laughed at once. Strangers slapped one another on the back, with
glistening faces, shook hands, and behaved generally like men gone
suddenly mad. Women wept in the street. The driver of a car stalled in the
crowd, who had stood through it all speechless, clutching the reins,
whipped his horses into a gallop, and drove away yelling like a Comanche,
to relieve his feelings. The boy and his rescuer were carried across the
street without any one knowing how. Policemen forgot their dignity, and
shouted with the rest. Fire, peril, terror, and loss were alike forgotten
in the one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin.
Fireman John Binns was made captain of his crew, and the Bennett medal was
pinned on his coat on the next parade-day. The burning of the St. George
Flats was the first opportunity New York had of witnessing a rescue with
the scaling-ladders that form such an essential part of the equipment of
the fire-fighters to-day. Since then there have been many such. In the
company in which John Binns was a private of the second grade, two others
to-day bear the medal for brave deeds: the foreman, Daniel J. Meagher, and
Private Martin M. Coleman, whose name has been seven times inscribed on
the roll of honor for twice that number of rescues, any one of which
stamped him as a man among men, a real hero. And Hook-and-Ladder No. 3 is
not specially distinguished among the fire-crews of the metropolis for
daring and courage. New-Yorkers are justly proud of their firemen. Take it
all in all, there is not, I think, to be found anywhere a body of men as
fearless, as brave, and as efficient as the Fire Brigade of New York. I
have known it well for twenty years, and I speak from a personal
acquaintance with very many of its men, and from a professional knowledge
of more daring feats, more hairbreadth escapes, and more brilliant work,
than could well be recorded between the covers of this book.
Indeed, it is hard, in recording any, to make a choice, and to avoid
giving the impression that recklessness is a chief quality in the
fireman's make-up. That would not be true. His life is too full of real
peril for him to expose it recklessly--that is to say, needlessly. From
the time when he leaves his quarters in answer to an alarm until he
returns, he takes a risk that may at any moment set him face to face with
death in its most cruel form. He needs nothing so much as a clear head;
and nothing is prized so highly, nothing puts him so surely in the line of
promotion; for as he advances in rank and responsibility, the lives of
others, as well as his own, come to depend on his judgment. The act of
conspicuous daring which the world applauds is oftenest to the fireman a
matter of simple duty that had to be done in that way because there was no
other. Nor is it always, or even usually, the hardest duty, as he sees
it. It came easy to him because he is an athlete trained to do just such
things, and because once for all it is easier to risk one's life in the
open, in the sight of one's fellows, than to face death alone, caught like
a rat in a trap. That is the real peril which he knows too well; but of
that the public hears only when he has fought his last fight, and lost.
How literally our every-day security--of which we think, if we think of it
at all, as a mere matter of course--is built upon the supreme sacrifice of
these devoted men, we realize at long intervals, when a disaster occurs
such as the one in which Chief Bresnan and Foreman Rooney[2] lost their
lives three years ago. They were crushed to death under the great
water-tank in a Twenty-fourth street factory that was on fire. Its
supports had been burned away. An examination that was then made of the
water-tanks in the city discovered eight thousand that were either wholly
unsupported, except by the roof-beams, or propped on timbers, and
therefore a direct menace, not only to the firemen when they were called
there, but daily to those living under them. It is not pleasant to add
that the department's just demand for a law that should compel landlords
either to build tanks on the wall or on iron supports has not been heeded
yet; but that is, unhappily, an old story.
[2] Rooney wore the Bennett medal for saving the life of a woman at
the disastrous fire in the old "World" building, on January 31, 1882.
The ladder upon which he stood was too short. Riding upon the topmost
rung, he bade the woman jump, and caught and held her as she fell.
Seventeen years ago the collapse of a Broadway building during a fire
convinced the community that stone pillars were unsafe as supports. The
fire was in the basement, and the firemen had turned the hose on. When the
water struck the hot granite columns, they cracked and fell, and the
building fell with them. There were upon the roof at the time a dozen men
of the crew of Truck Company No. 1, chopping holes for smoke-vents. The
majority clung to the parapet, and hung there till rescued. Two went down
into the furnace from which the flames shot up twenty feet when the roof
broke. One, Fireman Thomas J. Dougherty, was a wearer of the Bennett
medal, too. His foreman answers on parade-day, when his name is called,
that he "died on the field of duty." These, at all events, did not die in
vain. Stone columns are not now used as supports for buildings in New
York.
