Tom Heaney- October 13, 2019
It is deceiving to interview men in their seventies and eighties, decades removed from their time on the line. Tom Heaney looks like he could be your grandfather, but don’t be fooled. They called him “Skull” because he had a bald head twenty years before they were chic. Like Keenan, Gildea, Masse, Thurber, and others, this generation became the link between the World War II guys and the current department. He is soft-spoken, intense, and, like most of these guys, once they start telling stories, they take great pride in what they did, which was basically survive the 1960s, 70s, 80s, when structure fires were at times a daily occurrence. Recently, he was in town, so I caught up with him at Station 2. This is what he said … TT- It’s kind of amazing that your name keeps coming up in these interviews. Especially with Chickee. He said you had balls as big as your head. TH- Yeah, Chickee is a helluva guy. We were good friends but he was on another shift. Good firefighter, good guy. TT- What year did you get on? TH- April of 1967. TT- How old were you? TH- Twenty-three. TT- Were you in the service? TH- I was in the Navy. TT- How many years? TH- I spent two years active duty, and four more in the reserves. TT- So you went all over the world, right? TH- I was down in Newport, and we went to Cuba for the Cuban crisis. Didn’t go to Vietnam. TT- So you went from the Navy into the fire department. Did you work in the mills at all? TH- When I got out of the Navy, I was working for Fram Corporation when they were still in Pawtucket. Then they moved to a plant in East Providence on Pawtucket Avenue. From there I went to Groton Connecticut to work at Electric Boat. Worked there for a year, but back then I-95 didn’t go all the way. You were on the road for two and a half hours going down, and the same coming home. You had to get off 95, pick up RT 2, and keep on going. From there I worked for Corning Glass. In fact, Paul Keenan worked at Corning Glass. We didn’t know each other at the time, and he had put in an application for the fire department at the same time I did. When I got the call for here, I put in my notice at the glass company and got here in April of ’67. TT- So back in the day, you had an academy like ours, right? The city ran it. No pay, and classes at night, right? TH- Yes. Tuesdays and Thursday nights in the classroom, all day Saturday training, for like ten weeks. TT- Same with us. Fifty years later. Incredible TH- We had two senior firefighters teaching, they were on the list to make lieutenant. Al Renzi, and Ray Murray, Joe Murray’s father. They taught the class with LT. Clifford. TT- So it’s pretty much been the same for eighty years. I know that before World War II they had daytime academies, but it seems like in the 1950s they went to the Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. It’s too bad. I wish we still had it (The Pawtucket Fire Department gave up training its own firefighters in 2016. They are now trained at the State Academy.) When you got on, where did you go? What was the process for you? TH- School ended in November or December, there was ten of us in the class. Paul Keenan, Andy Monahan and myself came on in April, four months after the school. TT- Did all ten get hired? TH- Yes. The first seven got on right away. Ray Massee, Joe Gildea, Dick Ryan, Jack Doyle, Andy Monaghan, Frank Sylvester, myself, Paul ... TT- That’s a packed academy right there. Lot of legendary names in there. TH- Back then it wasn’t the type of job people wanted because when Paul and I left Corning Glass we were making good money. But there was no career. You got laid off in the summer, unless you wanted to work the tank repair, but I’d always wanted to be on the fire department. I grew up in Seekonk, but they were volunteers up there. I used to go down to the fire station and hang out. On Newman Avenue. I did some firefighting in the Navy. TT- Now Ralph Dominci was saying he had six kids, and they paid so little on the fire department that he actually qualified for food stamps. Guys had second and third jobs just to support their families. TH- When I got on, I think gross pay was $67.50 a week. You worked three days, three nights. TT- That’s like 70 hours. TH- No overtime. I don’t know whether guys today understand it, but this is basically considered a semi-military organization. You were on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. You’d have your shift, but many times you’d get home and get a call, there was a two or three-alarmer, or a mill fire, and when you got called in you had to come. That was your obligation. I know things have probably changed now. They finally went to what they call the Kelly Days, it was 56-hour weeks, and you got an extra day off somewhere, and then we created the Fourth Battalion. TT- That was in 1973? TH- Something like that. Two days shifts, two nights, four off. When I came on, I was assigned to Engine 7 (Engine 2) downtown. TT- Who was your boss? TH- Lt. North. Lt. McVay was on Ladder 1. The crew on Engine 2 was Ray Masse, Gerry Gendreau, myself and LT. North. TT- Now Gerry Gendreau’s name comes up as one of those guys who was a great fireman, but I know that stuff at the end where he crossed the picket line messed up his reputation. TH- Exactly. It’s sad, because when I got on, he was on Engine 2, and Lt North had just made lieutenant, and between Lt. McVay and Gerry Gendreau, even with what he did afterward by crossing the line, I cannot—I didn’t like what he did, but I’ll never put him down as far as his knowledge and firefighting skills. Frank McVay taught me a lot. Frank McVay loved to train, he would sit down with us at the round table, and we would have competitions with streets. You’d call out the street and how you would get there. He was big on street drills. He was a man that knew 767 streets. He would leave his house early and drive around and check them. When I was driving a school bus part time, he would say, “Where you driving this week?” And I’d say, “Fairlawn.” “I’m gonna give you four or five streets. Not with the kids on the bus, but after.” Owen Avenue, Samuel Avenue. I’d come in that night and he’d be like, “Did you find them?” “Yeah.” And then he would drill you on them. He would tell you if the bell hits, you better know where you’re going. He loved to train and it was very helpful. We would cross-train. We drove the tiller (truck), the horse, the engine-- TT- What’s the “horse?” TH- The tractor, on the ladder. The tiller was the guy on the back. No cover. TT- No cover on the trucks, right? TH- Right. We had a roof but no back. Totally open air. And if we needed a reserve truck, we got the one from Central Falls, and that thing was convertible—no roof at all. When it rained, you got wet. When it snowed, and you were at a fire, you’d have to come out and brush your seat off before you went back to the station (laughs). I could never understand why they bought a convertible truck in New England. TT- Were you one of the guys hanging off the back? TH- Oh yeah. Engine 7 was a cabover. The 5s’, 6s. 4s, they all had the backstep. You put your arm around the rail and you hung on for dear life. Engine 1 had the Ahearns Fox. You could ride the back, but you could actually enter into the back and you could hang on better. You usually had like a foot or two to balance on. TT- Different day. When men were men. Now let’s talk about this crew. Ray Masse senior… These are legendary guys. So basically the World War II guys taught you guys. TH- Exactly. TT- The 60s and 70s, from the stories I’ve heard, the whole city was burning. TH- When I got on, the city was still going through a redevelopment. I-95 was here but they were still pulling houses down all over. Broadway, down Mineral Spring Avenue, Taft Street, Division Street. Now everybody, like you said, had to have a part time job, because the benefits were there, the pay wasn’t great, but you could see it was gonna get better, because it couldn’t get any worse (laughs). And it was a stable job. Most guys took the job because they wanted to be firefighters. Some nights you’d come in and got two or three vacant house fires. Not every night. But you could. Most nights you’d be at one or two, because they never tore these houses down. It was a battle between the city and the homeowner or