In the line of duty: Three firefighters killed in Brushton after being trapped
By Michael A. Fuoco, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
This story was published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Feb. 15, 1995.
As fires go, yesterday's early morning blaze in Brushton seemed routine at first, the kind Pittsburgh firefighters encounter day in, day out. Normally, without injury. Usually, without a second thought.
But after Capt. Thomas A. Brooks and firefighters Patricia A. Conroy and Marc Kolenda entered the structure at 8366 Bricelyn St., events produced deadly consequences no one could have foreseen, fire officials said.
The team encountered intense heat after they descended a stairway. Smoke was so thick there was no visibility. Then, a fireball engulfed the stairway that had led to safety and it collapsed. An exit door was engulfed by flames. Their water hose -- the firefighters's "life line" -- burned in half. Thick plastic mounted over windows made them feel like impenetrable walls.
They tried to escape, consuming the compressed air in their Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus in the effort. Their comrades tried to rescue them. All was in vain. Brooks died of smoke inhalation; Conroy and Kolenda died of carbon monoxide intoxication, the Allegheny County coroner's office said.
Brooks, 42, of Polish Hill was a 13-year veteran; Conroy, 43, of Oakland, had eight years with the bureau; Kolenda, 27, of Bon Air, was on the force for a year and was a second-generation firefighter -- his father is Deputy Fire Chief Robert Kolenda.
Conroy is the city's first woman firefighter to die in the line of duty.
Brooks served with Engine Co. 17 in Homewood. Conroy and Kolenda were with Engine Co. 8 in East Liberty. They knew their jobs were dangerous and important.
"We accept that challenge when we take this job," said Joseph E. King, president of Pittsburgh Fire Fighters Local 1. "We know (this) could be the last alarm. That's what occurred last evening."
King's voice broke as he spoke.
The time was 12:22 a.m. A caller to 911 reported a fire at 8366 Bricelyn.
In an instant, a first alarm was sounded, sending three engine companies, a ladder company and a battalion chief -- 17 people -- to the scene. Among them was Engine Co. 17. Brooks was permanently assigned to that company; Conroy and Kolenda were filling in.
Pittsburgh Fire Chief Charlie Dickinson -- who, like King, broke down several times in recounting the events -- said he surmised that Engine Co. 17 probably arrived at the scene first. Brooks, as senior officer, surveyed the situation.
"What (Brooks) has to decide real quickly is the building occupable by the fire department or are there people we need to go get," Dickinson said. "I think Joe would say the same thing -- that in our business, we learned a long time ago, if they say everyone's out of the building that means someone is in the building ... We never go based on what people tell us on the street."
The tenants of the house -- a husband and wife, a teen-age girl and two babies -- had escaped safely before firefighters arrived.
"The captain is going to make a decision whether he thinks he can get his company inside the building and confine the fire. That's what we want to do first," Dickinson said.
"The fire was what we term a routine fire. There was nothing to strike the first alarm company's notice that it was an unusual fire."
From the street, the house appears to have one story and an attic. But the house is built on a slope -- from behind two more levels are visible.
Dickinson said firefighters initially believed the blaze was one floor down from the street level.
"What they didn't know is the fire had begun in the basement level in the furnace area and, in an older building, had ran through the walls and literally extended, probably, to the attic before they arrived," Dickinson said. He said the fire appeared to be accidental.
In full protective gear -- including the Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus -- and carrying axes, lights and a fire hose, Brooks, Conroy and Kolenda entered the home from the street level. They walked down a hallway about six feet, past a living room to the middle of the house where there was an entrance to a steep stairway leading to a family room. They descended the stairs.
"The lower they went into the building the hotter it became, the smokier it became," Dickinson said. "People who have been in a fire like that (will tell you), once you're into the heart of the building you no longer can see. You go by feel, you go towards the heat, where you think the fire is, where you see a glow ahead of you."
Dickinson said it appeared the team walked back past the stairs to a hallway leading to a door that opened to a kitchen.
"Our guess is, and we won't know for a while, that they ran into tremendous heat (there)," Dickinson said.
A second team of firefighters -- Capt. Edward Wyland Jr. and firefighters Richard Snyder and Charlie Sealey -- entered the structure. Dickinson said the second group was dragging another line down the stairs to backup the first company.
As the second team of Wyland, Snyder and Sealey began to descend the same stairway, a fireball engulfed the stairs, causing them to collapse. Wyland, Snyder and Sealey fell though the hole in the floor, nearly two stories down into the ceiling of the basement.
"Because there were timbers and second-floor joists and God knows what, they were able to hang on and crawl out of that hole and get out that way," Dickinson said. Other firefighters pulled them to safety through a kitchen door in the back of the house.
Last night, Wyland was in stable condition at St. Francis Medical Center, Lawrenceville. Snyder and Sealey were treated at the hospital.
The stairway collapse "opened up like a flue. The fire was loose then in the interior of the building and literally cut (Brooks, Conroy and Kolenda) off. ... If you can imagine a fireball, that's what was in the middle of that house," Dickinson said.
Then, the "worst thing that could have happened" occurred -- Engine 17's hose burned in half.
"So they were on the second floor, in the family room with no water," Dickinson said.
"The chief on the scene requested additional alarms and then began the process of trying to get the firefighters out of the building." Eventually, five alarms were issued on the fire, bringing more men and equipment each time.
King said there was no way to overestimate how important a hose is to a firefighter, not for attacking a fire but as a way to find one's way out of the smokey darkness.
"Whenever any firefighter is disoriented in an atmosphere of the unknown, we're taught the first thing you do is grab your hose line and follow it. It's going to take you outside if there's a tremendous amount of smoke, which we can only assume occurred in this room," King said.
"When the magnitude of that fire severed, burned that hose line in two, there was no life line left. ... One can only imagine when you go into the unknown (and) you can't find your way back out, it's total panic.
"I can't even imagine, going back over to the stairway and knowing my lifeline was gone, trying to make some conscious decision ... There had to be total panic, total panic at that point," King said.
The breathing devices Pittsburgh firefighters wear normally have about 30 minutes of air but because of exertion and adrenalin, firefighters normally exhaust the tank in 20 minutes, Dickinson and King said. Five minutes before the air is gone, a loud bell begins chiming to warn the firefighter.
When they can't see, Dickinson and King said, firefighters are trained to try to find windows -- an escape route -- by feeling the walls. But in the Bricelyn house, "there was real thick acrylic plastic facing the street level. Obviously when they felt the walls they couldn't feel the windows because it was big, heavy flat plastic. They can't see anything."
The group had a radio, but King said a firefighter would have to take off his breathing apparatus to talk, exposing him or her to toxic fumes. King said it appeared the firefighters had fought with their axes and even their helmets to try to smash their way out.
Dickinson noted how the city's firefighters, their badges covered with black tape and their hearts heavy, were performing their duties yesterday, responding to calls as they do every day.
"Why? Because that's what we're here for. Right now a lot of the firefighters are out there trying to deal with this, getting ready to accept it. I think Joe and I felt (denial) this morning. I can't tell you how I felt," Dickinson said.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10360/1112662-53.stm#ixzz1D0HtS4UO
Special Note. Captain Thomas Brooks was my brother (cashphat), homicidalrooster's godfather, and Squatchy's Uncle and we miss him dearly. Rest in Peace Tom..........