So one might go on quoting the perils of the firemen as so many steps
forward for the better protection of the rest of us. It was the burning of
the St. George Flats, and more recently of the Manhattan Bank, in which a
dozen men were disabled, that stamped the average fire-proof construction
as faulty and largely delusive. One might even go further, and say that
the fireman's risk increases in the ratio of our progress or convenience.
The water-tanks came with the very high buildings, which in themselves
offer problems to the fire-fighters that have not yet been solved. The
very air-shafts that were hailed as the first advance in tenement-house
building added enormously to the fireman's work and risk, as well as to
the risk of every one dwelling under their roofs, by acting as so many
huge chimneys that carried the fire to the windows opening upon them in
every story. More than half of all the fires in New York occur in
tenement-houses. When the Tenement-House Commission of 1894 sat in this
city, considering means of making them safer and better, it received the
most practical help and advice from the firemen, especially from Chief
Bresnan, whose death occurred only a few days after he had testified as a
witness. The recommendations upon which he insisted are now part of the
general tenement-house law.
Chief Bresnan died leading his men against the enemy. In the Fire
Department the battalion chief leads; he does not direct operations from a
safe position in the rear. Perhaps this is one of the secrets of the
indomitable spirit of his men. Whatever hardships they have to endure, his
is the first and the biggest share. Next in line comes the captain, or
foreman, as he is called. Of the six who were caught in the fatal trap of
the water-tank, four hewed their way out with axes through an intervening
partition. They were of the ranks. The two who were killed were the chief
and Assistant Foreman John L. Rooney, who was that day in charge of his
company, Foreman Shaw having just been promoted to Bresnan's rank. It was
less than a year after that Chief Shaw was killed in a fire in Mercer
street. I think I could reckon up as many as five or six battalion chiefs
who have died in that way, leading their men. They would not deserve the
name if they did not follow such leaders, no matter where the road led.
In the chief's quarters of the Fourteenth Battalion up in Wakefield there
sits to-day a man, still young in years, who in his maimed body but
unbroken spirit bears such testimony to the quality of New York's
fire-fighters as the brave Bresnan and his comrade did in their death.
Thomas J. Ahearn led his company as captain to a fire in the Consolidated
Gas-Works on the East Side. He found one of the buildings ablaze. Far
toward the rear, at the end of a narrow lane, around which the fire
swirled and arched itself, white and wicked, lay the body of a man--dead,
said the panic-stricken crowd. His sufferings had been brief. A worse fate
threatened all unless the fire was quickly put out. There were underground
reservoirs of naphtha--the ground was honeycombed with them--that might
explode at any moment with the fire raging overhead. The peril was instant
and great. Captain Ahearn looked at the body, and saw it stir. The
watch-chain upon the man's vest rose and fell as if he were breathing.
"He is not dead," he said. "I am going to get that man out." And he crept
down the lane of fire, unmindful of the hidden dangers, seeing only the
man who was perishing. The flames scorched him; they blocked his way; but
he came through alive, and brought out his man, so badly hurt, however,
that he died in the hospital that day. The Board of Fire Commissioners
gave Ahearn the medal for bravery, and made him chief. Within a year he
all but lost his life in a gallant attempt to save the life of a child
that was supposed to be penned in a burning Rivington-street tenement.
Chief Ahearn's quarters were near by, and he was first on the ground. A
desperate man confronted him in the hallway. "My child! my child!" he
cried, and wrung his hands. "Save him! He is in there." He pointed to the
back room. It was black with smoke. In the front room the fire was raging.
Crawling on hands and feet, the chief made his way into the room the man
had pointed out. He groped under the bed, and in it, but found no child
there. Satisfied that it had escaped, he started to return. The smoke had
grown so thick that breathing was no longer possible, even at the floor.
The chief drew his coat over his head, and made a dash for the hall door.
