flipped the bike, and tossed me into the woods. I'm laying there, I knew I broke my wrist and that was my throttle hand, so I couldn't even run the bike. A couple of guys came along with their four-wheelers and gave me a hand. They pulled my bike back up, and I'm riding out of the woods like a madman. TT- When 95 went through the city, that was the late 50's, right? SS- I was ten or eleven then. I remember they were building it. Well, our school team was going down to Cranston to play the Cranston Eagles, and my coach says, "I've got a fast way to get there." He jumps on the new highway, which wasn't even open yet, we weren't supposed to be on it, and this madman drove us all the way to Cranston. It wasn't even open. Pretty cool. TT- Now, when it went through the city, it pretty much destroyed the heart of the city. SS- Yup. Nightmare. They took peoples' homes, moved peoples' homes. It was an awful piece of real estate and an awful decision. I spent twenty-three years out in the S-Curves sweeping up bodies because of that decision. So many accidents. Originally, they were going to run it 95 to 195, through Providence and East Providence and then north to Boston. But they wanted to come through Pawtucket. Pawtucket got thrown to the wolves on that decision. And they made the S-curves into one of the most dangerous stretches of highway in the country after they bent it around the TK Club and some other joint that the city bigwigs could not do without. TT- So it was going to go through East Providence? SS- That was the plan. It was going to bypass Pawtucket completely and shoot up to Boston, but that never happened. TT- That decision killed everything. The property around the new highway was worthless because of it. Which is probably why you guys had so many fires, with people burning down everything they couldn't sell. Now what was the murder story your wife was hinting at? SS- Sunday morning. Kenny Moreau and Steve Tanguay were with me. They were my two privates and great firemen. We go over to Barton Street for an unresponsive woman. We get in the house, walk upstairs, and there's a guy standing there with his hands rolled up in his sweatshirt. So I look at the guy and go, "What's the problem, pal?" He just points to the bedroom. I go in first, walk in, and see woman's clothes all tore up and thrown on the floor. There's a woman laying in the bed. She was beat black and blue. Her face, I'm not kidding, was swollen up twice the size it should've been. Totally naked. You tell she had been raped. I'm saying to myself, "Someone broke into the house, raped this poor woman, and then killed her." I'm looking and then I see this small baby cradled around the mother's head. She was hugging her head. So I'm thinking someone raped this lady and killed the child. How could someone do this? I just couldn't believe it. She was a doll, too, a petite little thing. So I reach over and touch the woman. She was marbled up, cold to the touch. I go to check the baby and then it moved. TT- Oh God. SS- The baby's alive. I look at this guy in the kitchen and shout, "You realize your baby's alive? Why didn't you take her out if here?" He's got his hands rolled up in his sweatshirt. So I pick the baby up, wrap it in a blanket, and hand it to Steve Tanguay. He's holding the baby. So I go to the guy, "Hey, pal, what happened here?" Then I'm looking and realizing, "This guy did it." I said, "Let me see your hands." I didn't know if he had a gun or something. He takes his hands out and they were completely busted up, swollen. So he starts telling me exactly what happened. They were at Rocky Point drinking. They got into a fight, she left, and came home with the baby. He comes home, they start fighting again, he tears her clothes off, rapes her, beats the shit out of her. I says, "What happened to her face?" He says she was running down the stairs when he kicked her in the back of the head, and he put her head right through the plaster, there was still blood and plaster on the wall. I said, "You did that to your wife? What is wrong with you, man." You gott be kidding me. So finally the cops show up, it is Sunday morning after all. They arrested him. He woke up in the morning and actually called his sister. His sister lived in Taunton. She and her husband drove down there and got there almost at the same time as we got there. TT- Did he remember all of the attack? SS- Well, he showed me where he kicked her in the back of the head, so I guess he did. What a tough guy. So we had to testify in court against him. You should talk to Kenny Moreau, he was scared to death of testifying in open court. TT- This guy's lucky he didn't get beat right there. SS- Oh, I know it. What a coward. Killing this poor little girl like that. He said the baby cried in the middle of the night, so he put her in the bed with the dead mom. Leaves the child there. TT- Let's talk about black humor. B-Shift looked for a guy's hand over at Technor Apex one night after it got ripped off and whisked away on a conveyor belt. The rescue took him to Rhode Island while everyone else kept looking through the plant. You could hear guys yelling, "I could really use a hand over here!" (laughs) You realize real quick how thin the line between life and no life really is, right? We had a lady in the S-curves one day, car rolled, she got tossed, the car came to rest and clipped her head. All she needed was two inches more and she would've been alive. Two inches. SS- We responded to a run one night. I was driving. Joe Gildea was in charge. We get to the run, it's almost in South Attleboro on 95 North. There's like a Maseratti or Ferrari in the middle of the road. The lights were on, the windshield wipers were going but he was facing us. Not a good sign. I looked to the right and there was a woman laying in the middle of the road. I looked to the left, there's a guy on the guardrail, steel guardrail. Joe goes, "I'll go to the woman you go to the guy." So I run over to the guy. As I get near him--this is unbelievable--as I get near him there's a patch of dirt like this with no grass growing on it (motions in a circle). His entire fucking brain--both hemispheres--was perfectly placed in the center of this patch of dirt. Now I hit this scene with a flashlight and go, "Oh!" I looked at it--you know when you don't really know what you're looking at? Cause he hit his head on the guardrail and it just ripped his head this way (motions vertically) until his whole head was just elongated this way. And that's when his brain shot out. What're the chances of his whole entire brain landing intact and perfectly in the center of this dirt? So as I'm looking at it a State cop pulls up. He jumps out of the car and comes running over. I go, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Look out!" As he's running over, he steps right in the freaking guy's brain. TT- (laughs) Jesus. SS- He goes, "What's that!" I go, "That's his whole brain, buddy." (laughs) And the poor woman. Both of them came flying out of the T-tops. She's laying on the ground. She was beautiful. Broke her freaking neck but she was still alive. We started CPR, got her to the hospital. They took her X-ray and her neck looked like this (motions into a grotesque angle). She died. Just as well. Stories like that, one after another for decades. Crazy the way things happen. We caught a run one time on the highway. This girl rear-ends a car in the S-curves. So we get there. I look at her and she's screaming while holding her face. I'm looking at her going, "What is going on here?" What doesn't belong and why? Well, she hit the steering wheel right across here (motions to his mouth like the Joker) and peeled her whole entire face up to her forehead. Nose, everything. I reach over and grab the thing to pull it down-- TT- You pulled her face back into place? SS- It was so weird. It just dawned on me, you know? I'm going, "It belongs down here." (laughs) So I pulled it back down without even thinking and she could suddenly see again. And she's screaming, trying to look in a mirror. And I'm like, "Don't look in the mirror!" After we got back to the station, I go, "How is that even possible?" When you're doing it, you're like wow. TT- How'd you not bring all this home? You just dealt with it? SS- Never even talked about it. TT- They wouldn't even understand it anyway, right? This has been awesome. It sounds like you had a great career, man. SS- I had a great ride, man, I loved it. Loved every single second. Rescue Captain Dick Lemay has a wispy voice and squint-eyed way of speaking that's immediately reminiscent of Clint Eastwood if Clint Eastwood was a nicer guy and shorter. As far as legends go, few are more revered. He went to Vietnam as an 11 Bravo Infantryman in 1969, and then spent 36 years serving the public on Rescue 1. He treated every patient with respect even when they did not return the favor, pulled money out of his own pocket for people truly in need, and basically taught the EMS side of the job to practically every new guy hired in the last thirty years. It's been estimated he went on over 30,000 runs before he retired. One year later, he had to stop by Station 4 three different times to finish what turned out to be a four-hour interview. This is what he said ...
(Note to the reader. If you were a transfer guy on C-Platoon, chances are you either worked with Capt. Lemay on Rescue 1 or Lt. Tomlinson on Rescue 2. In between runs on sleepless nights, there were many stories each would share. Years later, after they were retired, one had to wonder why no one had ever written any of it down. I had an old tape recorder, and, despite having no idea what we were doing, one day Lemay showed up at the 4's and just started talking. What follows is the first interview ever done for this blog.) December 29/2016 TT: Pawtucket born and raised, right? You went to Vietnam? DL: Just before my 19th birthday they came out with the first draft lottery. My birthday was drawn number 9. It was the only lottery I ever won (laughs). Within in a month I had my draft notice, had my physical, and within two months I was at basic training. TT: What year was this? DL: 1969. I was in the Army in January in 1970. Went to Vietnam in August of '70 as an 11 Bravo Infantryman, was in the central highlands, saw some action, but not a lot compared to what other people went through in other places, and at earlier times in the war. I came home in August of '71, I got a five month early out instead of doing the full two years. I was still not even 21 when I got discharged. TT: So you made it back to Pawtucket in august of '71, so what happened then? Did you start applying for jobs? DL: No, I wasn't thinking of the FD at that time, the economy was lousy, so I started painting and roofing for my uncle. In '72 I started going to school on the GI Bill and got my associate's degree from RI junior college (CCRI). While I was there, there were some providence firefighters taking classes. I talked to them briefly, and it kind of put the idea in my head that it might be a good thing to do. Meanwhile I got a job with the city. I was working accounting which I had no interest in. Finally, I started applying for Fire Departments in '77. I did well in Central Falls, East Providence, and Pawtucket around the same time. I did well. In fact I was number one in Pawtucket and Central Falls. So, I got a letter from CF at the same time as Pawtucket, so I chose the Pawtucket job since this was where I was from. This was 1979. TT: So you came on the job in '79. At that time, were there any rescues? DL: One. TT: And it was basic life support? DL: BLS no cardiac, no advance life support. TT: Were they doing IVs? DL: No. TT: So this was a transport wagon? DL: Yes, scoop and go. Basic first aid, CPR, basic stuff TT: Did everyone go to the rescue first? Like now, where all the new guys go there to learn the job? DL: No. There were people assigned to the rescue. Guys got transferred to it. But I don't remember brand new guys getting assigned. But not long after I came on, like three months after I started, they put a second rescue in service. TT: So like 1980ish was Rescue 2. DL: Yes. 1980. TT: Do you know when Rescue 1 was put on the job? Are we talking early 1970s? DL: Oh no. before that. Way before that. They had a rescue/ambulance, whatever you want to call it, back in the 50s. But they didn't even transport. They would go to the scene and call a private ambulance to do the transport. They would treat on the scene and determine the need for transportation. TT: Now back in those days, the trucks had radios, the guys did not. DL: Right. TT: And when the rescue showed up, other than doing the basic stuff, they're not notifying hospitals, they're just going where they had to go. DL: Right. TT: They would just show up at the ER with whatever they had. So basically we're talking about stopping bleeding ... DL: Yeah. But when I came on the job, we were able to contact the hospitals. TT: Okay. Were there phones? DL: It was like a phone. In the back of the rescue. Not like a cell phone, more like a two way radio. TT: Like Emergency 51? DL: Yes. TT: Alright. Rescue 2 comes on in '80. When did you officially stay--were you on an engine company, or did you go right to rescue? DL: No, I was on Engine 5. TT: How long? DL: Four or five months. Then, when they put Rescue 2 in service, they assigned me to it because I was a new guy. They took all the junior lieutenants and took them off trucks to man the rescue. TT: So even back then there was an officer and a private. DL: Yes. They put Ladder 3 out of service to have the manning for the second rescue. TT: I imagine that was a shitshow. DL: It caused a lot of grief. TT: Ladder 3 was over at McCoy, right? DL: Yes. TT: So it was a seniority thing, right? Did they re-bid the job? DL: Yes. TT: What year do you think you were officially put on Rescue 2? DL: 1980, the year it was put in service. TT: So from 1980 on you were on rescue? DL: No. I was on Rescue 2 for a little less than two years. So some time in '82 I bid to Engine 2. and I was on Engine 2 until '84, but what was happening, in '83 they started the cardiac program. So I took that course, to be knowledgeable and up on the latest stuff. So when I got my cardiac, they kept transferring me from Engine 2 to Rescue 1, so in '84 they came out with the rescue lieutenant test and I had just enough time on the job, so I took the test and did well. TT: How old were you at this point? DL: 33? TT: Did they make everyone get their cardiac licenses? Or was it just new guys coming on? DL: After that, new guys coming on had to get it. When I took it we had the choice. TT: How many guys? DL: Original class? I would say 20. TT: So those were the guys transferred to the rescue. DL: Some were already on rescue, some like me just wanted to take it for the education and be knowledgeable. TT: So you're a lieutenant on Rescue 1 as of '84. DL: Yes. TT: And you pretty much stayed there from there on out? DL: Same station, same rescue. TT: Same shift? DL: Yes. (laughs). The rest of my career. TT: So when you made captain you didn't even have to move. DL: Nope. TT: When did you make captain? DL: Probably early '90s. TT: Now as far as the job goes, the fires in the '70s and 80s, it was a very active fire department as far as Code Reds go, and old school guys, the air tanks, I remember Chickie used to tell stories about the sponge. Is that anything you dealt with? DL: I didn't use one of those. But there were a couple of old guys that still did it that way. TT: Let's talk about the sponge. It was cut into a square... DL: Yeah, and they'd just stick it in their mouth and breathe through it, and they had some ill conceived notion that it was effective in keeping smoke out of your lungs. TT: When did the air packs come into play? DL: We already had them. When I came on the job we had them. We probably had them since the early '60s. Maybe even earlier. TT: Really? So these guys were just holding out to be hardcore. DL: Yeah. They just didn't like putting air packs on. TT: So there were still some sponge guys around. DL: Yeah, Ray Gilbert was one of them and, bless his soul, he passed away not long after leaving the job. TT: Just cooked. DL: Yeah, nice guy, too. and a hell of a firefighter. But he would just go in as far as he could with that sponge and you know, obviously you can't breathe that hot smoke, so once he hit real heat, he had to back out. 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 about a massive three-decker house that caught fire, and two guys who were drinking in a bar had left the bar to get people out of the building, or 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 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 that 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. TT: There was also the story involving the shooting, where a guy shot a girl, and you went against--you just walked in with the trauma bag... DL: It was outside, on the corner of Main and Vale, right down the street from our station. Sent us for a shooting. I was with Bobby Howe. We pull up and sure enough there was a girl laying in the gutter. I got out of the truck and came around the side where the victim was and there's a guy standing there holding a gun on Bobby Howe. I was a lieutenant at that time. And Bob said to me, "What do you want to do about this guy?" Then the guy took the gun and turned it on me. We were just feet apart. I said, "Well, if he wants us, he's got us. So we're gonna ignore him and help her." And that's what we did. And the engine pulled up and I told them to stay back. TT: Now this guy, what was his reaction when he saw you guys were like "We're gonna take care of this lady. You can shoot us if you want." DL: He was alternately pointing the gun at us and even threatened at one point to kill himself, put the gun under his chin. Some sort of semi-automatic assault rifle. TT: Now she was shot in the chest? DL: She was shot in the abdomen, pelvis, upper legs. He shot her eight times. TT: No shit. DL: She was 14 years old. TT: This was a straight up domestic? DL: Well, she was his girlfriend. She had his baby. He should've been charged with statutory rape long before this point. He was 23, she was 14. And she probably had the kid at 13. Anyway, she ended up paralyzed in one leg. TT: It was amazing she even lived. DL: Yeah. TT: The story I heard was that--William Shatner's "Rescue 911" got wind of this incident and they contacted downtown wanting to talk to you guys. DL: Yeah, I spoke to a lady from the show, from the west coast. They were interested in having us on, wanting to re-enact the incident. I'm not, I wasn't into going on television. (laughs) So I used the excuse, "Look this thing's still being investigated and we're not at liberty to discuss it." TT: But the real reason was you didn't really want to-- DL: I had no interest in being on TV. So anyway we got an award for that. TT: What's another one you can think of? DL: Ironic things, like we saved a guy, he was overdosed on heroin, cyanotic, complete respiratory arrest, not long to live. Gave him the Narcan, turned him around, got him to the hospital, and when he got out of the hospital, he murdered his step-father, and then he murdered another guy in a motel somewhere in Massachusetts. So after getting his life saved he killed two people. TT: Talk about a swing. One for two. Now, when you talk about the Narcan, was it already on the trucks when you got on? DL: Right from when we became cardiacs, 1983. But we used it seldom compared to now. I used more Narcan in the last two years on the job than I did the previous thirty-four. TT: No shit. DL: I mean we would occasionally get an overdose, but nothing like today. TT: Now as far as the drugs back in the day, they were sticking to coke, marijuana-- DL: Cocaine was the big--the cocaine epidemic hit this area in the early 80s. And it was carnage everywhere. Talk about fraying the fabric of society, it caused a lot of damage to families, people, you name it. The violence--I don't see the violence with the heroin like we did with cocaine. Violent crime at the housing projects, and all over the city. Terrible. The shootings. Every week. It was all based on the drug trade. Stabbings. People getting beaten, run over on purpose, cowboys robbing drug dealers... TT: The wild west. DL: Yeah. TT: As far as what you would do with someone who had too much coke-- DL: There was no antidote for that. The hospital would usually give them a Benzo. TT: Versed. DL: Yeah, Versed, Adavan, Valium, to try and smooth them out. Other than that you just had to let it run its course. And if they started seizing from a cocaine overdose, the next step was usually cardiac arrest. TT: Now, you used to tell me when I first got on the job, you used to say if somebody gets in the back of the truck and says they're gonna die, or feel like they're gonna die, chances are they're right. DL Yeah. There's a good chance. That impending doom thing is real. TT: I actually saw it with you one morning. It is a real thing. Pretty ironic that people would know their own death was coming. Now, as far as the trends in the job, cocaine in the 80s, there was cycles of things. DL: The city actually got better after this cocaine epidemic sort of went away. I mean the drug never went away, but the rampant use-- TT: The ferocity. DL: Yeah. TT: So by the early 90s things had mellowed out? DL: Yes. The city was actually better. Less violent crime, less pregnant women turning up at the ER testing positive for coke. Things got better. Then as the 90s wore on, opiates came into play more and more. Now we have an epidemic of that. Heroin, Fentanyl, synthetic opiates which you can buy on the internet, shipped from China, TT: They say the Fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine-- DL: Yeah well there's a thing called Carfentanil, which is even a 100 times more potent than the Fentanyl. So I mean it's just insane. It's an elephant tranquilizer. That's the only legitimate use for it in this country was to tranquilize large animals for surgery. TT: So when I was on rescue, we had just gone through the bath salts, that phase. It was quick right? I only remember a six month window of absolute freaking craziness. DL: That stuff was legal. It was a horrible drug. I mean you could walk into a store and buy it. No age limit, no nothing. The Feds kind of got that under wraps TT: I think people got scared of that stuff, it was like the first time a drug had actually scared people away from it. Especially when people began eating each other. Me and Mikey Dawson rolled up in the 1's one night and there was this tiny naked petite white girl covered in her own shit screaming nonsense like a lunatic. Howie was there. We charged her with sheets and wrapped her up like a burrito. DL: Bizarre. Seemed like a combination of hallucinogenic and central nervous system stimulant. So you're all jacked up and psychotic at the same time. TT: Not a good combo. DL: No. TT: Is there any particular run that you look back on, things you might've done different? DL: I remember a lot of the tragic ones. We had a fire, we were looking for a guy, and finally we realized we were walking over him. There was so much fire damage the plaster had fallen off the walls and ceilings, and sort of buried this guy in plaster and charcoal, charred wood, and he was staring up at us, obviously dead, and the heat had twisted his jaw into this grotesque grin, and the fire had burned most of the flesh around his mouth away, so all of his teeth were exposed, and it was like he was mocking us. This is right out of Hollywood. TT: You'll never forget that image, right? DL: Never. TT: Obviously, kid runs are awful DL: We had a kid that was 16 months old. Mom put him in the yard with the dog, and the dog got excited to see him, the dog was tethered to a post, and the dog wrapped round and round the kid, and the chain on the dog wrapped around his neck and choked him. We ran a full code, but couldn't pull him back. Also, kids pushing through screens, falling out of second and third-floor windows. TT: Did you have any miracle stories of kids? DL: Yeah. One second-floor leaper we couldn't find a scratch on him. One third-floor little girl was unconscious but not hurt. We had a kid, two months old, coming down I-95 from Attleboro. Mom had taken the kid out of his seat to feed him, and they crashed. And the kid went out the back window with nothing on but a diaper and a T-shirt, and he bounced down the highway like a basketball. Now it's a baby, the plates in its skull haven't even formed yet. As we approached I thought, man, this kid's gonna die. He had a mouthful of glass, and we cleaned all that out, and he started screaming and I thought, he might just make it. TT: Let's talk about the Fourth of July in Pawtucket. Crazy stories. DL: That goes all the way back to the 1920s and 30s. TT: So starting in the 20s and 30s. DL: At least. Bonfires around the Fourth of July was a big tradition. TT: People would be out lighting up the neighborhoods. And these people would be burning sofas, mattresses, whatever the hell they could. DL: Piles of scrap wood. TT: When did that come to an end. 80s? DL: No, later than that. Into this century. When did you come on? TT: I got eight years. DL: It was pretty much dying out by the time you came on. And even now once and a while, we'll get something. But back in those days there was one on every corner. Especially Woodlawn. The guys would just go from one fire to the next. TT: Like 200 fires in 2 days... DL: Oh yeah, more than that even. Magill and Whitman was the epicenter of this activity. The kids would pile stuff up and it would be almost to the top of the utility poles, tires and scrap, soaking in gasoline, and I mean, the siding would start to smolder on the houses. TT: Isn't it crazy that this went on for 80 years and no one said, "This is probably something we shouldn't be doing?" DL: My father said they used to take rolls of old wallpaper, cut into three inch sections, soak it in kerosene, take one end and throw the roll up over the utility wires and light it, so now you'd have these flaming strips hanging down, and of course it would light the wires, sometime short out the juice. And fireworks with it. Tons of fireworks. TT: Anything goes, right? DL: Speaking of irony. I owned a three-family near the hospital. So I had the second-floor vacant, and I'm in there working, painting, and a guy knocks on the door, comes in, and he's got this pregnant woman with him, so he says, "You gonna be renting this place?" I says, "Yeah. You working?" He goes "No, but I'm on a case." He was suing somebody. So he looks like a wiseguy, got a bunch of tattoos, had the pregnant girl, he goes "Don't worry, we don't party too much." And he's laughing. And I'm saying to myself, "Yeah, you got a shot, pal." But to make it look good I took his name and number and says, "I'll call you when it's ready." So I go to work on the night shift a couple of days later, and we get sent to a shooting right down the street from the station. It's him. He got shot right in the jaw, on the right side, and the bullet came out his neck on the other side. We didn't know it but the bullet had transected his spinal cord. He was dead from the neck down, he wasn't breathing, so we got the breathing under control. Got him to the hospital alive, but he died a few days later, paralyzed from the neck down. TT: Jesus. Good thing you didn't rent to him. You never would've seen your money. DL: Right? I remember one Valentine's Day, this couple, they're both drunk, and he slaps her, so she breaks beer bottles over his head. They're both sitting there bleeding and the cops are there and I'm thinking, "Ain't love grand." (laughs) TT: A love story on Valentine's Day. Of course she's not gonna press charges and blah blah blah. You'd see the same repeat stuff, right? The guys who abuse women, they just do it over and