-By Bob Wade; Milwaukee DAT night team Team Leader/Supervisor-ARC of SE WI-Milwaukee, WI (Edited by Gayle Hemmy)

July 1st, 2007:

What a wild night this one was.  Buckle your seat belts for this is going to be a long one and one of the most incredible and amazing nights of my career with the Red Cross. 

12:29am:  I’ve been asleep for about an hour and my phone rings. The duty worker states, “Our assistance has been requested at a fire at N. 40th St. & W. Keefe Avenue.”  

I hop into the van and turn up the volume on my police scanner just in time to hear that it’s a garage fire.  I know we’re probably going to get canceled on the way to this one, so I decide to call up only one teammate.  I call Teresa and she says she has a flat tire on her car and is trying to fix it so she can’t respond. Next I call Chuck, who is able to respond. I let him know that we’ll probably get called off on this one, on the way there.

I make it all of the way to the fire and still no cancellation call.  I figure it’s either a garage attached to a house or the MFD dispatcher forgot to call us off.

As I’m walking up to the fire scene, I see a garage fully engulfed in flames…completely gutted.  I spot the battalion commander and he tells me that we won’t be needed there.  “Everyone’s OK here…Well, the garage isn’t…but you guys won’t be needed here.”

I call Chuck on my hand-held radio and let him know that we’ve been cancelled. He drives past me in his car and yells, “OK” out his window. Too funny.  I call the duty worker and let her know as well.

While driving back towards home, I hear MFD Dispatcher on my police scanner saying “Structure fire…We’re getting numerous calls on this one…2300 N. 20th St….20th and Meinecke.”  

“Call out a second alarm. We have a 2nd house on fire now!”" is the response from the arriving battalion commander at the scene. 

I figure out in my head where this fire is in relation to where I am; it’s about 20 blocks just to the east of me.  I decide to slowly make my way over there, figuring that my DAT cell phone will ring at any moment.  I get about 5 blocks away from this fire and my DAT cell phone still hasn’t rang.  I decide to pull over and wait for the call, so as not to appear on scene before getting called by the authorities and our duty worker.

I wait at least 10 minutes at the side of the road but finally I hear MFD dispatch broadcast “Keep the Red Cross coming; we have about 10 kids sitting out on the steps across from the fire!”

I hit the gas and I’m there in less than a minute.  The duty worker calls just as I’m arriving at the perimeter of the fire scene and I tell her that I’m already there and explain the communications that were heard.

It is 1:23am.

I call Teresa, who has become my right-hand woMAN for our fire calls. She’s still working on her flat tire and apologizes profusely.  I tell her not to worry about it…a flat tire isn’t her fault. 

After making two more phone calls, I know that Chuck and Donn are responding.  Short of it being a large apartment complex fire, I know that 3 people are all we really need to get the job done at any and all fires.

After putting all of my gear on, I get out of the van and see a large billowing column of smoke shooting way up into the sky.  The two homes on fire are hidden by big trees in the front so I can’t really see them yet.

There are two trucks with their ladders extended over the tops of the two homes.  The firefighters are attacking this blaze with a vengeance; axes are being slammed into the roof, saws cutting violently, there is liquid everywhere and it is pouring like a waterfall out of the front of the first house. Flames are shooting out of every other window to the point where one can feel the heat from it, even all the way across the street, where I am standing.

I walk up across the street from the fires and see about 15 police officer’s standing there.  I’ve never seen so many cops at a fire before.  One of them approaches me and tells me that there is a group of children sitting on the front steps of one of the houses; they live in the house directly behind the second house on fire, the rear cottage (about 20 feet away). He wasn’t sure if their house was on fire, but they had accidentally been sprayed and completely soaked with water by the firefighters as they evacuated their home.

When I found these very young children, they were all sitting there, about 10 of them, shivering, shaking and all wet. The outside temperature was in the upper 50′s.  A woman from that same house came up to me, reeking of liquor, and asked me if I had a light.  I told her no. She seemed to be more worried about lighting her cigarette than she was about the children who came from her house.

I asked all of the kids how they were and if they were cold.  They all said, “Yes!”  I told them that I’d get them some blankets and that I’d be right back. I ran back to the van and pulled out an entire box of blankets and carried it back to where they were and wrapped all of the children up in them, one-by-one.

One of the older kids told me that his Dad was out and that he’d be coming back home and see all of this.  I asked him if he knew how to get a hold of his Dad and if he knew where he was.  He said he did.  He even knew the phone number. I dialed it and handed my cell phone to him and a minute later, he handed the phone back to me and said nobody answered.