He reached it only to find that the spring-lock had snapped shut. The
door-knob burned his hand. The fire burst through from the front room, and
seared his face. With a last effort, he kicked the lower panel out of the
door, and put his head through. And then he knew no more.
His men found him lying so when they came looking for him. The coat was
burned off his back, and of his hat only the wire rim remained. He lay ten
months in the hospital, and came out deaf and wrecked physically. At the
age of forty-five the board retired him to the quiet of the country
district, with this formal resolution, that did the board more credit than
it could do him. It is the only one of its kind upon the department books:
_Resolved_, That in assigning Battalion Chief Thomas J. Ahearn to
command the Fourteenth Battalion, in the newly annexed district, the
Board deems it proper to express the sense of obligation felt by the
Board and all good citizens for the brilliant and meritorious services
of Chief Ahearn in the discharge of duty which will always serve as an
example and an inspiration to our uniformed force, and to express the
hope that his future years of service at a less arduous post may be as
comfortable and pleasant as his former years have been brilliant and
honorable.
Firemen are athletes as a matter of course. They have to be, or they could
not hold their places for a week, even if they could get into them at
all. The mere handling of the scaling-ladders, which, light though they
seem, weigh from sixteen to forty pounds, requires unusual strength. No
particular skill is needed. A man need only have steady nerve, and the
strength to raise the long pole by its narrow end, and jam the iron hook
through a window which he cannot see but knows is there. Once through, the
teeth in the hook and the man's weight upon the ladder hold it safe, and
there is no real danger unless he loses his head. Against that possibility
the severe drill in the school of instruction is the barrier. Any one to
whom climbing at dizzy heights, or doing the hundred and one things of
peril to ordinary men which firemen are constantly called upon to do,
causes the least discomfort, is rejected as unfit. About five per cent. of
all appointees are eliminated by the ladder test, and never get beyond
their probation service. A certain smaller percentage takes itself out
through loss of "nerve" generally. The first experience of a room full of
smothering smoke, with the fire roaring overhead, is generally sufficient
to convince the timid that the service is not for him. No cowards are
dismissed from the department, for the reason that none get into it.
The notion that there is a life-saving corps apart from the general body
of firemen rests upon a mistake. They are one. Every fireman nowadays must
pass muster at life-saving drill, must climb to the top of any building on
his scaling-ladder, slide down with a rescued comrade, or jump without
hesitation from the third story into the life-net spread below. By such
training the men are fitted for their work, and the occasion comes soon
that puts them to the test. It came to Daniel J. Meagher, of whom I spoke
as foreman of Hook-and-Ladder Company No. 3, when, in the midnight hour, a
woman hung from the fifth-story window of a burning building, and the
longest ladder at hand fell short ten or a dozen feet of reaching her. The
boldest man in the crew had vainly attempted to get to her, and in the
effort had sprained his foot. There were no scaling-ladders then. Meagher
ordered the rest to plant the ladder on the stoop and hold it out from the
building so that he might reach the very topmost step. Balanced thus where
the slightest tremor might have caused ladder and all to crash to the
ground, he bade the woman drop, and receiving her in his arms, carried her
down safe.
No one but an athlete with muscles and nerves of steel could have
performed such a feat, or that which made Dennis Ryer, of the crew of
Engine No. 36, famous three years ago. That was on Seventh Avenue at One
Hundred and Thirty-fourth street. A flat was on fire, and the tenants had
fled; but one, a woman, bethought herself of her parrot, and went back for
it, to find escape by the stairs cut off when she again attempted to reach
the street. With the parrot-cage, she appeared at the top-floor window,
framed in smoke, calling for help. Again there was no ladder to reach.
There were neighbors on the roof with a rope, but the woman was too
frightened to use it herself. Dennis Ryer made it fast about his own
waist, and bade the others let him down, and hold on for life. He drew the
woman out, but she was heavy, and it was all they could do above to hold
them. To pull them over the cornice was out of the question. Upon the
highest step of the ladder, many feet below, stood Ryer's father, himself
a fireman of another company, and saw his boy's peril.