landlord about who was going to pay for the demolition. TT- Did they pay these people to just walk out of their houses when 95 was being built? TH- They did pay people. They gave them close to market value. But it was a lot easier and cheaper to burn it down then tear it down. By then, 95 was already through here, but there was all kinds of redevelopment happening. It actually lasted into the 1970s. On the 3rd and 4th of July, it was nothing for this department to do two hundred or three hundred runs a night. You could come in at 5:30, have a chowder—most of the guys’ wives cooked for the 4th of July. Hamburgers, hot dogs, got the grill going, have a salad, chowder-- TT- It was like a party, right? TH- Yes. The ladder wasn’t as busy as us, but they would catch a few runs and keep the grill going in-between. Sometimes we’d ride by, swing onto the ramp, they’d give us some hamburgers and we’d keep going. Lot of dumpster fires, car fires, trash fires, and then the night got later and we’d get the house fires, bonfires, like huge bonfires. In the morning of the 4th, 5th, or 6th, depending on how the holiday fell, if it was Friday Saturday Sunday, you’d leave the station in the morning and the city would look like a war zone. Haze and all you could smell was rubber, burnt wood, trash…the dumpster fires stunk. The bonfires in the street, we’d put them out as best as we could, and then the city would come with the loader and trash trucks to take it all away. If they didn’t, then the people just relit it all over again. TT- Now doesn’t it seem incredible that this went on for like eighty years? It was like a forty-eight-hour arson-fest and instead of shutting it down, it was kind of like a citywide party. Just to burn everything. TH- Exactly. Providence, those guys would do like 400-500 runs. Providence and Pawtucket were the worst. Central Falls was less. TT- Chickee was saying the neighborhood would pay a band to come down and play, and they’d bring food to the station and just watch the fire trucks coming and going. TH- The 1’s was always a party, the 3s had the Pawsox game. And that was the city’s signal. After the Pawsox game on the 3rd and 4th, they always had fireworks. And when those fireworks started going off, that was the signal for everyone to cut loose. They’d go on until four, five, six o’clock in the morning sometimes. They’d burn a building, we’d put it out, and then they would burn it again. Nobody really got hurt, but there were injuries. We had a time there where they would throw rocks and Molotov cocktails at us, but no one died. You tried to talk to them. Like “Hey, you want to start these fires, ok, but you don’t have to firebomb us when we try to put them out.” Especially when you were on the tiller or hanging off the back of the engine, you don’t want to take a rock off the head. Some places you would need a police escort. Like at Crook Manor, when they would light up the dumpsters, car fires, we would wait on the main street for the police to get there first, because Crook Manor, when you went in, there was only one way out. Once you went in you were committed. Like Prospect Heights. Same thing. One way in, one way out. Most of the guys looked forward to the 3rd and 4th of July. And being downtown, not to take anything away from the other stations, but downtown we had the engine, ladder, and BC, the boat, the Jaws of Life with the trailer, all of the equipment was out of here. You trained on all of this stuff. I found it very enlightening to be down there with Lt. McVay and Gerry Gendreau because they were very knowledgeable and good firefighters. McVay would say, “It’s common sense that’s going to keep you alive on this job.” Can you get hurt? Sure. It’s a dangerous job. But you can’t just run into the burning buildings. Is the stairway still there? Is there a second way out? I learned a lot from those guys. As far as Gerry Gendreau goes, he was invaluable with the information he had, but to this day I’m still upset with what he did. We lost a good man. Even though he became a Battalion Chief, unfortunately he had a heart attack. It wore on him. So was it worth it? TT- How long was he the BC before he had a heart attack? TH- Not sure. Year or two. That was when the job kind of…the camaraderie and brotherhood were great back then. TT- Mean Smitty was saying there’d be 40 guys at the bar, the whole shift second-day party. TH- Even after a bad fire, everyone went to the bar. We had a bad fire on Japonica Street, we lost four kids and a mother. Back then there wasn’t a lot of smoke detectors. When we rolled in it was going good. TT- Gildea talked about that fire. Said it was one of the worst things he’s ever seen. TH- I can remember it to this day. Joe and I were going in the front door, we pushed the door open and I started crawling in and Joe said, “Hold it.” And there was the boy. Burnt to a crisp. His mother was over in a chair, dead. Upstairs were four more kids. They succumbed to their injuries. No smoke detectors back then until the late 70’s. Thurber’s father was working at the Celtic. He was retired by then. We called him up and they opened the bar for us. We went up there. Some people used to ask me, “How do you deal with this?” To me and a lot of the guys I worked with, our feeling was you know what you’re getting into when you take this job. Not that you want to see this stuff, but you have to know it’s coming. Our shift caught … TT- Joe Gildea said 19 fire deaths in 20 years. TH- I was about to say 17-19. Seven or eight of those were children. I can still visualize that kid. I mean that poor little guy was like eight-years-old. He made it to the door and that was it. You remember these things, but you can’t take the job home with you. And you can’t let it eat away at you. TT- How long have you been married to Sue? TH- 56 years. TT- So you saw all this stuff and you were able to leave it at the job. You didn’t have to bring it home and make everything worse. TH- She’d ask me, she knew if we had a bad night, we would talk about it. The guys, we’d have a beer in the morning before we went home, but I would have soda. I wasn’t a big drinker. Gave me headaches. That’s the way we handled it. TT- You processed it and that was that. TH- Yes. I’m not saying I’m a special person, but this stuff effects different people in different ways. TT- To put this in perspective, I’ve been here eleven years and had three fatal fire deaths. You guys had nineteen in twenty years. People quit smoking, smoke detectors got mandated, alarm systems were put in place for large multi-unit buildings—everything got safer. TH- Smoke detectors are the biggest thing. It’s something some people still don’t understand. In fact, we’re living in Florida now because my wife hates the winter, I don’t like the heat in the summer but I put up with it. One of the big things down there are the hurricane shutters. You’re supposed to take them down when the storm’s over, but people leave them in and the firefighters have a hard time getting in because they’re metal and locked. TT- You know what’s crazy? I ran into some dude who works in Florida. He was so amazed about basement fires. Apparently, they don’t have basements in Florida. He’s like, “You guys go into basements?” “Well, yeah, if that’s where the fire is.” He says, “That’s crazy.” And he just laughed. It is kind of crazy. TH- They fight fires in 90-100 degree temperatures, and we fight fires when it’s 0 degrees. My wife has a picture on Smithfield Avenue, on the corner of Mineral Spring. It was a big fire and I got called in. I was coated head to toe in ice. They wanted us to go into the coffeeshop and warm up. But if I defrosted, I would be wet and cold. The ice kept me insulated, so I just stayed outside. It’s different up here. TT- That’s funny you said that. We had a fire on Roosevelt Ave with the Central Falls boys and it was like 1 degree. The minute we stopped moving we froze up solid. I mean I couldn’t even get my coat off. I could barely walk. TH- The night on George Street, it was a cold winter night. In the teens. I was on Ladder 1 and we went in. Frank Boisclair and us. We kicked the door in and found a lady on the floor. We were trying to do CPR on her and we couldn’t get her arms to move. We rolled her over and saw her hands were tied. She was murdered. Somebody killed