over. DL: Yes. TT: So machetes, knives, what about a baseball bat? Me and Mikey had a guy that got hit in the head with a baseball bat one night. That was pretty fucked up. DL: Blunt force trauma? TT: Yeah, this guy had just gotten out of the hospital for a brain--these guys beat him and they took the skull off-- DL: To relieve the swelling? TT: Yeah. They put it back on, this poor bastard's in the hospital for weeks, and then they let him out and two nights later, he gets jumped over by the mart on Spring Street DL: Jesus.. TT: And they beat his head again. DL: Ugh. TT: I couldn't even believe it, I'm like this is.... he told us the story and I'm like oh my God.. so baseball bats. Now, in that bag you've got stuff written down? DL: Yes. (rummages through a plastic shopping bag and pulls out papers, receipts, backs of envelopes, each filled with notes on runs through the years. Rustling sounds of plastic and paper.) Yeah, I got a whole bunch-it's not very organized, and some of it is just a three word scribble to remind me of the story, so you wouldn't even be able to decipher it. Oh and I got a story here. I'm brand new on the job, it's 90 degrees out, humid, we get a three-decker going, one of those two-and-a-half stories where the only windows are the ones on the end? On the third-floor? It's got those slanted ceilings, so all the heat and fire was trapped, and I'm up there on the third-floor and almost throwing up in my mask. I'm trying to hang on because I'm a new guy and I'm gonna stay here, my ears are burning-- TT: It's hot as fuck. DL: Yeah. That was my first real good fire, my introduction to a hot, smoky, nasty, job. They finally opened the roof and it was like somebody put the air conditioning on, but up until that point we were dying up there. You could see the red glow of the fire rolling back and forth over our heads. TT- Sounds pretty jakey-- DL- Another run, we had a guy who was in a drunken blackout, killed her, beat her to death, and didn't realize he'd done it until he sobered up a little bit and looked at her. She was unconscious, so he called us and is on the phone saying, "Oh my god, I think I just killed so and so. And I don't remember doing it, I was drunk." The cops weren't even there. TT: Imagine being so hammer drunk you don't remember killing somebody? DL: There was--I didn't have it--but one of the crews had another one, guy came home drunk, beat his wife to death, and during the night, she was in the chair, and the toddler, a daughter, crawled into the dead mother's arms. And that's how the guys found her the next day. At first they weren't even sure the baby was alive, because the mother was obviously dead. And there was one off Weeden Street. The ex-boyfriend beat, strangled and stabbed this girl with a three-year-old daughter in the house, so the three-year-old spent the whole day with the dead mother. TT: Gross. DL: I was with a new guy, too. He was horrified. But the poor kid, all day long just hanging out with her dead mom. TT: Jesus. DL: I also remember a North Providence firefighter hung himself in our district, in his hallway closet. TT: I remember that. I was working on the other side of the city (Rescue 2). It was you and Curry, right? DL: Yes. TT: And Curry knew the guy, am I wrong about that? DL: Yes, he knew him and the girlfriend. We had another one, there was this girl who worked on an ambulance company, she hung herself on a curtain rod, also near our station. Yeah, so two hangings we worked together. TT: That Curry's a bad omen. DL: But yo know what? When he was first with me, we had a bunch of cardiac arrests in a short period of time, and we got pulses back on four of the five. So I started calling him, J.C. TT: Jesus Christ. I forgot about that. DL: Oh and Timmy Noiseaux, brand new with me, brand new on the job, he's all of twenty-one himself. he's transferred to the rescue and he still tells this story. We go to the highway, this guy crashed his car, ejected, his brains are all over the highway. Well Timmy's only twenty-one himself, he's never seen anything like this, probably never seen a dead guy, much less in that condition, so we go back to the station, we go inside, I'm warming up some spaghetti, and I look over at him--he's got the TV on but has a blank stare on his face, and he's smoking a cigarette and he's shaking. I go, "You all right?" It didn't even occur to me that he had never seen this. He turns around and says, "How can you eat!" (Laughs) TT: How can you have spaghetti... (laughs). The guy's brains are all over the road. You're like, "Kid, we got to eat lunch, the shift's not over." DL: It was late at night. A midnight snack. TT: What was the closest you ever came to hearing the bagpipes? DL: The old Narragansett Race Track. It was vacant. It was closed. There was a clubhouse, which was a huge structure that had stands in the front to watch the race. Behind that was a lounge and all type of concession stands. We're on the top floor, and the fire's going like hell. It's underneath the roof, rolling over our heads, and it's black in there, hot as hell, so all of a sudden the ceiling collapses and all of the plaster comes down on our heads and now it's just fire everywhere, rolling back and forth over us. Whoever was in charge said we didn't have enough water for this, I mean it was hot as hell and our ears were burning. He says, "We gotta get out of here." So we all bailed out. Not fifteen seconds later the whole roof came crashing down right where we had been. All that heavy timber caved right in. It was an old old building. Built in the 1920s TT: You ain't pushing that out of the way. DL: I've seen people with maggots living in their flesh. TT: Drug addicts? DL: Yeah, street people, homeless, drunks, and this lady, I knew her too. she was one of our regulars. She was a pleasant person, just obviously a drunk, and she fell and cut her head and was too busy drinking to worry about it. It was summer time, so some flies went in there and hatched. She had hundreds of maggots between her skull and her scalp, the docs poured acetone in the wound. The maggots came streaming out by the hundreds. TT: Now the drunks themselves are pretty remarkable as far as endurance. I mean guys who can drink and drink everyday, all day, their longevity is amazing. DL: I dealt with some of them for twenty years. Same person. Speaking of being irresponsible and not taking care of themselves. We had a guy, he fell on the ice on like a Monday. He was another drunk. Friday comes and his friends can't stand the smell of him anymore so they call us. Well, when he fell on Monday, he had an open fracture of his humerus. it was sticking straight out of his arm, and it had gotten gangrenous, and by the time we got there his arm was black from the shoulder all the way down. the bone was still sticking out and he was in horrible pain. It was gangrenous, which is one of the worst smells on earth. And I'm not sure, but I think he lost his arm. TT: What about decapitations? DL: Yes. Seen a few. The brick wall at the Stop and Shop was one, and another was a guy who got hit by a train so hard his eyeballs popped out of his head. The face was looking up at me and it looked like a Halloween mask. TT: Majority of train strikes are suicide, right? DL: Yes. After one of them, an engineer told the cops the guy was standing in the middle of the tracks. He turned back right before he was hit by an Acela doing 180 mph and locked eyes with the engineer. (searches his notes). One time we had a girl feeling suicidal. Took her to the hospital. Next night, same time, we go back to the same address. And this time she's in the shower dead. She had turned the heat up on the hot water tank, and I don't know how she stood it, but she stood under the scalding water and burned herself to death. All of the skin on her back and shoulders was peeling off. I mean how can you stand that? TT: That's dedication. That's the difference between people wanting help and wanting to die DL: We had, one of the babies I delivered, mom's in the room with three guys. The baby came out inside the placenta, which I had never seen before, so at first I looked and said, "What is this?" Then it dawned on me--the baby's still in the sack. So I got the scalpel, cut the kid out of the sack and the cord was wrapped around his neck three times. He was as blue as your jeans. So we got him breathing, got him nice and pinked up, wrapped him in a blanket, and I says, "Who's the lucky guy? You got a healthy baby boy." And they're all going, "Not me, not me." Well, it turns out she was a prostitute and was servicing these guys when she went into labor. Another time, a mom was in labor. We got her in the truck, dismissed the engine company, and we're going down York Avenue as she's screaming, "This baby's coming!" I barely had time to put the gloves on. She spits the kid out, right out onto the gurney. I missed him, didn't even get to catch him! So I says, "Rescue 1 to fire alarm, correct time please." To get the time of birth exact. I delivered nine babies. TT: Wow. DL: One time, we had a fire in a second-floor tenement. There was a steel door, and we had a helluva time getting in. So, Greg Brulé, big as a house, kicks the door with his size 16 boots, and the whole door crashed down with half the wall. But before that, a cop who was on patrol got to the fire first. He ran up to the third-floor to get everybody out. Meanwhile the smoke followed him up the stairs and he started to panic. He's hanging out the window, black smoke pouring out over him as he's yelling, "You gotta get me down!" We threw a ladder up right as the fire rolled out. TT: Brulé was a monster. I had a fire with him on West Ave and watched him kick in three different exterior doors. DL: He told me, "I've only been in one fight my whole life. I put the guy through a door, and then I'm going, I'm sorry, you all right?" (Laughs) (More notes) I took Chief Coutu, in Central Falls, he was still a lieutenant back then. They had four-decker blowing good. A big woman was hanging out the second-floor window. He threw a ground ladder and was trying to pull her though the window. But the room flashed over and back-drafted at the same time. It blew her out the window and down he goes with her on top. I think she died, but he broke his jaw, knocked out teeth, broke his wrist. He had multiple traumas, survived, came back to the job and went on to make chief. Second Part of interview January 17, 2017-- TT: I was talking with Bob Thurber- DL: He tell you about the kid they had? The guy's naked--a big black guy--the kid's naked. He hands him (Thurber) an eight-year-old kid that was just about dead. Anyway, the kid died. Turned out, the guy had been raping and beating this kid. It had been going on for a while. TT: The mother was in jail, right? DL: I don't know exactly what the back story was, but he got convicted of murder and everything he should have. TT: So we went through a bunch of stuff last time, and I know you might've had some other things to add. DL: Well, I mentioned to you--you asked me if I had to work on people I knew--and of course there was Chief Renzi, I knew the guy for thirty years and there I was doing CPR and running a code on the guy. Then there was Dave Tomlinson's sister. (Tomlinson, another legendary 28 year rescue guy, was in dispatch). It was a night shift. She had like seven months on the Police Department, her first night alone in a patrol car. I don't know what the guy did, but she starts chasing a guy on Power Road. There was a construction area, she hit a patch of sand, lost control of the vehicle, no seat belt, hit a pole, and when we got there she was unconscious. And not breathing very well. She didn't have a scratch--a mark on her, but you could tell she was in tough shape. What happened was she hit the base of her skull in the back-- TT: Oh no. The whiplash of the pole-- DL: Yeah. She bounced around the inside of the car--I don't know what she hit. TT: Did she have a pulse when you got there? DL: Yes, she had a pulse. She was barely breathing and then she started to seize and I knew she had a head injury. I was a brand new cardiac and so was my partner. We got six cops in the back of the rescue looking over our shoulders while we're trying to work on her and it was--you talk about stress. So anyway, these were the days before the trauma center, so we took her to Memorial, they shipped her to Boston and they pulled the plug a few days later. She was brain dead. TT: How old was she? Was she in her 20's? DL: Yeah, early twenties, and she looked like a kid. She was a little peanut of a thing, and like I said, not a mark, not a bruise, no blood, but you knew she was in tough shape. TT: This was the mid-80's? DL: Yes. Exactly. It was probably '84. '85. I would say '84. TT: Dave was on the job here, right? DL: He had just gotten on this job. He sent me to the call. And he did not know it was his sister. TT: Oh Jesus. DL: He just sent us, you know, for a police car involved in an auto accident. Not knowing. TT: Wow. Brutal. DL: And his father, who at the time was the chief of police, and his other brother was already a police officer-- TT: On Pawtucket? DL: Yes. So that whole thing was all connected. TT: A circle of horror. DL: Yes. TT: Let's talk about what this did--I mean you were able to absorb all of these runs, all of these terrible things, and you didn't turn to booze, like you were able to process all of this stuff. What did it do to you as far as, like, your personal relationships? You never brought the job home, right? DL: I would go home and talk about a few things. You know, just run it by the wife, but that would kind of be the end of it. I didn't dwell on it, and, I think the best thing I did was talk to other people on the job about what we had experienced, because who knows better than somebody who's doing the same thing as you? So that was my way of coping. And I drank a little bit. Especially when I was younger, I drank a lot (laughs). But I'm not saying it was because I needed to to cope with this job. TT: You've been married how long? DL: Forty years. TT: So you were able to weather everything without having it turn bad at home. DL: Yeah. And, you know, speaking about working on people you know, I did CPR on my mother-in-law. TT: Oh God. DL: Off duty. On Thanksgiving Day. TT: Oh my God. DL: So we're having Thanksgiving at our house, so I went to pick up my mother-in-law early cause she was gonna have to give my wife a hand getting things ready. So I go to her house and pick her up and she goes, "I don't feel very good. I'm a little dizzy." I said, "Well, come on and if you don't feel good I'll bring you home, whatever you want to do." So I get her in the car, I look over, she kind of went slack-jawed, had a little seizure and then coded, right in front of me. So I jumped out, dragged her out of the car, put her on the ground, started CPR, right in the driveway, and I had my father-in-law call 911. Anyway, they got her pulse back but she died a day or two later. TT: Happy Thanksgiving. DL: Yeah. I ever tell you about the time with Joe Cordeiro? When the guy slashed his face? TT: No. DL: We went to 150 Dartmouth Street, which is an elderly high rise. Last place you'd expect trouble. And just the rescue, no engine. Woman ill. So we knock on the door, and the door opens about this much (holds hands inches apart) and an arm and a hand comes out with a knife in it-- TT: Get out of here. DL: Yup. And the knife catches Joe Cordiero just under his eye all the way down to his jaw, but not deep. He had pulled his face back and it was just like a deep scratch, like an abrasion, and he was bleeding. Looked bad at first but it turned out to be superficial. Turns out the guy was the lady's son who had just gotten out of the psych ward, and he was having some sort of episode. (Tones hit for a house fire. Interview suspended until January 18, 2017) TT: So where were we? DL: Well, they got the door open, the arm came out, it was like Alfred Hitchcock. Like Psycho, the shower scene? Remember? TT: Yeah (laughs) DL: So we muckled the guy and sat on him. At the time, there were dead spots? With the portable radios? And 150 Dartmouth Street was one of those spots. TT: Before they put the repeaters in, right? DL: Right. Exactly right. In fact, that was one of the incidents that kind of called attention to the need for the repeaters. (Repeaters are used to boost radio transmissions. They were installed in two high rises in Pawtucket soon after so the entire city would be covered). So the only people--we were yelling into our portables--Fire Alarm couldn't hear us, but Engine 1 did (Station 1 is barely a mile from Dartmouth Street). Because they were close by. So they barely heard us and they came running. And by the time they got there we were sitting on the guy. We had taken the knife off him. TT: Did he stab the lady inside? DL: Nope. It was his mom. So anyway, Joe didn't need stitches... TT: He just got whisked by the knife. DL: Yup. I mean...close call. TT: (Battalion Chief) Kraweic was talking about, um, cause he didn't do a lot of rescue time-- DL: Right. TT: It was interesting to get his perspective from the chief's level of like, on the fireground itself. Not just when we're showing up and we're doing our jobs, thinking about we have to do, he's thinking about thirty guys, you know, and their safety... DL: Yeah. He's got to keep thirty people safe. That's his whole deal. TT: That kind of responsibility must be brutal. DL: It is. That's a whole different--like you said, we don't think of that too much. TT: I mean everyone's scurrying around, and he's got to worry about 80,000 people (in the city) on top of that. DL: Was Al Jack gone when you came on? TT: Yes. DL: He was in charge of the fire where Hargreaves got killed. I mean he went on to become the chief in Tiverton and then Seekonk--he's got forty years in the fire service--but that fire rattled him to his core. He'll go to his grave with it. TT: The weight of command. DL: Yes. All kinds of second guessing, you know, what did I do wrong? And he did nothing wrong. The only guy that screwed up that day was John Hargreaves. I don't know if anyone talked to you about that. TT: Yeah, he went in alone-- DL: Yup. He was freelancing. TT: It's too bad. Al Jack had nothing to do with that decision. Freelancing's dangerous business. DL: Yup. I mean he's retired now, he's got a nice life, but that'll always be with him. And that's his nature anyway. He's one of those OCD kind of guys, worries about-- TT: He's a detail guy. DL: Yes. Worries about the little stuff. TT: And at that level, there are Battalion Chiefs that some guys--blah blah blah, everyone talks about somebody, but once you get to that level, there's not a lot of guys that are like, "I fear for my safety because that guy's chief." I mean these guys know what they're doing, on a basic level, on a tactical level. I mean you can't rise that high-- DL: Yes. Al Kraweic's another good example. He was a very conscientious firefighter, lieutenant, a captain, and Battalion Chief. That's his makeup. "If I'm gonna do this job I'm gonna do it right. I'm gonna try and make sure myself and the guys go home at night." TT: Leading by example, Kraweic, right? A man of few words, but the words he said-- DL: But I know he used to get worried and nervous and he used to lose it a little bit once and a while and get pissed off for someone screwing up--which he has a right do, and he should've done, because that's his job. Even though most of the time he was a mellow, easy going kind of person... TT: He was talking about (Battalion Chief Jay) McLaughlin as well as far as like tactics. We were talking about, on the actual fireground itself, how you're directing the scene. Some guys have a sense for these things. DL: Right. Jay's another one. Smart guy, great tactician, knows his job--he can be an asshole to deal with--but he'll make sure you go home at night. TT: Kraweic was talking about (Bobby) Ogle as far as like, just being a hands on fireman, really a talented guy when it came to that kind of stuff. DL: Bobby Ogle? Bobby was a gutsy guy. He was a Vietnam veteran and just balls to the wall. Fearless, really. But sensible at the same time. He wouldn't take unnecessary chances but he was good. TT: Kraweic was saying one time Ogle saw something and Kraweic--they were in a room. Kind of like the story you had about the racetrack, where somebody said, "We gotta get outta here right now." And they did, thank God, because Kraweic said the roof collapsed seconds later. Anyway, we already spoke about how you were able to compartmentalize everything you saw. Without it taking a toll... DL: Well, yeah, I think I took that from Vietnam. Because I saw some shit over there too. I just kind of put it away. Did I mention to you, like, after I retired I started thinking about Vietnam? TT: Really? DL: Because for all those years I worked two jobs (he ran a painting business as well), raised a family--I mean I was busy. All the time busy. So last winter right after I retired I wasn't doing any painting. I wasn't doing much of anything--my wife got a hip replacement so I was kind of nursing her. And Vietnam came back. All of a sudden it's in my head. TT: Wow. Forty years later, right? DL: Forty years later. So I availed myself of the services of the VA. Not because of that but because all I wanted was an ID card so I could get a ten percent discount at the big box stores? (Laughs) So I went in there and they were great. They said while you're here get a physical, talk to this councilor, see if you got anything else going on, you know, you're a Vietnam vet, blah blah blah. So I told this person, and he said, "You know, don't feel like the Lone Ranger. I'm seeing this alot." He said, "Guys your age, you're retiring, you've had busy lives, and you've kind of put Vietnam behind you, but all of a sudden you've got time on your hands, and all this stuff comes back." He said it's common, and it usually passes within a few months. And he was exactly right. TT: You were able to deal with it. You took the steam out of it. DL: You talk about what this job does to you or doesn't, uh, I say it didn't bother me but, yeah, especially when things didn't go right, trying to save somebody--especially a young person--and you lose them ... that's tough. And you take that home with you, that's a tough thing to deal with. And this job--it wasn't just what I did, it was who I was. I was this job. And still, what am I doing? (He motions around us). I'm hanging around a fire station. TT: Thirty-five years, right? DL: Thirty-six. TT: The same thing with (Name redacted). He lost his identity, and he kind of lost his way at the end. DL: You know I didn't have that kind of reaction but, I dreamt about--I'm still dreaming about the job. I'm going on runs in my sleep. Not as much now, but at first ... TT: Really. DL: Oh yeah, all the time. Every night there was something about the job in my head, you know, while I was sleeping. Getting up in the middle of the night thinking I've got to go on a run. I'm at home in my bed and I'm thinking, "How come it's so quiet? Why aren't I going out the door?" TT: You're also making up for thirty years of lost sleep, too DL: Yeah, that's the good part of it. So yes, it affects you. Some more than others, obviously. Same thing with going to war. Some people deal with it and others not so good. DL: And to, you know, you become inured to a lot of this stuff. Uh, somebody who doesn't do this for a living would find that just one incident horrifying, but like anything else you get used to it, you learn to adjust to it, whatever, because it's your job so, a lot stuff that other people would find terrible ... that was just another day at the office for me. TT: Yeah. DL: So maybe I'm screwed up that way. I don't know. I got through it TT: It's a lot to absorb (long pause) We were talking ... guys like Callahan, Slater, Joe Pike... These guys look ten years younger once they retired. They look so much better. That's how much it drained them. DL: Callahan. He's another guy that had a tough time with the Hargreaves fire. He was on the rescue that day with Artie Mintsmenn, and they took John to the hospital. And uh, when they realized how bad he was, that he probably wasn't gonna make it, Callahan had a tough time with that. You know, as they say, you can see a thousand terrible things, but that next one might put you over the edge. So, maybe everybody's got a breaking point. TT: As far as dealing (with all of this), these services kind of developed along the way. Like the Critical Stress Debriefings... DL: Yeah I went to two of them over the years. From time to time they'd get offered. The first one I went to was in 1989, after we watched those two guys burn to death on Dexter Street, that was the first time I had ever been involved in a PTSD debriefing. And they had a team together. One was a clergyman, one was a firefighter with training in debriefing people, and another guy was like a psychologist or something. So anyway, a bunch of us went to this thing because, you know, we were traumatized. And uh, I don't know if you know, but I lost my own kid to a SIDS death. TT: I did not know that. DL: He was a month old. Um, that's the worst thing that ever happened to me by far. First kid after eleven years without one--we weren't sure we were ever gonna have one, then a miracle happens, we have a kid and we lose him. So this fire was like maybe a year and a half after I'd lost...? So for some reason, sitting at this debriefing session with these professional people, I guess they knew how to push our buttons because I lost it. All it did was bring back losing my own kid and all the shitty stuff that had happened to me, so I says, I don't know if this is doing any good or making things worse. TT: The accrued toll of everything after awhile, was something that the VA, especially when you started dealing with the Vietnam stuff, did it provide a way to process the whole career? To just kind of put it all in perspective? DL: You know who did that for me? Mike McMahon, who was a dispatcher on this job for thirty-five years. A long time on my shift, I mean he sent me to hundreds of these incidents, thousands even. Um. And he's a Vietnam Vet that almost--he was so badly injured they flew his parents to Hawaii to say good bye to him because they were convinced he was gonna die. In fact he became a dispatcher because it was all he was able to--did you ever meet him? TT: I did not. He was retired by then. DL: His hands were still all...kind of like this (forms two claws) from the injuries? He still had shrapnel in his body that, every once in awhile a piece would work its way to the surface and he'd pull it out? Anyway, I told him about what happened to me after I retired, and how Vietnam came back, and he said to me, he said, "Think about this. You never had a normal life." He says, "You went to Vietnam when you were nineteen-years-old, then you came on this job, you were working sometimes three or four shifts in a row, sometimes three or four days nonstop. You worked another job, you worked days, you worked nights, you worked evenings, you didn't have a normal schedule or a normal anything like the average person." He says, (laughs uncontrollably) "You're lucky you're as good as you are." (Laughter) DL: He says the same thing happened to him after he retired from here. And the Vietnam stuff came back a little bit. But he said, "Think about that. You had a pretty whacky career." TT: With no down time to process any of it. DL: He says, "Just be grateful you're as good as... you know, if you need to talk to me some more we'll talk. But you'll be okay." And he was exactly right. (Long pause) Thirty-six is a long road. But I enjoyed it right to the end. Like I told--I don't know if you saw the article when I retired that the Times did? TT: Yup. DL: I told the guy, "I never got tired of it." And it