Farnham Ave House Fire - Garfield

Most of my company was at my buddy's girlfriend's surprise party, in the pool actually when we heard our company get paged out to Garfield for a mutual aid request to standby at their firehouse for a working house fire. Our chief soon got a call on his cell stating Garfield wants us to the scene instead of standing by. We all jumped in his SUV and hauled ass to Lodi.

Most of our gear was on the engine so we ran and got geared up and walked up to the staging area in front of the house. I saw some small amounts of smoke coming from the eves, 2 handlines stretched into the front door and a ton of mutual aid towns standing by. A minute after we arrived, Garfield's chief asked for two crews to relieve some of the manpower, one crew to the fire floor and one crew to the roof. My captain and I went up to the fire floor.

I walked up stairs avoiding the 2 charged handlines and the closer i got to the top of the stairs the hotter it got. At the top of the stairs it was really hot and I asked my Cpt if he wanted to tie in on air yet, he said to just get onto the landing and tie in. When we got into the room the heat subsided a bit. The room we first entered looked to be a kitchen, with a living room to the right, and a small hallway to the left which lead to the fire room. The fire was almost completely knocked down, but we took out the remainder of the windows to vent the room.

Operations officer told us to open up the ceiling above the door in which we entered. I took an ax to the walls while my captain took a pike pole to the ceiling. We had a good amount pulled down, with embers and little smoking pieces falling down with every stroke. The roof team began cutting the roof above our heads, a little towards the door. We unmasked after a few minutes when the heat went down enough and most of the smoke cleared. With a few more pounds on the sheetrock we had enough exposed for the Operations officer to put an end to the overhaul.

When I got outside I felt nauseous. I downed a few bottles of water before I heard that while on the roof, one of our guys took the butt-end of a pike pole to the eye. He went to the hospital where they said his cornea was scratched, nothing too serious.