Not all the stories guys tell me are recorded. Occasionally, someone will tell me a story while I’m packing up my equipment or even as I leave. These stories don’t make it into the oral history simply because they’re not recorded. They are just part of my memory. The only exception is a story Chief Partridge told me as I was leaving. It was such an unusual tale that when I got home, I type it up and sent him a copy to confirm my memory. But what about the others I was told over the years? Can’t publish them because I can’t verify how accurate my memory is (some of the story tellers have since passed away). With that in mind, I thought I’d share one of the better ones that illustrate how human the NFD is (deleting all names mentioned when originally told to me.)

We all know that firefighters get along famously. . . Well maybe not. There was more than one emergency transfer in the five years I was in the Union office just to avoid a fist fight and charges. It had nothing to do with competence on the fire ground or knowledge of firefighting. It was simply personalities.

What about chief officers? They each have their own area of responsibility and only interact at the Deputy’s quarters or at multiples. No need for transfers, a good deputy can keep a lid on it. But on a fire scene the tensions can show up in unexpected ways.

Back in 1980, at a multiple alarm fire in a large manufacturing plant, the Deputy was talking with one of the Battalion Chiefs when a second chief walked up. The two BCs didn’t play well with each other and the Deputy was well aware of it. The second BC couldn’t help but throw a verbal jab at the chief speaking with the Deputy. “My fire’s out, what about yours?” This brought a defensive retort from the first chief followed by a challenge. “If you’re so good then you put it out.”

“I get to pick my company?”

The second chief then marched over to the Bell & Siren truck, approached a particular young company and snapped, “Cap, get your guys together and come with me.” They saw he was obviously not happy and wondered what was going on. The chief marched into the building, heading towards the back where the roof had collapsed into the top floor. Lines had been stretched to the area, so all the company had to do was pick up one of the lines left behind by companies taking a blow and stretch it to the area the chief wanted.

They stretched the line to the edge of the collapsed zone with the chief leading the way, stopping about 20 feet from the buried fire. The chief then directed the operation, obviously determined to darked down the fire buried under the roof. The company members could see that getting this fire knocked down meant something more to the chief than just getting back to quarters. As they began hitting the metal elements of the roof with the stream, more of the structure came down. The chief didn’t flinch.

After about fifteen or twenty minutes, the visible flames were extinguished, but all knew this was going to be one of those fire-watch situations until demolition came in and tore apart that section of the building. That didn’t matter to the chief. He was content that there was no visible fire. After thanking the men, he walked back to the Deputy to gloat in front of his rival, leaving the men involved clueless until the Deputy told me the story as I was leaving. I then passed the story on to them.

One other point, at no time were members placed in an untenable position. There was no extraordinary effort that could only be done by a specially trained company. It was just ordinary firefighting and of course, personalities.