I took another look at the kids and made sure they were all wrapped up properly in their blankets. One little boy, maybe 4 years old, looked up at me and asked “Are we going to have to go to back to the foster home now?”  I was stunned. He repeated the question.  My heart sank.  That has to be the saddest question anyone has ever asked me in my entire life.

I told him, “Noooooooo!!!  Everything is going to be okay. You are going to be okay. No one is going to the foster home. All of you guys are going to stay here and will probably get to go back into your house after the firemen are done.”

I was finally able to step aside from the children and take a good look at what was going on with the two homes which were on fire.  The first house had cedar shake siding on it, and boy, did that burn.  I think about 99% of that house burned; the entire outside of it was completely blackened by the fire, every window was broken out and I could see that the firemen were tearing its insides out on every floor, in order to get to all the fire.

Two young women from Meda-Care Ambulance Service were standing next to me and asked me how the children were.  I told them that they were a bit wet from being sprayed by the fire hose on their way out of their house and I told them about the one child asking me about returning to the foster home.  Both of the women let out an “Awwwww…That is soooo sad!” 

It was very disheartening to see that such a young child would have to think that way.

Both Chuck and Donn showed up at this point and all we could do was just stand there, watch and wait. The fire fighters were still sending men up the truck ladders with saws and roof ladders in their hands.  They started to cut into the roof of the second house and I turned to Chuck, a trainee, and said “Watch this…at any moment, flames will start to shoot out of that roof” and sure enough, they did.

We still hadn’t identified anyone from these two homes yet, although I was able to pick up bits and pieces of information from overhearing conversations here and there.

Four people walk in front of us and the police to our left started questioning them immediately. “Why are you here? Where are you going? Do you live around here?”

 The older and taller man, who kind of reminded me of the actor Sinbad, states “Yes, we live in that second house which is on fire.” 

Finally!  We’ve found someone who lives in one of these two homes! 

I quickly learned that the fire originated in the house to the north, which was supposed to be vacant. The neighbors saw people coming and going from that house ever since there had been a fire there three weeks ago; the boards nailed on to the front door to secure it after the first fire had been peeled off so people could come and go at will.

No one called the police.

No one in the neighborhood said anything about it….Fear runs deep.

We were looking at another arson fire.

I was getting tired of just standing around and figured it was time to get things rolling so I told Chuck and Donn that I was going to return the empty blanket box to the van, see what was going on with the cops and also with the family that had just appeared.

That worked…and what a wonderful family I ended up getting to know out on the street that early morning.

Upon introducing myself and teammates to this family, James (the Sinbad look-a-like) began to explain how he was upstairs in his house, reading his Bible when the fire first broke out next door.  His wife, Angela, was downstairs, also reading; she told me “I heard a loud “BOOM” then I looked out my window and all I could see were flames on the north side of the house. Something had exploded, but I didn’t know what it was at that point.”

I would later learn, after speaking to the arson investigator at the scene, that there was an intentional or accidental release of gas inside the first house, which built up within until the entire inside of the house exploded into a ball of flames, from an unknown ignition source.

In the meantime, James and Angela, from next door, were calling 911 and in the panic, Angela realized that she was dialing 611 by mistake.

They got their two teen-age kids out of the house. As they did, they happened to see someone rush out of the first house and take off running up the street.

I had Chuck do the interview with the family and after realizing that they had no other place to stay, we gave them the Red Cross full service treatment, that is, accommodation at a hotel until Monday, a change of clothes and comfort kit for everyone and a food allowance loaded on a Client Assistance Card (CAC) for the family.

They had no renter’s insurance.

When we get to that part of the interview at fires, when we ask if the client has renter’s insurance, we never seem to get the answer “Yes.” It seems that when we ask renters who have just lost their home and belongings to a fire, the answer is always, “No.”

Chuck and I go back to the van and start to call up the hotels on our list. Every single hotel on the list is booked until we get to the very last one and they have a room with two double beds. Whew!

We fill out all of the paper work and I call in the authorization for the client assistance card and we’re all set.  We invite James into the van and Chuck, the trainee, does all the explaining; he’s on the verge of becoming a certified team member. He told me he had 5 fires to make 20, and I promised to get him there this week (!)  He’s already 2 fires out now.

I heard a rumor going around that if you want to push up your number of fire calls, quickly, sign up on my team. I’m a fire magnet!  Statistically I have been getting the most fire calls per week this year, and that includes the day team’s stats as well.

Just another one of the superstitions we on the DAT all subscribe to, because of the sort of work we do.

It’s not about the numbers, though. 

It’s not about going through the motions and getting the job done so we can get back to our warm beds at night.

It’s all about how we translate our emotions and training into actions in order to get our clients lives back on track again after they’ve been through their devastating disasters.