her and lit the place up. We did CPR and told the cops what we had. We went with the rescue to the hospital, and when we got back to the scene thirty minutes later, we couldn’t even drive the tiller. Everything was frozen. We were finally able to swing it enough to get it in the station. TT- What year did you retire? TH- 1988 TT- So you were here for Star Gas. Were you working? TH- No. Ray Masse and I were painting a house up at the end of Cottage Street. Near Attleboro. Ray was on a ladder near the garage and the ground shook. You could see it. We packed everything up and called downtown. They said they needed everybody. TT- I heard these cannisters were landing on freaking Broadway. TH- They were. There was the Winter school right there too. They put us on a line to cool down a train car so it wouldn’t explode. We lost Engine 4 that day. TT- There’s a picture of Brule, Burns, Gildea, on a line shooting a hose directly at the front nose of a railcar. Brule was laughing when he told me the story. He said if that thing had blown up they would’ve been the first ones killed, and then half the city would’ve died after they did. The CF Chief, Couto, he said the same thing. If that tank had exploded it would have killed thousands. Now what’s the closest you came to dying? TH- When you go into three-deckers, as you know, you’re blind. You can’t see a thing. We got stuck in a closet one time. Sounds funny now but it wasn’t funny then. It was early in the night, like eight o’clock. All of a sudden you want to panic, but you know you can’t you gotta find a door, a window, feel for anything to save yourself. We’ve had ceilings fall on us, floors—when the floor has been burnt away—you can end up falling right into your own death. You can kiss your ass goodbye. Chickee and I got caught one night in Central Falls. TT- Oh man, he told me this story. This guy Bobby Tierny was a ladder guy in Central Falls. I heard Vietnam made him a little crazy, and he was up on the ladder with the master stream and blew the chimney apart and sent it down on top of you guys. TH- (laughs) Yup. The chimney came through the roof, we fell down the stairs, and it landed on our heads. We finally got outside and Chief Couto says “I want everybody out.” I said, “Well your crew is still up there in the back.” We had gone in the front. “I don’t know whether they heard you or not.” So me and Chickee go back up and somehow Tierney’s now upstairs and he didn’t want to leave. So we just threw him down the stairs. Seriously. Grabbed him and pushed him down the stairs. (laughs). He wasn’t happy about that, but when the chief says it’s time to go, it’s time to go. TT- You were friends with this guy, Tierny, right? TH- Yes. We all knew one another. TT- It was different back in the day. The Pawtucket and CF guys all knew each other, all hung out together… TH- If they had a working fire we went. Period. And if our fires were big enough, they’d come help us. That’s why I say I was fortunate to be stationed downtown. We went on everything in the city. Everything good. TT- Now this Tierny guy, I heard he was a tunnel rat in Vietnam and came home a little crazy. TH- Yeah something like that. TT- Chickee was funny. He says, “I’ve never seen Skull so mad.” Because after the chimney came down you were pissed. TH- Well, you don’t expect it. Back then, if you cut a hole in the roof, it was to vent. But a lot of guys would get up on that aerial and think it was a good idea to blast the master stream through the roof and push all the fire, heat, and smoke back onto the guys inside. It was brutal. It’s all in the training. I heard they have a state fire academy down in Exeter now? TT- By the way, it’s terrible. They’re not teaching these guys nothing. They show up here and we have to retrain them. I wish we still ran our own academy. These guys show up here and do like five weeks with our Training Division. Kenny Moreau’s over there-- TH- Kenny’s a good man. TT- Sure is. They’ll drop these guys off at the stations and say “Do something with these guys.” So we’ll take them out, go through the district, throw some water around, etc… Otherwise, I’m not impressed. Our academy was way better than the state academy. TH- Like you say, Renzi and Murray did the same. Renzi taught the pumps, and Ray Murray was the medical and firefighting end. They were good. They explained things to you in terms you could understand, versus over your head. You know what I mean? Like I took a few classes down at CCRI, fire science classes. You learn a lot from that, but a lot of those instructors are way up here (he motions above his head.) But I’ll never forget. They called the Breslin Distributor a “Twirly thing.” (the Breslin is a spinning nozzle shoved through floors at basement fires.) TT- Let’s talk about some of the guys. I heard Stretch Tuitt was a real character. TH- He drove the chief for many years. TT- I heard one day he walked into Fanueil Hall, and firemen from New Hampshire were yelling his name. Like that’s how many people knew this guy. TH- He was tall and well known. He drove Chief Monast, who was the last chief with a driver. Then he became a lieutenant on Engine 2. Gildea went on Engine 2 after Stretch retired. TT- Stretch was one of those guys that knew a million stories. Like he had the folklore of the whole department. And he would just tell story after story. TH- Back then it was strange because today the Battalion Chiefs drive themselves. The Chief had a driver too. They also only had one person in Fire Prevention. TT- We got at least four now. TH- But Stretch would be up in the office with Chief and he’d do some paperwork if the Chief didn’t need to go anywhere. TT- It was different back then because there was only one TV in the whole station, right? Guys hung out and talked. TH- Like the newspaper? You didn’t touch the newspaper until everyone senior to you had a chance to read it. Period. You didn’t just come in and grab the paper and coffee. That was an extreme no-no. There was a Lt. Coleman, he was in charge of the house because he was the senior lieutenant. He was strict. Back then, when you walked into the station you had your khakis on, and you had to have your blue service cap. When we used to relieve him, he was on nights. So our first day was his first day-off. And he’d be here. Waiting. Just waiting. You’d drive to work, you might leave your hat in the car by mistake, and he’d say. “Hey, firefighter, where’s your blue cap?” “Oh, it’s in the car.” “Go get it.” And the trash barrel, he wouldn’t say anything in the morning, but since he worked part time at the Pawtucket Times, sometimes he’d stop in, and if that trash barrel wasn’t emptied by noon, he’d go to the senior officer and say, “Your boys forget to do the chores?” But, you know, you respected that. Especially if you’d been in the service. You go in the service, you respected authority. No matter how pissed off you got, they’re in charge. You do what they say. TT- Things were different back then too, right? You had guys who fought in World War Two, Korea, and then the Vietnam guys started coming home. Other than this current generation, that had the 9/11 attacks and subsequent wars, the service aspect is gone. They don’t have that fear. TH- It is gone. They don’t know the respect of authority. They’ll give the lieutenant on the truck a ration of shit, but back then, that never happened. You didn’t have to like him, but you had to respect the pins. It’s like anything else. You have good firefighters, good lieutenants—that’s the majority. But then you have the exceptions to the rule that are only here for the paycheck. You weed them out. I was very fortunate to have some great guys on my shift. 90% of them you could trust with your life, that if you went in with the nozzle, they’d make sure you came back out. If somebody was gonna leave because their tank was running out, they’d tap you on the shoulder and tell you they were going to leave. So you at least knew you would be alone instead of someone just disappearing. We didn’t have the 20-minute accountability. You never had a headcount. You fought the fire from the beginning to the end. There was no break. You might have a coffee after the fire was knocked down and the canteen arrived, but otherwise you were working. Scott packs, when I came on, were in a suitcase in the side compartment. There was two on the ladder, and two or three on the engine, but they were in the side compartment. When you pulled up to a working fire, and usually on a three-decker back then, it was almost guaranteed that someone was going to run up to you, grab you if you were on the first and second truck in, they were going to grab you and say, “Someone’s still up on the second or third floor.” 