Saturday Night Fright

(Obviously I have some layout issues that need to be addressed. I'll get to them when I have more time to futz with it. Please try to enjoy, anyway...)

Saturday night, as I was getting myself ready for bed, I heard somebody shouting outside on the street in front of our house. There are quite a few younger, fresh-out-of-college people living in the three- and four-flats in the neighborhood, plus the young professionals in the condo units that have sprung up in the last few years, and, it being a Saturday night, I assumed someone’s party was hitting its stride, and I tuned out the shouting as much as I could. I was reaching for the toothbrush when I heard the sirens. Several sirens.

We live on a one-way street. The nearest fire station is about a block away, around the corner at the far end of our block, and about halfway to the end of that street. Occasionally, when responding to a call somewhere, the fire trucks will barrel down our street opposite the direction of legal travel in the interest of getting there as quickly and easily as possible. I was certain they were barreling down our street again. As the sirens grew closer and louder, I began to wonder if maybe the shouting I had heard meant something else. The sirens grew to their loudest and stopped…right in front of our house!

I ran to our bedroom, at the front of the house, just as Mrs. Farrago was parting the blinds to see what was going on. A ladder truck was parked in front of our house, and firefighters were already running around and shouting to each other, amid the chorus of the sirens of other approaching fire trucks.

The view that greeted me when I stepped out on the porch!

I ran downstairs to observe the activity from ground level, and to figure out just what the heck was going on. I stepped out on our front porch and my ears were greeted with the sickening sound of the firefighters using either a battering ram or a fire axe to break open the door to the first floor apartment in the house almost directly across the street from ours.

The firefighters enter the first floor apartment after breaking down the door.

And yet more fire trucks arrived.

And I smelled smoke.

And I ran inside to get my camera.

Apparently the tenant in the first floor apartment had left some sort of electrical device on, which he was either using improperly, or which malfunctioned, and it touched off a small fire.

In less than two minutes from the time I heard the shouting and the first sirens, there were six fire trucks parked up and down our street and out on Belmont Avenue, which the police had barricaded for a two block stretch.








Mrs. Farrago heard someone say they saw flames. I never saw any, but I did see, in the front window of the top-floor apartment, smoke billowing up inside from beneath the air conditioner.

Very soon after the door was busted open came the equally sickening sound of glass breaking, as the firefighters busted out all the first floor windows in the front of the house and vented the smoke outside. Then there was the sound of water spraying against solid surfaces.



A haunting memory came to me when another familiar sound then struck my ears: from each firefighter came a repetitive electronic sing-song chirping sound – their rescue sounders, for lack of the proper name, which they wear on their utility harnesses over their coats, emitting a high chirp which allows others to know where they are in dark places or if they become incapacitated or unresponsive in an emergency. It’s the sound I recall quite clearly from the hours of footage I watched on television in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001. From that point, while I watched, and until we went inside, I felt a peculiar tightness in my throat. While nothing dramatically heroic was done here, these men and women of the Chicago Fire Department are heroes nonetheless. Sure, they broke down a door and prevented a smoldering fire from becoming an inferno. But had they arrived at an inferno, they would have still broken down that door and gone inside. They didn’t have to do it here, but they’ve done it before, and they’ll do it again.

I looked around at the relative chaos on the street and realized the sheer number of personnel who had shown up to deal with this incident in six trucks, two command center type vehicles and two supervisors’ vehicles. At one point, when it was apparent that the fire had been snuffed out, all of the firefighters who had entered the building came out together in a seeming gush of black-and-reflective-yellow. There must have been 20 to 30 firefighters in the building!


While it seemed a bit of overkill at first, I realized why so many were called. Ours is an old neighborhood. Our house was built around 1895, and I’m sure every other building on our block – save for the new condos, of course – was built around the same time. Every house on the block is about 22 feet wide on a 25-foot lot, leaving narrow gangways to get from front to back between each building. These houses are very close to each other. If one becomes fully engulfed, the flames blasting out from the windows will most certainly ignite the buildings on ether side. All those bodies, all that equipment, all that experience and expertise was there to prevent the fire from spreading.



And then it was over. The firefighters coiled their hoses. The investigators went inside the apartment to gather evidence. And the crowd of spectators thinned out. Mrs. Farrago and I went upstairs to bed, watched some TV, and then turned out the lights. We looked outside and saw two police cars – one parked, the other patrolling – keeping an eye out for looters who might visit the vulnerable building, is my guess. Later, as sleep was approaching me, we heard the whine of a power tool from inside the house. We looked out and saw, parked haphazardly on the street, a van with some type of customized emergency flashers operating, and we assumed someone was inside the apartment and in the process of boarding up the broken windows and door.

As we lay back down, I couldn’t help but think about the people affected by this one small fire. Obviously the tenant of the apartment where the fire occurred has suffered a loss. Whatever he owns inside that space is probably heavily smoke-damaged as well as water damaged. But the space below was probably flooded in a veritable rainfall from the floor above. And what of the top-floor tenants? They have been a nuisance in the past, sitting on the front stairs of the building on warm evenings, talking and laughing – and sometimes arguing – until late into the night, the sound of their voices cutting through the quiet and disturbing our sleep, even with our windows closed. But they did not deserve their upheaval Saturday night. I would not have wished it on them. The firefighters dragged a hose up to their apartment. I don’t know if any water was sprayed up there, but they certainly have quite a bit of smoke damage, and they probably can’t return there any time soon, certainly not before the place is remodeled. Or torn down.



Sunday morning I took a look outside and snapped a couple more photos. Mrs. Farrago and I wonder what will become of it. Many of the properties on our block are highly sought-after by realtors and developers; dozens of brick four-story condos and single-family homes have gone up in the surrounding blocks and start between $750,00 to $1.5 million to sell, and drive up our property taxes obscenely. Will the owner refurbish? Rebuild? Sell?

Over all, Saturday night’s big excitement makes me think about our heroes. Certainly, most firefighters or police or rescue workers will pooh-pooh the term “hero” when someone bestows in on them, saying it’s just their job. And certainly there are some otherwise innocent bystanders whose thoughts and actions in a situation are truly heroic, and they save lives before anyone else can act. But those who say it’s just their job seem to forget that they chose the job. They keep the job. They run in the opposite direction of everyone else when the shit is hitting the fan. Whether paid to do it or not, it takes a special person, a special pattern of nerve impulses in the brain, to make one want to do it more than once.

Saturday night, before I had gone inside, I stepped over to one of the supervisors who stood by his vehicle, dumping something out of his boots. “I’m proud of you guys,” I said to him.

He looked up at me and cocked his ear.

“I’m proud of you guys,” I repeated. “You got a lot of people here, fast.” I felt myself choking up.

He looked at me, somewhat dumbfounded. Then he seemed to realize that I indeed said what he thought I said. “Okay. I’ll tell them.”

I got the impression that, in all the years he has been with the Chicago Fire Department, no one outside his chain of command has ever expressed pride in him or the department.

Honor your heroes, whoever they are. They may not know it.