This Happened To Me

Fighting A Fire On Your Stomach

For those of you who may not know, I was an SPO (Special Police Officer for those who aren’t up on useless acronyms) at a pediatric hospital. Part of the many duties we had was responding to fires in the hospital or on its grounds. The electrical panel was a sight to behold. Mounted on a wall in the primary office of Engineering, it was massive. There was an indicator light for each and every fire alarm placed on a metal outline of the entire building. That way when an alarm went off, we knew exactly where the potential problem was located.

Naturally, it had to be on my shift when an alarm went off. And went off. And went off. And…

We were always on paired off, so we always had backup. Which turned out to be a very good thing on more than one occasion. This being one of them. My partner, we’ll call him Nelson as we also always went by last names only, and I took off to the quadrant where the alarm was sounding. Mind you, we’re in full uniform and have a full fire extinguisher. There’s no time to lose. Kids can’t be evacuated as easily as most adults, so time is precious.

We search and we search. Nothing is hot to the touch. No smoke. Nothing. We radio back to Engineering. The alarm is still sounding. Somewhere there’s a fire and we can’t find it. We finally pinpoint the possibilities down where its exact location could be.

It’s in between floors.

Shit.

Nelson and I locate a dwarfed-sized door meant only for maintenance access. We pass through and can stand up on the other side. We see nothing, hear nothing, smell nothing. We go in deeper.

The further we go in, the less space we have to stand up. This is how the subfloors are designed. The closer to the exterior you get, the more you squat walk until you end up crawling on your belly.

At this point, Nelson and I are belly-crawling away further from the door and closer to the exterior. Long before now, we lost all radio contact with the outside. Too many mechanicals around blocking the frequency. We’re on our own.

We stay in visual contact with one another as now we can’t hear one another. We use hand signals. The ceiling and floor are so tight with ductwork we lift our fire extinguishers up and over, and then we crawl under. Finally, we make it to the furthest point. Still no sign of a fire.

We sign to one another that it’s time for us to get out. If there is a fire in there somewhere, no one can hear us call for help. Time to self-evacuate. We repeat all the steps until we’ve made it back to the stairwell where it all began.

We show up at Engineering grimy. White shirts now black, black pants now gray. As it turns out, Engineering and Security had been trying to reach us. They had located the source and remedied the problem.

It was a dead battery in one of the alarms.

Needless to say, I had a few choice words for them and told them that in the future maybe that should be the first thing they look at. Without asking permission, I announced that I had had enough and was taking my dirt-covered ass home and showering.

See you all tomorrow.

The hospital is built to look like a pointed dome sitting on top of another dome. It was in those very narrow points that my partner, Nelson, and I were stuck with no way to communicate with each other or anyone else for that matter.