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Don Smith went into a burning apartment without any of his usual firefighting gear — no heavy coat or pants, no boots, helmet, flash hood or air supply.
The district fire chief was wearing only his uniform dress shirt and pants. But there was a little girl missing, trapped in a smoke-filled apartment.
“You do what you have to do,” he said later.
He went straight in.
Smith was the only firefighter at the burning apartment on Caldwell Avenue Saturday, because the crews from his station were fighting another fire. Trucks from a station farther away hadn’t arrived yet.
Four times he went into the smoke. Three times it drove him back.
The fourth time he emerged with a two-year-old girl named Neva, who was unconscious and not breathing.
But on Wednesday, thanks to his rescue, she was released from the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.
Smith retires at the end of this month, when he turns 60. He’ll step down with extra good wishes from all around.
There were three fires in two hours Saturday, and the trucks from Smith’s station at Carling and Kirkwood avenues were at one of them. That left Smith and his boss, acting platoon chief Marc Asselin, alone in the station. Smith hopped in their Chevy Tahoe and sped south to the Caldwell Avenue fire.
The dispatch centre was feeding him information as he drove. “It was getting worse and worse,” Smith said.
He knew the first pumper was going to be delayed, and when he arrived he saw people outside the building, waving frantically for help.
He ran to them.
“They were asking me for a fire axe, because they said (people) were trapped inside and we needed to break down the door.”
His Tahoe had no axe, so he ran up the stairs just as one little boy rescued from the apartment was being carried out. The neighbours had managed to bash open the locked apartment door with a fire extinguisher.
But the boy’s twin sister was still missing.
“There were already people inside searching for the missing child,” Smith said. The children’s mother “was hysterical — she kept yelling, ‘My baby! My baby!'”
Smith did have protective gear, but it was all in his truck.
“If I had taken time to suit up — because it does take time to do that properly — it wouldn’t have been good for the child, let’s put it that way. It would have taken a good minute or minute and a half that we didn’t have.”
So in he went wearing his street clothes.
“Thick smoke down to the floor,” he recalls. It was “warm, but I’ve been in hotter.”
He searched as far as he could before the smoke drove him back to the hall, where he coughed and threw up until he refilled his lungs with clean air. The neighbours were going in and out too. Some of them were also vomiting.
In all, he thinks he entered the apartment four times.
“On the fourth time in, there was another gentleman that had gone in just a few seconds before I did. Each time I went I was getting in deeper and deeper. This gentleman had got deeper than I had, and then I heard him say, ‘I’ve got her!’
“To me it looked like he was getting a little wobbly, so he handed the child off to me and we both got out of the unit. I ran down the stairs,” still carrying Neva.
He found a flat area outside where the paramedics could reach them fast.
“So we get outside and the mom is beside me, screaming like crazy, and I start to assess the child, hacking and coughing the whole time.”
The girl wasn’t breathing. Smith went to work blowing air into her tiny lungs — at a time when he could barely draw a breath without coughing.
“You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” he said again. He forced himself to focus.
“It seemed like it was forever, but it was probably only 30 or 45 seconds and the child started breathing spontaneously … It’s a very good sign when they come back so quickly.
The first fire truck arrived as she was recovering outside.
Smith couldn’t stop praising the civilians who went in, among them Samir Al-Rubaiy, who told the Citizen about the experience earlier this week.
“I’ve been a firefighter for 36½ years … The true heroes are the civilians. I’m trained, I knew what to expect, I know what the conditions are like in there … These civilians, all they’ve ever seen about fires is in the movies and on TV, where the firefighters can walk in without any protection and see everything.”
He noted that the neighbours went into the apartment before he arrived and had more smoke exposure, but kept going back.
He wants Ottawa Fire to recognize the rescuers’ courage. “They did an outstanding job.”
As he searched, the thought ran through his mind that they might not find the missing girl in time.
“That’s a firefighter’s worst fear, that despite your best efforts it’s not going to happen.”
He deflects a lot of the praise to “the team” — from the many firefighters at the scene to dispatchers to paramedics to OC Transpo, which sent buses to keep the evacuated residents warm, and the Salvation Army and Red Cross.
Smith has three shifts left. He’s on vacation for now, then works three 24-hour shifts beginning Christmas Day.
He went back to the fire station on Tuesday, and was thrilled by the reaction — phone calls, emails, handshakes (“my hand is sore,” he says) and even a visit from someone who dropped into his home east of Ottawa.
He and his wife, Andrée, will likely drive across Canada in retirement. They may go on a cruise, having taken one to Alaska. The list of home repairs needs attention too.
Smith worked at a fire where four children died in the 1980s and says “that haunts you for life.” The bad memories still flash back.
He had nightmares after Saturday’s Caldwell fire too, for two nights — until he went to the hospital and visited the family. He slept well that night.
tspears@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1
查看原文...