was the truth, even though it was kicking my ass, physically and mentally I was exhausted. Think I told you, when I finally called it a day I said, "Geez, I didn't know how much I needed to retire until I retired." (Laughs) This is all right. (Laughs) They send me money every month, got healthcare, I'm good. TT: McMahon was right. You strung together forty years of hell right there. It has to find its place. DL: Something just crossed my mind and then it went away again. That happens a lot when you get older. TT: Kraweic was like, "I wish there were a couple of other guys in here because if there was a bunch of us we can all start talking and stuff comes back." DL: We would remind each other of stuff. Yes. TT: But it's funny because as each of you tells these stories, because you're all--most of you--some of you were on the same shift and we were at the same events, its told from different angles--the same story--and that's how you know it's all true. It's all backed up by everybody else. And if you weren't there, you didn't see it, you don't know. DL: Speaking of old timers who knew their business, John Buchanon was another one. He was working the day Hargreaves got killed. That was actually my shift but I was on vacation. I was up in New Hampshire with the kids. In fact, this is so weird, I got a PFD T-shirt on, I'm in like Storyland in New Hamphire, and this guy comes up to me and says, "How's that Pawtucket guy doing?" And I says, "What're you talking about?" He was an East Providence firefighter and he'd heard about the Hargreaves fire, and I hadn't heard about it. So, when I heard that, I said, "Jesus, we gotta go home." We were gonna stay another day, so for some reason I just felt like I had to be back here. What I was gonna do? No idea. But I came home. Anyway, this John Buchanon. He was a savvy firefighter. And he came out to change his bottle. And uh, Al Jack, in charge of the fire, says to him, "What's it like in there?" And I'll never forget this. John said--Al Jack told me this--John didn't say it's hot, it's this or it's that, he said, "The fucking devil's down there and it's gonna kill somebody." TT: (Gasp. Shocked laughter) DL: He says, "I have never," and he had twenty something years, and in those days a lot of fires, even like--he was on before me, and there were a lot of fires before I came on. Anyway, he says, "I have never seen conditions like this." He said, "The fire is everywhere and it's nowhere," he says, "It's fucking hot as hell," and he says, "You can actually feel the pressure in there. The place...it just wants to explode." This place had triple plexi-glass windows, it had three roofs on it, it had been remodeled a number of times, and instead of tearing stuff out, they just added more stuff on. Guys were hitting the windows with axes, the point of an axe, and it would just, like a cartoon, axe would bounce off and you'd make a little hole this big (holds fingers barely quarter inch apart) because it wasn't only plexiglass but it was super--like it could stop a bullet. TT: Thurber was saying they had to take the actual wall apart under the windows. They couldn't even go through the windows at all, they were taking bricks out... DL: Yeah, uh, Spud Taylor, another great firefighter. Ladder 2, but a great ladder man, and we don't have that many real good ladder guys, goes up on the roof, he opens the roof, and there was none better at--especially being fast in opening a roof--now smoke comes out but not a lot, and he pokes, there's another roof. So he opens that one up and more smoke but not a ton like you'd expect, pokes, another roof. There was three fucking roofs on the building. So they had a helluva time venting it. and the place had a fire load. It had plastic, it had wooden furniture, it had decorations, just, it was made to burn. And no vent. Nothing was coming out. TT: It was just sucking the life out of everything around it. DL: The fire started in the basement, so the guys were down there, trying to find the seat of the fire and uh, but the fire would flash over their heads, almost like that movie Backdraft, and that's when John Buchanon told Al Jack, "I've never seen anything like it." TT: Now, did at some point Jack pull everybody out and just say "Fuck it." DL: Yeah, I think that was just before or just after someone realized Hargreaves was missing. TT: Oh wow. TT: Are there any--I don't want to say regrets because you don't have any--but when you look back on the whole career, is there anything you would've done differently? DL: Well, a lot of guys chide me for staying on the rescue. They said, "You could've been a Battalion Chief, blah blah blah." I don't really regret it. I think I found a niche where I was and I liked the action. You kind of get hooked on that activity, that busyness. TT: The juice. DL: Yeah. So I think I stayed where I belonged. TT: The rescue reminds me of--you know the trains going down the track, and on the top is the antennae that connects to 200,000 volts up there? DL: (Laughs) Yup. TT: Right? That's what the rescue reminds me of. In the car itself, people are cruising along, guys are on their trucks, and up above is where the real electricity's going on. Like where the mainline--the rescue's out there prowling around all the time, it's the one main piece of the whole job that is the whole job. DL: You know, I got to meet street people, lawyers and everything in between. You meet a cross section of society you would otherwise never encounter. The down and out, the druggies and drunks, and homeless people, poor people...you know, poor people are invisible unless you have a job like ours, unless you're a social worker or something, you know I'd go into these tenements and people had no furniture, no food, little kids running around all ragged looking, sad situations, you know? I used to tell my kids all the time, "You have no idea how lucky you are." And my youngest, (laughs) she's kind of a smart ass, and she used to go, "Don't tell me, more tales from the street, dad." (long laugh). TT: That's perspective right there. DL: I'd deal with some of these people for years. The same homeless drunks and druggies and...what was her name...Anyway there was this one girl, poor thing got into a bad lifestyle at an early age like seventeen, eighteen, she started with the drugs and drinking and she, she was an addict. And she was used and abused out there, anyway, I used to say to whoever I was working with, "She's committing suicide on the installment plan." And uh, sure enough, at about the age of thirty-five, thirty-six, she died from an overdose. But she had a rough go of it the whole way. TT: You saw the whole sixteen-year decline. DL: I saw her downslide for all that time. Same thing with Jay Minasian. I started picking him up when he was eighteen. He was forty-four when he died and I was still picking him up. Twenty-six years. I knew his birthday by heart--I didn't even have to ask him his birthday. TT: Twenty-six years is pretty incredible. That's a lifestyle most people wouldn't survive for a weekend. DL: I saw a whole bunch of those people die. TT: It's amazing the amount of abuse the body can take. Especially sleeping outside, drinking all day to whenever you pass out, then just wake up and do it all over again. DL: You're chronically malnourished and dehydrated. Yeah, you're right. The body is a powerful thing. You don't die easy. TT: One of the worst things--medically--in my brief time on the rescue, me and Mikey had two people that were going out with end stage liver failure. Cirrhosis. Hep C. DL: Yep. Yep. They had the big swollen belly but the rest of them was skin and bones? TT: Skin and bones and yellow. This one guy was just screaming in his bedroom, "Leave me here to die!" His family was trying to get him to go to the hospital. He was like, "They're not gonna do anything, I'm gonna die!" Hep C, HIV...we had two of those guys in like a month and I was like, "This is one way I don't want to die." Any other way there is, but that didn't look very pleasant. DL: Nope. And they have that smell, cause their liver's not processing the toxins, so they're just circulating in the body, and you just have this terrible odor. At this point this interview wraps up. I tell him it was an honor to be a part of it. He offers me three giant garbage bags filled with newspaper clippings and photographs accumulated over thirty-six years. A truly staggering collection. He tells me to call with any questions and then says, "You know, I just read something that I thought was funny, and it's very true ... Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense." Interview ends Paul Keenan--
March 1, 2017 Paul Keenan worked in the mills before taking a significant pay-cut to join the fire department. He had four kids, worked three jobs, one of which was manning Engine 2 during the fire years of the 60's, 70, and 80's. Back then, it was more important to be surrounded by people you trusted then by people you liked. But he got lucky on both counts. While the Beatles were barnstorming America, he was pulling people out of triple-deckers. Trained by the old school, this is what he said ... TT- What are the basics, Paul? When did you get on the job? PK- I got on in April, 1967. It was a class of ten. Three or four politicians, they went on first. A few names I would hate to mention because one of them is an asshole (laughs). But that's the way it was then. TT- In 1967, how big was the job? Our full staff number is-- PK- Same amount of trucks now as then. Because we had Ladder 3 and one rescue. When Ladder 3 went out of service, that created Rescue 2. So I'm guessing the manpower's about the same. Fire Prevention had one guy. And there was a guy doing all the books, like Barbara's job now, and his name was Murray. TT- So in '67, who was the Chief? PK- Romeo D. Monast. Not too smart, but a nice guy. I'll tell you, the chief had power in those days. And when they put a guy on--I was downtown twenty-five years and never left. Because I got together with a good crew of guys. And I'd rather work with ten or twelve guys than two at the 6's, you know what I mean? In them days, actually there was a private in charge of Ladder 1. He was an acting lieutenant, because there was none on our shift. Now back then, if there was a guy who couldn't do the job, guys would go upstairs and say, "Hey, Chief, get him outta here." And he did. He went to the guy nicely and said, "You know, I think you'd be better at the 6's. Or the 4's (laughs). The 4's was on Broadway with the old Ladder 2 back then. TT- So when you got on, where did you go? PK- We had a school first, ten or twelve weeks at night and one on Saturday. TT- Some things never change. How old were you got on in '67? PK- Twenty-three. He (points to his son Kevin) wasn't even around yet (laughs) TT- What did you do before you got on? PK- I used to work at Corning Glass. TT- Oh yeah? In the mills? PK- Yup. I used to drive a forklift loading the freight cars. So I had to take a pay-cut to join the fire department. And everyone said, "What're you doing? Are you crazy?" I probably took a ten or twelve dollar an hour cut in pay. Back then, that was big money. I said, "It's security." You know? And fifteen years later I had a lot of security and they went out of business. TT- So you went downtown straight away? PK- Yup. I was on the engine. But years ago we used to switch. Because if there was a vacation or sickness, they got switched back and forth. Like an in-house transfer. Instead of having some clown come down who didn't know what he was doing, right? (laughs) TT- These are the tiller truck days, too, so driving that thing was probably a challenge to guys who didn't drive one everyday. But you did. PK- I didn't drive the tiller a lot, every once in a while. (the tiller truck has two drivers--one in the front, one in the rear) When I went to the ladder I usually drove the truck part, the front. And that was the old Ladder 1, which was a bitch. To get it in second gear you had to use your foot, kicking it (laughing), it was an old Maxim. It was a good truck, just hard to drive. TT- How long was it? PK- A hundred-foot stick. The old Ladder 3 was 85 feet. That was another old Maxim, a '58 I believe. And when you were driving that truck, the front bumper was probably where the TV is from here (far away). TT- When did you guys get airpacks? PK- The engine company didn't have airpacks. Just the ladder. TT- Are we talking sponges? PK- Yeah, basically. I never used the sponge. I just coughed (laughs). But some guys did. Some guys were heavy smokers. They'd be gulping smoke in the fire and then come outside and celebrate with a cigarette (laughs). Different days back then. When I retired I had a full physical done by my own doctor, and he said, "You know, for twenty-five years of fighting fires you're not in that bad of shape. Because you don't maintain than kind of smoke. There's no tar or nicotine." Nowadays, with everything being plastic, who knows? But we didn't have Scotts. They were on the truck, but we only used them for rescues, you know? We started off with a little one on the truck, like a fifteen minute bottle. Then they put one or two of the bigger ones on the Engines. Because we were doing three quarters of the runs. Even then. We didn't go with rescues either. TT- I was looking at some of the numbers as far as actual structure fires, you guys were doing something like four times the amount of structure fires back then. PK- Oh yeah. I went to as many fires in Central Falls as I did in Pawtucket. If there was a fire in C.F., we were on the first card going in. TT- So some guys used the air-packs, some didn't. PK- There were some guys who didn't even know how to put them on. TT- It's just fascinating. Guys from your generation didn't have any protection and had four times as many fires and smoked cigarettes, and it's the guys who got on in the 90's who are now dying of cancer. They don't even smoke. Shows you how toxic this job really has become. PK- Some guys got on the job years and years ago and didn't even go to a fire school. They went right to the line. One guy showed up one day, Polish guy, in fact he just passed away a few months ago, and he reported for duty and the Chief didn't even know he was coming. TT- (Laughs) PK- He walked into the Chief's office and said, "Stanley sent me." Chief says, "Stanley?" He says, "Yeah, Stanley So-and-So." He used to own the credit union on Broadway. And the Chief was so scared of that guy he just put him right to work. (Laughs) But that's how it operated back then. TT- When we talk about the late 60's, the ambulance and the medical stuff, that was all nonexistent, right? PK- Scoop and run. That's what it was. TT- Was it just a station wagon? PK- No. It was a small little ambulance, like a GMC truck? But before that, we had the old CD. After the war, the old CD trucks- those were the original rescues. TT- So there were two guys-- PK- Two guys. TT- And after they showed up, the private ambulance companies transported to the hospital. PK- Yes. Unless it was real bad. Then they would scoop and run. We're talking like the late 1950's. The Battalion Chief was actually Rescue 2 if needed. He had a driver back then. TT- Seriously? PK- Yep. TT- So in the back in the 60's and 70's we're talking about everybody smoking, no detectors. That's all changed now. The reasons for those fires have disappeared. They quit smoking, detectors every twenty feet. I mean back in the day, you guys had some really bad fires. Fatal fires were not uncommon. PK- You know what it is? They were knocking down parts of the city. I-95 came through and cut the city right in half. Killed it, really. TT- Was that in the early 60's? PK- Yes, something like that. Late 50's? And every night we'd have a two-bagger. TT- Oh man. PK- On Mineral Spring Avenue, Pleasant Street, and we'd go to a couple of mills--I've been to two two-alarm fires in the same mill three times. TT- Jesus. PK- They'd start to fix it and then someone would try to burn it down again. Especially where the Apex is? That was all mills. The highway killed all of that. TT- Did you do side jobs? PK- I did everything. I had three jobs at one time. TT- Guys were saying in the 70's they couldn't even afford to feed their families. PK- It was tough. TT- What did you do on the side? Were you driving with the CDL? PK- I drove for Brinks, the armored car company? I used to drive the big truck. I also worked part-time for a hardware company, driving a panel truck (with tools to sell.) There were three firefighters. There was always someone there. We were all on different shifts so we could man it. In fact, the guy I worked for was Chief Doire's brother. Nothing like Chief Doire, believe me. Direct opposite. A real jerk. In fact the other guy, he's still alive. Roger Doire. He's gotta be ninety. But that's how we started. So I stayed there for a while and then, my uncle was a boss on the school department. Head of all the maintenance? So, at the time they had these three-quarter ton trucks delivering food to the schools. Because all the food came out of one kitchen. TT- So everyday you'd be driving food to all the schools? PK- We had guys on different shifts to do it. There had to be two guys there all the time. We did that for a few years. I worked twenty years at Brinks, ten of it part-time because I was still on the fire department. In fact, I saw the ad in the paper, you know? So I went in. The manager says, "We don't hire part-timers." I said, "Oh, I saw it in the paper." He says, "Fill out an application anyways." And about three months later he calls me up. "Come on. Work the hours you want to. If you can't, or you catch overtime, don't worry about it." So I put ten years part-time into it. And when I retired in '91, they offered me fulltime, and they counted the other ten years, so I ended up with twenty years and got a pension. I mean they didn't have to do that but I held different positions there. TT- So how many kids did you have? PK- Just four (laughs). Kevin Keenan-(His son is a current Pawtucket fireman) yells- He should've quit after just one. PK- (laughs) TT- So four kids, and the stresses from all of the jobs, some of the guys, it's different now. But a lot of the guys who did rescue for a long time, I was talking with Bob Thurber and them--so a lot of these guys, at a certain point, they saw enough horror that they had to stop and get off the rescues. PK- You get cruel. After a while. We had a guy on the rescue, Timmy Holloran his name was, you'd think he was a priest, that's how nice he was. He was terrific. And he'd sit there and talk to them and you know, like their father would? But that's the way he was. But most of the guys on the rescue, after a while, they had had enough. "You been sick all day and decide to call at two in the morning?" TT- How did you deal with the things you saw? Did you bring it home? PK- Not unless smoke was coming out your mouth (laughs). I'm not kidding. Sometimes you'd come home, be eating breakfast, and smoke would be coming out of your mouth. TT- No radio, no ropes, long-ass hallways fully charged with smoke-- PK- We had no radios. We were lucky if there was one on the truck. And then a lot of times it would get soaked in a fire and wouldn't work. We used to put it in the oven to dry it out. TT- (laughing hysterically) PK- I'm not kidding. To dry it out. And it worked. And they were this big (motions like two-feet). TT- Before the days of search and rescue techniques, you had to claw your way out the door. What else can you think of? I heard the 1's was always ripping. PK- We relied on a couple of companies. A couple you didn't rely on, you know? "Are you sure you guys can lay a line on the way in?" (laughs) But the 1's and the 5's on our shift we never had a problem with. TT- What shift were you on? PK- B. TT- The whole time? PK- Yup. And we worked 56 hours a week back then. TT- When did that stop? PK- Like '72? When they went on Kelly days. After so many weeks you got an extra day off. Then when we went to 42 it was terrific. It really was. TT- Were you there for Star Gas? This was like '82? PK- This is a story. Maybe you shouldn't record this. I called out sick that day, which I never did. My wife was always like, "Call out sick, we got too many--" Of course, she was a pain in the ass. Right, Kevin? (laughs) I'm out doing something, I didn't feel good, the guy from across the street comes over. Rings the doorbell. Says there's a fire and explosion near his niece's school. TT- Oh yeah, I forgot about the school. It was packed with kids that day. I heard everybody would've died. PK- He says there's cylinders flying all over the place. He says, "Oh, you gotta go help them." So I got in my car and went. I looked around, there were flames chasing everyone around. I went up to Chief Murray, the B.C., I says to him, "I'm here, but I'm really not here. What do you want me to do?" (people out sick are not allowed to show up anywhere.) He says, "Great, great, great. Take my car, go do this and that." So a week later, the guy doing the payroll upstairs, Dave Lancaster, he used to be downtown and then he went upstairs when they expanded Fire Prevention. He got a job upstairs. And he says, "How could you get overtime and be out sick at the same time." (laughs). I says, "Shushhhh!" TT- (laughs) You cared about the city. Showing up sick and all. PK- And it could've been worse. TT- I heard there were tanks and canisters landing on Broadway. (three quarters of a mile away). PK- Many houses got hit over there. I don't think Broadway, but it could be. TT- You know, Lemay showed up with bags of newspapers, and it took me about a month to go through them all and organize them chronologically, as I read through the events, this Star Gas thing in this densely populated neighborhood, it was like a propane distribution place, right? PK- Yes. TT- So there were triple-deckers literally across the street from this place. PK- And the school. TT- And people had been complaining for years about the smells coming from that place. PK- Plus they had tanker cars, railcars, coming in to unload them. Kevin Keenan- I remember watching those tanks from our house. Over near Riley Street. TT- That's so crazy. That's the story I heard, that shit was just raining down. PK- There was a lot of confusion. And there was a couple of guys, they were on the roof of the 4's, never came in. Everybody was called in, but some guys were watching it from far away. TT- (laughs) That's pretty terrible. Kraweic was saying he was on the ladder just watching Engine 4 burn up. PK- That was a no-no, you know. There was an order out that that truck never should've gone in there. TT- I heard the truck actually melted. I saw some of the pictures... PK- We had a fire on Dexter Street, right where they built the ice rink. There was a couple of houses up there, three-deckers, we had a fire there one night, I pulled a lady and two of her kids out of the third-floor. TT- Off a ladder or fire escape? PK- Off the stairs in the back. A week before I had a rescue run there. So you used to open the door and instead of taking a right you had to shut the door and go up that way. So that's how I knew how to get there. TT- Wow. PK- And then the following day they had a big write-up in the paper. A big write-up and a picture and everything, but it wasn't me. (laughs) I was on the (union) executive board back then and they had our pictures on file over there. So they screwed up the names. So instead of me they had Billy Magill. Who was a lieutenant then. But two days later they did the story over again, and had me standing in front of Engine 2. TT- What other grabs did you have? Kevin Keenan- He's glossing over all the awards and commendations. PK- Yeah, I got something from the state, something from the Blackstone Valley, Fireman of the Year or something like that. TT- Jesus, that place must have been ripping. PK- The toughest one I really had, we had a fire on West Avenue. The corner of West and Warren. Used to be a school there. It was the Warren Avenue school years ago. They knocked it down, built a big cement wall and had apartments in there now. But right on the corner there before that was a big three-decker house. And across the street was a drugstore, which is where I used to hang out as a kid. That was our corner, right? I was from that area. And it was like noontime. And we get the call. Of course the 1's get there in a hurry, they're right around the corner, Code Red and smoke is pouring out of everywhere. Flames are shooting out. There's a kid missing. Four-year-old kid. He lit the fire. He got under the bed with a lighter and caught it. We get there, of course we're laying lines and everything, the chief, in fact it was that asshole Doire (laughs) but he says, "There's a kid missing." So then you change it up. You attack, right? We charged inside, Scott up and everything. Can't find him. Can't find him. You know it was daytime, and losing a kid? Unacceptable. That don't happen, really. So about fifteen twenty minutes later I says, "I'm going up to the third-floor." And I did. And in the kitchen on the third-floor--I kicked the door in--the phone melted, that's how hot it was. So I'm feeling around and all of a sudden I'm standing on the kid. TT- Oh no. PK- Then I realized who it was. I grabbed him. I didn't do any mouth to mouth because I went flying down the stairs and I handed him off to someone on the first floor. But he died like an hour later. But his lungs were so scorched. I saw that kid for a couple of months every night-- TT- In your head. TT- What about the highway? PK- Spent a lot of time on 95. We had one night, a Friday night, right after the S-curves where it straightens out? There's a guardrail there. But we had a guy and his girlfriend coming from Providence. Had to be like nine o'clock at night. He had a sports car. Of course they didn't have seatbelts on. And what had happened was he was racing with a panel truck. And when they were going around the corner, he caught the bumper on the panel truck, and what it did was shoot the car through, they hit the guardrail, and both flew out. And he ended up against the barrier. Well, when we went over there to see what happened to him, all he had was a face. The back of his head was gone. The brains were on the ground. She went the other way. She went towards the breakdown lane. She was really banged up too. I don't think she lived more than a couple of days. And she was young. And he wasn't that young. They were partying. It was a Triumph or an Alpha Romeo. TT- When you guys responded to the highway, it's not like nowadays where we have all these wonderful toys. You were just banging the car apart with whatever you had. PK- Right. We didn't have any of the hydraulic stuff til later on. TT- You just smashed everything apart. PK- Years ago, when things were burning in the car, there wasn't that much plastic in the car. Now, you don't know what the hell is in there or what's going to explode. TT- What's the closest you ever came to dying? PK- When I got married (laughs). I fell down a few times. TT- You ever have a ceiling come down on your head? PK- Oh yeah. But not where it knocked me out. TT- Obviously, these days our gear is heavier and stronger, more advanced, can take more heat, but you guys would just go in and take a beating. PK- Well ,yeah, we didn't have the equipment. TT- Seems like it was pure balls back then. PK- Yeah. You had to rely on certain people. Like I said. Some people you were like, "Screw you. I ain't following you anywhere." I've caught guys--the bad ones, you want nothing to do with them. I was on overtime one night, I found one guy hiding behind a truck. (laughs) He didn't want to get dirty. TT- It's hard to be on the fire department if you're afraid of fire. Who was the best boss you ever had? PK- Best boss? I guess the nicest guy was Stretch, Farrel Tuit. Anybody tell you about him? TT- Stretch? Not yet. PK- He was the driver for the Chief. He passed away about five or six years ago. But he drove Chief Monast, and then he finally made lieutenant, had a lot of years on the job. He didn't know that much, but at the time we had a pretty good crew. So we took care of him. But he was nice guy. And we'd say, "Stretch, I think you should do this instead of that." "Okay," he'd say, "let's do it." TT- Why'd they call him Stretch? PK- He was like 6'3", 6'4". He had the moustache. Nice guy. Wasn't the smartest guy out there but he was the nicest guy out there. TT- Looking back at your whole career, is there anything you would've done different? PK- Probably should've been a cop (laughs). I was fortunate, I was lucky I got a job, you know? I was looking for security, which I did get, I mean I didn't want to load freight cars for the rest of my life. I do miss, we had a softball team. I played softball until I was 70 years old. Kevin! (yells to his son.) You ever hit a ball longer than me? Kevin Keenan- No. (laughs) That was part of my oral interview when I got on the job. Can you hit a softball farther than your dad? But I can shoot a puck a lot farther than him (laughs) TT- So you were on how long? PK- Twenty-four-and-a-half years. Retired in 1991. TT- That's a great run. You guys had a great run. You didn't even have a line of duty death or anything. PK- Hargreaves died right after I retired. TT- So you got on in '67 and there was no one killed until 1993. Kind of incredible considering the sheer amount of fire, big fire, you guys saw. PK- The best Chief I ever had was Chief Gallant. TT- Who? PK- They haven't been talking about Gallant? Oh, man. He was a son of a bitch, and he used to yell at ya, but he was the nicest guy in the world after. He would go and get the beer for us (there is a rumor that back in the day a few cold beers may have been consumed after a fire.) Really. And a few times I carried him home drunk. I had to get him in the door for his wife. But he was a politician, his father was a judge, he always was a politician, he lived right next door to his best friend, Harry Curvin, you never heard of him, but he ran the state. He'd yell and scream at the scene, but you had to ignore him. A lot guys were afraid of him. "Jesus Christ, let's save the bar! The rest of the building, who gives a shit!" He'd yell at certain guys. When you got off the truck, he'd point out a couple of guys and he'd go nuts. I don't know if it was nerves or what. But he was a nice guy. TT- What about July 4th? PK- I used to go to Providence with Engine 6. Me. Have forty or fifty runs. Five or six guys on a truck, all I did was drive. Went to the Captain's house to pick up all the beer (laughs), seriously, and if Providence had problems on the other side of the city, like Broad Street or over that way, we'd really get a lot of runs. But we were exhausted. We'd burn half a tank of fuel in one night just running around. TT- July 3, July 4, you guys ran hot all night. PK- They used to burn Providence down, years ago. They've got nothing like that now. TT- Pawtucket was as shitshow too. PK- But not like Providence. It was busy in Pawtucket, but Providence was just as bad or worse. (Chief) Monast used to send me. He'd say, "You take Engine 6, don't worry about a thing, and when you want to come home come home." TT- So you were Mutual Aid there all night? PK- Just me. TT- What? Just you alone? PK- All they cared about was the truck. I was driving our truck with their guys and I had no idea where the hell I was going. (Laughs) The captain would be sitting next to me, "Jesus Christ, I don't even know where that street is." And it was his city. Big area. I was their ride to the fire. TT- As far as having a couple of cold ones after a fire, when did all that stop? Because that stuff doesn't even exist now. PK- It went into the 90's. We used to send the Battalion Chief (laughs). "Go pick up the beer." TT- Listen, I want to thank you for agreeing to do this. PK- I'm not gonna get locked up, am I? TT- Negative. It's been fun. Sounds like you had a great career. PK- Loved every minute of it. Joe Gildea- March 5, 2018