90% of the time they were wrong and no one was up there. But you never thought like that. You went in to get them. So you didn’t bother with the Scotts because you had to open the door, take the case out, put it on the ground, open it, take it out, attach your mask—it doesn’t sound like a long time, but you just went in. The other crews coming in would the grab the line and come in after you. TT- When did everyone start wearing the packs consistently? I’ve heard the old school guys were like, “We’ve been putting out fires for a hundred years without these things…” TH- A lot the guys, Renzi included, just told us to wet a sponge and put it in your mouth. TT- Were you a sponge guy? TH- No. Never used it. I went my first few years on the job with no Scott. The first ones they put on the trucks were the side compartment. They were up in the rack, high up, so you couldn’t back in, you had to take it off and drop it in over your head. You had to grab it just right to drop it over your head and put it on. Then they put them in the jumpseat, in the back of the seat, which was a little bit easier to put on, but there wasn’t much room. But at least you had, on the way to the fire, the guy in the back and the officer could Scott up. The officers didn’t get them til later. TT- So you guys ate a lot smoke. I’ve heard stories about Timmy Hayes and Gendreau chainsmoking in a fire. TH- Timmy Hayes. The first thing he did was light up a cigarette. I haven’t seen him in-- TT- He just passed away last year. TH- Did he? That’s too bad. He could take smoke. TT- I’ve heard about this guy. There would be guys on the ground puking from the smoke and he’d just be standing there talking like he was having a coffee. TH- He was a smoke-eater. And a great fireman. For sure. As soon as the fire was over, like you said, out came the cigarette. Me, I smoked when I first came on, but I threw them away one day on Conant Street. We had a fire in a mill, a machine. It wasn’t a big fire, but it created a lot of smoke. We had to go up like three of four flights of stairs. And with the Scott, the axe, and everything else we carried, I got up there and was sucking air. I killed that bottle in like ten minutes. You’re not gonna go back down and get another one, so now you just take the mask off and do your job. After the fire was out, we were coming down, and I says, “You know, this smoking ain’t helping. And I took the cigarettes out of my pocket and threw them away. Never touched them again. It was just an incentive to get rid of those things. TT- How old were you when you quit? TH- Twenty-eight. A lot of times, you’re just hanging around the station killing time. Gum and Tootsie-Pops helped. Something to do with your hands. TT- What about Ray Gilbert. TH- He was on Central Ave, Station 6, Hose 6. Leo Masse was up there on that shift. But Ray was on another shift so I only saw him on overtime. TT- What about the Kevin Rabbit fire. Were you working that day? TH- No, he was on the B-Shift. It flashed right over. He got burnt pretty good on the face. His helmet, they had his gear in Training for a while-- TT- I saw it. It was torched. TH- They still got it? He was a good kid. Good firefighter. It was just one those things-- TT- Somebody pops the wrong window and everything goes boom. TH- It’s funny because when you watch these shows on TV, they always show a backdraft, backdraft, backdraft. How many backdrafts do you really see and have? You will have one. We had one over on Main Street. A motorcycle shop. But I don’t even think it was a true backdraft. The motorcycles inside still had gas in their tanks. And when we went in, they all blew up, so we got tumbled out the door. But nobody got hurt. I just think it was an explosion. Igniting. But his was definitely a backdraft. TV shows them every week. TT- Not to mention you don’t usually survive backdrafts, so they would need a whole new cast every week (laughs). TH- He was very fortunate. He only had a few years on the job at the time. He would’ve come back but the doctors said—I remember talking to him because he was working as a salesman at a car dealership. I was in there looking at cars when he said, “I’d love to go back, but the doctors said something could trigger me, and it wouldn’t be fair to the guys I’m working with or myself.” Lose it for a few seconds, you know? It was a traumatic event. TT- I heard the doctors said the skin grafts wouldn’t hold if he took another blast of heat like that. TH- That’s a lot of heat, a lot of fire. That’s 2000 degrees. TT- So you guys had some crazy stories. We’ve been very fortunate. We average a line of duty death every 30 years. TH- We never had a single one. Hargreaves got killed a few years after I left. We had some serious injuries but no deaths. You’re gonna get that in any department. Especially in New England. Snow, rain, ice, guys are gonna trip and fall. Ceilings come down on you, your foot goes through a stairwell…you’re gonna get hurt. You just hope you don’t end up in a cellar, because chances are you’re gonna die down there. TT- Nobody wants to end up in the cellar, man. TH- Dick Ryan, he was a lieutenant on B Platoon Ladder 1. He went through a flight of stairs over on Armistice Boulevard. They were able to grab him and he didn’t get hurt or burnt, but he told me, it was some scary business. And Dick was a big boy. There was a couple of guys there that were able to pull him out. But you know when you got a good crew. Engine 2, Ladder 1, and Engine 3, Engine 4 and Engine 1 on my shift were good crews. Engine 5, depending on the crew, was okay. Same with the 6s. But you have to remember, those trucks are where all the old-timers went. They didn’t do many runs until the rescue business exploded and then they got pissed that they got busy (laughs). But the other crews, you knew who was coming in behind you, and you knew you were gonna have back up. When we had the Olive Street fire, the father was a famous soccer player and his son—we couldn’t get in the front door. It was me and John McDavitt, we were first on scene. We were alone for three to five minutes. We called a Code Red. I was in charge, John got the pump going, he started blasting and I ran around the side to look for another way in. I went up to the second floor and it had been blocked off. You couldn’t get to the third floor. I had to come back down and I said to John, “I’m going in the back.” By then, Engine 4 and them were coming in, so John sent them up after me and that’s where we found the father and son. Upstairs. There was a front door, a side door, and a back door. The side door only went to the second floor. Back door went to the third. So we made it up there – TT- Were they dead? TH- Yes, but you couldn’t tell. At the time, I grabbed the kid and started running down the stairs. Norm Partington (a legendary rescue guy) was coming up and I handed the kid to him. I went back to help the other guys because the father had tried to hide in a bathtub. TT- Now the Dexter Street fire, where the two guys died in the window, were you around for that or already retired? TH- I was gone by then. TT- So you left in 1988. You did twenty-one years, right? TH- I would’ve stayed longer but the politics sucked. (For years, fire department promotions were run by politics instead of being earned. Finally, the union told the men to stop taking the promotions until the city approved outside testing for fairness. This almost destroyed the job. For years, 80% of the officers’ spots remained empty. Desperate, the city finally offered to make anyone who crossed the picket line, which was why Gendreau, Murray, Sylvester and the other four were quickly shunned and treated as outcasts.) And unfortunately, I think that’s what killed my buddy Ray. Ray Masse, at the time, took the lieutenant’s test, passed the test, he went next door for the Oral Board, and it was either this or that. You knew when you walked in if you were