When duty calls, worlds can collide
Engine 5, the busiest firetruck company in Lawrence, rumbles through a city enveloped by a blanket of silence during the night. Housed at the Lowell Street central station, Engine 5 is the queen bee that accompanies trucks called from the city's six other stations.
''Lawrence is only 7.7 square miles, but it packs a lot of punch," Eric Humphrey said one January night during his 24-hour shift at Engine 5.
For Humphrey and other firefighters, who work 24-hour shifts twice a week, the day moves in shifting rhythms, languorous at times, frenetic at others.
During the daytime, the men on duty run the department's administration, conduct fire inspections, train recruits, clean gear, wash floors, take medical classes, watch television, work out.
On a typical night, the activity boils down to one thing: the watchman-like quality of a lighthouse. Firefighters cook, eat together, walk across the street to the
But when the phone downstairs rings, a bell sounds a series of chimes, all of the lights in the building automatically turn on, and the dispatcher's voice blares a street address from speakers. The men rise from beds, chairs, or dining tables and scramble to the truck. In seconds, Engine 5 is blasting its sirens through the streets.
Beyond their obvious functions, firefighters in Lawrence play witness to the very life of the city they inhabit.
Tuesday, 6:32 p.m. David Reilly is on the truck, still chewing the Italian bread from his dinner. Engine 5 is headed toward Essex Street, where a man has been reported choking.
The truck -- with 40-pound oxygen tanks, hoses that fire 700 gallons of water a minute, and a ladder on top -- maneuvers like a whale through the streets. Tom Baggett, grandson of a former Lawrence fire chief, is at the wheel, pushing the truck at 35 miles an hour, but still managing to bring it smoothly to a halt at every stop sign.
When the truck arrives at a bar on Essex Street, an ambulance is already there. The city's procedures call for both an ambulance and firetruck on medical emergencies. Reilly and Humphrey climb off the truck and enter the bar to help the choking man.
Minutes later, a man strapped to a stretcher is taken into the ambulance, and the firefighters circle back to the station.
Tuesday, 10:09 p.m. The firefighters have been called to a Lowell Street building with a labyrinth of rooms, decrepit stairs, and abandoned floors. A woman had called 911 after the smoke detector had gone off.
Just before they alight from the truck, the firefighters say to each other the building looks like a rooming house. It's the type that attracts people at low points in their lives -- drug addicts, young runaways, adults on the edge of homelessness, looking for shelter.
''Is this a rooming house?" Deputy Michael Bergeon asks the woman who called.
''No," she says with arms akimbo, ''I live here." In the hallway behind her, an open door reveals glimpses of her stove, plants, and white cotton curtains.
Rooming houses are supposed to have sprinklers, but this place doesn't. Bergeon asks who the landlord is. The woman replies, ''I don't know."
The men search for smoke, pointing flashlights into attics and hallways, but find none. Finally, Bergeon determines there is no fire, sending the firefighters back onto the truck.
At the station, Bergeon files a report to investigate what sort of housing this is, and whether it should have sprinklers. A month later, a fire inspector determines that the building is not a rooming house, and there are no code violations.
It's part of the department's fire-prevention efforts, which have contributed to the sharp decline in the number of emergency calls.
Friday, 7:30 a.m. The dispatcher says the call is medical. It's a minor car accident involving young people who seem to come from different worlds.
The morning air is crisp, but the frozen snow makes the streets slippery. When Engine 5 arrives at the intersection of Water Street and Broadway, two girls wearing pastel-colored pants and polo shirts with turned-up collars look distressed.
''Are you hurt?" a firefighter asks.
Yes, they say, they were hit hard. Their new white SUV has a dent in the back.
The 16-year-old students from Central Catholic High School are asked to go back into the car, and a firefighter asks questions from outside the window.
Another firefighter walks over to question the three teenagers standing next to the slightly rusted minivan that is nearly touching the SUV. The young man has baggy jeans; the two girls wear tight jeans and black jackets.
The driver is 17, her black hair pulled back in a ponytail. On her trembling hands, her long nails are adorned with a polish that sparkles. The three say they were on their way to Lawrence High School.
Soon the two girls go back into the minivan, which has a flag of the Dominican Republic hanging from a front window. The driver starts crying, while her friend consoles her in Spanish.
The firefighters turn over the questioning to the emergency medical technicians from Lawrence General Hospital, and to the police officer who arrives later.
As the firefighters linger, their driver that day, Alfredo Santiago, comes out of the truck with blue latex gloves in his hand. But it takes him 30 seconds to make his assessment that he's not needed. The firefighters follow him back to the truck and leave the scene.
The shift for firefighters always ends at 8 a.m. By 6 a.m., coffee is brewing in the kitchen, and an hour later, the relief shift begins to trickle in. Chief Joseph Marquis starts his routine at the station with stretching and push-ups with recent recruits who are being trained at the station as they await their turn at the state fire academy.
The trainees are expected to learn not only fire rescue, but the gamut of emergencies firefighters respond to. It includes calls such as the one that came in one afternoon in December 2002, when firefighters tried to save six boys who fell through ice into the Merrimack River.
The boys had formed a chain with their jackets in an attempt to rescue a friend who had first plunged through the ice. Four of the boys died.
On the day before the second anniversary of the accident, Marquis arranged a river rescue simulation on the banks of the river. In the frigid waters, firefighters learned to swim while wearing plastic suits that fit like heavy gloves and to pull one another back to shore.
''One never knows what can happen," Marquis says, expressing the tenor of the department, ''but we try to keep the training up, and be prepared."