Joe Gildea was putting out fires thirty years before the young guys on our job were even born. Like most of the probies who came on during the 1960's, Gildea was taught by the World War II guys. Attention to detail wasn't a catch phrase, it was a way of life. He, like most of the old school, out of modesty, was reticent to discuss the details. This interview was conducted in the Engine officer's room at Station 4 thirty-one years after he retired. This is part of what he said ... TT- Why don't we start at the beginning as far as what year did you get on? JG- I came on in 1966. On Thanksgiving Day. November. And the chief put me--the chief at that time was Monast--and he said "I'm gonna put you on Ladder 1 because you're the tallest person in your class." We had just gotten a new 100-foot aerial and I was three inches taller than everyone else. TT- Is this the tiller truck? JG- The tiller truck, yeah. And I had been driving trailer-trucks for five or six years, so I was very good at driving. It amazed the acting lieutenant when I went on that I could drive the truck so well. It was a new experience to climb into the tiller and drive that. TT- How old were you when you got on? JG- Twenty-six. TT- What did you do before you got on? JG- I worked for New England Papertube as a tractor-trailer driver. All over the east coast. TT- So you were a driver? JG- Yes. I drove well (laughs). I did it all my life. TT- Were you ever in the military? JG- No. I couldn't get in because it was between--Korea had just ended, Vietnam hadn't started, so they were getting rid of people. I was six-foot three-inches, one hundred and thirty pounds, so they said, "You're well under weight. We're not accepting people now, we're trying to get rid of people." I didn't get the chance. I wanted to. I signed up for the Army but they weren't taking people. It was ironic that a month later I got a letter from Uncle Sam saying, "We Want You." so I got on a bus down at the post office on Broad Street, and everybody was in there with bandages on their knees and everything else, and I'm sitting there reading the newspaper and they're saying, "How can you be so calm?" I said, "I just went through this a month ago. It's old hat. They don't want me." They said, "No way. I got this bandage for this, and this is wrong with me ..." So I got in there, and the doctor that was giving the physical down at Field's Point, down on Allens Avenue? He looked at me and says, "Geez, didn't I see you not too long ago?" I go, "Yeah." He says, "Well what the hell are you doing back here? We refused you.” And I said, "Uncle Sam said he wanted to see me." So they said, "Here's a ticket. Get back on the bus and go home." (Laughs.) So that was my experience with the military. I wanted to go in the worst way after high school but it just didn't work out. TT- Right on. JG- Then I had to go to work. I went to work. TT- So by now you're twenty-six, driving trucks, got on the job and did they have academies back then or did they just throw you in. JG- There was exactly eleven of us in the academy. The training officer trained us for ten weeks. You had to go through eighty hours (Up until 2017, for 142 years, Pawtucket's Fire Academy was unpaid, held at night twice a week after work, and on Saturday. Regrettably, probies are now put through a state academy instead.) We went through it. Joe Clifford was the Training Officer and he gave the class and everything else. This, once again politics entered into it, everybody in the class got on eventually, so it took about six months before we all got on. And they started another class right after us. TT- Now in those days, when you got on, did you get assigned places or was there a bid? JG- You got assigned. They put you where they wanted you, where there was a space for you. That was it. TT- When you got on, the rescue was pretty much a station wagon, right? JG- The rescue was a red van-truck. A delivery truck. Before I went on it was the big police truck, the big square box truck, used as an ambulance. TT- And they didn't transport, right? Costigan's did that. JG- Costigan Ambulance transported everything. TT- Now the gear back then, we're talking about tin helmets, rubber gloves ... JG- Yes. You painted the helmets red when you were on the ladder truck. But they were terrible and they hurt. They got tighter and tighter around your head as you went along. And they didn't protect a whole lot. TT- Meerbott was saying they used to call the gloves "Melt-aways" because that's what they did when they got heated up. JG- They would too. Yeah, yeah (laughs). TT- I heard they had airpacks in the 60's but no one really used them. JG- Well, the airpack's another thing. When I came on in '66, well, in '67 they got their first two airpacks. There was one put on Ladder 1. No, I 'm sorry, in '66 they got the airpacks because Ladder 1 had one when I got there. The other they put in the chief's trunk. The chief of the department, who's not going in anyway. That was the extent of the airpacks. Well, my first fire was a couple of weeks after I first got on. And my acting lieutenant said, "Don't go near that," he says, "because if the chief sees you near that he'll want you to put in on and he thinks you can walk on air with those things and you can't." So that was our experience with the airpacks. Eventually, every truck got an airpack ... TT- But years later. JG- Years later, years later. It just went that every year they bought a few more and this and that. TT- Even then I heard some of the old school guys wouldn't wear them. JG- They didn't. They didn't. The old-timers said, "What the hell are you doing here with airpacks on," and everything else. (laughs) Because I can remember going up--To supply the airpacks, there was a bay of tanks. Airtanks. That was down in the cellar of Station 2. They had a fire up on Newport Avenue, the old Dalton Theater. So I got the tanks filled, and brought them over so they could have spare tanks, and the lieutenant of the 8's, which is now the 6's, he says, "What the hell are you doing with them things? We don't need them, we're firefighters!" And I had my things (balls) busted to no end because I brought the spare tanks. TT- Now Chickie used to talk about the sponge. Did you ever use the sponge? JG- No. No. I just went in. TT- Now you got taught by the World War II guys, right? Those were the guys that came back from a bloodbath--I heard they were very by the book. Cleaning the undercarriage of the truck after every run in the winter ... JG- The older guys, yeah, it was--that era was really before me, but some of the old-timers that worked that era, they carried it on. At certain stations it was, after you came in from a run you had to wash all of the wheels, underneath and this and that. We didn't have to do it downtown, we were fortunate (laughs). TT- Now when you got on, who did you look up to? You don't learn this in a book. Who was teaching you. JG- My acting lieutenant was Frank McVeigh. TT- Al McVay's dad? JG- No. But Frank McVeigh, he was a private. His boss was Zagrowski, and he was an acting Battalion Chief. So everybody--that's what happened back then. If someone was out, the next guy moved up in rank and this and that. So they put you in charge. So he (McVeigh) was acting up until he made lieutenant a couple of years after I was on. He was great. He was a fantastic man and he used to go out in his car, on his three days off, and he would drive through the city, and he knew every street and every box, every hydrant, and he used to--that's what he used to do in his spare time. There was no part-time jobs for him. He just drove around. He was fantastic. Absolutely. He taught me everything I knew. TT- So how long were with him? These are the Ladder 1 days from 1966 to when? JG- Til we started the Fourth Battalion. TT- And then you went to Engine 2 what year? JG- No. I stayed on Ladder 1 because my then lieutenant was Edgar St. Germaine, and he had a lung disease, and the city didn't want to retire him because they thought it would start an influx of people retiring on heart disease and lung disease. So they left me in charge. So for ten years, I was in charge as an Acting Lieutenant on Ladder 1. I think I'm getting confused. It was a long time ago. They had to have made the Fourth Battalion five years after I was on, because I think I worked for Frank McVeigh for five years, and then I was in charge for nine years as an acting lieutenant, and then I went over to Engine 2 because I didn't like the lieutenant that was finally coming over to Ladder 1. Then I made lieutenant and stayed on Engine 2 for five or six years. TT- Back in those days, who were some of the guys around you? I hear Ray Gilbert's name a lot. JG- He was up at the 6's when they were on Central Avenue. Him and John Payne. All of these guys had either come from Broadway or somewhere else. They weren't downtown. They didn't like downtown. (laughs) I went on with Ray Masse Sr., Tommy Heaney, Dick Ryan, Frank Sylvester, Jack Doyle, Andy Monahan--these were all the guys that I went on with. TT- Tommy Heaney's name came up when Chickie was describing quality guys. He said they used to call him Skull. That was his nickname because of his head. JG- Yeah, he lost his hair early in life. (laughs). Somebody called him that and it stuck with him. TT- Chickie said he was a tough fireman. JG- He was an excellent firefighter. He and Ray Masse were both on Engine 2 and they stayed there most if not all of their careers. I also had Paul Keenan and Steve Smith downtown and they were excellent firefighters. Kenny Moreau came on and we brought him along and he did an excellent job on Engine 2. That was my crew, the three of them and myself. TT- So when you got on in '66, how did they dispatch you guys? Are we talking street boxes? JG- Everything was street boxes. There was a box on almost every corner. TT- Now these boxes are numbered. And when they would get pulled, there was a tickertape showing up in the station? JG- It would come into the station on two ticket tapes. They had a backup. It would come in and it would punch out holes in the paper that came off two reels. The paper would read 5-2-2-3 or something like that. The first number was the district that the box was in, and 2-2-3 would be the street. And we'd have a card to pull out, 5-2-2-3, so they would pull out the card and it would have the address of the box. TT- So it was a four number system. The first number was the district and the 2-2-3 was the street. JG- Right. It would, the box that is, it would usually be on the corner. TT- So the ticker tape went for how long? JG- I don't know. That was after I left. TT- Wow. So it went into the 80's? JG- Yes. TT- I also heard that you guys got dispatched by phone? It would be one ring for the engine and two rings for the rescue? JG- This is true. At night, if it was a box alarm, the big bell would ring. If it was just a rescue run or a call by telephone, one ring would be rescue. Two rings would be engine and the ladder. So you waited to hear what the rings were and everything else. Then they would dispatch it over the air. TT- Now, as a ladder guy, I'm assuming you guys were using axes. Was this before the chainsaws? JG- Right. TT- The chainsaws were like the '70's? 80's? JG- We got into chainsaws, we had a big one on the truck, but it was mostly axes. TT- Like men. JG- (laughs) TT- You didn't have any fear of heights, obviously. JG- No. I didn't. (laughs) TT- It's fun up there, right? It's fun. I used to be a roofer. JG- It is. TT- When you're in charge of the ladder, you're pulling up thinking about placement, the wires, the guy climbing up behind you, you're responsible for him, there's a lot going on in your head, right? JG- Yup. TT- Let's talk about some of the fires. This was before smoke detectors, right? Everybody's smoking cigarettes. You guys were busy. JG- The very first fire I went to, I came on on Thanksgiving Day. And Chief put me on the rescue that day and I almost choked myself to death that day swallowing the candy I had in my mouth (laughs). Back in those days, for Thanksgiving, each person was given two hours off to have a meal with their family. So they had to have a new guy substitute for the two guys on the rescue. So I went to the rescue for the first time. But then a couple of weeks later we had a fire at Gormand's Furniture on Main Street, which was right next to the Main Street fire station. (laughs). And that's where I was telling you about the airpacks and about how they busted my chops for showing up with extra tanks (laughs). So this was my first fire and it was spectacular and everything else. Engine 1 was the old Ahern's Fox (This is a legendary apparatus. Ahern's Fox made fire trucks from 1920 until the 1970's. Pawtucket bought one of the only "Fire sedans" ever built in an alleged kickback scheme that spanned many years. It was an open-ended contract, and the rumor was that the mayor was using these unchecked funds for his re-election campaign. But it was a very capable pumper and used for decades. The Ahern's Fox last known address was in an upstate New York fire museum.) And they put that right up in the middle of Park Place. And it was fed by three different hydrants and it fed water for everybody. Every line there, it just came out of the Ahern's Fox with its big bubble on the front. (It was distinctive because of a big chrome sphere above the pump that smoothed out pressure differentials.) That was my first fire, and my second fire was Christmas Eve. We had a fire on Grace Street which was across the street from St. Mary's cemetery. But it was the house behind a house. It was a converted chicken coop and this and that, and the first call came in as a rescue run. And the rescue went up, knocked on the door at the front house and they said they said they didn't call the rescue and everything else, so they left. And then they got another call for a fire at the address that was behind the house they'd already been to. And when we got there the fire was roaring. We lost three people in that one. TT- Wow. Three civilians in the house? JG- Three civilians in the house. What had happened was that they had one of those old kerosene heaters, where you tip the big bottle over, on the side of the stove? What happened was, it was a cold windy night. A cold cold night. And there was one entrance in and out. The Christmas tree was here (motions to the front door), the heater was over here (motions to the kitchen). The kerosene had leaked onto the floor and drifted across the floor. Well, because it was so cold and windy they were pushing the heat. And what it did was it lit the kerosene and followed this path across the floor and lit up the Christmas tree. Back then it was all natural Christmas trees, so it was dried out. TT- That thing must've been roaring. JG- That was their only exit. There was a baby inside this bedroom (motions), a mother and a child inside this bedroom (motions), and the mother went in to grab this child, the father grabbed the other child from this one, and he went and he couldn't get out. So he jumped out the back window. But when he jumped out, his hand hit the window and the baby fell back in. The mother came in--they could feel the crib was right here. She got to the crib but she couldn't get any further. Now the rescue again, going to the scene, was the first ones on the scene, and Tommy Kiley got into the window right here, he could feel the crib, so he pulled himself in the window and he went down because of the smoke and everything else. So we got him out and took him to the hospital, but the mother and the child both were in there and that was something terrible to me, to start off, because I had never seen death or anything else. TT- So two kids and the mom died? JG- Two kids and the mom died, yes. One was a baby. Just months old. We went by it. We knew there was another one in there somewhere, but we must've walked right by it because it looked just like a doll lying near the sink. Finally we picked it up and saw that it was a child. So I went home and at the time I was divorced, I had a three-year-old son and when I walked in I was supposed to pick my son up for Christmas and everything else, I just told my mother, I was living at my mother's house at the time, I told my mother I will call up and tell him I won't be there to pick him up. She said, "What's the matter with you? You look green?" And I said, "I had a bad fire." And that was it. I went to my room. Spent the day in my room. It was terrible. And it got nothing but worse from there. (laughs). As we went on, you know, the sights that we saw, back in the day, we counted up I think it was, when I left A-Platoon for D-Platoon, counted eighteen fire deaths. TT- Eighteen? Jesus Christ. JG- That's a lot of deaths. TT- I heard the 60's and 70's were just raging. Like we just talked about--cigarettes, no detectors, no safety. JG- And this was when they had just put the highway through, so we had a lot of vacant houses, they were re-doing Mineral Spring Avenue and everything else, and that area had a lot of vacant houses. So they had a lot of places to play in and everything else, light them on fire, so we got good experience because we had a lot of fires. TT- It seems like the fireload for you guys was unbelievable. So, you had the Christmas fire, the three deaths, and as these things started to roll through, there were big events. I remember hearing about Star Gas... JG- Star Gas. That's another one. I was in that one too. TT- Your name came up at Star Gas. JG- It came in, again this was the time I was in charge of Engine 2, and we were substituting people to equalize the overtime, so we had one gentlemen came in for the morning shift, and then at noontime I remember Mike Levesque came in, and he says, "It's a nice hot day out there, boys." It was in the high 90's. Humid day and this and that. And everybody was filling their gas tanks to have cook outs and everything else, and Mike says, "Good day to have Star Gas!" TT- What? JG- Yup. Well, don't you know, half an hour after he was sitting down at the kitchen table, bingo, Star Gas came in. We went in there and we went in the same way as everybody else. And they said, "We need somebody on the other side, on the Industrial Highway side." To wet down these tanks. The railroad cars. So we went around and laid a line from Cottage Street right up to the where the tanks were. And I can remember there was a tanker truck coming right at us, and we were trying to lay a line, and I was saying, "Get out of the way, get out of the way!" And he's giving me one of these (the finger) and everything else, and so all of a sudden one of the tanks exploded and flew across and hit the side of his trailer, and he saw that in his mirror and the next thing you know he was almost on the sidewalk across the street to get out of our way. (both laughing) But yeah, that was fantastic. Star Gas. TT- Talk about balls, I had heard that you were on a 2½ inch line directly facing the tank. It was a tanker car loaded with propane? JG- Yes. We were cooling the tank. That's all we were trying to do. TT- Brulé said you would've been the first ones killed if that thing exploded. JG- The way they looked at it afterwards is that everybody would've been dead. Everybody in a mile area would've been dead, and it would've leveled everything, because the tanks were empty. They had just filled up the big tank from the railroad car. The next thing you know Central Falls was coming in and asks the Battalion Chief, "Where should we set up?" And he said go around to the Industrial Highway and lay another line." They laid the second line, so we got more water. The next day, Chief Couto from Central Falls came over and we went back and were looking at the tanks. The railroad car tanks. And they were bent and everything else and had started to melt. He said that if they had blown it would've taken out everything and everyone. TT- I heard tanks were landing as far away as Broadway. JG- Freddie Fisher was standing on a roof taking pictures. He could see them 500 feet in the air. And the bottoms of them, when they exploded, were coming at us like frisbees. TT- What was the closest you ever came to getting really--were you ever in a fire where you were like, "Maybe we should get out of here." JG- Not really. We got into fires and we had one down on Webb Street. This was late in the afternoon. We fought the fire. It started in the cellar and it came up, went across three floors, so we fought it all the way up. We got up to the third floor and then they put the aerial up and hooked up the master stream and it drove us all the way back down to the first floor. That was one of the toughest fires I ever fought. But I never really got into so much danger where I couldn't find a way out. We did have some really smoky fires but we just did it. TT- What kind of guy was Tommy Heaney? JG- Personally, he had two children and a wife. (I made the mistake of conducting this interview at the 4's. We got dispatched several times and this break was the longest. We lost the whole train of thought.) TT- So we were talking about Japonica Street and other moments of danger. JG- You were saying danger, I wasn't afraid at most of the fires, I felt confident and everything else. But the day after Star Gas, when we went back and saw and reviewed- (dispatched again.) TT- How did you handle all that you saw? Did you internalize it? Booze it away? Bring it home at all? Guys handle it differently. JG- We did a lot of drinking afterwards, you know, reviewing fires that we had, but we never brought it home. Very very seldom brought it home. There were enough problems at home. They didn't need to know what you were going through. We kind of kept it in. But we did have a lot of conversations at the Celtic and other local establishments (laughs). There were several bars that we went to. TT- By being together you were able to process it. JG- Absolutely. To relieve the pressure and everything else because they knew exactly what you were talking about. Whereas if you brought it home, they had no idea, and they put their own emphasis on things you didn't even think about. It wasn't appropriate. TT- You retired in 1988? JG- 1987. I did twenty-one years. TT- How old were you when you retired? JG- Forty-seven. TT- After you finished, did you do another job or were just retired? JG- Well, when I was at Roosevelt Avenue, across the street was Collette Travel. On Exchange Street. And I used to see the buses pull up. I was very close to John McConaghy, and he and I had a little painting business on the side. And I said to John, "You know, if I get off of this job, I'm gonna down and drive one of those buses." Somewhere. Anywhere and this and that, and get to see a lot of things because I love to drive. Well, we were down in West Warwick one day and I said, "Hey, Pawtuxet Valley's right down the street. Let's go in." I went in to see the manager and I said, "I'm a firefighter in Pawtucket but I was thinking about driving one of your buses." He said," We'd love to have you. We have several firefighters working for us and everything else. Next week we'll set up a road test for you and go from there." I said, "Fine." And I left. I didn't think anything of it. Well, needless to say on Friday morning I got a call from Pawtuxet Valley, which was two days after I had just been there, and they said, "What're you doing over the weekend?" I said, "Well, I'm working tomorrow night in the fire station but then I'm off for four days." "Well, can you get the night off?" I said, "Why?" He said, "I want you to go to Washington." (laughs). I said, "Washington? I haven't even gone for my road test." He said, "Yeah, but everybody's in Washington, so this will be your road test to see if you can get down