Phoenix Fire Department
Chief Alan Brunacini
Personnel: 1,153 career
firefighters, 268 civilians
Apparatus: 48 engine companies,
11 ladder companies
Population: 1.1 million
Area: 469.33 square miles
Oct. 25, 1996, promised to be a busy day in downtown Phoenix. Presidential candidate Bob Dole was going to be in town making a speech and all the headaches of such an event, such as motorcades, blocked-off streets and large crowds, were already going to be a reality. Before Dole even started his speech, however, things got hot.
A few minutes before 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the Phoenix Fire Department alarm room started receiving calls concerning smoke in a warehouse area a few blocks away from the Dole campaign event. Engines 2 and 8 and Ladder 1 were dispatched.
"When we turned on Buchanan from 1st Street, we could see the fire already in one of the warehouses about mid-block," said Captain Scott Grane on Engine 2. "We laid a supply line and set up a stang to keep fire from spreading to the east. Ladder 1 pulled in behind us. They started cutting roll-up doors."
"When we pulled up," said Captain Dave Ware of Ladder 1, "it was a lazy smoke coming out of there and the wind didn't really seem to be blowing anything like the thirty to forty mile per hour gusts later. We forced entry into overhead doors. It was fully involved. It was time to go defensive."
Battalion Chief Pete Hobel, the incident commander, circled the block to take a look. "There was smoke showing from the building. No fire. One warehouse was on fire with a separation to the next exposure of about 40-50 feet. At one time, that open area had been a warehouse and now it was just all boxes stacked in the area. It looked like one warehouse fire we could cut off."
Photo by Paul Albertson A Phoenix firefighter stands in amazement. The fireload consisted of paper, half-empty drums of unknown substances, cardboard and numerous other combustibles.
A first alarm was called for and the first order of business was to keep the fire from spreading east to other warehouses. The hazards and complications were already mounting up. The fireload consisted of paper, half-empty drums of unknown substances, cardboard and numerous other combustibles. The warehouses were mostly built of 70-year-old red brick, lime mortar and heavy timber. Then it got worse.
"At that point," Captain Dave Ware said, "it seemed like the wind turned from just a light breeze to probably a 30-40 mile-per-hour wind."
Second-alarm units were on their way even as the situation continued to get worse. "There was a big problem from an aerial perspective with regard to power lines," said Ware, "because that's an old warehouse district, industrial area; there's a lot of power lines. That really didn't allow us a lot of good vantage points. Add fire to those poles and lines and it made things more interesting when they began to arc."
Units were being assigned as soon as they showed up in staging. The wind seemed to be getting stronger. Unfortunately, Engine 5 got caught in the way of the fast-moving fire.
"We got there six to seven minutes into the fire," said Captain Joe Ducote of Engine 5. "The only fire at the time was in the original building. We laid northbound on 1st Street, mid-block, with a straight shot down the alley with a stang gun. The wind started picking up. Once the fire hit the cardboard boxes, all hell broke loose. It was a fire tornado that came ripping up the alley probably as fast as you can run.
"When we retreated, the plug person was just coming back to the truck. We had a couple of power lines come down which made it difficult to get the truck out. Once the power had been cut off to that grid, we made efforts to get to the truck. Don Llona had already driven it where no fire was impinging on it. Jack Dale did an excellent job hitting sprinklers, which I believe saved the truck."
A tractor-trailer truck 25 feet away burned to the ground. Three blocks away, the politicians were giving their speeches as best as they could. All of them had to make reference to the monster of smoke growing just to the south of them.
"We attempted to stay ahead of the fire," said Grane, "which was pretty difficult in the position we were in. At one point, Captain Ware decided Ladder 1 had become an exposure and we would have to reposition it. We couldn't get into it (the fire area) and work lines between stacks and we couldn't reach deep enough into the paper stacks to be effective, between the wind and the arrangement, there was really no way we could stop the fire from spreading east."
Photo by Jack Jordan Engine 5 had a close call and sustained burns, blisters and meltings.
The incident quickly became a four-alarm fire.
"We had a lot of things happen that can make a fire difficult to manage," said Hobel. "The wind was 40 to 50 miles per hour. When the wind picked up, the fire vented and carried everywhere. The outside storage got going and carried to other buildings. We had building collapse. There were power lines down. Crews had to take different routes to get into the fire and this affected response. We had fire trucks exposed to fire and damaged. There were multiple buildings on fire and we had fire in a large geographic area.
"For 45 minutes to an hour, we kept hearing more buildings were burning or something else bad was happening. We didn't get a whole lot of good news for a long time in that command van."
Evacuation of buildings east of the fire was somewhat frantic. Citizens were doing what they could with garden hoses against spot fires started by burning, blowing debris. Many held out as long as they could but were soon overwhelmed by the firestorm coming their way.
"At one point, I remember looking down at 1st Street and Buchanan," said Ware. "Engine 21 was there and there was a big power line laying on top of it. At that point, I thought, "As long as we don't get anybody killed here, if we can stop it at 7th Street, I'd be happy. We got the stick up and started to hit the cardboard boxes and it just went right by us. If we'd had all the gpm's in the world, we weren't going to stop it. It seemed like it went by us like we weren't even there."
As the strong winds pushed the raging fire east, there were plenty of other reports which made it all that much more exciting. Command received information about fuel tanks and forklifts with propane tanks in the path of the flames. The wind was carrying burning debris high and fast to other warehouses two and three blocks away. Firefighters trying to make a stop, first at 1st Street and then at 2nd Street continually had to look behind them to see if another building had caught fire.
"Our biggest problem was fire load and wind conditions," said Division Chief Mike Westfall, who commanded the south sector. "We had wires running and snapping all the way across the area that we wanted to enter so it was a tough situation. We had ladder pipes, stangs and monitors but they weren't doing a whole lot of good because of the wind conditions. It was just blowing the water back at us."
Hard, aggressive firefighting managed to save a lot of buildings and, finally, the Phoenix firefighters got the conflagration under control after approximately two hours.
"My responsibility was to cut the fire off from the east," said Battalion Chief Kevin Riley, commander of the east sector. "I was hoping I'd get that thing cut off before it got to 1st Street. By the time I got to 1st Street, it was already halfway to 2nd Street. We had a large volume of fire that had already lapped over 1st Street. The key tactical position was the space between two warehouse buildings on 2nd Street. We set up Ladder 4 there. It was an aggressive spot. There was just a ton of fire and embers and debris blowing over 2nd Street into 3rd Street. I think that's where we made a dramatic stop."
"The aggressiveness of our firefighters and officers really stands out," said Assistant Chief Dennis Compton. "We had two or three instances where companies were on their way to assigned positions only to come across another building that was burning east of the fire and they took the initiative to deal with that situation they had encountered. Imminent hazard situations is covered in our (incident management) system. It was impossible for command to be aware of all situations. Companies that self-assigned did a good job of letting command know what they were doing."
Dole was able to give his speech with no problems. But, no matter what he said, it wasn't as hot and fiery as what was going on just a few blocks away.
Tim Simmons has been with the Phoenix Fire Department for 12 years and currently is assigned to the Division of Corporate Communications. He is also a volunteer captain in the Nogales, Mexico, Fire Department.