going to get it or not, you know? More politics. I can remember one of the times I went over there, we had the foam truck. Engine 2 had the foam unit on it. One of the chiefs at the boards, who was from East Providence, asked me, “Can you come into my city and use your foam truck?” I said, “Yeah, of course I can.” “Oh, you think so?” “Well, why wouldn’t I?” “You can mix your foam and my foam?” I said, “Chief, you didn’t say that. You asked if I could come into your city and use our foam truck.” And another chief who was there agreed with me. (laughs) Then the guy says, “I wouldn’t consider you for lieutenant.” (makes a motion of crumpling up the application and tossing it over his shoulder.) Okay. So that was the way it went. Ray, because his brother-in-law Bob Thurber was a lieutenant, and his brother Leo was on the job, he was a lieutenant-- TT- Did Ray make lieutenant? TH- No. In fact, I retired as an acting lieutenant. So I got the money, but not the pins (laughs). But that’s the way it goes. TT- They had the people they wanted to make, right? The politics is always ugly. TH- Exactly. TT- That’s gross. TH- Then when they went to the outside testing, I said, “This is my shot.” No oral board. So I studied and studied. I passed every test but one during the years I was on. All I needed to get was a 70. With my seniority, that gives me a 90. I gotta be in the top ten, and they were gonna make like fifteen or sixteen guys. Two days before I was supposed to take the test, (the city) put in an injunction against it. They wanted to go back to the old test, which meant politics was coming back. It was like, if I stay, chances were slim that I was gonna make it. And then I’d end up working for a junior guy-- (At this point, the tones hit. Fire Alarm announces, “Attention Engines 4,1,2, Ladder 2, still alarm…” After the address is announced, Heaney looks at me curiously and I tell him Engine 3 is out of service.) TH- I was wondering why the 1s were going. TT- No, I mean Engine 3 is no more. Like it’s closed. The city whacked it.” TH- (Incredulous) You’re kidding. TT- So now we’ve got five engines, two ladders and four rescues. TH- Where are the rescues running out of? TT- Everywhere. The 5s, the 4s, 6s, Station 3 is now the 1s, so Rescue 1 runs out of there. TH- So the crews … TT- We haven’t had a bump bid yet. This just happened like a month ago. The city came to us and asked if we wanted to run with two-man ladder companies, or close Engine 3. We said, “Look, we’re not gonna do two-man ladder companies.” TH- We did that. It sucks. TT- Not only that, one of our guys just had half his leg cut off. TH- I heard that. How’s he doing? TT- He’s great. He’s doing great. TH- I read that they were trying to screw him. I’ll say one thing about McLaughlin, he and I had our differences, but I give him credit, and I would shake his hand. He stood up. It’s sad the chief didn’t, because that’s one of his men. I mean, he did nothing wrong. They only had one ladder there that night. Period, end of story. It’s not the firefighters’ fault that you don’t maintain your equipment. They didn’t maintain it. They could’ve gotten a second ladder (cities and towns loan each other pieces of equipment on a regular basis.) They were doing the right thing. Somebody was trapped, they were moving the ladder to try and get them—No, you back your men. I was glad to see that Jay did that, because it would’ve really sucked. TT- He has a stern reputation around here, but he’s also one of the only guys who’s going to stand up. TH- That’s the way Jay was. They used to call him Cement Head. He was very headstrong. I’ve had my arguments with him at union meetings and this and that. “You wanna take this outside?” (laughs) At union meetings, and Billy Malloy was the president, and he would say, “Come on, guys, come on, guys, calm down.” If you wanna take it outside, we’ll go. One of us wins, one of us loses, I don’t care. So then the meeting was over, and I was standing there talking to Ray or somebody, and he comes over and says, “Can I talk to you for a minute?” “Yeah, outside or inside?” “Naw, naw, naw,” he says, “I apologize. I lost it.” I says, “But don’t ever think, because you lift weights, and you’ve got muscles, I’m gonna back down. I’ve taken punches before, and I’ve been knocked on my ass before. But I’m not gonna back down for you or anybody. After that we got along a little better. He was just that way. He probably would’ve kicked my ass, he probably would’ve stomped me into the ground, he was a big boy. TT- Back in the day he was throwing up a lot of weight. TH- Hey, I’m glad he stood up for the kid, because it’s sad to see something like that happen. He was thinking of retiring too, wasn’t he? TT- Actually, the day it happened, at shift change, I was sitting on the picnic table at the 4s. Sometimes I would work nights for him, because he got a side gig doing electrical work, so that night he came in, it was his last night of his cycle. Me and him sat there and he was like, “Yeah, I pulled my papers. I’m checking my numbers…” He wasn’t officially going, but he was right there. Then seven hours later all hell broke loose. TH- So he’s up and walking around? TT- Yup. He’s moving and grooving. The beginning was rough, obviously, but we just saw him last week. We try to go down every couple of weeks. We were going down every week but I think, as he started to heal up, he didn’t need all of us clowns pounding beers in his house (laughs). TH- Where is he? TT- North Kingstown. He’s doing good. Anyway, switching gears, we’re still getting used to this five-engine model at work. I’m on the 4s, so the 2s and 4s are already busy, we took up some of District 3 after they closed the truck, but Engine 1 and Engine 6 are the ones who have taken over the majority of that district. District 1 is now huge and spans both sides of the river. TH- At least they kept Station 3. Station 1, I can’t even believe that’s closed. That’s a heavily populated three-decker area. When Lynch was the mayor, we had that fire on Olive Street. When that soccer player died. Lynch showed up on the scene, the fire was knocked down, Norm and I, Norm Partington who was on the 4s that helped us bring him down, we were out there because Bannon, he was the Battalion Chief, he said, “ I need you back here to give a full report to the mayor.” So I did. The mayor says, and I’ll never forget it, he says, “I know you guys think I’m gonna take a ladder out of service, I would never do that, especially after something like this. Blah blah blah, I feel bad this happened…” I think it was not long after that we were pounding the streets trying to save Ladder 3. That guy was two-faced. TT- Ladder 3 got killed to create Rescue 2, kind of like Engine 3 being killed to create Rescue 4. TH- When I came on, we had three-man engines and three-man ladders for the most part. But they never replaced if someone was out sick. TT- So this was before minimum-manning dictated 31 firefighters had to be on shift at all times. TH- Right. So, especially on the weekends, a lot of people might be out sick or on vacation, and you’d run with two guys. That’s what happened that night. Ray was on vacation, so it was me and McDavitt, who was driving. It was just the two of us. We pulled in and I mean this thing was roaring. TT- Two guys? Jesus… TH- Two guys. What do you do? You just gonna stand there waiting for another truck? You go in. We couldn’t get in the front door. John wanted to come in. I said, “John, just run the pump and send the next company in behind me.” So I went up that side door and couldn’t get to the third-floor. I mean that’s like three minutes wasted. Who knows if it would’ve made a difference? TT- Incredible that you’re still critiquing that run forty years later. TH- As soon as we got upstairs, I went in that first door and that was the bathroom. That’s where they were. But they were… TT- Yeah, you can’t take that kind of smoke. TH- No. And for him (the mayor) to come over and say that at the spot of a double fatal, and then come back a few weeks later and still take the truck away, you need more, not less. You don’t need them every day, but you just don’t know when you’re gonna need them. Everybody thinks you’re sitting around playing cards and this and that, I mean we used to check our trucks, we used to start the