there." I said, "I know how to get there but I don't anything about the town." He said, "Well, you'll be going with two other buses so just follow them closely." So that was my road test. And I started there and eventually said I think I'm gonna retire from the fire department and go there. I went there full time once a spot opened up. I ended up all over the east coast and Canada driving a bus. TT- Do you have any regrets? JG- No regrets whatsoever. I miss the job 100%. I miss the camaraderie and everything else, but no. I think that it filled my life completely. It allowed me to do all these different things. I was a truck driver for five or six years, then I was a fireman for twenty-one years, and then I worked eighteen years in the bus company. It was different but basically the same. I was a driver and this and that. The funniest thing was when I was working driving a truck before the fire department, I was driving all kind of hours to all kinds of places, and I was making about $400-420 a week. Where the average pay for a fireman was $60-80 a week. So everybody looked at me and said, "What're you, cuckoo? You're gonna leave this job where you're making over $400 a week, and go to a job that pays you $80?" And I said, "Yeah, but I'm gonna get security." And this was a thing that I lived by. The security. Because come December, if they have a layoff, I'm gone from this company. If I go on the fire department, I'm secured a job for life. That was my thinking back then. And it worked out perfectly. TT- Any other events stick out in your mind? Narragansett Racetrack. Were you there for that inferno? JG- That was a farce. I don't know how much I can tell about Narragansett Racetrack. We parked Engine 2 up behind the grandstand and pumped from the hydrant right there. And we had a lot of friends that came by and they knew it was a hot day and they would bring us a case of beer. So the guys that were there, we told them, "go up to the engine. On the back is a couple of beers." Well, the next time I went up to the truck there was eight cases of beer lined up and everybody was in and out and in and out (laughs) so that's why I said it was a farce. It was an easy job, just a big one. It was huge. No danger there except for us. TT- (laughs) That's a back in the old days story. JG- Everybody showed up with a case of beer for the firemen. TT- God, I'm jealous. JG- (laughs) TT- The community was looking out for you guys! Can you think of anything else? It sounds like you had a great career. JG- I enjoyed it. And I gotta say I think that some of the people I worked with or for were great firefighters. And they taught me an awful lot back then. They were grassroots firefighters that shot from the seat of their pants. Jerry Gendreau, on Engine 2 with Tommy Heaney and Ray Masse, and they would honor the ground Jerry walked on because he was a great firefighter. He ran into a little trouble later on in his career because he wanted the promotion and crossed the picket line. But he didn't leave the job with the best of thoughts about the job. But he was an excellent firefighter. I can remember going into Beattie Street on a fire. It was a room like this. I was working on the engine. I was inside the room and it was smoky and I saw this red glow on the wall and I'm trying to hit it with a hose and everything else, all I'm doing is creating smoke. Jerry comes in and says, "What the hell are you doing?" I said, "There's fire in that wall somewhere. I can see the red glow." He says, "Shut the hose off." So as it cleared there was a light up above the bed with a red shade on it and that's what I was hitting. But that's the type of guy that he was. As soon as he walked in he kind of realized it wasn't a fire and that I was new. TT- Gendreau? That's his name? JG- Gendreau. We took all of these things with a grain of salt. That's how you got through them. And you had confidence in the people you were with. I went to a fire on Roosevelt Avenue. A car repair place. And it was a cold cold night. I had a new rookie with me named Mike Szczoczarz. TT- Oh yeah? JG- We got there and started putting the fire out. The building was ripping. We were putting it out and Mike says to me, "Jesus, this ain't bad. It ain't cold or anything." I said, "Well, wait until we put the fire out." Next thing you know we put the fire out and our coats and everything else are flaring up like skirts, the hoselines, the big 2½ inch hoses are frozen solid. We had to get the pickup to drag them back to the station to thaw them out. That's how cold it was. Another funny story, you know? TT- Sounds like you had a great career and had a lot of fun. JG- We did. We were serious there, but we never took the seriousness away from the fire. We came back and joked. It relieved the pressure. We did a lot things, softball tournaments, charity events, a carnival on Barton Street. And everybody worked together. Also, we were all Pawtucket back then. Not like today where you guys are from all over. That's why these families grew up together. TT- What kind of guy was Ray Masse Senior? Was he like Ray? JG- Same thing. Yup. And we grew up together. Ray, Barbara, and junior, and Tommy Heaney and Sue and his two children, and we'd be at their houses or they'd be at our houses. It was family. Jimmy McShane lived across the street, he was on the fire department and left to go to the electric company. TT- What did Heaney do before he got on the fire department? JG- He was young. I think he just came on. TT- Was he on before you? JG- No. We went to the fire school together. He was in my academy. Dick Ryan, all of those guys. TT- Now, Ray Masse senior had a heart attack right? Was it at work? JG- No. He was at home. He was home at night. And the toughest part of that was they got a rescue run to his house and they knew there was a problem. So they called Bob Thurber, Chief Thurber, to go in first, because they were related. And Chief Thurber's wife was Ray Masse's sister. So, yeah, when he saw him he had one leg out, like he was just getting out of bed, and it was tough. For all of us. I have to give Chief Thurber credit. TT- It affected a lot of people. JG- It did. He was a great guy. He was well-known and well-liked. TT- Well, if you think of anything else please call. Feel free to let me know, because like I said, I'm just collecting information and typing it up. JG- No, this is great. I enjoyed it. Good luck, too. There's probably a million stories. I enjoyed the job immensely, and I'd say it took me three or four years to get comfortable being away from the job. TT- That's what everybody says. JG- And then because I tried to influence my son to come on the job, and he thought private industry was the way to go, and he didn't listen to dad and everything else. But he found that this job was very adept to what he wanted to do. And be secure too. From what I've heard he's a doing as good a job, if not better, than what I did when I was there. It's great. It makes you feel proud that he'll follow in your footsteps. It's a different story today compared to back in the day when we only had cloth and wood and none of the plastic. That was just starting. Not the chemicals and everything else that you people are dealing with now. TT- Right? It's gross. When I came on we slept with our bunkerpants in the dorm at the 2's. JG- Not anymore. TT- Too true. I really appreciate you coming down, Joe. It was great to meet you. The interview ends. He stands up and takes one last look around the Engine officer's room at Station 4. "Some things never change," he says. March 30, 2018--
Ralph Domenici came out of the steel mills and was a member of the Pawtucket Fire Department from 1973-2004. He and his wife each worked two jobs, raised six kids, and are now enjoying their retirement. This interview was conducted in his kitchen. This is only part of what he said ... TT- I love those pics. Especially the one of Chief Mercer. I never would've recognized him. And that's also the first time I've seen Tommy Heaney. RD- I had more pics but I don't know where they've gone too. TT- Take us back to the beginning. What year did you get on, and how old were you? RD- I got on in 1973, I was almost thirty-two. Back then, thirty-two was the cutoff. If you were older than that you couldn't get on the job. So I got in August of '73 and I was thirty-two. I just made the cutoff. This was also when the four-days on, four-days off started. That's why they put on the extra guys. TT- So it went from three days, three nights, three off, to four-on, four-off. RD- Right. TT- What did you do before you got here? RD- I worked in the steel mill. Newman Crosby was on Columbus Avenue. Back then that was the big money. Back then, I lost a hundred dollars a week to get on the fire department. But I knew it was getting ready to close. And it closed three years after that. TT- No kidding. So like, you were working there in 1969-1970. RD- Yup. TT- You saw the future and knew it was gonna close down. Newman and Crosby you said? RD- Yup. TT- What kind of steel were they making? RD- They made steel for almost everywhere in the country. They made some big big things. A lot of guys on the job--Kenny Noiseaux for instance--he worked there. He got on right after I did. And another guy who died, Kurt Richards, he worked there too. Frank Sylvester, who I don't want to talk about. TT- (laughs) Are we talking about fabrication steel? Like I-beams and girders? RD- No no, not that kind. The flat stock. Like for the sides of toasters and things like that. TT- Stainless steel. RD- Right. TT- How long did you work there for? RD- Nine years. TT- So basically after high school you just went to work. RD- I did. TT- Any military time? RD- National Guard. TT- You ever get deployed anywhere? RD- No. TT- So you got on in '73. What was your process? Did you have an academy or did you just go on the job? RD- We had an academy. Two nights a week and Saturdays. TT- Just like ours forty years later. Incredible. Unpaid? RD- Yes. TT- Same here. How many guys? RD- Thirteen guys. Twelve finished and one guy quit for some reason. I don't remember why. TT- Now as far as when you got on, who were some of the guys you looked up to? Those are World War II guys, right? RD- Some of them were. When I started on Engine 4, Ray Cody was the lieutenant. Ray Gene, who is still alive, and Willie Plant, who's still alive as far as I know. I can't remember who the Battalion Chief was. TT- Now those were the guys you looked up to? RD- Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, they'd been on ten years ... I think Ray Cody had thirteen years. It was funny, back in those days it was all politics as far as getting promoted. In fact the guy who was in charge of the house, Frank Cavino, he was just some friend of a politician, and they put him on the job as a lieutenant. TT- (laughs) Come on. RD- He was in charge of the Broadway station. (Laughs) TT- That's crazy. Wow. Safe to say there was some shenanigans going on with the promotions. RD- Oh yeah. TT- So in 1973, they had airpacks but not everyone was wearing them, right? RD- Used to be there was one regular sized one, and they used to have one they called the lieutenant's airpack. It was about half the size. It was about that big (motions two feet apart). Nobody ever used them. If you used them, they laughed at you. TT- Right? RD- Those guys used to put a sponge in their mouth. TT- The sponge guys. Chickie was telling me about them. Were you a sponge guy? RD- Yeah. You had to be. (Laughs) RD- One guy, Leo Masse, he smoked alot. And we'd have fires--like a kitchen fire, smoky as a bastard, you know what I mean? And you'd come in and barely breath, and you'd be crawling on the floor, or in a bedroom for a mattress fire, crawling around on the floor, and Leo Masse would come in and give you one of these-- "Hey!" He'd be standing up, "Hey! Come on, get up. Get up. Let's go!" You'd be spitting your guts out and he'd be standing there. (Laughs) TT- Leo Masse? RD- Yeah. TT- That's the first time I've heard his name. Sounds pretty old school to me. They were talking about Timmy Hayes doing the same thing. Walking around with a cigarette in the middle of a fire. RD- Different day. TT- So you were right in that transition point where they were going from the mills to where we are now, which is still kind of struggling along. Talk about the Fourth of July. A lot of people that didn't grow up here have no idea exactly how much mayhem there was for eighty years. We're talking 200 runs a night, bonfires, house fires ... RD- It was only us, Pawtucket and Providence, that had nights like that. We used to send an engine company to Providence. Warwick sent an engine company to Providence, and they used to run with like 15 or 20 engine companies. Of course they're three times the size of Pawtucket. But we had our share of runs. Some years we'd go out at eight o'clock and not get back until the next morning. They'd have runs all lined up--the Alarm Room would have runs all lined up--and you'd clear one run and head to the next. You'd clear Grace Street and sometimes be sent all the way across the city for the next one, depending how bad it was. TT- So you guys were just running around all night. Now this went from the 1920's until the early 2000s. RD- Yup. TT- Brulé was talking about some guy showing up from Wisconsin, and he was like, "I heard Pawtucket's the place to be on July Fourth." RD- They used to come from everywhere to ride on the trucks that night. Or follow them around. It was crazy. TT- Chickie was saying it was still a sailor town back then too. Quonset Point was still open, the Navy, the fishermen. The weekends in Pawtucket were a bloodbath. Busy busy busy. RD- Yup. TT- Let's backtrack. You started off on Engine 4 and how long did you stay there? RD- Probably two years at the most. I went to Ladder 3 on Columbus Avenue, spent maybe four years there, all the time trying to get downtown but I didn't have enough seniority. I wanted to get on Engine 2, and after I finally did, I stayed there the rest of my career. TT- So you were like seven years in before you got to Engine 2? RD- At least. TT- So we're talking like 1979, 1980? RD- Yes. TT- Now who was downtown with you? Who was the crew? RD- The crew at that time was Tommy Heaney, Ray Masse Senior, Jerry Gendreau was the lieutenant, and on the ladder was Dick Ryan, Kurt Richards, and Mike Noonan. TT- What happened to Kurt Richards? RD- He had cirrhosis. Never drank, or very seldom, he'd maybe have a beer here or there. But Kurt and I went to school together in Seekonk. TT- People said he was in shape, he was squared away, knew his shit, but died of liver disease and wasn't even a boozer. That's heartbreaking. RD- It was. TT- Was he still on the job when he passed? RD- Yes. TT- That must've been brutal. RD- It was. TT- So you got downtown, you're with the fellas, now Tommy Heaney, I heard some funny stories about him. Just being a nutbag. RD- He was by far the best firefighter I ever worked with. I learned more from Tom Heaney, and Ray Masse as well, but I think Tom was even a step above Ray. They were just super super firefighters. TT- Chickie said the same thing. He said Tommy Heaney had balls as big as his head. RD- He sure did. TT- Now when we talk about Heaney, I don't even know this guy. Haven't even seen a picture. I just know of him. Now, when you got downtown, how long had he been on the job? RD- Probably like sixteen years. (Shows me a picture) TT- Oh, that's him? Wow. RD- This is the shift downtown. These guys all retired. TT- Who are these guys? RD- That's Mike Brindamour, Tim Mercer, Tom McGarry, Tom Heaney, Dick Fuller and Mike Sholas. This pic is Joe Burns, Bob Thurber Senior, Frank Boisclair, John Mensa, Farrel, and Bobby Hammond. (Brindamour would go on to become Battalion Chief, Mercer became Assistant Chief, Burns, Boisclair, and Thurber were all Chief of Department at some point). TT- Wow. Great pics. Now as far as Heaney goes, you were saying you were learning from him on the fireground itself. How to read things, when to break this, I mean we're talking about the basics of firefighting. RD- Yes. TT- Did he ever say who he learned it all from? RD- He worked with Gerry Gendreau, I think he's still alive. He was one of the guys that crossed the picket line, so at the end we had some problems with him. But he was a hell of a firefighter. I'll give anybody that crossed the picket line even back then, if they were a good firefighter they were a good firefighter. What they did I didn't believe in, I didn't condone, but they were good firefighters. Gerry Gendreau was one of the best. TT- Wow. So Tommy Heaney, he descended from him. RD- Yes. TT- Then he taught you and Chickie ... RD- Yes. TT- So you were on Engine 2. What year did you make lieutenant? RD- 1988. TT- So you were fifteen years in by then. RD- Yes. TT- And what shift were you on? RD- A-shift. I was lucky I didn't have to go to another shift in my whole career. TT- How many total years did you work? RD- Almost thirty-one. TT- Wow. And all that, other than Engine 4 and Ladder 3, it was all Engine 2, downtown. RD- Yes. But we had a lot of transfers back then. You didn't know where the hell you were gonna be. TT- Now let's talk about the gear. We're talking about tin helmets, melt-away gloves--the gloves were so terrible they'd melt on your hands-- RD- (Laughs) Yup. They were freaking rubber gloves. All you had were hip boots, and most guys wore them rolled down, unless you were going into deep water or something, your khakis were ruined from here to here (knees to waist.) You'd bring them home to be washed and the wife would want to kill ya. The old jackets that they had-- TT- We're talking vinyl jackets? RD- Some were vinyl. One time on Engine 4, it had to go out for some work. Their back-up was an old Maxim, but it had no roof over the cab. The roof was wide open. So you'd be driving in a rainstorm and it would be coming in on top of ya. TT- That's crazy. You were there for the EMS transition, when it started taking over. I mean before 1980 no one was calling 911 for headaches, stomach aches, right? RD- Nope. TT- It never happened. People aren't like they are now. There's been this kind of generational shift where now people call 911 for everything. As far as close calls, did you have any? RD- Not really. I was really pretty lucky as far as that. I always considered going down into a basement a close call every time because you didn't know where the hell you were going or what was down there or not. And there was probably only one way out--the way you came in. And if you get turned around down there ... You had to keep your hands on the hose--don't let go of the hose. TT- Bob Thurber Jr said the same thing. He almost got killed three different times in basements and he hated them. RD- Yeah. TT- Hated them. The worst part is just getting down there because you're basically walking down through a chimney, right? RD- Yup. It was dangerous business. TT- And you guys weren't even wearing air packs. RD- Back then the radios were pretty bad, as far as there was only one walkie-talkie and the lieutenant had that. And back then, (he whispers), most of the lieutenants stayed outside. TT- (laughs) RD- So when you went down that basement you didn't have a radio or nothing. You were just going down there bare-assed. TT- Jesus. Now let's talk about the Narragansett Racetrack fire. Some people don't know that Pawtucket had a state of the art race track for horses that was nationally known. Are we talking about 1978? RD- Something like that. We got there and I think I was on Ladder 3 at the time. Or Engine 3, one of the two, I can't remember. Anyway, we got there before the 6's. So we get there and the barns were going like hell. The horses were going crazy. TT- Did they get the horses out of there? RD- Some of the jockeys were there, the guys that cleaned the stables, we were helping them pull the horses out but if you read anything about almost every kind of animal, like my two dogs out there, we were pulling the horses out and letting them go, and you'd turn around and they would be running back in. TT- Oh no. RD- You know? That was their home. And they were scared to be out of it. And the next morning when the sun came up the barns were gone. They were like this (makes an EKG like line to show lumps in the ash). It was the horses. Everything fell on top of them and they were dead. TT- Jesus. How many horses are we talking about? RD- I don't even remember. Had to be twenty-twenty-five horses. TT- That's awful. Talk about big fire, it sounds like when you guys pulled up it was ripping. RD- Yes. TT- How'd it start? RD- Back then the guys who took care of the horses were kind of street people. There was straw and hay everywhere and the theory at the time was that someone tossed a cigarette. TT- You were there all day. RD- I don't remember what time at night-- TT- Oh this was a night fire? RD- It was a night fire. TT- What about Star Gas? Were you there for that? RD- That was the day they had the golf tournament. I was with Timmy Mercer, Gary Pappas, and somebody else, maybe one of my brothers. He used to come every once and a while. And we were at the backside of the Pawtucket Country Club, like near Seekonk. We didn't hear anything, didn't know anything, we came back and we were looking around saying "Where the hell is everybody?" "Oh, don't you guys know that Star Gas finally blew up?" "What're you talking about?" Then off in the distance you could see the smoke. I said to somebody, "Well, should we go?" "Oh they got plenty of help." "Good. That means more beer for us." (laughs). We never heard anything, no explosion, no nothing. TT- The younger people reading this won't realize there was a time when there were no cell phones. Anyway, Chickie said he'd already had one too many and the chief just said, "Go back to where you were." RD- (laughs) TT- Now let's talk about the picket line stuff. What exactly was going on with that? they were trying to break the union by wanting people to cross it, right? The picket line was basically broken by how many guys? RD- There was probably six or seven. At least. Some of the guys, like Gerry Gendreau, Frank Sylvester who was a big big union man in the steel mill before he went over there, I can't remember the rest. They were just looking for promotions. You know? And they didn't care about the rest. We were fighting for outside testing and they were offering to promote guys or they were gonna run a test and promote guys by the old process and we didn't want that. TT- Which is why no one took a promotion for years. Because they were political and not based on merit. Can you think you think of any other events? RD- We had a big fire on Front Street. Down Central Avenue, you know where Collette Travel is now? TT- Yes. RD- On the other side of the street was a huge mill. It ran like 500 yards. Massive place. And it started, we were on duty that day, but we were up on Smithfield Avenue doing CPR training. The box came in and Joe Burns, who was on Ladder 2, he got there and said, "This is a Code Red." I was on the rescue with Frank Sylvester and Gerry Gendreau came down and when he crossed the Exchange Street bridge he called the Alarm Room and told them to send everybody. Make it a General Alarm. That's how bad that place was going. TT- So as far as General Alarms go, you might see three or four in a whole career, so it's a pretty big deal. (General Alarm is a mandatory call back of all off duty personnel. With 32 on a normal shift, that means 128 FFs.) RD- It is. TT- That thing sounds like it was ripping. RD- Yeah, the whole thing went down. From one end to the other. We were fighting it and fighting it but we were just backing up, throwing as much water as we could but you couldn't put it out. TT- You couldn't stop it. Like standing in front of a train. RD- Yeah. Exactly. TT- What year did you finally retire? RD- 2004. TT- That's a long career. Any injuries? RD- Just a knee, but that was the only one. I was very lucky. Never got burned. TT- Do you have any regrets? RD- No. Actually yes. I wish I had gotten on when I was younger. (laughs) TT- It's true. I got on late too. I was in construction and other stuff so I didn't get on the job until I was thirty-eight. RD- How long you been on now? TT- Nine years. But it's true, if you get on early you get that extra jump. What made you decide to join up? RD- The mill was closing down. I almost got divorced because I lost $100 a week taking the fire department job. And I used to get a lot of overtime at the mill and the fire department didn't have any OT. It was always just straight pay. I think my first check was $115 a week before taxes. TT- How did you deal with it? You never brought any of it home? Just did it the old school way and went and a had a few beers with the fellas and talked it out, right? RD- Pretty much. I had six kids, so I always worked two jobs. My wife was a nurse and she always worked two jobs. With six kids you had to. In fact one time, when I was on the fire department and she was a nurse, with the six kids I was eligible for food stamps. TT- Jesus. RD- I got food stamps for a while, I think for a $100 they gave me $80, so it was only like getting ahead twenty bucks, that's how low the pay was. TT- That's terrifying. We haven't had a raise in like eight years. It is, you're right. Sometimes it's a struggle. Six kids? RD- Yup. TT- What was your second job? RD- I installed carpet. TT- The whole way through? Carpet and FD? RD- Yeah, and every once in a while I would work Pelletier Trucking, the rigging company over here? I used to work for them part time. If I wasn't installing carpets I'd go work with them or vice versa. I always had to have two jobs. TT- Can you think of anything else you'd like to talk about? RD- No, that's about it. I loved the job. I wish I had gotten on earlier. It was a great job. TT- Fun, right? RD- The only thing they had back then that you guys don't have now .. they used to sit us down, every cycle, usually your second day. They'd sit you down at the table just like you and me right here. Everybody on the two trucks downtown had to take a seat at the table and do street drills. TT- Quizing each other on the streets. There wasn't no satellites or GPS back then, right? RD- If you went out the door and didn't know your street, when you got back you sat down at the table with your street book, the lieutenant would make you sit down and go over every one of them again. TT- That's the old school. And there was more self-discipline back then. We're trying to get back to that now, because we've had such a flood of new guys. I'm not even nine years in and I've got eighty guys beneath me. RD- Wow. TT- Crazy turnover. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Too many new guys and not enough old guys is not a very good recipe. Some of these newer dudes don't get it, and need to be put back in a line a little bit, so the older crowd is flexing back. But the old school way, as you know and Chickie used to talk about it, you didn't go in the kitchen and sit down and have a coffee and read the paper before the lieutenant did, right? You always made coffee, you cleaned, went through your street-books and protocols, like it's a job, right? RD- From what I've been told about the new guys, I'm sure there's a lot that are really good, but I'm sure you got some real nags too. Like we did too. Guys that wouldn't go into fires. I just see it right now--I was talking to somebody who said guys come in and sit around the table and nobody talks to each other. Everybody's on their devices. TT- Brulé was saying the same thing. It was driving him crazy at the end. "I don't want to sit around looking at my phone. I want to talk to somebody." Well, I really appreciate you taking the time. RD- It was my pleasure. TT- Sounds like you had a great career. RD- I did. Thanks for coming over. Joe Cordeiro- March 6, 2018.
