Exclusive: DE Firefighter Recounts Harrowing Mayday
Christopher Colpo's breath burned as he clung to a handline about a foot above a basement quickly filling with flames.
Even though he was wedged in a hole by debris following a kitchen floor collapse during a late October residential blaze, the Camden-Wyoming, DE, Fire Company firefighter didn't dare reach for his radio for fear he would drop into the inferno below. He realized his chances of escaping unscathed—or at all—were disappearing as rapidly as the temperature was rising.
All Colpo could do was scream mayday and hold on for dear life.
"I was in this dark hole that was getting hot and getting all orange, and I was able to hear everything, but I wasn't able to react because I was pinned," the 12-year veteran firefighter told Firehouse.com in a recent interview. "As soon as I ran out of breath from screaming, I came to the conclusion that I was screwed."
Seconds burn away at an excruciating, seemingly eternal pace during a mayday event, and just as he reached the point where he believed he couldn't last any longer, Colpo was pulled out of the hole and the burning house.
"(Debris) was falling on me. It was getting hotter. You could see the glow," he said. "By this time, I felt like I was down there for 20 minutes. In reality, it was probably more like two minutes."
"I'll never forget the look in his eyes, the whites of his eyes. I'm never going to forget that for the rest of my life," said Deputy Chief Jeff Brown, who was lowered down into the hole by his legs to help save Colpo. "I'm thinking his thoughts are, 'I'm going to die. I'm not going to make it. Am I getting out of here? Am I going to see outside? Am I going home" That's the thoughts I was pulling from him just looking in his eyes and I'm never going to unsee that."
'A fireman's fire'
Colpo's mayday came as Camden-Wyoming was assisting the Magnolia Fire Company during a two-story, single-family residential fire Oct. 25. Although he was on ambulance duty that day, Colpo was helping his fellow firefighters to put out the blaze.
He had entered the burning home along with three other crew members, inching their way inside.
"It was 10 out of 10 hot, fire blowing over our heads. It was a fireman's fire," Colpo said.
When they reached the kitchen, they found it was lit off, as well as the living room, and the fire was venting out the back door. The firefighters then began a floor-to-ceiling attack of the flames in the kitchen.
That's when the sky started falling.
"Something fell on us from above. I'm not sure what it was. We still can't figure it out, if it was part of the ceiling," Colpo said.
The falling debris knocked off the helmets of Colpo and the lead firefighter. Colpo quickly found his helmet, but the other firefighter couldn't locate his and needed to head back out to get another. Making sure he still had a backup firefighter, Colpo went to a knee and continued dousing the flames.
That's when the ground opened up.
"You know when you hear a jet fly over, you feel that rumble? Well, I felt like this rumble underneath me. ... And then all of a sudden, in a split second, the floor just goes out from underneath me—just collapses—on, like, an angle, and I slide down it kinda like a slide.
"I remember turning on my stomach and just grabbing the handline because the handline was sliding with me. That's kinda what saved my life, as well, because I was hanging onto the line like a rope. I remember going through the hole, swinging there, between the first floor and the basement."
As he began trying to pull himself up, kitchen cabinets and other debris began falling on him, wedging him in the hole. And once the floor opened up, the fire began spreading to the basement, Colpo believes.
"That's when my adrenaline kicked in, and I started freaking out, because (the debris) pinned my arms to my side, so I couldn't get to the radio," he said. "I couldn't call the mayday, so at the top of my lungs, I was screaming for help, screaming, 'Mayday, mayday, mayday!' But no one could hear me."
Except Brown and Fire Chief Tom Rigsby.
'An experience we're never going to forget'
When the two heard Colpo's shouts, the deputy chief transmitted a mayday twice until he heard the tones.
"For me, it felt like an eternity. It usually does when you're stuck in those situations," said Brown, echoing Colpo's sense of slowing time.
With the mayday called, the two department officers, along with career firefighter Frank Fitzgerald, went to work. Brown went to the edge of the hole, and Rigsby and Fitzgerald held his legs as they lowered him in.
"I would probably say from my mid-thigh up was down in this hole, (and I was) talking to Chris," Brown said. "First thing I said was, 'Who is this?' And all I could hear was, 'Colpo.'"
Although Brown could hear the trapped firefighter, he couldn't see him. The deputy chief began clapping and telling Colpo to move toward him before clearing away some large debris and grabbing the firefighter's right hand.
I came up with a hand. That's all visibility wise I could see at the time," Brown said. "Before I grabbed his hand, I couldn't tell how far he was from me. It sounded like he was 15 or 20 feet away, but he may have been closer. I couldn't see him."
"I told him to climb me, use me, do what you need to to get out of the hole," he added.
Eventually, Brown was able to secure a strong grip on Colpo's arm and pack, pulling him about three-quarters of the way out of the hole. Rigsby and Fitzgerald then helped pull Colpo out the rest of the way, and all four escaped the burning house.
"It was definitely a first for me, a first for the fire chief and a first for Frank Fitzgerald," Brown said of the rescue. "It's an experience we're never going to forget."
Passing along the knowledge
Outside of some elevated vital signs, Colpo escaped relatively uninjured. He signed a release declining further medical attention, but instead of going home he remained at the scene.
"After everything was under control, I wanted to see what happened," Colpo said. "I didn't want to leave the fire scene right away."
"I keep telling everybody, firefighting is my only job," he added. "I gave up college to pursue a firefighting career, so that's the only thing I knew, so I didn't want this to be a traumatic injury, mentally causing me not to want to be in a firefight. So the best thing I could do was to bite the dog that bit you."
That outlook impressed Brown.
"It kinda made me feel good he came back and wanted to learn from this. ... And to me, that makes him a good person," he said.
Colpo called the mayday "a 100 percent freak accident," and Brown said the fire appears to have started in the kitchen—not the basement—but they're still waiting for the findings of the fire marshal. Even so, both firefighters plan to pass along the knowledge they gained in an effort "to use this as a positive thing ... (and) take this back and teach the young guys," as Colpo put it.
"As far as the learning experience, I'm going to share this until I'm blue in the face," Brown said. "Be aware of your conditions. Learn your building construction. Do your preplans. Take your rapid intervention training. Take your firefighter self-survival training. Anything you can do for some reason if you were put into this situation you can trigger that training and fall back to it and go, 'I need to go to work.' It's definitely going to be used as a training aspect. One thing I try to tell everyone is that nobody's perfect and there's always room to learn. Nobody knows it all."
In fact, Colpo credits the training of his fellow firefighters for the reason he's alive to talk about the experience.
"We train constantly," he said. "We have a statewide mayday policy. We have mayday training. We drill it, drill it, drill it. ... And because of how we drill it and are reminded every day about it, boom, I was freed in five minutes because everybody didn't think twice about anything. It was all second nature to these people."
"As soon as I heard (Colpo's) voice, inside my head, the only thing I was telling myself was, 'You've got this. You know what to do.' That's why it was second nature," Brown added. "I reached for my radio and called out a mayday. Then after that, I just went down the list of everything we're taught. Who are you? What unit are you from? ... The only outcome I was worried about was we were getting him out and the three of us were coming with him. That's the only thing at the time I was worried about."
And Colpo is thankful for that.
"When Deputy Chief Jeff Brown pulled me out of the fire, I will always be in debt to him," he said. "Knowing someone saved my life, it's kind of a crazy feeling. It's kinda surreal. It wasn't like they put me on a backboard and pulled me out. No, he threw himself in the hole with the basement on fire to rip me out. When I say he saved my life, he saved my life."