"Hold fast, Dennis!" he shouted. "If you fall I will catch you." Had they
let go, all three would have been killed. The young fireman saw the
danger, and the one door of escape, with a glance. The window before which
he swung, half smothered by the smoke that belched from it, was the last
in the house. Just beyond, in the window of the adjoining house, was
safety, if he could but reach it. Putting out a foot, he kicked the wall,
and made himself swing toward it, once, twice, bending his body to add to
the motion. The third time he all but passed it, and took a mighty grip on
the affrighted woman, shouting into her ear to loose her own hold at the
same time. As they passed the window on the fourth trip, he thrust her
through sash and all with a supreme effort, and himself followed on the
next rebound, while the street, that was black with a surging multitude,
rang with a mighty cheer. Old Washington Ryer, on his ladder, threw his
cap in the air, and cheered louder than all the rest. But the parrot was
dead--frightened to death, very likely, or smothered.
I once asked Fireman Martin M. Coleman, after one of those exhibitions of
coolness and courage that thrust him constantly upon the notice of the
newspaper man, what he thought of when he stood upon the ladder, with this
thing before him to do that might mean life or death the next moment. He
looked at me in some perplexity.
"Think?" he said slowly. "Why, I don't think. There ain't any time to. If
I'd stopped to think, them five people would 'a' been burnt. No; I don't
think of danger. If it is anything, it is that--up there--I am boss. The
rest are not in it. Only I wish," he added, rubbing his arm ruefully at
the recollection, "that she hadn't fainted. It's hard when they faint.
They're just so much dead-weight. We get no help at all from them heavy
women."
And that was all I could get out of him. I never had much better luck with
Chief Benjamin A. Gicquel, who is the oldest wearer of the Bennett medal,
just as Coleman is the youngest, or the one who received it last. He was
willing enough to talk about the science of putting out fires; of
Department Chief Bonner, the "man of few words," who, he thinks, has
mastered the art beyond any man living; of the back-draft, and almost
anything else pertaining to the business: but when I insisted upon his
telling me the story of the rescue of the Schaefer family of five from a
burning tenement down in Cherry street, in which he earned his rank and
reward, he laughed a good-humored little laugh, and said that it was "the
old man"--meaning Schaefer--who should have had the medal. "It was a grand
thing in him to let the little ones come out first." I have sometimes
wished that firemen were not so modest. It would be much easier, if not so
satisfactory, to record their gallant deeds. But I am not sure that it is,
after all, modesty so much as a wholly different point of view. It is
business with them, the work of their lives. The one feeling that is
allowed to rise beyond this is the feeling of exultation in the face of
peril conquered by courage, which Coleman expressed. On the ladder he was
boss! It was the fancy of a masterful man, and none but a masterful man
would have got upon the ladder at all.
Doubtless there is something in the spectacular side of it that attracts.
It would be strange if there were not. There is everything in a fireman's
existence to encourage it. Day and night he leads a kind of hair-trigger
life, that feeds naturally upon excitement, even if only as a relief from
the irksome idling in quarters. Try as they may to give him enough to do
there, the time hangs heavily upon his hands, keyed up as he is, and need
be, to adventurous deeds at shortest notice. He falls to grumbling and
quarreling, and the necessity becomes imperative of holding him to the
strictest discipline, under which he chafes impatiently. "They nag like a
lot of old women," said Department Chief Bonner to me once; "and the best
at a fire are often the worst in the house." In the midst of it all the
gong strikes a familiar signal. The horses' hoofs thunder on the planks;
with a leap the men go down the shining pole to the main floor, all else
forgotten; and with crash and clatter and bang the heavy engine swings
into the street, and races away on a wild gallop, leaving a trail of fire
behind.