Joe Cordeiro is a no nonsense guy with a great sense of humor. Third-generation Portuguese, he wears a trademark black mustache. His drive and professionalism propelled him through the ranks until he made Captain of Engine 2. He never stopped learning or teaching, and was one of the primary instructors for the Pawtucket Fire Department for two decades. He served as a Rescue Lieutenant, Fire Lieutenant, and Fire Captain before he retired. He also still teaches at the State Fire Academy. This interview was conducted at Greenwood Fire Apparatus where he is currently the General Manager. This is what he said ... TT- Why don't we start at the beginning, like what year you got on and how old you were. JC- I got on in June of 1988 and I was thirty-one years old. TT- What did you do before you got here? JC- I graduated from high school, went into the Coast Guard for four years, and then I went into the merchant marine. I did that for six years, and then I got my Stationary Engineer's license, which means you can work on boilers and generators. I worked at Rhode Island Hospital for three years as a Stationary Engineer. I worked in the power plant at Rhode Island Hospital, and I was also--I had moved to Rehobeth at the time, so I was on the Rehobeth Fire Department. It was a call department. So we got paid by the call. I was on the Rehobeth Ambulance, which was a separate department, and then I was on the Rehobeth Rescue Squad, which was also a separate department. So I did all that, had been friends with Bobby Thurber forever-- TT- Where'd you meet him? JC- I met him at East Providence Ambulance. After I got out of the Coast Guard--I already had my EMT license--I was looking for a job. I saw an ad in the paper, so I applied and got on there, met him there back in July of 1978. So we've been friends since then. TT- He brought in Brulé as well. He met Brulé at Rhode Island Hospital. JC- Yep. He (Thurber) was in East Providence then, went back to Costigan's (Ambulance) because he had come from Costigan's, and he brought me over to Costigan's too. Actually, I forgot about that. When I got out of the Coast Guard there was a lull. I worked private ambulance and then went into the merchant marine. TT- For people that don't know, Costigan Ambulance was really a pipeline for our job. A lot of guys came through there. JC- Back in the day, Costigan's did the transportation, emergency transportation with the fire department. The department had one rescue. That rescue would respond and request an ambulance if needed, and Costigan's would send an ambulance and do the transport. We actually ended up doing a lot of emergency work with the rescue guys on the fire department. And like you said, a lot of guys went from Costigan's--if it wasn't Pawtucket, they went somewhere on a fire department. TT- Now the merchant marines, we're talking about sailing the seven seas. We're talking about huge cargo ships ... JC- I was actually on oil tankers, 1100 footers, or supertankers, with a crew of twenty-six and that included the deck guys, engine room, and the steward crew and the kitchen crew. In the engine room where I worked there was seven. One was the chief engineer, so he didn't stand on watch. So there was six of us, two guys per watch, and we would work four-hour shifts on watch and then when you were off watch you would do maintenance repair. TT- How long would you be out? JC- Minimum was ninety days. It could be more. Like a hundred and twenty days. TT- So we're talking three to four months at a whack? JC- Yup. TT- Wow. So you saw the world, right? JC- Yes. TT- Where would you--did you have a regular route? JC- Well, it depends on the ship you were on. Actually, in the Coast Guard, you'd be surprised, because I went--when the recruiter had me in his office and showed me pictures of little forty-foot patrol boats out in Narragansett Bay, I was like, "Oh, that looks like fun." TT- (laughs) JC- Then I get to Basic Training and they got these huge ships, and I ended up getting assigned to a ship that was 378 feet long, a destroyer-sized ship, so I went all over the world. I went to New Foundland, along the coast, Charlestown, South Carolina, Norfolk, Virginia, Guantanamo, Cuba, went to England, Spain, Italy, Jamaica ... that was just the Coast Guard. TT- So on the tankers there was what? The Middle East? JC- I never did that. I did the Scotland run a couple of times, but most of the time it was West Coast, up to Alaska, and then down either to Washington State or Long Beach, California, or down to Panama. Some of the smaller tankers I went through the Panama Canal on. It was pretty interesting. TT- What happened? Was six years enough? JC- I had gotten married, had the first kid, then the second kid was on the way, and it was like, "Ehh." TT- Because you're missing everything. JC- Yeah. The money's great. But yeah, you miss everything. TT- So you got on the fire department in 1988. And back then what was the process? Did you have an academy and then come on? JC- They had a fire school. TT- Who were some of the guys you came on with? JC- I was with the "Dirty Dozen." TT- Oh yeah? (laughs). So we're talking Kean-o-- JC- Boisclair, Kean, Garlick, Bobby Plouffe, Frank Johnson came on right after us... TT- So you came on with the Dirty Dozen, you got assigned to a spot, right? JC- No. When we got on, they had an issue with promotional exams. They weren't taking them because they were fighting with the city. I'm sure you heard about that. TT- I did. JC- So we came on, we did our probationary time, and then you got a temporary assignment. So you went somewhere to fill a spot. Not like now where it's a bid spot. Because there were no lieutenants, there were only Actings, so once they straightened that out they had mass promotions, where they promoted like thirty officers, and then after all that was sorted out, you were able to finally bid and find a home. TT- Now the controversy itself was that they wanted outside testing for the officers spots. They didn't want it in-house anymore. JC- Yes. It was in-house, and they wanted outside testing. There was some other stuff, but that was before I got there. TT- So how long did they go between promotions? JC- Years and years. TT- It sounds like there was no lieutenants left, like everybody was an Acting... JC- I don't remember the number, but if I remember correctly it was in St. Mary's Parish Hall on Roosevelt Avenue. My recollection is that there were thirty promotions that day. TT- Wow. JC- There was a handful of lieutenants left but not many. TT- Now they created the captains at this time? JC- (pauses) That I can't remember. But it was all around the same time. TT- Now who were some of the old-school guys you were working with, the guys who taught you? JC- Well, I was fortunate because I spent a lot of time at Station 2, headquarters. And it's funny, because if you talk to some of the other guys, but it seems like where you start, where your first station was, is kind of where you try to get back to? Because once you start bidding you're going to different places. In fact, when I first started you couldn't get on Engine 2. Forget it. You weren't bidding there as a new guy. It wasn't going to be open. So you'd go somewhere and if you wanted to be on Engine 2 you would wait your turn, and over the years, work your way back there. The crew that I spent a lot of time with was Battalion Chief Thurber, on Engine 2 was Mike Szczoczarz (So-sarz), Pete Basiliere, and I can't remember the ladder crew... TT- So you started off down there and you were able to stay down there. JC- I was able to stay there for a while, because that's when we'd be doing the dispatch. We'd get moved around, from dispatch, to the engine, ladder, rescue, wherever. I did spend a lot of time at headquarters until we had our first temporary bid, then I ended up going to Rescue 1 with Dick Lemay. TT- He told a funny story--actually it wasn't a funny story at all--but he told me you guys went to Dartmouth Street one night for an emotional disturbance or something, something that sounded so mundane, then you get there and the door opens and can you describe what happened next? JC- We get there, knock on the door, and a guy comes out with a steak knife and he's just rambling on and we're going, "What the hell is this?" and the next thing you know we're all wrestling around in the hallway and he cut me in the face. So now we're calling for help. Fire Alarm couldn't hear us because we were in the high-rise and they were having trouble with their communications, so they couldn't hear us, but Engine 1, Bobby Ogle was the lieutenant. I forget who was with him. But he heard it from the 1's, so they self-dispatched to give us a hand and then they called for the cops on the way over. The thing is, I remember when we held him down, I finally grabbed the knife off of him and I was able to get up and put it on the stretcher, because it was evidence, I knew that. So I put it on the stretcher. The cops get there and everything else. I tell them it's on the stretcher--there's no knife. Some people that this guy knew, I don't even know who these people were, councilors that they had called to come and help? I don't remember. And this is speculation, but when they got there, they took the knife, so we didn't have any evidence. TT- I mean this is assault with a deadly weapon. Could've even been elevated to attempted murder. JC- It was funny because the guy ended up pleading out. I never even went to court on it, it all got settled out of court. But the funny story is, my wife works for the post office in Rehobeth. There's a new clerk there and they become friends. He invites us over to his house, he's having a little get-together, invites us over. We meet his wife and some of his friends. So one of his friends is a lawyer. We're all sitting around having some drinks and I'm being quiet because I don't know these people, I'm just kind of checking it out, and he starts talking about this case. Now I don't know how it came up, but he says, "Yeah, I just defended a guy that assaulted a firefighter." (laughs) So I'm sitting there, like, "Hmm." So he goes through the whole story, about how this guys stabbed a firefighter with a knife, blah blah blah. So all of a sudden I'm like "Holy shit, this is the guy ...?" So I go, "What was your client's name?" He couldn't tell me, obviously, but he goes, "I'll tell you his first name." "Yeah, go ahead." So he told me and I go, "Yeah. I'm the guy he stabbed." TT- (laughs) JC- I told my wife, "Let's go." TT- (laughs) JC- And they're all nervous until I go, "Only kidding." (laughs). But that's a true story. You should've seen everyone's faces falling. TT- So where'd he get you? The face? JC- Just a nick across the cheek. TT- Just a nick with a freaking steak knife. JC- They took pictures and everything. If I remember correctly, he was a war veteran and I get it. He had problems. I get it. TT- How long were you with Dick Lemay? JC- A couple of years. Three years? On Rescue 1 and then I took a promotional exam for rescue lieutenant and so that came up. It was funny because I was tired of the rescue and wanted to go to an engine company and the next thing you know they had an opening on Rescue 2 for lieutenant. And I was hemming and hawing, should I? Should I not? Everybody's over at the Celtic (legendary Pawtucket Fire bar), yelling, "Well, you can't turn down a promotion!" And I said, "Alright." So I took it and like a week later I was like, "This was a mistake." (laughs and laughs.) TT- (laughs) JC- So I did six months as a rescue lieutenant and then I was at a bid and Engine 2 opened up. TT- Nice. JC- So I grabbed it and went back to being a firefighter. TT- So what year are we talking about? You've been on the job four or five years, maybe? JC- Probably like four. Like 1992. TT- Now the thing about Lemay, outside of the fact that he probably trained the majority of guys in EMS that came on the job, was just the way he treated everyone the same, right? He used to have a saying, I mean a person could be an alcoholic, drug addict, covered in God knows what, just a total mess, and he'd be like, "You know, you're just one or two failed opportunities away from being this guy." Treated everyone with respect. JC- Yup. TT- It's just something that reverberates through. You realize--that's what the job kind of shows you, you can see how bad things can go for some people, and how the ones that have it good don't even know it. JC- He was great. He was just a great guy to work with. Not only because of the knowledge and experience, but the patience. I did have a little background coming from Rehobeth, but still, I had cardiac stuff but I never did stuff like that before. Just the patience and me doing stuff and him just smiling and shaking his head. "Hey, Lou, is this blood supposed to be coming out of this tube?" And he'd shake his head, "No, that's an artery. We don't want to stick that." "Oh, okay, sorry about that." TT- (laughs) JC- We had some interesting stuff. Spent like two and a half or three years together. But I always enjoyed it. I was new and wanted to be busy, learn the city--because I wasn't from Pawtucket--learn the city and all that, and we were certainly busy. TT- So you're on Engine 2 and what happens next? When did you make lieutenant? JC- I took the test after six years. Back in those days, after five years you could take your first promotional exam. I made lieutenant off of that list. TT- Now were you around guys like Ray Gilbert? JC- Not Ray Gilbert, but Ray, uh, Ray-- TT- Mathews? JC- Yes. And then Ray Naughton, out of the 1's TT- We're talking about put-together guys, as far as firemen go. JC- Oh yeah. TT- When your name is mentioned in pretty rare air, like Timmy Hayes, and funny stories get told about that guy just being a complete smoke-eater while smoking Pall Malls in the middle of a fire-- JC- I'm sure you've heard the story where you're down, gagging, trying to breathe on the floor, and you hear, "Come on, kid, let's go." He's just standing there with the cigarette going. You gotta pack on and everything and he's like, "Let's go, kid, this thing ain't gonna put itself out." (Laughs). So you watch this and say to yourself, "Oh, I think I can do this too." Until you pull your mask off and start puking. "Okay, I guess not." TT- (laughs). He never wore a pack? JC- Every now and then. But don't forget, they didn't even have packs when those guys started. Different generation, different mentality. The whole thing is, when you came on, there were people that you looked up to. And your goal was to impress them. You wanted to do a good job and work hard and do what you gotta do and be there, when it was time, and you wanted these guys to acknowledge that yeah, you're doing a good job. You hear it, and some people might think it's corny, but the best compliment you can give a firefighter is tell him he's a good firefighter. He was a good Jake. That's the best compliment you can get, right? TT- And you talk about the guys who know how to read things. (B.C.) Kraweic would talk about reading smoke, and guys who were instinctive firemen, and Bobby Ogle's name comes up a lot as far as just being in a fire and he can almost describe what's happening, and what's gonna happen next, and you know, it seems that we've lost some of that just because ... I mean there are fires all the time, but not with the ferocity of that generation. We have fatal fires, we have all that stuff, but in the 70's and 80's, they were laying feeders every other day. We're good at the medical, the OD's, the heart attacks and car wrecks ... we can do that stuff in our sleep. But you pull up now and some of the new guys are kind of looking around ... JC- And that's where working with the senior guys, and them explaining it and you picking it up until you say, "Wait a minute, what kind of construction is this? Let's get somebody up to the third-floor and crack a wall, see if it's stretching for the roof. Let's check that attic space. That crawl space. The last few times that's what we had, so let's head it off." The text book says, first line here, second line here, well, that's great. That's the text book. But let's get a line up there where the fire is extending to and let's just push it back this way and put the frigging thing out. So you gotta have the text books, you gotta have the base to work on, but it becomes learning from the guys that were there before you, and then learning yourself, like you talked about, starting to read the scene, "Lemme take a second and see what's going on here before I commit. What exactly is going on here?" So you try to make the right decision right off the bat. TT- Now you were a captain when you left, so I'm guessing you were an Acting Battalion Chief at certain points. When you would be put in the car, that's a whole other level of responsibility. Obviously, we're talking about the safety of 30-something guys and 80,000 people. JC- That's a big responsibility. And I can remember the first fire I had as an Acting B.C., as much as I know what to do--as an officer on an engine company, whether I'm first due, second-due, third-in, am I attack, water supply, am I on the back-up line, if I'm on the ladder am I ventilation? Those roles are kind of spelled out. But as a Battalion Chief you come in and you gotta take in this whole scene, and kind of direct it, make sure everyone's staying safe, getting the resources you need to the fire, but it's a whole different perspective. I remember the first time that happened to me, I was little bit overwhelmed, to tell you the truth. It was just, it seemed like I was behind a step, know what I mean? I just couldn't get ahead of this thing. It was a whole different perspective. But that's how you learn? That's your experience. TT- Can you think of any crazy rescue runs you had? JC- I gotta tell you one. Cops are there on a psych eval. So we go. There's four cops there. They're like, "This person's gotta go to the hospital." She doesn't want to go. So we walk in, she might've weighed a hundred pounds. A little thing. But she was on something. So, Dick does his thing, trying to talk to her, "Listen, you gotta get checked out," all nice-like. She goes, "I'm not going." "But miss, this will really help you out." She goes, "I'm not going." This goes on for a while. Finally, we're gonna have to grab her. The cops are like, "Okay, take her away." So we go to grab her and she starts fighting. Six of us. Six of us. And we still got beat up. She's rolling around, flipping us off, it wasn't really funny as much as it was like, "Are you freaking kidding me? Is this really happening?" It took four cops and two firemen to bring her down and restrain her. TT- A hellcat. JC- That's why when people say, "What're all these guys here for?" Because you never know. TT- People watch these things on TV about use of force, and they don't realize that when you pull up on a scene, whatever's happening has to be resolved at some point. We're not just gonna go away. The cops aren't just gonna go away. We can sit there and talk to them for an hour, whatever it takes, but someone somewhere along the way has to make a decision. We need to put these companies back in service. Right? JC- My first--Dick's on vacation, it's a Sunday and Dick's on vacation--so my first shift as Acting Lieutenant, I'm nervous. First run we go to is 150 Dartmouth Street. We get there, walk in the apartment, there's a guy and his wife, his daughter and his son-in-law. So we make contact, they called for chest pain/difficulty breathing. "Okay, sir, we're gonna take you to the hospital." "I don't want to go." "Well, who called us?" "We did." He doesn't want to go. I say, "Let me check your vitals." I go through the whole thing, I say, "Sir, your blood pressure's down, you're having some problems breathing, you really need to go to the hospital." "Well, I'm not going." I'm thinking to myself, "Fantastic." My first call, right? So I ended up, we're there for forty minutes. I was sitting on the couch next to the guy, we were just talking, shooting the shit, and I was explaining different stuff and finally I said, "You really need to go to the hospital." "Well, I'm not going to the hospital." So the family's like, "You gotta take him." I says, "I can't. He's of sound mind, I can't force him to go." So I had him sign a refusal and I said, "Listen, do not hesitate to call me back." Okay? An hour later we get the call and go back and now he's a code. TT- Ugh. JC- So we bring him to Miriam, but he doesn't make it. I'll never forget it. We were walking out of the ER and his wife comes up to me and says, "This is all your fault because you didn't take him to the hospital." TT- Jesus. JC- So we got back to the station and I go, "First run of the day. That went well." TT- (Laughs.) It's not even lunch and the day's just torched. JC- What is for lunch? The biggest question ever asked on the fire department. TT- What about Greenhalgh Mill? JC- I was working that day, and I was in Canton, Ma., teaching. So class finished up something like two or three o'clock. So I says, "Well, it's too late for me to go home before shift." Thurber was working so I figured I'd go in early and relieve him. So I get on 95 South and you can see this smoke, I say, "Holy Christ, someone's got something big, maybe it's Attleboro or something." So I put the radio on and I'm driving, and it's windy and I'm like, "Oh man, that's a big one." The news goes, "Meanwhile, in Pawtucket, a large fire is ravaging a mill complex." I put it to the floor and come flying into the city and it was funny because Mike Thurber was driving this old station wagon we had, to go the fire scene from Station 2. It was loaded with guys and their gear. I come flying into the parking lot and scream, "Wait for me!" "There's no room!" "You better wait for me!" I run in, grab my stuff, jump in--I don't even know how I fit in, we're all just laying in there with our gear and we get to the fire scene--" TT- It's like a clown-car. JC- Exactly. Everyone falling out over all the place. But that was quite the fire. TT- Now when you got there, where did you go that day? JC- We showed up at Station 4 and just went to work. Because there was plenty of work. TT- I was told that they didn't even allow guys to go into houses, they were just trying to maintain the perimeter to keep the rest of the city from burning down. JC- We went into a couple of houses, but there was two houses next to each other. One was going really good, the other was just starting. So I says, "Listen, forget that one, because we ain't saving that one. Let's put water on this one." So that's what we did. We actually saved that house. But once the houses got going there was nothing you could do. TT- When you saw the mill, had you ever seen anything like that? Because I heard stories that that thing was just lit up. JC- By the time I got there, that thing was just, like you just said, "Wow." Which is not what I really said, but you can fill in the blanks. TT- Four stories ripping, blowing through a neighborhood with embers showering everything, it sounds like a war movie. Now the fallout from events like this is that we don't have enough airpacks for everybody. So the guys on shift that day had air, maybe there were a few reserve packs floating around somewhere, but every guy I've talked with who wasn't on shift basically showed up and ate smoke for twelve or fourteen hours, and not pleasant smoke either. We're talking 55 gallon drums- JC- And different colors. TT- Right? Never a good sign. It's almost like any guy that was there that day and eating that wind with all that smoke should be on a cancer watch list right now. JC- It's not conducive to your health, that's for sure. TT- This wasn't a quick event either. JC- But you didn't think about that stuff. You just do your job and do what you gotta do, but it was one of those events where you were like, "I've never seen this before, and I hope I never see it again." It was incredible. There were fires everywhere. It was funny because you'd be on the scene and people I knew from Central Falls and East Providence and Lincoln--guys I knew from all over the state--it was like a mini-reunion. TT- Except for the inferno. JC- (Laughs) It was a very quick hello, we were busy. TT- After that there was Union Wadding Mill. That was nowhere near as bad as Greenhalgh, but that was a big big fire. Now as far as situations that develop, where you're like, "You know, maybe we should get the hell out of here." Did you have any close calls? JC- Well, I probably ... I can't remember the street. Where I fractured my back. That's sad. My memory is gone. But I was at the 5's and they sent Engine 2 out. It was right where the 2's and 5's districts meet. What the hell was the name of the street? Anyway, it was for a wheelchair fire. TT- Did you just say a wheelchair? JC- Wheelchair fire. I don't know if the caller told--the dispatchers were Moe (Barris) and Mike (McMahon, legendary characters who were veterans of World War II and Vietnam respectively)--don't know if the caller told them the wheelchair was in the freaking house ... TT- Oh no... JC- They send Engine 2. Engine 2 gets there--it was a Saturday, Engine 2 gets there and all you hear is "Code Red." What? We're all looking at each other. "What'd he say?" Code Red. Code Red? Next thing you know Beep Boop Bop of we go. Now this thing is roaring. The battery for the wheelchair, they were charging it in the house when it exploded. So this thing's going. By the end of the day we had a civilian fatality, six firefighters injured, several other civilians injured. This thing just went like that (snaps his fingers). But yeah, it came in as a wheelchair fire. You never know... Anyway, I ended up falling down the stairs into the basement, backwards, so when I hit the bottom, where my bottle was, it snapped there. I fractured my vertebrae down there. So I was out of work for like four months. TT- They do surgery? JC- No. Healed up. TT- What year we talking? JC- '92. TT- When did you retire. JC- 2010. TT- Twenty-three years? JC- Yes. TT- How old were you when you left? Fifty-five? JC- Fifty-three. TT- You were able to get out and continue your other career. JC- I've been involved with Greenwood ... I was in their Training Division, I became the New Truckshop Manager, now I'm the General Manager, and I've been with Greenwood for twenty-one years. So I've been here for a long time, too. They've always taken real good care of me. They've been a great company to work for. TT- Now when you look back, do you have any regrets? JC- Not really. I've been very fortunate. I will say that I wish I had stayed a few years more, but that's a tough decision that someday you'll have to make as well. TT- Every guy I've talked with has wrestled with that. Because once you walk out that door ... JC- I think you always have second thoughts. Not everybody, but I did. I missed it for a long time. TT- Right? You have to readjust your whole life. JC- Yup. TT- Chickie was saying it took him three months to get used to being around his wife so much because he was always at work. (Laughs) JC- It's funny because when I retired, I told my wife, "Okay here's the date," --now don't forget I met her when I was in the military, I was on ships, then I'm in the merchant marine so I'm gone all the time, then I'm on the fire department with that schedule, and she goes, "Lemme tell you something--" she's very independent, she goes, "Lemme tell