 It is one thing to think compassionately towards others, but the hard road is expressing and communicating that, in what we say and do, to people we have never met before, in the middle of the night.

But to continue the story:

We finished setting up the assistance needed to James’ family and the next phase was to confirm that we had helped everyone who needed and requested it.

I wanted to make sure that the children who lived in the house directly behind the second house were able to go back to their house.  We still didn’t know if their house had sustained any damage.

I caught up with the arson investigator and the two of us walked to the back of the second house with flashlights to see how the house had faired.  There was no fire damage to the front of it and the electricity was still on, so they were allowed to return.

The 10 children had long been removed from the front steps of the house across the street.  They were taken to relatives’ homes and were probably fast asleep by the time we were doing our final check.

When I got back to the front of the house, the rest of the family was on its way back into the rear home and so we realized that we were done for the night and headed back to our vehicles.

Wait! Something happened then and there!!

I said goodnight to James and Angela and I didn’t take but 10 steps before I walked past a young man who was stumbling up the sidewalk; he turned to me and from a drug-induced stupor he said “Hey…I live in that house over there!”  I said, “What?”  He repeated himself.   “Which house? Which house do you live in?” I asked.  He pointed to it and said, “That first house over there, the all burned up one.”

The alleged arsonist has shown up at the scene and is totally wasted!! 

Totally unexpected and never happened before…until this morning. 

A cop walks right past us and doesn’t give him a second look.  I ask the man “Do you mean to tell me that you live in the house which caught on fire?”  He says “Yes…I started it.”

His eyes are swollen and red and he can’t walk straight.  He is definitely under the influence of some very powerful drug.

“Holy ****!!” I say to myself. 

The guy who started this fire is right here talking to me!!!  I turn to the cop who just walked past and caught up with him and in a quiet voice say “This guy over here just bumped into me and told me he lives in the house where the fire started.”  The cop immediately got a surprised look on his face and said, “WHAT?  Tell him to go over by the van across the street and talk to the officer there.”  The cop didn’t seem to care too much; maybe he didn’t believe it would be that easy to catch this guy because they always have to hunt arsonists down.

I could very easily have told the guy to go across the street and put both of his hands up and say, “I surrender…I set the fire.” .and he probably would’ve done it, but I just told him what the officer told me to tell him…to go across the street and talk to the arson investigator…and he did.

It seemed so weird – and too easy.

We went from being on our way back home to sleep, to spending another hour there at the scene, waiting to see what they were going to do with this guy.

James and Angela came over next to me on the curb across the street from their home and we talked together for that entire hour.  They had to wait until the arson investigators were done there before they could go back inside and gather their valuables.

Chuck thought we could call it a day and go home but I told him we couldn’t leave a scene before we were absolutely positive that no individual would be left to fend for himself after a disaster.

I didn’t know what the policy was on a man living in a boarded up house illegally and being put out on to the street due to a fire that he himself had set. I asked the Assistant Team Leader if he knew what we were supposed to do and he didn’t know either.

I called Steve Stein, our DAT coordinator, up and he said, “Give him the full service. It’s not our job to judge.”

The Red Cross does not differentiate between the potentially guilty nor non-guilty people at disaster scenes.  No man, woman, or child gets left behind if the American Red Cross has a say on it.

The Red Cross mission statement is: The American Red Cross, a humanitarian organization led by volunteers and guided by its Congressional Charter and the Fundamental Principles of the International Red Cross Movement, will provide relief to victims of disaster and help people prevent, prepare for, and respond to emergencies.

It has no ifs, ands or buts to it.  The Red Cross is neutral to everything…country, race, sex, religion and guilt.

The officers still on scene placed the young man in the back of one of their squad cars next to us and began to question him.

 James and Angela’s biggest and most obvious concern at that moment was what might be left in their home and how they could get their valuables out of there before people started to sneak in and steal everything.

The conversations we shared over that next hour were priceless; one moment both of them would be laughing, the next, they’d be on the verge of tears.

When they’d get to the low points of their feelings and emotions, we made sure to bring them back up again, by letting them know that they wouldn’t be alone through all of this. The Red Cross would be there to make sure they made it through.

Finally, a police officer came up to me and said, “You won’t need to give this man any assistance so you guys can go home now. Thanks for coming.”

 He was arrested and is currently in the Milwaukee County Jail.

I said goodbye to James and Angela and told them to call if they had any problems or questions over the rest of the weekend and to make sure they called the Chapter first thing on Monday morning.

I drove home, mentally rewinding and replaying some of the conversations of the night.

I wondered, as I often do, if there was more we could or should have done.

Such events also make me feel a little guilty about the good life I have in comparison to the hard, harsh and difficult lives that so many of our clients have.

Filed under: Disaster Response, Volunteers