Presently the crowd sees rubber-coated, helmeted men with pipe and hose go
through a window from which such dense smoke pours forth that it seems
incredible that a human being could breathe it for a second and live. The
hose is dragged squirming over the sill, where shortly a red-eyed face
with disheveled hair appears, to shout something hoarsely to those below,
which they understand. Then, unless some emergency arise, the spectacular
part is over. Could the citizen whose heart beat as he watched them enter
see them now, he would see grimy shapes, very unlike the fine-looking men
who but just now had roused his admiration, crawling on hands and knees,
with their noses close to the floor if the smoke be very dense, ever
pointing the "pipe" in the direction where the enemy is expected to
appear. The fire is the enemy; but he can fight that, once he reaches it,
with something of a chance. The smoke kills without giving him a show to
fight back. Long practice toughens him against it, until he learns the
trick of "eating the smoke." He can breathe where a candle goes out for
want of oxygen. By holding his mouth close to the nozzle, he gets what
little air the stream of water brings with it and sets free; and within a
few inches of the floor there is nearly always a current of air. In the
last emergency, there is the hose that he can follow out. The smoke always
is his worst enemy. It lays ambushes for him which he can suspect, but not
ward off. He tries to, by opening vents in the roof as soon as the
pipe-men are in place and ready; but in spite of all precautions, he is
often surprised by the dreaded back-draft.
I remember standing in front of a burning Broadway store, one night, when
the back-draft blew out the whole front without warning. It is simply an
explosion of gases generated by the heat, which must have vent, and go
upon the line of least resistance, up, or down, or in a circle--it does
not much matter, so that they go. It swept shutters, windows, and all,
across Broadway, in this instance, like so much chaff, littering the
street with heavy rolls of cloth. The crash was like a fearful clap of
thunder. Men were knocked down on the opposite sidewalk, and two teams of
engine horses, used to almost any kind of happening at a fire, ran away in
a wild panic. It was a blast of that kind that threw down and severely
injured Battalion Chief M'Gill, one of the oldest and most experienced of
firemen, at a fire on Broadway in March, 1890; and it has cost more brave
men's lives than the fiercest fire that ever raged. The "puff," as the
firemen call it, comes suddenly, and from the corner where it is least
expected. It is dread of that, and of getting overcome by the smoke
generally, which makes firemen go always in couples or more together. They
never lose sight of one another for an instant, if they can help it. If
they do, they go at once in search of the lost. The delay of a moment may
prove fatal to him.
Lieutenant Samuel Banta of the Franklin-street company, discovering the
pipe that had just been held by Fireman Quinn at a Park-Place fire
thrashing aimlessly about, looked about him, and saw Quinn floating on his
face in the cellar, which was running full of water. He had been overcome,
had tumbled in, and was then drowning, with the fire raging above and
alongside. Banta jumped in after him, and endeavored to get his head above
water. While thus occupied, he glanced up, and saw the preliminary puff of
the back-draft bearing down upon him. The lieutenant dived at once, and
tried to pull his unhappy pipe-man with him; but he struggled and worked
himself loose. From under the water Banta held up a hand, and it was
burnt. He held up the other, and knew that the puff had passed when it
came back unsinged. Then he brought Quinn out with him; but it was too
late. Caught between flood and fire, he had no chance. When I asked the
lieutenant about it, he replied simply: "The man in charge of the hose
fell into the cellar. I got him out; that was all." "But how?" I
persisted. "Why, I went down through the cellar," said the lieutenant,
smiling, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
It was this same Banta who, when Fireman David H. Soden had been buried
under the falling walls of a Pell-street house, crept through a gap in the
basement wall, in among the fallen timbers, and, in imminent peril of his
own life, worked there with a hand-saw two long hours to free his comrade,
while the firemen held the severed timbers up with ropes to give him a
chance. Repeatedly, while he was at work, his clothes caught fire, and it
was necessary to keep playing the hose upon him. But he brought out his
man safe and sound, and, for the twentieth time perhaps, had his name
recorded on the roll of merit. His comrades tell how, at one of the
twenty, the fall of a building in Hall Place had left a workman lying on a
shaky piece of wall, helpless, with a broken leg. It could not bear the
weight of a ladder, and it seemed certain death to attempt to reach him,
when Banta, running up a slanting beam that still hung to its fastening
with one end, leaped from perch to perch upon the wall, where hardly a
goat could have found footing, reached his man, and brought him down
slung over his shoulder, and swearing at him like a trooper lest the peril
of the descent cause him to lose his nerve and with it the lives of both.