you something. I've been used to having at least two nights a week with you not being around here. Don't you cramp my style." (Laughs and laughs). I said, "Don't worry." TT- Chickie was like, "I wasn't used to sleeping right and eating good and blah blah blah." It took him a minute to get back to life. That's a hard call to make, though, because once you're gone there ain't no coming back JC- Even now, it's funny how much turnover there's been in the last ten years. I'll walk into a station now and I'll recognize one person? Maybe two? TT- Brulé said the same thing. He walked in downtown and said, "I don't even know who any of these people are." When guys retire they do, they disappear. Unless you see them at some function, they're usually gone for good. It's so weird because you spend your whole life with these guys and then one day it just stops. Then they feel kind of weird going back to the station because everything's kind of moved on, right? It sealed over ... JC- Yeah. When you first retire it's a little weird but you still know guys and can grab a coffee. But after a while, like I said, I really don't know a lot of people. TT- It's just like these guys show up, they do the job, and they just disappear. And it keeps going on. It's the same job it's been for two hundred years, right? JC- Yes. Think about the bed you're sleeping in or the office you're working in, and how many generations of people have done the same thing. TT- Chief Cute one time came in. It was right after he retired. He just looked around the table--just completely blurts it out-- "I don't even feel like I should be here anymore." And I was like, "Woah." JC- I don't know if I can explain it, but you were part of it, and now you're not. You're a retiree, you did your time, but you're not part of it anymore. A lot of times, it's just easier to go on. That's why you don't see a lot of retirees at stuff because it's not our time anymore. TT- You're on Engine 2. And the highway stuff. I'd imagine you've seen some pretty horrible shit out there. JC- We had that girl that hit the abutment. TT- Nightmare. JC- That was bad. They hit it at like 70 MPH. TT- Mikey Dawson, me and him were on Rescue 2 when we got a call for a rollover. With ejections. I was fully braced for an S-Curves bloodbath. We're pulling up, and there's the mom and five kids all lined up on the embankment, the car's completely wrecked, and it turns out the mother was the only one wearing a seatbelt. The mother said none of the kids would not put on their seatbelts. Every kid got thrown out and they were all fine. Now Can you think of anything else you'd like to talk about? You were always one of the most knowledgeable dudes on the job. Involved with training, teaching ... JC- Still am. Still do it now. I'm supposed to do a class with North Providence. They bought Cumberland's old ladder truck. It's a 75-footer with only two jacks instead of the four. So they called up and said, "Can you come out here and put us through a class?" Still doing that. Still studying. TT- We were talking earlier when you gave me a tour of the facility, about how things are changing in the fire service itself. There's a complete fixation with safety at this point, and it does have its place, but it seems to be going kind of overboard, especially the use of seatbelts. I can't ever get used to the fact that you're on your way to something, you're getting all of your gear squared away, you already have enough straps and crap hanging all over you--radios, suspenders, airtank. Ricky (Slater) was out so I was in charge of Ladder 2 and had the seatbelt on. Got stuck in the seatbelt, took a step out, and was literally hanging off the side of the truck like a ball of mucous. I looked like a complete idiot, right? Thank God no one saw it and there was no video of it because that was some ridiculous shit. But I was like, "You know what? I can't wear a seatbelt on the way to something where I have to actually function. I got more important things to think about-- "Are we search and rescue, are we the vent team, where are we gonna place this thing so we can get a clean shot for that roof?" The seatbelts suck. They put little kids in schoolbuses and say a prayer, but 250 pound men have to wear seatbelts. So it seems everything is slowing down. The speed element of what we do is being lost. Especially the ladder guys. They're really putting the brakes on those guys. By the time these guys get up there to cut the hole half the house is gone. JC- Right? It's like forget it. TT- I get that people don't want to say that safety is bad, blah blah blah, but you do. You see it slowing everybody down. JC- Like I said, we talked about it earlier. My big thing is that, with the apparatus, the equipment, there's so many features on it to make it safe, which is great, but you still need to know how to run your truck. You still need to know how it works. Just because I have a body-protect (a fabricated piece that prevents the ladder from hitting the truck) that makes sure the ladder's not going to hit the truck as I'm putting the ladder into the cradle, or even rotating it at a scene, I still gotta be aware of the fact that I should be putting the ladder away myself instead of the computer, not depending on that. Listen, if the sensors are out of adjustment it's gonna hit the vehicle anyway. Depending on the sensors instead of humans is risky business. TT- Kind of scary. Like airplanes with pilots that no longer have to land them. JC- Yes, you gotta know the basics. You gotta know how to operate your truck. What happens if it fails? Is there a way for you to operate, if you can't get your pump engaged at a fire because of the computer, is there a way for you to manually engage your pump? Do you have that override? Do you know how to use it ... to me, you talk about safety stuff and that's something that should be on there because it's something that does happen (computer failure). The override gives you the opportunity to engage your pump if you have an air problem. Some of this other stuff, the worst one I saw that set me off a little bit, was an automatic tank fill. TT- Oh no. JC- Yeah. Now don't quote me on the numbers, but if you had an intake pressure from your supply greater than thirty or forty pounds, and your tank got down to half a tank, this valve would automatically open to fill your water tank ... TT- Dear God. JC- And if your incoming pressure dropped to like the twenties, the valve would automatically close. So I'm talking to the salesperson saying, "Oh what could possibly go wrong with that." (laughs) TT- That is freaking crazy. JC- I said, "Don't sell those." That is ridiculous. I can't pull the lever myself and put water into my own tank? Really? TT- Crazy. It's getting to the point where the computer panel on the pump, like we were talking about, "Where is the knob I turn? Where's the relief valve? And I'll put the fire out on my own. I don't need all this stuff." There's been a single knob to turn for a hundred years. Why do we need to reinvent this? Why do we need sensitive computer chips that don't like water or vibration or violence, because a fire truck is full of all those things. JC- I do Driver-Training and Pump-Operator training classes for the Rhode Island Fire Academy, and a lot of my classes, we have a couple of pumpers there. One of the pumpers actually has a switch where you can use either the pressure governor or you can go back to the relief valve. So you can train on both. And I'll do a class and someone will say, "Our department only has the computerized one." And I'll say, "That's great but you still need to see how this is gonna work in the real world." It's gonna show you how the pump works. One of the big things is troubleshooting. What can you do if the worst thing happens? You're running a pump at a fire scene. You don't have that luxury to say, "Oh, the pump doesn't work. Wrap it up." Well, you better do something because you've got people in the building and I'm pretty sure they'd like some water to put out the fire. (laughs) You gotta know your equipment. TT- And not only that, but the safety safety safety--I was on a ladder crew for three years and I loved it. I was a roofer, so heights don't bother me. Anyway, I got reprimanded a couple of times for being on the tip as they flew me up with the saw. "Your feet are gonna get broken in the rungs, blah blah blah," and I get it. It's dangerous. But do you know how much faster this operation's gonna go after I step off this thing fresh? Instead of climbing eighty feet with sixty pounds of gear, airppack, roof ladder-- JC- But do you know how many people every year that happens too? TT- I get it. They get their feet caught in the ladders, get their ankles broken-- JC- It still happens. TT- But it's a risk though, and the whole job is risk. You try and mitigate these things but at the same point, if you get too far away from the risk nothing's ever gonna get done. JC- I understand what you're saying, but the other way to look at that is, "Don't become a problem." You're at a scene to help solve problems, not become one. TT- True. JC- Don't you become an incident because now there goes more resources to help you out. Bail you out. Now we need people to deal with you. And then they're gonna bust your chops later anyway. (laughs). "What the hell were you thinking!" "Well, chief, it seemed like the thing to do at the time." Look we've had guys get hurt, in other departments in the area, one guy got both of his feet crushed and he's now disabled. Done. TT- I hear ya. Listen, Cap, if you think of anything else give me a call. This was fun. Lemay kept calling me back. We did three hours on tape and he still had more. A thirty or forty page interview. JC- Well, don't forget he was on that rescue for a lot of years. Plus, he used to get us in trouble with Chief Meerbott. Oh my God. We were on the Third Battalion and every time there was a fire Lemay was like, "Alright, let's gear up." We'd go in. The chief would be like, "Where are ya? Where are ya?" We were inside getting our butts kicked by the fire. I remember one time we had to go to his office, he was pissed at us, "You guys aren't supposed to be in there!" One time, right at Exchange Street and Broadway, there used to be a house there. Engine 2 pulled up. Smoke detector had gone off. Engine 2 pulled up and the cop says, "It's just a mattress fire." "Oh, okay." Like two or three alarms later-- (laughs)--we get there on the rescue and Dick goes, "Gear up!" We go up, inside on the second-floor, we go out on a landing, we get stuck on a roof. We can't get out because the way we came in is now fully involved. So we're on the roof and I go, "Now what do we do?" All of a sudden Chief Boisclair's yelling, "Jesus Christ! What're you guys doing up there!" (laughs) "Someone get the ladder and get those guys down!" Yeah, we got in trouble. TT- Well, he was a hard-charger. He was going in no matter what, right? JC- And Chief Boisclair was great, just a great guy. Really good chief. TT- I appreciate you taking the time. I mean you trained us all up and then were gone three years later, but I remember everything from our academy, still do, which shows you how good you must be because I'm not a very bright guy. JC- (laughs) It was fun. The academies were always fun. A lot of work, but working with Bobby (Thurber), it was great. TT- You had a great career. Thank you for sitting down with me. JC- Good luck, T . . 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. Charles "Chickie" Carroll was on the Pawtucket Fire Department for 36 years. Before that, he was a mechanic that loved wrenching on cars. Then he followed his father into the fire service. He spent the majority of his career downtown on Engine 2 and became a revered figure both on the job and in the community. Everyone knew him, and if you were lucky enough to ride around with him on Engine 2, you could hear people calling out, "Hey, Chickie!" as he waved and drove by. His enthusiasm for the job never faded, so he became a mentor and a teacher for all the new guys. One of the last old-schoolers who actually breathed through wet sponges instead of airpacks, all the fire over all the years finally cooked his lungs, so he retired with respiratory issues in 2011. This interview was conducted at Station 4 six years later. It lasted three hours and this is barely half of it. This is what he said ...
CC- This picture right here, John Seback's garage caught on fire. TT- No shit. CC- Um, on Meadow Street. TT- There's been so many fires on Meadow Street you can't keep track of them all. CC- Yeah, yeah. This picture, this was on Utton Avenue. It was Christmas Eve. I looked for a kid, I went back into that room, the house was fully involved and I looked for a Russian kid and I couldn't find him. He was in the closet under a pile of clothes and it killed me that I couldn't find him. Finally Peter O'Neill and I ran back in there and I actually took off my mask and kept looking. They said he was in there and I couldn't find him until finally Pete O'Neill found him. TT- Wow. Is this a picture of the General? (Dave Langevin.) CC- Yeah, that's the General. You should talk to the General. Me and him together, he was on Ladder 1 and I was on Engine 2 and together that's me and him on the roof. The wires let go and we almost got zapped right off the roof. TT- (laughs) CC- Yup. Here's another picture of it. We were pretty close. TT- Jesus. CC- This is the Leroy Theater. (The Leroy was opened in 1923. Because of its lavish interior and multi-purpose stage, the Leroy was one of the premiere theaters in New England. Its silent movies, vaudeville acts, theatrical and musical performances were among the best in the nation. Built at the height of Pawtucket's prosperity, the Leroy stayed open until the 1960s, when the city's economy began to freefall. It was destroyed in 1997.) TT- Oh yeah. What year was that? CC- Oh God. Uh, I can't really remember. Here's me and Willy. TT- Will Maher. CC- Oh yeah, and this is me and Ronnie Doire. TT- Wow, that's from the ... what year did you get on? CC- 1981, August 1981. TT- Two years after Lemay? CC- Uh, yeah, yes. In fact, I took Lemay's spot when he went over to the rescue because we only had one rescue back then. That was downtown. TT- Right on. CC- So my first fire and death was five days after I got sworn in. Back then, when you got sworn in you didn't have a party, they gave you gloves, a helmet, coat and you got on the truck, you know, so ... TT- No fire academy, you just got right on. CC- Just went right on. So you learned from the old guys. I learned from Ray Gilbert and the guys like him. Back then, Ray Gilbert gave me a piece of sponge and he said, "You wet this and keep it in your mouth, kid. Keep it in your coat," he said. "That's how you breathe." So I said, "Ok." That's how I learned how not to eat smoke. So my first fire was a fatal on West Avenue. I was on the job about five days and the house was fully involved and we got into the first floor. I was with Tommy Heaney, and we got in the first floor and found a body on the floor, melted into the floor. And his bones, you could see his intestines and everything. A bottle of Jack Daniels was next to him. So we had to cut the rug and put him into a body bag, and break his arms so we could get him through the door to the kitchen and get him out. TT- Jesus. CC- That fire, we were there all day, that was my first fatal fire and I was on the job a whole five days. TT- What truck were you on? CC- Engine 2. I was in training. Back then they would put you on Engine 2 for two weeks and then you would go to the ladder. I went to Lt. Ryan on Ladder 1. Back then it was a tiller truck. You had to learn how to drive the tiller truck. I was fortunate enough to learn from him and was able to drive it pretty well. It was hard at first because everything's opposing. TT- Now that you mention Gilbert, this was a crew, like they were at the end of their careers and you were just getting on. CC- Yeah, pretty much, yeah, yeah. TT- '81. So you got on, you're on Engine 2, Ladder 1, and you stayed downtown the whole time other than the rescue. CC- Yeah. I used to--what happened was that I ended up getting my EMT. I was one of the first ones, and everybody had to have their EMT to get on the rescue, you know, to run the rescue. And Dick Lemay, we both had our EMTs and we were downtown. I would get transferred for three cycles to the Rescue, so I was with Dick quite a bit. I would go three cycles to the rescue and then come back, one cycle on Engine 2, and then go back to the rescue for three. I was with all them old schoolers--Ray Mathews, Timmy Williams, Meerbott, so that was my first fatal fire. TT- So you were a four man company back then? CC- Back then, yeah. TT- Wow. Alright, so you were with Lemay, Lemay in the early 80's, was it like the same Lemay that he was in 2010? CC- Yeah, pretty much. They started the cardiac program and Dick was into it. Dick was right into it and I wanted to do my three years with my EMT and get off the rescue, because they couldn't get rescue privates at night. So I would work sometimes my cycle plus a cycle. You know what I mean? If you couldn't get someone to go on rescue--you needed two EMTs. I got stuck there for a little while. I was on the rescue quite a bit. TT- What do you remember about your early rescue days? This is the early 80's, so this is the time of the cocaine cowboys ... CC- Yeah, we had cocaine, heroin, um, one year I remember, the first time I saw it (an OD), it was at 21 Dexter Court. The guy looked like he had pissed himself. TT- What? CC- Back then, they stuffed ice in your crotch if you OD'd. They took a bag of ice and stuffed it in his crotch and that's how we knew it was heroin. Back then, the heroin was 99% pure, so they called it "China White." And me and Dick, you know, you would know automatically when you got there and looked at the guy and know it was a heroin overdose. Narcan was very scarce back then. TT- Did you guys carry it? CC- You know, I think the hospital carried it. We didn't push drugs back then. As the Cardiacs became more seasoned, they started putting drugs on the trucks. TT- Okay. CC- But one night me and Dick, we, uh, he probably told you this, but we had a stabbing on Mineral Spring Avenue and the girl, the knife was right in her heart. We taped it up, got her into the truck, got her vitals and got her over to Memorial. Once we got her there the doctors came in and split her chest open and massaged her heart. But the knife had gone right into her heart. She was dead, but we tried, the doctors tried, but I never seen nothing like that, and you know, that was the coolest thing I'd ever seen, you know? TT- Now, before you got to the Fire Department, what were you doing? CC- Doing cars. TT- So you were fixing cars. CC- I worked for my family in the gas station. TT- Right on. How old were you when you got on? CC- Twenty-three years old. TT- Did you come on with a group? CC- There was four guys. Me, Artie Mintsmenn, Dave Marito, and Felix Ramos. We all came on together. Yeah. We came on the same day. TT- So you're twenty-three, you're on the rescue as a transfer guy, you're on Engine 2. Now other than Lemay, who were some of the other names you worked with on the rescue? CC- Uh, Rocky. Paul Laroque, Rocky. I can tell you a story about him. One day we were sent to Providence for a stabbing at Chad Brown. And we get there and the guy's stabbed in the chest. Now Rocky had diabetes really bad. He always carried a can of soda and candy in his pocket, you know? So I'm in Chad Brown, I'm a kid, I didn't even know where Chad Brown was. TT- That's the housing project, right? CC- Yeah, the housing project and I'm like, you know, okay we're going to Roger Williams (Hospital.) I knew where Roger Williams was, so we take off. He says, "Rescue 1's on the way to Roger Williams with a stabbing victim." All of a sudden the guy that got stabbed yells out, "Hey buddy, you better pull over, man, your man is on the floor." Well, Rocky was having a diabetic seizure. TT- So Rocky's in the back and the guy who got stabbed told you Rocky was seizing? CC- Yup. Told me to pull over. "Your guy is on the floor." TT- (Laughs) CC- So I cracked a can of Coke and tried to give it to him, but he was flapping around pretty good. So I called Fire Alarm and said, "Listen, the guy in charge, Paul Larocque, is having a seizure. Can you let them know that there are now two patients?" (Laughs) TT- Jesus. CC- So I was on the job maybe two, three months, and Rocky was a very high strung guy. So we got to Roger Williams and they took him out, took out the guy that got stabbed, and I didn't know what to do. Like I'm brand new and I don't know what to do here. So I called Chief Lundegren, back then it was Ralph Lundgren, and I says, "Chief, Charlie Carroll." I says, "Rocky's in the hospital having a diabetic seizure what do I do?" He says, "Get back here with the truck and we'll get someone to ride with you." Because I didn't have enough time to be in charge yet. Another time, I was on rescue, one night we get a call, me and Dick Lemay, we get a call for a car accident. A car into a pole on Mineral Spring Avenue. In front of Slater School. Anyway, my friends Roger and Ronnie Alex, they used to run Alex Welding on Pleasant Street. TT- A welding shop? CC- Yeah. And we get there and the car is wrapped around a pole, and Ronnie is up against a fence and he says, "Chickie, Roger is in the car, Roger is in the car." And he was cocked, you know? I go to get Roger and I can't open the door but the windshield is kind of pulled away. I was able to pull the windshield away. Now Roger's a pretty big dude, he was a heavy, big kid. Dick went to Ronnie and I went to Roger. So I climbed in through the windshield and started doing CPR. When Engine 2 got there they were able to get the door open with the Jaws. I kept doing CPR and he was hurting. TT- And this is your buddy. CC- This is my friend, my close friend, and I found out later he survived. Back then, if you were out on the rescue on a Friday night--this was a sailor town. Pawtucket was a sailor town because Quonset Point was still open. So there were bars everywhere and fights everywhere, but I found out later that night that Roger was alive, nice, they saved Roger. TT- That's incredible. CC- They saved him. And you know, his father couldn't believe it. He said, "Chickie, you saved my son, you saved my son." And it was just what I was trained to do. Another time with Gene Casavant, two guys were on one motorcycle flying down Pawtucket Avenue, because they were getting chased by the cops. Well, in the old days, they used to have these "guide wires" on a pole right in front of the Job Lot. They crashed the bike. The guy driving flew through the air and hit the guide wire, cutting off both his legs from the knees down. The guy on the back hit the guard rail and got cut in half and when I got to him, he still had a full face. I will never forget his face. His eyes were wide open like wide open with fear, you know? And his legs were probably, you could see his intestines stretched to his legs which were over by the wall. His torso was on the ground and his head was up and I was like, I opened up his visor, I knew there was no saving him, but to check for a pulse. Nothing. So we-- TT- Jesus. CC- A guy hopped in the rescue. Turns out a Chaplain was driving by. He jumped in and gave the guy last rites. All three guys that showed up on Engine 1 that night--Jack Doyle was one of them--all three retired the next day after this accident. TT- No kidding. CC- I put the guy's two legs into pillow cases, put sterile water on them, and we got him over to Memorial while he's screaming, "My legs! My legs!" TT- That's a crazy story. Now when you were dealing with all of this stuff, 'cause there is a lot of stuff going on, you weren't married yet, right? CC- No, no, drank a lot. TT- Right on. CC- Yeah, I did. I did. On my days off I drank a lot, that's why I have been sober for twenty years. TT- It's a lot to absorb just sweeping up people all day all night. CC- All day and all night. You could do ten runs during the day and never see the station. Or you leave the barn at 5:30 at night and come back at 7:00 the next morning to get relieved. It would be that way, you know. TT- Now, Central Falls is always a key part of the Pawtucket Fire Department. CC- Big time. TT- Because we go on just about everything they have. Battalion Chief McLaughlin used to say they had some of the best firemen in the state. "Providence and Boston have a hundred guys showing up and C.F. has six." Anyway, they're so understaffed, we go on anything big. CC- Yes. TT- What else did you see over there? CC- Central Falls was, back then in the 80's, Central Falls had six guys on a shift. TT- That's absolutely crazy. CC- And they have four-decker houses, and we became very friendly with the guys from Central Falls. I am still friendly with a lot of them, but I can tell you a good story. We went to Summer Street and it was three-decker with a flat roof. Going good. We went up to the third floor and I hear a guy yell to me, "Hey, S and S (the name of Chickie's garage), you got a Harley?" And I said, "Yeah, I do." And he says, "Me too. Jimmy Gallagher here." And I says, "Hey, Jimmy, I'm Chickie Carroll. I heard about you." And he says, "I heard about you, too." You know, like in the middle of a fire we're doing this, right? So Central Falls, we worked very close with Central Falls back then. Very, very close with those guys. TT- Right? CC- 'Cause they didn't have no help, they had no help. TT- Yeah, they're crazy over there. CC- Crazy. Jimmy and Ricky McDermott and them guys they were good, they were damn good firefighters, damn good, damn good. TT- Now when you look back at some of the other CF fires, because Lemay has a stack of freaking newspapers, so as I was going through them back then there was real reporting. So there are names of guys at fires, descriptions of the firemen and what they were doing. It's almost like a diary entry, but yeah, you were mentioned in a lot of Central Falls stories. CC- Yeah, yeah. I fought a lot of fires with them guys. There was one that myself and Tommy Heaney and Chief Couto, who had just made Chief back then, he was chief and his father had been chief of C.F. for years. I was on Engine 2 and they sent us to Central Falls. I don't recall the street, if it was Illinois or which one, I don't remember, but back then Bobby Tanny was a Central Falls firefighter and he was a little crazy from Vietnam, you know, he was a little, he was nutty. So Chief Couto says, "Would you guys mind going up to the third floor and making sure everybody's out, just check and see what we got?" Back then, we didn't all have radios. Tommy had a radio but we had no Scotts, of course no Scotts, so we go up there with our boots, our three-quarter boots, you know, helmet and gloves and coat only. The second-floor is lit up pretty good, and we got passed the second-floor landing, and we used to call Tommy "Skull" because he was bald, you know what I mean, he was a helluva firefighter. This guy had balls as big as his fucking head, you know, like he was good, and if you learned from him you learned good. So we felt the door and everything and kicked the door and it was fully involved. We didn't have a line with us because there wasn't lines available, but Chief Couto wanted us to make sure that everyone was