Jaws of Life. Ralph and I and Sholas and Ray, we’d take the small boat and head out towards East Providence just to run the motor. Things like that need to be run. “Oh, just put it in a 55-gallon drum and run it.” No. I don’t think so. Take it out and run it. It was good. That’s why they used to send new recruits downtown. We had the ladder, the engine, all the toys, and we liked to train. TT- The Jaws were new back then, right? Didn’t they come around in the 70s? TH- Yes. Before that all we had was a pinch bar and a spreader. TT- How did you know it was time to go? You got on at twenty-two, you did twenty-one years, so you were like forty-three? TH- Like I said, the politics killed it. I was Acting Lieutenant, the money was there. If I stayed and didn’t make lieutenant, I would’ve had to stay for ten more years, which I wouldn’t have minded, but I knew there were some guys that were gonna make it through politics, that didn’t have experience. TT- Right. You didn’t trust them as a boss. TH- I mean, we always said, you should be allowed to take the lieutenant’s test after you get two or three years on the job. You should be able to take every test you want to take, but you shouldn’t be allowed to make lieutenant before you get ten years on the job. It’s not the knowledge that you have, it’s the experience that counts too. But they wanted to do that. Like you said, you have to respect the officer, but how can you respect the officer if you don’t trust them? You know yourself. There are probably some guys whose opinions you question? TT- There are some people you definitely keep an eye on. TH- They’re book smart. I was in my forties by then. Am I gonna take a test against a guy who’s twenty-two, twenty-three, just got out of school, maybe did some college? TT- We have guys scoring 91 on these tests now. I can’t even compete with that. I took the lieutenant’s test and came out like 22 on the list. Everyone would have to die for me to make lieutenant. (laughs) TH- If you get lucky, they go for years without making anybody, like I think when Ralph made it, he was under me, so when I left he was the senior firefighter, and he passed the test, so he was in the top ten. I think they made like sixteen or seventeen guys. It went that long without making lieutenants, because they just kept putting the senior firefighter in charge. So it’s like, did I want to go? No. I loved the job. When I left here, the Chief in North Cumberland said, “I’ll put you on right now. You don’t even have to go to the school or nothing.” I thought about it and said, “You know, I’m not gonna take a job away from a young kid that might really want the job for a career.” He said, “Will you at least come up as a paid call-man?” I says, “Yeah. On my hours, I’ll go on any call that comes in. But if I have something to do…” he goes, “No problem.” They used to be volunteers and then they started paying them. He said, “When the tones go off, if you could just come to the station…” When I got off here, Cumberland was running five stations from different districts. Station 5 was off of Napierville Highway, they had a brush truck, a squad, two engines and a ladder truck. They only had three guys on duty. One man per truck. You’re on Engine 53, you take the brush truck, you take the ladder. That’s why they needed call-men. (they get paid per call.) TT- So you did that and what else did you do? TH- I was working for the food service, Sedesco, which was actually Marriot at the time. It was actually run by the state first, then they privatized it. Marriot took it over. Paul Keenan, Leo Masse and myself worked for them. TT- So you were driving around food or what? TH- Yes. Delivering lunches to the schools. TT- Oh, I get it. TH- When they privatized it, they went full-time. It worked out great. You guys pay Social Security on here now? TT- No. We are still outside the system. TH- We didn’t either. But my outside jobs allowed me to collect Social Security. I worked almost twenty years, until I was seventy-two, plus the part time jobs I had before, plus the Navy, so I accumulated enough time to collect. I still got burnt because Reagan put in this windfall act that penalized police, fire, and teachers if they had a pension, they couldn’t get their full social security. They cut you like 40% or something like that. Why, I don’t know. TT- I got twenty years out in the world before I got here, so I’ll be able to collect the SS on that at least. TH- The IAFF was supposed to be trying to do something but I never heard otherwise. TT- Let’s circle back, because you keep mentioning Ray Masse Sr. When he died, this was a big deal, right? I heard this affected the whole job. TH- Oh yeah. He was well-liked, he was good fireman, he would’ve made a great officer if they made him. TT- How old was he? TH- Forty-one. TT- Jesus. TH- I don’t know if you know the full story, but him and Bob Thurber Senior, Ray’s son RJ, and Thurber’s son Michael, the kids were very close. In fact they used to play fireman at Thurber’s house on Benefit Street. They had a radio there and the tones would go off and the kids would jump into their little fire cars and respond to the driveway (laughs). They went to the Cape, Just Ray and his kid and Thurber and his kid. Ray took the days off, but worked the nights. He was supposed to be there on a Saturday night. Ray was always here at five o’clock. I’d be here between five and a quarter after. I got here and Ray wasn’t here. Maybe he was late or whatever. 5:30, 5:45 came and went, so we let the guy who was waiting to be relieved go home. We were gonna run with two men until he came in. Finally, I called Bob Thurber and I says, “Bobby, can you run over to Ray’s house? See what’s up? Maybe he fell asleep?” I knew they had come back from the Cape, and maybe he was taking a nap. Bob went over there, the door was locked. He called back, we were in Fire Alarm, and he said he couldn’t get in. Says his car is here but everything’s locked up. “Send an engine and a rescue, something’s wrong.” So they got in the house and there he was, dead in the bed. We went up with our truck, and Leo was working our shift too. Bob said Ray was fine at the Cape, that it was just one of those things. He had one foot on the floor, Bob said, like he was trying to get up. I heard his son, RJ, recently had to retire as well. TT- Ray Junior got pensioned off from lung damage. A lot of this stuff is new. A lot of the guys who got on in the 1980s, they were the tail-end of the good old days and, unfortunately, as we created more and more of this plastic, toxic crap like cell phones, huge flat-screen TVs, iPads, laptops—the whole house is a toxic shitdump now. Everything in there is cancerous. But no one knew anything about it until these guys started dying. A lot of the 90s guys and the 2000s guys—no one gave a shit about cleaning around here. You know, you probably slept with your boots and nighthitch in the dorm. We all did. But no one does that now. All of this went on until about four years ago. Nobody cleaned any gear, our stuff was as trashed as your gear was, I mean I remember bringing my stuff up here (in the dorm) when I worked with Chickee on C-Chift. Nobody knew what was coming. TH- Boots and nighthitch right next to the bed. TT- And you guys are all alive. That’s the difference. Hell, Timmy Hayes was ripping Marlboro Reds inside a goddamn three alarm fire and he lived until he was almost 90. Keenan, you, Gildea, all alive. But now we got guys in their 50s and 60s dying from cancer. That twenty-year window where they started putting all this crap into the houses, it’s all garbage. The whole house is fake and filled with plastic. TH- Like you said, Joe (Gildea’s) older than me, Paul (Keenan’s)about my age. And what can you say about Timmy Hayes? I don’t ever remember seeing him wearing a Scott pack. Think about that. He was just that type. He would chew the shit out of a sponge, but… TT- And he lived to almost 90. That’s crazy. Now, some of these guys aren’t even going to see 70. TH- The whole job has changed. I laughed, and maybe I shouldn’t have, but I remember a Providence Battalion Chief getting called in a number of years ago, after I was off, and they had had a pretty big fire in Providence. He got called in. They had the building broken up into quadrants. He needed guys, so he found a