FIRE FUELS QUESTIONS ABOUT, RESIDENTS', FD'S RESPONSE

By Juan Montoya
The call to 911 that a house was on fire at 1712 Stanford came in at exactly 1:30:59 a.m. last Thursday according to the Fire Incident Table from the Brownsville Fire Department Fire Marshall's Office.
After the dispatcher got the particulars from the caller (a neighbor) the call went out ot the Fire Department at 1:31:45 a.m.
When the call came in, according to neighbors, the fire was in full blaze and the building was engulfed. Apparently, the inhabitants and some of the neighbors tried to use their house hoses to try to put out the fire. When it became apparent they couldn't,  the call went out to 911.
The first ones to get there – as usual – were units of the Brownsville Police Department, then EMS, and then the fire engine (#4).
By the time the Fire Engine 4 – from Station 4 barely two and one-half blocks away on Old Alice Road – it was 1:36:28 – just within the standard five minutes required by the International Fire Chiefs rules.
Yet, the proximity of the station to the fire has made some residents of the neighborhood  question the promptness of the FD response.
"When the fire engine got there the building was already fully engulfed and the fire was already venting through the roof," said a retired firefighter who lives nearby. "The time that the residents took to try to put out the fire themselves probably made matters worse. This was a hot fire. There was no way that they could have put out that fire with house hoses."
Still, this didn't stop some of the neighbors from loudly complaining that it seemed like the firefighters took an eternity to reach the house.
"It seems like they took a half hour to get here," said one of the neighbors whose house was saved by the firefighters who sprayed her home to stop the fire from spreading.
"That's a typical response," said the firefighter wryly. "If it's not your house that's on fire, you can just sit back and watch and enjoy the spectacle.When it's your property that's involved, it seems like the firefighters are taking forever."
In fact, when the firefighters got there, both houses on either side were in danger of igniting because of their proximity to the flames. He said some fo the firefighters running the hoses from the hydrants down the street tripped over the mangled hoses from the houses that were left on the ground in the futile attempt to douse the flames with them.
When Fire Station 4 firefighters arrived they reported using 300 feet of 13/4-inch fire hose. Engine company 2 and 6 also responded to the fire call.
"When firefighters get to a house fire and there's nothing to be done about the structure, their concern immediately becomes to make sure that the homes nearby don;t catch fire, too," said the retired bombero. "In this case, some of the paint had already begun peeling from one and a car parked in the carport received some damage from the heat."
The fire was so hot that after firefighters doused the wall of a home next to the house, they moved out the crew and as they had walked away, the brick wall on the side where they had been standing collapsed.
"They were lucky that no one was there when it fell," said neighbor. "The lady who lived there had escaped the fire through then back door and she was not hurt either."
Could the firefighters at Station #4 have responded faster to the call?
Probably, since the distance from the station to the fire was only two and one-half blocks and it took them about five minutes to get there. But when the residents and neighbors tried to put out the fire themselves and allowed the fire reached full blaze before calling 911, it gave the flames time to engulf the structure.
"When you have a fire, call the 911 right away," said the retired firefighter. "A puny hose from a spigot on teh side of a house is no match for a full-fledged fire. We're lucky no one was hurt.
Loss of the house was declared total with a value of $90.000. The report states that the home was insured.