Make ’em four!

What someone thinks you mean and what you actually meant can easily be misunderstood? Both parties thinking the message is clear and unequivocal but inevitably leading to unintended consequences. It was an average supper, but spiced with above average mess-table banter. The sharp and playful repartee brought to a sudden halt by the station call bells summoning us to the appliance room. Nine of us were riding that night, five riding the pump escape and myself and three others on West Norwood’s pump.

The rhythmic tapping of the teleprinter keys forming the words that would send us on our way.  Croydon control room had received a 999 call to a fire in a block of flats on the edge of our station’s ground. Whilst both drivers were already in their respective machines, only the sound of the pump’s engine filled the appliance room. The pump escape remained uncharacteristically silent. It had failed to start. It steadfastly refused to respond to the driver’s strenuous efforts to turn the engine over. With the ordering completed there could be no delay, lives might depend on our speed of response. As the Leading Fireman, in charge of the escape, sent a priority message reporting a ‘failed to start’ the pump left the station. Croydon would order a second appliance to complete the initial attendance of two machines, the minimum attendance for any property fire in London.

I knew my crew would be on their own in those first few minutes as we moved rapidly along Christchurch Road where the tell-tale smell of smoke told me that we had a job on our hands. I had no idea that the PE driver had finally coaxed life into the engine, and with the appliance room full of exhaust fumes and the engine revving unmercifully, the appliance pulled on to the station forecourt, into Norwood Road was heading towards the fire.

The council flats were typical of London County Council flats built after the Second World War and into the early fifties. Five stories high it had a common open balcony serving each floor. Individual flats led off each balcony. The courtyard, that would have once been spacious, was filled with residents’ vehicles and other cars left abandoned. As Peter, my driver, tried to drive into the courtyard I saw the thick brown smoke coming from an open doorway on the fourth floor. The frantic waving of the woman on the same balcony only boosted our already adrenaline charged bodies. Pulling into the congested centre of the courtyard the pump stopped and we sprang into action. I didn’t need to tell the two in the back to don BA sets whilst at the same time lay out a forty-five millimetre hose line ready to be hauled aloft. Taking a long line from the locker I ran towards the staircase telling my driver to watch for my signal! He had already engaged the pump, ‘dropped the tank’ and was now running in the opposite direction armed with a standpipe, key and bar towards the nearest hydrant.

Having got to the fourth floor by the stairs (there were no lifts) the distressed owner of the flat was almost incoherent with sobbing but assured me that no one was inside the flat. Her husband had just left for work. The blackened line on the inside of the windows, plus the force of the smoke coming from the flat, told me that a serious fire involved at least one of the four rooms of the flat, possibly more. Crouching low and looking into the passageway only about twelve inches of relatively clear air was visible above the floor. The lethal concoction of noxious and poisonous gases spewing out into the night sky. An angry orange glow filtered through the smoke and with it the signs of rapidly rising temperatures.

Throwing one end the line over the balcony I looked for the BA crew and my driver. The BA crew were nowhere to be seen but the driver was ready to tie the line on to the hose line with its nozzle attached. Without rapid intervention this fire had every chance of spreading into the roof void and involving the pitched roof and then the adjoining flats. Our hand-held radios had been promised but were yet to be issued universally to front line appliances. Only senior officers at major fires came equipped with walkie-talkie radios and they were notoriously unreliable. In theory my driver should have run up the five flights of stairs, taken my message, run down again and then sent any message. But not here, and not tonight given the situation we found ourselves confronting.

As he finished tying the line and before I started to pull up the hose I sought to catch my driver’s attention. Although I shouted down to him he could not hear me clearly above the sound of the pump’s engine noise. So as well as hollering down I extended an arm over the balcony wall as I told him, “Make pumps four.” I extended my arm showing four separated fingers to enforce the message. The driver waved back in acknowledgement as I started to haul up the line, pulling it up forty feet to the fire floor. The hose reached the fire floor at the same time as the BA crew, their sets started up and ready for action. The sound of their breathing exaggerated through their facemasks and told of the strenuous effort of running up the stairs wearing the heavy BA sets.

In the distance two-tone horns were filtering through the background noise of the surrounding streets on a Saturday night adding to sound of the fire and the high revving engine below. The window panes, already blackened, were starting to crack under the effects of the heat. Holding their tallies I watched the BA crew crawl along the hallway, hugging the floor because of the intense heat. It’s when I saw the first wisps of smoke starting to seep through the roof tiles. I shouted to my crew not to bring the ceiling down with the force of the jet. This would have allowed the fire free access into the roof space.

The sound of the two-tone horns was very close, but appeared to have an echo. The sounds were coming from opposite directions so maybe the extra pumps were arriving too. But then four appliances were unlikely to contain the blaze if it broke through into the roof space. Temperatures were already many hundreds of degrees centigrade within the flat and my BA crew are struggling to move forward despite their determined efforts. Reinforcements were required and urgently. I was preparing to send a further priority message, the question then would be make pumps eight… or ten at the first sign of the fire breaking through.

John Williams is the Station Officer from Norbury. He and his BA crew arrive on the balcony. Explanations weren't necessary when I tell him to break into the roof void to check for fire spread. His crew get to work immediately. Extra hose is hauled aloft, a short extension ladder brought up and the roof hatch located. “Your PE is around the back pitching the escape to the rear of the flat,” he shouted between encouraging his own crew to greater efforts. My PE crew were making up for lost time. Having driven the appliance on to the grassed area between the flats and the roadway they pitched the escape. Armed with a jet they had broken through the rear window allowing the pent-up heat to vent. This had made progress into the flat easier and the BA crew enter the rear rooms. Having committed all my available crews I was concerned the remaining reinforcing appliance had still not arrived. 

Norbury’s crew searched the roof space and despite experiencing considerable heat find no fire spread. Meanwhile it’s all too easy to lose track of time when dealing with a drama! Time go’s into overdrive. We were some twenty minutes into the fire and it was expected, in fact required, to send an informative message to Control. My driver finally joined me on the balcony armed with his message pad and his pencil at the ready, a Norbury fireman looking after his pump.

“So what time did you send the ‘Make pumps four’ message Peter?” My pump driver, a London taxi driver on his days off, a man never at a loss for words fell uncharacteristically silent. “Well?” I ask now rather irritated. “I didn’t send that message Guv,” he replied, clearly embarrassed and looking uncomfortable. “I shouted down to you and showed you four fingers. What did you think I was saying?” ‘‘I thought you said, ‘I got this floor,’ and you waved to indicate that all was okay; so I went back to check the pump controls,” he replied.

For me lesson leant, I made a mental note to always brief any driver in future as to just what my signals meant before I gave them. (A Sub Officer – I forgot his name – on Southwark’s Blue Watch was cursed with a stutter. He is alleged to have said, “Make pumps f- f- f- f- f- f- oh effing ell, six.”) The three crews had worked their socks off. They were justifiably proud of containing the fire to the one flat. That was little consolation for the poor, now homeless, flat owners but others would pick up their pieces, the Council and Social Services. It was not part of our brief.

With the stop message sent somewhat late, its wording ‘Four room flat on fourth floor, fifty per cent damaged by fire, one jet, one hose reel, BA,’ did not quite tell the whole story, but Norbury’s Station Officer put his slant on it when, as the crews were making up the gear, said, “You sailed pretty close to the wind there Pikey boy.  Personally, I would have made them four.” Little did he know!

West Norwood fire station. Norwood Road. SE27.