bunch of them rehabbing, sitting on the wall. He said, “I need ten guys, you ten, you come with me. We’re gonna grab a line.” They said, “Sorry, Chief, we’re on rehab.” He looked at them. “Rehab? What’s rehab?” “Well, we’ve been in there for twenty minutes and now we have to rehab.” We used to fight fires for three or four hours. Rehab was go to the canteen truck, get a drink and a sandwich, and then get your ass back there. TT- Different world, right? We still have some nut-bags that will change bottles and keep going in and out, but you’re right. There’s an awful lot of shepherds (firemen standing curbside with their poles and tools.) There are also guys that don’t want to go in because they’re scared of cancer. TH- Your blood pressure is gonna be high if you’re fighting a fire. As soon as that bell hits and you jump on that truck it’s gonna be high. So when they take your pressure on-scene, of course it’s gonna be high. TT- I’m in-between both sides. I’m old enough to still have contact with the guys in their 50s and 60s, and I’m between the guys in their 20s and 30s, and you can see the generational difference. The guys in their 50s and 60s who recently retired were pretty grossed out about what was happening. TH- It blows your mind. Not to take anything away from these guys, but I don’t think they would’ve been able to handle twenty or thirty years ago. We used to work the same hours as you guys. 5pm to 7am. 730, you headed home. If I didn’t smell like smoke, I’d go right to my other job driving the bus. From there, I’d meet Ray over at Sacred Heart. We did maintenance over there. So you worked from eight o’clock until four, went home, showered, got dressed, then came back here. Like you said, guaranteed, out of the three nights, you’re gonna spend two of them out fighting fires. Especially down here. Here, the 3s, the 4s, you’re gonna get rescue runs, you’re gonna get fires, it’s gonna be busy. I hear guys say, “Oh I had a hell night. I had a rescue run at one o’clock, a car fire at five…” (laughs) You don’t know what a hell night is. You wanna hell night, go to Detroit. They have thousands of fires. Those guys take a beating. Building after building after building…whole neighborhoods. TT- I heard they stopped going in in Detroit. There was no point to risking lives for vacant houses. TH- Not taking anything away from these guys, but a lot of guys take this job for the wrong reasons. The dedication isn’t there. The brotherhood and camaraderie isn’t there. I mean Freddy Fisher was on this job and he was one of the guys who died young. Think it was his kidneys. He was in the process of remodeling his house. Dick Ryan, who was a lieutenant, he worked at Drolet Hardware. He sold Freddy all of his kitchen cabinets. He came into the station one night and he says, “Guys, Freddy’s really doing bad, he’s really sick. He’s not gonna be around too long.” He said he wanted to get a crew together and go over there and rip all of the cabinets out, strip the kitchen right down, and then he’d get a crew to go over and remodel the kitchen for him. There was like twenty-five or thirty guys that showed up there on a Sunday morning. Totaled it. Ripped everything out and threw into dumpsters. I mean it was clean down to the studs, so that the remodel guys could just come in and do the install. I don’t think you’d see that today. TT- No. You might get five guys, you might have ten. TH- Even when we used to have the Fireman’s Ball, at the Le Foyer, we’d have to go back there on a Saturday morning to get the hall cleaned up, because they had weddings there. It had to be cleaned by eleven, twelve o’clock so they could set up for the wedding. At first, we used to have a good crew to go over there, and then all of a sudden it started to dwindle down. There’d be three or four of us that showed up to clean and dump out the beers. That’s when it all started going downhill. TT- I heard that. We’re talking about the late 80s, right? TH- Yes. Just before I got off, basically. TT- Were you born in the city? Did you live here? TH- I lived on Pinegrove, off of Beverage Hill. I got on here in ’67, we bought a house right over there after I got on, and my son, he got hit by a car Memorial Day in 1975, and he was in pretty bad shape. In Intensive Care. He had a fractured skull and everything else, and my wife couldn’t take the sirens all night, going up and down Beverage Hill Avenue anymore. So we moved up to Cumberland in’76. We didn’t move sooner because there was that gray area, where you were supposed to live in the city? That still existed back then. And then they finally loosened up. My only restrictions to her were that the house have gas heat, and was less than a half hour to work. So we moved up to Cumberland, which was a good move. TT- You have any regrets? TH- No. No. I would do it all over again. Like you say, the guys that I worked with, they were great. Not all shifts, you have your good guys and you have your bad guys, But I was fortunate to work with guys who did the job. Like Chickee. He was on a shift with a bunch of good guys. I used to tell Joe Murray, and it used to piss him off, “If you haven’t been on a downtown company, you’re not a firefighter.” “Oh, you guys downtown, this and that…” Anybody that wants to do the job and loves the job, they’re gonna do it. We had a Battalion Chief from Warwick teaching our class. He says to the class, “People out there tell us we’re assholes and we’re stupid.” He says, “Don’t disagree with them.” And everybody looked at him and said what the hell, man? He said, “Stop and think about it. When we pull up to a burning building, everybody’s leaving. We’re going in. So you either gotta be crazy, stupid, an asshole or some combination of all three.” But it’s because it’s a job you want to do. Like when you go to war. You don’t want to be in a war, but you join the service and you do what you have to do. I think it’s sad if guys take the job for any other reason. TT- Kind of like risking your life for all the wrong reasons. TH- Right. TT- Every day you walk in the door could be the last one you ever see. TH- That got proved by that kid with his foot. Who would ever think, you know? Whatever happened, his foot slipped off the rail-- TT- It’s three in the morning, it’s raining, take your pick. TH- Exactly. He didn’t say, “Oh, it’d be a good idea to get my foot crushed in the ladder.” It’s one of those things that just happens. TT- When I was on the ladder, we trained to fly it around with guys on it. You watched your hands, moved your feet. You train for the scenario, right? I get the safety aspect. I do. No one wants to get crippled, so I’m not advocating that, but I can also tell you that if you work with guys long enough, you get to know each other’s skills and limitations. One day on Paul Street, Cabral flew me up to the roof. I didn’t climb a single rung and thought nothing of it. Once I came down, Chief Tanguay just smiled and said, “Old school rail-riding…don’t ever do that again.” But you know what? Even though the hole was cut in like four minutes, it is, it’s different now, especially after what happened to Asher. But even he knows. He doesn’t regret it because the whole reason for our profession being created was pulling people out of windows of burning houses. TH- This job is a combination of wins and losses. A lot of times you go to car accidents and house fires and you get people out, you save them, they live. Bad accidents, bad fires. And then there’s those times, and hopefully they’re very few, when you get somebody out and they haven’t made it, or they end up dying by the time you get to the hospital, it’s sad. And it will affect you, but there’s more better days than there are bad. And if you’ve done the best you can, you can hold your head up, no matter what anybody says. You gotta be thick-skinned. I don’t know where you live, but when I lived in Pawtucket, my neighbor used to say, “What’d you guys do, go to bed all night?” “No,” I says. “We had three car fires and were at the dump all night putting out a fire with rats running all over—” “Rats?” Unfortunately, the citizens see you standing out front of the station and they say, “You guys are doing nothing. You’re probably gonna go inside and play cards.” Well, they don’t understand that you train, you wash your truck, you check your