out and to see what we had, so we could report back to him, and the next thing you know the ceiling comes right down with the bricks, it comes right down. Bobby Tanny, not knowing that we were in the building, hit the chimney with a 2 1/2 inch line and he parlayed the chimney. It fell through the ceiling and it was falling onto us, so I just grabbed Skull by the coat and threw him down the stairs, I threw him down the stairs, and I said, "Skull, we gotta get the fuck out of here," you know? (laughter). So I threw him down the stairs and when we got outside he was so mad, the man was so mad he says to Randy Couto, "Chief, no disrespect, but who the fuck hit us with a 2 1/2?" He says, "We were on the third-floor and someone put the bricks right through the fucking ceiling. I'm gonna kill him. I'm gonna kill this guy. Who the hell did it?" Turned out it was Bobby Tanny, his buddy. (Laughs) So we had to hold Tommy back for a while to keep him away from Bobby Tanny, you know? But that was a real good fire. That thing was roaring. TT- Right? CC- How we didn't die a few times over ... TT- What was the closest you came to like really, like you've described two fires so far where the fire is coming down on your head with the ceiling but-- CC- You know, I've never ever thought of it, I never thought of it never. My mentality, you know because you've worked with me, was grab the line and go in and do what you gotta do. I was the first one in the door, not to blow my own horn, but I was, I know I was. I got to work with my father, I got to work a couple of cycles with my father before he retired and we had a fire. He was worried about me and I was worried about him, you know, and I said, "Dad, dad, I got it. I got it. I'm ok." And once he knew that I was all set, he left in '82 and he retired. TT- Now the highway too, right? On Engine 2 for thirty years there had to be a lot of chaos. CC- Yes. A lot of chaos. I'll start off with a funny story. This is a classic. Back when Chief Meerbott was first made (He went from lieutenant of Engine 2 to Battalion Chief of C-Group), I was in charge of Engine 2. I had RJ Massee and I can't think of the third guy who was with us. But anyway, we get a call for a car on its roof and its up in the grass just before the Smithfield Avenue exit. The back window is blown out, so when we get there I tell RJ and whoever the third guy was, "Grab a line, just grab a line in case it catches fire. I'm gonna check inside the car." So I climbed in the car and there's this woman, you know a nice looking black woman well dressed and put together. She says to me, "Honey, I don't know what happened, but a car--now I'm on my roof!" She was hanging upside down. She had her seatbelt on but the seatbelt was crushing her boobs, like crushing her boobs, you know, so she says, "Can you cut me out of this seatbelt?" I said, "I can't, ma'am, we're trying to get some pillows and stuff to hold you up so that you won't fall hard, you know." So she says, "Please, please push on my boobs, please, please, please." TT- (laughs) CC- Now I'm laying on my back, my hands on this woman's tits holding her upright. All of a sudden, Meerbott sticks his head in the back window and says (in Meerboot's classic southern drawl), "Chickie, what're you doing?" TT- (Laughs) CC- And I says, "Chief, I'm waiting for pillows so we can cut the belt and let her down." And she says, "It's alright, Chief, he's doing a damn good job." (Both laughing) CC- That was one of the best--she wasn't hurt, she was okay, her car was wrecked but she was okay. And when she got out, we got her out, she thanked me. I said, "Ma'am, I'm terribly sorry." And she says, "No, don't you be sorry, you really took the pain away." TT- the funny stories are funny, but the bad ones never leave, right? CC- Well, I'm sure Bobby might have told you about this one, but this was a hard one. (pauses) We had a kid on Coleman Street, a baby like a year old. Old enough to crawl out of his crib. Well, the baby stood up and fell out of his crib, and he landed on the radiator. The mother and father were in the kitchen all doped up. I'll never forget his face. I grabbed the kid and I'm saying to myself, "He's warm, he's warm." You could see blue around his lips but I'm saying, "He's warm." So I started CPR on him and we got the kid into the rescue and I wouldn't let the kid go, I kept doing CPR, and I put a mask on him and kept working him and when we got to the hospital the doc says to me, "Give me the child. Chickie, give me the child." I said, "Doc, he was warm when I got to him, I was doing CPR all the way here, you know, maybe there's--" He says, "No, just look at him. Rigor mortis has already started to set in." His mother never checked him, never checked him. That was one of my worst for a child, you know? TT- Now let's backtrack a little bit, because the fourth of July stuff--people who don't live here don't know the history of July 4th, and it went on for seventy years. CC- Yup. TT- Just absolute mayhem. BC Kraweic was telling stories of guys getting the old wallpaper rolls, cutting them up, soaking them in kerosene, tossing them over power lines, and lighting them up. CC- Yup. I can tell you an even better one. The Alex's, my buddy that I pulled out of the car and saved his life, his father, the one who kept thanking me for saving his son's life, he was a little crazy. He used to cut up sticks of dynamite. TT- Oh God. CC- He would cut them up, and they would get an old car and push it down the street and light it up. TT- (Laughing) CC - And M-80s. The whole bit. People would pour gasoline on telephone poles and light them up. TT- (laughing) CC- So the power would go out, you know, and they (the Alexes) had the big yellow house right on the corner, they had a swimming pool and everything. Pleasant Street was crazy. Pleasant Street, Magill Street, Essex Street, Slater Street, all around there. That's where the bonfires were back when I was a kid. The neighborhood would come down to the West Avenue Fire Station (Station 1), the neighborhood would come and bring chowder and clam cakes and food, you know, and one year they had a band-- TT- What? (laughing) CC- God's honest truth, for the guys, you know for the guys. The neighborhood did that for the firemen, you know? It was pretty cool. We would go to a bonfire at like say, two or three in the morning, and I remember I was with John McConaghy and Dave Reed one night and I don't know, we went to the same bonfire probably four or five times. It was like beer time, you know what I mean? And John says to the kids, to all of the people that were out front watching it and shit and he says, "Hey, we're kind of beat up, do you think you could call it a night?" And the people, well, we never went back, we never went back. You know, like they said, "Thanks, guys, we had a great time, can we offer you something to eat? Take some of this back to the station." They wanted to give us food and shit, you know, everything. TT- They also put extra guys on the trucks, right? And extra trucks? CC- Yes, extra trucks and five guys on a truck. Plus during the day they would have an extra guy on every truck. So it worked out that the guys that worked the night before (July 3) would get a little bit of down time, you know? With that extra guy they might say, "Hey, go get a couple hours sleep, take a shower, we'll run without you, we've got enough guys, you know?" Nothing would happen during the day anyway, it wasn't bad, but I can remember doing a good 200 runs on a fourth of July--third and fourth of July, both nights, hundreds of runs. TT- Jesus Christ CC- Yeah, yeah. TT- That's a l-o-n-g night. CC- Yup, yup. TT- What about the big fires? Like when you came on, Star Gas was probably a year after you got on? CC- I was on the job and we were all at the Country Club playing golf, having a golf tournament for the firefighters and everybody was hammered. Everybody. TT- (laughing) CC- So a call came over the loudspeaker for all off-duty firemen to respond. And some of the guys started to show up on-scene and Chief Doire just said, "Go back to where you were." (Both share long laughter). You know, like, I never even got off the golf course, you know what I mean? I knew I wasn't going to work. Even worse, it was a General Alarm fire. Al Scanlon was the one--there's a picture of him somewhere making sure the gas tanks were shut off. That's when Engine 4 burned, Star Gas. The America LaFrance burned up. Yeah, That was a good one. TT- Were you on the job when Rabbit got burned in that flashover? CC- No, I came on right after that. TT- Okay, so that was like '79 or '80? CC- Yeah. That part, what happened was he was going up the back stairs trying to get to a guy trapped. Our guys were in the front with a ladder, a ground ladder, and they smashed the windows just as Kevin opened the door and it backdrafted and just melted him. TT- Unbelievable. CC- Melted him. Completely melted him. TT- I saw his gear. They showed it to us in our fire academy. It's incredible he lived. Now when you look back at your career, I mean the suicides are always tough. But the ones that stick out to me are the hangings, just because the people are intact, it's not like a gunshot, right? CC- I got a good one for you. Again, I was on overtime on Engine 3 and I was with Lieutenant Lourenco. It was shift change, so there were only two of us. Engine 3 used to go to the Heights (housing project) for dumpster fires and lockouts and whatnot. So we got a call for a hanging. Me and Al pull up and Al gives me the keys and he says, "Kid, I'm not going in there. You go in there." So Dave Overt, he was a cop and a good friend of mine, we used to ride dirt bikes together. He says, "You coming in with me, Chick?" And I said, "Yeah, I'll go up with you." I unlock the door and we walk into the guy's apartment and he's got a note. He didn't have much, but the apartment was clean and he left his license, a suicide note, what money he had, his jewelry, he didn't have a lot but he had good clothes on. So I said, "Where the hell is he? Let's go upstairs." When we go upstairs there he is hanging by the pipe over the bathtub in the ceiling and his eyes were popped out and he had broke his neck. So Dave Overt has his license in his hands, the guy's license, and he spins the guy around and says, "Hey, Chick, you think that looks like him?" I was still kind of brand new. He holds the license up next to this poor bastard with the bulging eyes and broken neck and who could tell? After I realized he was kidding, I said, "You're a sick bastard, you know?" TT- (Laughing) CC- And I knew what I was in for after that. TT- But that was part of the humor. CC- It was part of it, yeah, it made it easier. TT- Now talk about some of the giant mill fires. Greenhalgh Mill comes to mind. CC- I was actually packing up to go to New Hampshire when that fire came in. TT- And you were also, for people who don't know, you also rode motorcycles a lot, you were a biker. CC- I was a biker, yeah. I rode with the Hell's Angels sometimes. TT- So you were hanging with the Angels and some other groups but you weren't ever really affiliated. CC- Because I was a firefighter it wasn't, not that I couldn't have joined, but it wasn't proper, it wasn't proper, but I could ride with them guys any time I wanted, you know, if they were going on a trip or a run I would go for a run with them, you know? And that part was cool. But I never really wanted to be wearing a patch, you know what I mean, it wasn't my thing, that wasn't my thing. I was a firefighter and my buddy--he got out of the Angels because he got Parkinson's Disease--he said, "Chickie, these are your colors right here."And that's, you know, our firefighters, our blue shirts, those are our colors, you know? TT- That's your patch. CC- Yup, yup. TT- So get back to Greenhalgh Mills CC- So, It's a General Alarm. It's all over the TV. "All firefighters are to report downtown to Roosevelt Avenue" (Station 2.) The fire was at three o'clock. I got here at four. I laid on a two-and-a-half inch line on Mendon, right over here, for probably four hours. Just laid on it. TT- Jesus. CC- And the heat was coming up through the bricks, so it was keeping me warm, but it wasn't doing anything. The water was blowing in the wind. But they said, "Keep pouring it on, you're getting the houses, maybe we can save the houses." Well, the houses started to go. And they wouldn't let us go into the houses to put them out. My wife's cousin lost her house. There were four houses over here that burnt. I can remember, this was also the night Lieutenant Joe Bierly had his heart attack. He told me he wasn't feeling good. I was going to grab some equipment and more line. So I says to him, "Go sit in Engine 6. The heat's on. Warm up. Dry up and I'll come get you." They had this whole station (Station 4) full of food, cots, everything we needed. So they would send us to the 4's every couple of hours to get some food and water. This room was completely full of guys. The chairs, everything was a mess, soot filled. Well, I forgot about Dave Bierly. He had a heart attack that night. I mean I had all these houses burning and I forgot about him but he did have a heart attack that night. I can remember at like four o'clock in the morning, me, Steve Small, Dave Reed, Bobby Thurber--Meerbott finally let us go into the last house that was burning. And it had already burned through the roof. So we went in and hit the hotspots. Me and Smally went up this little little stairway. It was like this big (2 feet wide.) We had a line with us. I can remember to this day, the toilet was in the corner of the room. And the pipes had popped and the water's coming out of the pipes-- TT- Like a fountain. CC- Yeah. So I'm looking around. The roof was gone and it was a bright, clear night, clear as hell, and the smoke's everywhere. I'm saying, "Wow." Helicopters were here from the ATF, news channels from Boston, Providence. We're looking around and I take a seat on the fucking toilet, light up a cigarette, and I'm just sitting there. I'm beat up. We were tired, man. So I'm having a cigarette, looking around going, wow. Bobby Howe (EMA director and former firefighter) got 90 trucks here that day. There was 90 crews willing to help us, you know? When it started, I got here, I drove my truck downtown, I had my trailer on the back with my bike, because we were supposed to go to New Hampshire that day. I said to my wife, "I gotta go." She said, "Be careful. Call me when you can." That's how it went. She was good. Laurie was very ... TT- She understood. CC- She knew, yeah, she knew. TT- Now talk about, as far as the fire tips, the tips that got passed on to you, reading the smoke, what this color means, it's kind of scientific, right? CC- Well, the first thing was when they came out with the hoods. The old guys wouldn't wear them. And I was one of them. I didn't like it either because I was always taught that if your earlobes felt hot, get out. Cause it's hot. TT- And through the hood you couldn't feel that. CC- No. The Nomex Hoods make you feel over confident. If you felt your earlobes were melting, you knew you were in a hot situation. It was time to go. It was time to go. And smoke, the gray smoke, if you looked in a window and saw it, that was a potential for a backdraft. You could tell. Yellow smoke was a chemical. White smoke was like if you were getting water on it, extinguishing it, it was making steam. You were knocking it down. Like they'd yell up to you, "You're getting it, you're getting it, keep going. The smoke is changing colors." We had Manoline's warehouse and it was an old train depot, where they used to keep all the stuff for the trains. And it was a huge place. Made from big, big timber. It was built to last forever. And I'll tell ya, I've never seen black smoke like that ever. They had tires, they had all kinds of chemicals--anything automotive they had in there. TT- And the hole place is burning. CC- Just roaring. I mean, when we pulled up with Engine 6, the guy had been welding in the back, and he caught the back of the building on fire. Within, and Ronnie Doire will tell ya, within minutes there was flame fucking everywhere. We got in the side door and you couldn't see a foot in front of you. It was just roaring. TT- That is awesome (laughs) CC- It was, we got off on it, you know? I got off on it. Loved it. You really did. At least I did. I loved it. TT- There was no place you'd rather be. CC- Guys used to say to me, "Chickie, with all of your seniority, why are you still on Engine 2?" Because I loved it. I never came down that pole pissed off. I never did. You know? I got on that truck and--especially, I knew Bobby Thurber, and towards the end he wasn't feeling too good because of his feet and all the diabetes, but he had that same damn smile on his face, you know? (laughs). "Let's go, kid!" "Alright, Bob, let's go! Let's go do it." I can remember one night on Dagget Avenue, we were all here (at Station 4) because we had a union meeting that night. And I knew exactly where the street was and I knew the house. It was a friend of mine, Porky Burns' house. We got a call for a Code Red, house fire. So Bobby says, "Chickie, you got that?" I said, "I know exactly where we're going. Exactly. To the T." We get there and it's blowing out the kitchen windows, blowing good. We kick the door. Bobby's almost on top of me, like pushing me in trying to get in himself. The floor, Burns was rebuilding the house, so there was some type of chemicals on the floor. Somehow they had gotten into my nighthitch as we crawled, and my knees got burnt. My kneecaps were burning and Bobby's pushing me in there and he's on top of me trying to take the line and I'm like, "Bob, get off of me!" (laughing) "Bobby!" Dave Farris come walking through the front door--it was a kitchen fire--Dave Farris comes walking through the front door like nothing ever happened, you know, and I'm going, "Bobby! My knees are burning, fer Christ's sakes, get off of me!" (laughing and laughing). I can tell you another one about Central Falls. It was Railroad Street. Cubby was on Ladder 2 in charge. I said, "Cub, can you get me a line?" He said, "Yeah, I'll get you a line don't worry about it." We got the line. Central Falls guys were up there. And me and Willy (Will Maher) are up there. We grab the line and we start hitting the rooms, we're hitting rooms, and he'll probably kill me for telling you this, but he was--they had a set of bunk beds. This room was pretty well involved. We knocked it (the fire) down and the C.F. guys are yelling, "Hey, Pawtucket, you guys okay over there?" "Yeah, we're good. you guys okay?" "Yeah, we're good." That's how we used to do it, yelling back and forth. So Willy got up on the top bunk bed to pull a ceiling down. Next thing I know I hear this huge crash. He went right through the bed-slats and landed on the first bed. And I went, "Hey, what the hell are you doing? Taking a nap?" You know? and he's looking at me. He goes, "I think I'm a little too heavy for the fucking bunk beds." (laughing). And we laughed and laughed, still fighting the fire. Thank God he didn't get hurt. I said, "Will, you alright?" "Yeah, I'm fine," he says, "But Jesus Christ, Chick..." It scared the shit out of him at first because he wasn't expecting it, you know? TT- Talk about the adjustment to retirement CC-It took me three months to get used to being at home with my wife. Swear to God. And Laurie's a sweet heart, you know her. TT- She is. CC- But it took me three months to get acclimated and out of the mold. TT- Lemay said the same thing. He said, "I didn't know how much I needed to retire until I retired." (Laughs) CC- Yeah. Yeah. You start to sleep, eat normal. I still eat kind of fast. I loved this job. My father said to me when I was about seventeen. I mean I was gonna quit school and fix cars. That was my thing. My uncle had a shop. My cousin quit school and he was driving a brand new TR-6, you know? So my old man says, "Nope. You're going on the fire department." And thank God I did because they sold the place and it's not there no more and I had the best thirty years of my life, you know? On this job. On this job. And I loved every minute of it. TT- Right? They had to pry you out of here. CC- When the doctor told me that I had a lung issue, it broke my heart. Broke my heart. Really. TT- You fought it hard though, you kept trying to get back full-duty ... CC- I tried, I tried. But I just couldn't do it no more. Couldn't do it. My body gave up. TT- You took a helluva beating. CC- I took an ass-pasting. Yeah. I did. (laughs) I loved it. Loved it. That picture of me with that black eye, that was after a whole ceiling fell on my head. And I still stayed in there, you know? Meadow Street, the floor on the third-floor melted. It was gone. And I can remember Will coming up the back stairway yelling. The fire was all in the front. Harry Callahan had to go back and get a Scott. RJ was the training officer at the time and he said, "I could see you hitting it through the windows. You were getting it all alone." I was, until Will came up through the back. And then that picture of me sitting on the windowsill, the ladder was opening up the eaves and I was wetting it all down as they did it ... you know, I just...I loved it. I loved it. Every minute of it. I really did. I met you, too. TT- It's true though. If you can't have fun at a fire, you really shouldn't be here. CC- Exactly. You gotta be careful, you gotta use your head, I tried to tell Matty McMahon, I said to Matty, because he used to ride with us when he was a kid, I said, "Matty, you hook up with a good boss, like John Wallace, if you can hook up with a guy like him you'll be good." Forget about Tiverton, you're in Pawtucket now. You do it Pawtucket's way. You know what I mean? Just because you're a firefighter somewhere else for five or six years, you're in the city now. TT- Right? It doesn't mean nothing. CC- No. No. TT- Joe Cordeiro one time told me, he was like, "I don't care if you were a Battalion Chief on the FDNY, if you're gonna come to Pawtucket, you're gonna do it our way." CC- Exactly. I was told that too. My father, the day I got sworn in, my old man said to me, "Keep these open (motions to his eyes), keep these open (motions to his ears), and keep this closed (motions to his mouth). That's exactly what he told me. He said, "You pay attention, you soak up as much as you can." TT- When you knew it was time to go, it seems the guys just walk away. They never come back. It's like they just disappear back into the mist, and those left behind just carry on. CC- It is kind of like that. I haven't been downtown in ...a long time. I didn't know what to do at first. I was like, "Should I go down there and have a coffee with the guys?" But I can remember sitting at the kitchen table and having an old guy come in that you really respected, say Ray Gilbert for instance, he'd come down to see Barbara and poke his head in the kitchen and say, "Hey guys, what's up?" "Hey, Ray, how you doing? You want a coffee or something?" "Naw, I'm gonna go. Thanks. It was good to see you." "Hey, Ray, take care. If you need anything you just give us a holler." And that's the way it was. For me, like I fix a lot of guys cars nowadays, and I'll come to the station to bring the car back, and I'll say, "Hey guys." And off I go. Why it's like that, I don't know. TT- It's weird. It's almost like it just seals over, right? And once you walk out, it's like the nucleus kind of keeps going. I remember Chief Cute, after he retired, he came in for a coffee, and he was like, "I don't even feel like I should be here right now." CC- Yeah. It's like you're bothering the guys. Like if they're cooking or whatever and someone walks in and they have to stop what they're doing and bullshit with you ... You can get a run at any second and be gone for five minutes or half the day. I don't want to interrupt that. I know I'm still part of this job, but in my way. In my head. I'm still part of this job. I'd do anything for anyone of you. I would. But to come and hang and watch a movie or whatever ... naw, that's just not the way it is. TT- It's one of the things that's so surprising but it's true. You're out of the rotation. CC- Exactly. I play golf with Tang (Chief Tanguay) every Monday. I take care of his cars, his father's car, and the guys support me, Tommy, big time. I can't thank the guys enough. And Topper let's me use his shop, and I fix his stuff. But I got a shop. And the guys support me. And I take care of the guys, money wise, because they got families and shit. For me, it keeps me healthy, keeps me busy. Nelson quit, but I called him when he quit and I said, "Nelson, I want to thank you for giving me a life after the fire department." Because he's the one who got me into Topper's garage. He says, "Chickie, you have no idea how much you've helped me." And I said, "Really, Nelson, I mean it." TT- You gotta stay busy, right? CC- I walk my dog every morning, have a coffee, and then I go to the shop. I do two or three cars a day, and if Topper's got something for me to do I fix it, and it works. I can't thank Topper enough. I could tell you about fires all night but I don't want you to have to type all day long. (Laughs). TT- These are the stories people need to hear. CC- Smithfield Avenue, the theater, there are so many. And car accidents and everything. I don't know if Bobby told you this one but it really bothered us for a while. We got a call on Walcott Street. We got a call for car into a pole. There's four victims. So we get there. A Mexican guy in the front seat, two Mexican guys in the backseat, but there was supposed to be a girl too. Well come to find out she got thrown from the car, hit a van in the driveway and died. She was in the driveway. The other three were dead too. The two in the back were just mangled. So, we cut the roof off and me and Bobby climbed into the backseat to check the guys. Now we're sitting there in the backseat. I got this guy's head in my lap. The back of his head was gone. Gone. And Bobby's guy, same thing. His neck was broken. We had to sit there for an hour and a half waiting for the Medical Examiner. We could not move. TT- What? CC- The police froze the scene because of all the deaths. It just so happened that the way they were positioned, we actually had to crawl over the trunk to get into the backseat and check for pulses. Once we got in there, we had to maneuver the mashed bodies to do that, and we became part of the scene. We had them on our laps, we could not move. The M.E. has to come and pronounce them dead, pictures gotta to be taken. So we yelled for someone to get our cigarettes from the truck. So we're smoking cigarettes while we waited. When we got back we took a hose and washed their brains from our night hitches and went to bed. TT- Another day at the office. CC- You know how I met Laurie? TT- No. CC- When the wall collapsed at Stop and Shop, that's how I met Laurie. I dug her boyfriend out of the rubble. Three guys died that day. TT- Lemay told me that story. How awful. CC- It was. One guy was decapitated, the another was cut in half, the third was smushed. TT- Jesus, Chickie, you've had one of the best careers anyone's ever had. CC- I can say yes. I did. I really did. And I loved every second of it. TT- It's been an honor. It really has. |
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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