The district fire chief was wearing only his uniform dress shirt and pants. But there was a little girl missing, trapped in a smoke-filled apartment.
“You do what you have to do,” he said later.
He went straight in.
Smith was the only firefighter at the burning apartment on Caldwell Avenue Saturday, because the crews from his station were fighting another fire. Trucks from a station farther away hadn’t arrived yet.
Four times he went into the smoke. Three times it drove him back.
The fourth time he emerged with a two-year-old girl named Neva, who was unconscious and not breathing.
But on Wednesday, thanks to his rescue, she was released from the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.
Smith retires at the end of this month, when he turns 60. He’ll step down with extra good wishes from all around.
There were three fires in two hours Saturday, and the trucks from Smith’s station at Carling and Kirkwood avenues were at one of them. That left Smith and his boss, acting platoon chief Marc Asselin, alone in the station. Smith hopped in their Chevy Tahoe and sped south to the Caldwell Avenue fire.
The dispatch centre was feeding him information as he drove. “It was getting worse and worse,” Smith said.
He knew the first pumper was going to be delayed, and when he arrived he saw people outside the building, waving frantically for help.
He ran to them.
“They were asking me for a fire axe, because they said (people) were trapped inside and we needed to break down the door.”
His Tahoe had no axe, so he ran up the stairs just as one little boy rescued from the apartment was being carried out. The neighbours had managed to bash open the locked apartment door with a fire extinguisher.
But the boy’s twin sister was still missing.
“There were already people inside searching for the missing child,” Smith said. The children’s mother “was hysterical — she kept yelling, ‘My baby! My baby!'”
Smith did have protective gear, but it was all in his truck.
“If I had taken time to suit up — because it does take time to do that properly — it wouldn’t have been good for the child, let’s put it that way. It would have taken a good minute or minute and a half that we didn’t have.”
So in he went wearing his street clothes.
“Thick smoke down to the floor,” he recalls. It was “warm, but I’ve been in hotter.”
He searched as far as he could before the smoke drove him back to the hall, where he coughed and threw up until he refilled his lungs with clean air. The neighbours were going in and out too. Some of them were also vomiting.
In all, he thinks he entered the apartment four times.
“On the fourth time in, there was another gentleman that had gone in just a few seconds before I did. Each time I went I was getting in deeper and deeper. This gentleman had got deeper than I had, and then I heard him say, ‘I’ve got her!’
“To me it looked like he was getting a little wobbly, so he handed the child off to me and we both got out of the unit. I ran down the stairs,” still carrying Neva.
He found a flat area outside where the paramedics could reach them fast.
“So we get outside and the mom is beside me, screaming like crazy, and I start to assess the child, hacking and coughing the whole time.”
The girl wasn’t breathing. Smith went to work blowing air into her tiny lungs — at a time when he could barely draw a breath without coughing.
“You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” he said again. He forced himself to focus.
“It seemed like it was forever, but it was probably only 30 or 45 seconds and the child started breathing spontaneously … It’s a very good sign when they come back so quickly.
The first fire truck arrived as she was recovering outside.
Smith couldn’t stop praising the civilians who went in, among them Samir Al-Rubaiy, who told the Citizen about the experience earlier this week.
“I’ve been a firefighter for 36½ years … The true heroes are the civilians. I’m trained, I knew what to expect, I know what the conditions are like in there … These civilians, all they’ve ever seen about fires is in the movies and on TV, where the firefighters can walk in without any protection and see everything.”
He noted that the neighbours went into the apartment before he arrived and had more smoke exposure, but kept going back.
He wants Ottawa Fire to recognize the rescuers’ courage. “They did an outstanding job.”
As he searched, the thought ran through his mind that they might not find the missing girl in time.
“That’s a firefighter’s worst fear, that despite your best efforts it’s not going to happen.”
He deflects a lot of the praise to “the team” — from the many firefighters at the scene to dispatchers to paramedics to OC Transpo, which sent buses to keep the evacuated residents warm, and the Salvation Army and Red Cross.
Smith has three shifts left. He’s on vacation for now, then works three 24-hour shifts beginning Christmas Day.
He went back to the fire station on Tuesday, and was thrilled by the reaction — phone calls, emails, handshakes (“my hand is sore,” he says) and even a visit from someone who dropped into his home east of Ottawa.
He and his wife, Andrée, will likely drive across Canada in retirement. They may go on a cruise, having taken one to Alaska. The list of home repairs needs attention too.
Smith worked at a fire where four children died in the 1980s and says “that haunts you for life.” The bad memories still flash back.
He had nightmares after Saturday’s Caldwell fire too, for two nights — until he went to the hospital and visited the family. He slept well that night.
tspears@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1
查看原文...