truck, you clean your station—this is your home. You keep it clean, you keep it neat. That’s all you can do. We had guys bitch, “Oh I don’t want to clean the urinals.” Then I’ll do it. I did it in the navy, I can do it here. I do it at home. It’s no big deal. It’s a bathroom. If you keep it clean, it’s not gonna be that hard to clean. And you got somebody here every single day. If it’s washed everyday, how long does it take to clean it? But if you leave it for a month, good luck. It’s gonna be gross. TT- That’s kind of what started to happen around here. The mayor hates us, and he tries to torture us whenever he can. So guys started slipping a little bit, and we were like, “I don’t think so. We live here. We’re not living like this.” TH- Exactly. TT- It doesn’t matter how pissed off you are, it’s not gonna make this place any cleaner. TH- We used to say the same thing. Would we strike? No. Because I couldn’t live with myself if there was a fire and we didn’t roll that truck out the door and somebody died. Because that’s my job. Whether we’re fighting with the city or whatever, no, you work, you put your stuff on the truck and you work. If you want to slack off on doing housework, take care of your truck. If there’s a mechanical problem with it, get it fixed. That’s your job. You’re here to save and protect lives and serve the public. Don’t take it out on the public. Some guys don’t get that. TT- There’s a lot of animosity between the union and City Hall, especially with him closing Engine 3. The 1s are already closed. TH- So stupid, by the way. TT- Seriously. We thought closing Station 1 would be a disaster. The number one fire district in the city, and we haven’t had a true burner over there in a while. When I first got on, there was a first-due fire in the 1s every other week. The city’s gotten so lucky. And for the public, I hope that luck continues. But we all know what’s coming. And once it does, saving money isn’t gonna be too good an argument after people are dead. TH- That’s the land of triple-deckers. Plus high-rises downtown. It’s bound to happen. The response from downtown to there isn’t that long, but it’s long enough, especially if you’re trying to get over the bridges at rush hour. They don’t think it’s ever gonna happen. Did we think Japonica Street was gonna happen? Did we think that Olive Street was gonna happen? TT-They closed Engine 4 a couple of years ago thinking they were gonna do rolling blackouts and save money, and we caught a fire over there almost immediately, a gas fed fire. Needless to say, Engine 4 was re-opened. TH- You can’t…like if you work in a mill you can show how much you’re producing. Like a thousand pieces an hour. So many a day. And that’s making money. You can’t say you’re having X amount of fires because you don’t know. You might go a week or two without one, or maybe even a month, but back in the day that wasn’t the way. There was some type of fire every single day. Somewhere in this city, you had a fire, maybe not a big working fire, but you had one. If you remember correctly—and you’re a roofer—a lot of people were using torches to burn paint off houses. And they would go to lunch. We had a couple of them off Harrison and Main Streets where they would come back from lunch and smell smoke. Same thing happened with that church over in East Providence. They were taking the paint off it and set the whole place on fire. Painters don’t really do that anymore. Mostly scraping and sanding. Buy you never know. People love their candles, especially during the holidays. They used to dip Christmas trees into a vat of fire retardant. We had one at the 3s. From what I understood, and I never got the full story, but the stuff we were dipping into was actually more flammable than the tree. But we were lucky. You never know. People clean out coals from their woodstoves and leave them on a wood deck porch. Bad idea. You can’t tell the city, “We’re gonna have five fires next week.” It doesn’t work like that. TT- You can’t plan a disaster. TH- They don’t get that. We’re the insurance policy for the city. You need insurance for your car and your house, right? It’s a necessary evil. Well, that’s like the fire and police departments. Without them, you have chaos. TT- If the cops can’t arrest it, remove it, or shoot it, we go. On everything. Some lady called us up one night because her neighbor’s AC was making too much noise. People can’t turn off their own water. TH- In Florida, they call our ACs “window-shakers.” I said, “What the hell are you talking about?” Their AC units are usually built into the house. Up north is where people jam ACs into their windows. TT- Back then, you guys didn’t do the EMS runs we do now. Like everything’s been flipped on its head. TH- It started in the 80s. We ran engines only on heart attacks, car accidents, strokes, but now it’s everything. When I came on, we used to call it a bread wagon, because that’s what the truck looked like. Like a big van. With a stretcher. Costigan ambulance did all of the transports. Once the contract with Costigans ran out, we started rolling engines on everything. There was only one rescue until the 80s, early 80s. Now they have four rescues. TT- I’m sure Rescue 5 will be here in the next few years. We’re doing 17,000 runs a year. TH- Is Fire Alarm civilian? TT- Yes. TH- Any retired firemen in there? TT- A couple. Arty Mintsmenn is in there. TH- Oh boy (laughs) Arty? He’s a character. TT- You got that right. TH- Nobody likes Fire Alarm. But some guys don’t like driving the ladder either. Back then it was a tiller. So some guys would be like, “I’ll take the rescue if you drive the ladder.” Seriously? We had Joe Gildea, who used to drive tractor-trailers, so I wasn’t worried about it. Joe was so good that the tiller guy wouldn’t even have to touch the wheel. He drove that whole truck like a tractor-trailer. If he was making a righthand turn, you had to turn your wheel left. It was opposing steering. Then you had to come back. If you swung that wheel three times you had to swing it back three times or you were gonna hit something. Joe was a master. He used to tell me, “when I get ready to back in, don’t even touch the wheel.” (laughs) He would back it in and I wouldn’t have to do a thing. We all took turns in the Alarm Room, but no one liked it. Back then it was the old plug type switchboard. Then they got more modern. Back then, there wasn’t any night-mode either (night-mode goes from 10 pm to 8am. Individual stations will be toned out for runs instead of waking up the whole department for nothing.) So when I would go to the 6s on overtime, I’d get there in the morning and ask how their night was. “Oh, Jesus Christ, downtown went out three times and we had to listen to them (on the radio).” (laughs) You’re part of the Pawtucket Fire Department, it means you know they’re out, so if they call for help, you’re going. But they used to get all pissed off. The contract doesn’t say anything about being able to sleep all night. Remember that story about the murdered woman? Frank Boisclair and I had that run. It ended up being a Pawtucket cop’s grandmother. And they never found the killer. I was retired and Frank was retired. We got letters from the department that we had to go to court years later for this murder. So we came down here and had to find the report and read it. The brother of the kid who did the murder, gave him up because he got arrested for something else. He got popped in Providence, so the Providence cops called the Pawtucket PD and told them what they had. Now this is seventeen years later. Frank and I had to go to court, like three or four days, and they finally made a deal. Guess they weren’t too close as brothers. TT- I’d say not. Can you think of anything else you’d like to say? TH- (he takes one more look around the bunkroom of Station 2 where he was stationed for 21 years.) No, I think I’m good.
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AuthorTom Trabulsi was born in the Midwest, attended high school in Rhode Island, and graduated from Boston University with a degree in American History. He was a bike courier in Boston and New York City, worked construction in the mountain west and east coast, and is currently a firefighter in a northeast city. Archives
August 2022
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