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.

The 'rat-run.'

London's Southwark training school did not only train recruit firemen. Other firemen also attended it and undertook a range of practical training courses. One such course was the breathing apparatus (BA) course. From the 1960s firemen had to have served a minimum of a year before attending the BA school and learnt to wear, use and test the Proto oxygen BA set. I had returned to Southwark to complete my basic training and had seen some of these firemen training, wearing their sets, as they shuffled and felt their way around the perimeter walls of the training school. Blindfolded and wearing their blue bagged Proto sets they practiced the skills necessary to move in smoke and darkness safely.

Occasionally we saw the firemen exiting the smoke chamber, an underground maze and obstacle course. As they came out, either carrying equipment or a training dummy, they were shrouded in the chemical smoke forcing its way out of the chamber at the end of a exhausting training exercise. I was in awe of these real firemen, seeing them standing proud in their breathing apparatus sets. I looked forward to being one myself when the time came.

It was our instructor who announced that the following day the squad would to go down into the smoke chamber. There were excited mutterings as we left Southwark that evening, thrilled and full of anticipation for our first taste of real smoke.

The visit to the smoke chamber came at the end of our normal training day. In fact we thought the instructor was having us on or he had completely forgotten all about it! He had done neither. True to his word he was providing some extra-curricular activity but after the Training School senior officers had left for the day. This was an unofficial lesson. As surprising as it must seem firemen going into smoke during basic training was not something contained in our training syllabus.

There was conspicuous odour as we walked through the smoke chamber door. The aroma of decades of use of chemical smoke bombs, canisters ignited by a fuse, filled our nostrils. The smoke chamber comprised a extensive multi-roomed basement area. It was divided into sections. As our squad walked down the single flight of stairs into the chamber the electric bulk head lights threw out a strange glow of orange light. Their original clear glazing obscured by the build-up of greasy tar residue from the training smoke over the years. However, late on this afternoon we would experience some real smoke.

Directed into the chamber the tang of smoke hung everywhere. To the left was a purpose timber built ‘rat-run’. It comprised an elongated, narrow, enclosed obstacle course. It was built on various, interconnecting, levels and incorporated hazards firemen might experience in any building fire including missing floor boards, ball-bearing rollers, small openings and vertical ladders. The configuration of the ‘rat-run’ could be altered by the BA instructors. Using a series of lockable gates they ensured that only their selected route could be followed by BA firemen undergoing training. Additionally, the design of the ‘rat-run’ allowed those inside only move through it in single file.

“Right” said our instructor, as he guided us towards the entrance of the ‘rat-run’. “Through you go. There is only one possible route to reach the other end.Now find your way out.” He opened the access door and said, “Right you go first. Oh, and there are some dead-ends in there.”

Then, as we waited to enter he switched all the lights off.  We were plunged into total darkness. You could not see a hand in front of our faces. We could taste the stench of the smoke impregnated timber rat-run. It was then the reality of this extra-curricular activity suddenly hit home.

Crawling through on hands and knees or stooped low we moved forward slowly and unsteadily. Some missed their footing, others banged their helmeted heads on low beams, two rolled backed down the industrial rollers they were trying to climb. I took a wrong turning. I led them down a route only to find it blocked by a locked gate! Confusion reigned, as we groped and felt our way through the inter-connected galleries. I had to back up causing a log jam as those trying to move forward pushed against those trying to move back.

Our instructor moved around effortlessly in the blackness. He had a self-assured stride as he monitored our progress to the end of the ‘run’ and before he turned the lights back on. Some exited with sore knees, others with grazed knuckles and we were led into the adjacent, larger, room. It was about twenty feet by twenty feet. This room served as a ‘search’ area by those undergoing their BA training and by proper firemen doing regular BA training exercises. In the centre of the concrete floor room stood a metal ‘crib’. It was piled high with waste sawn wood.

“Right you lot stand back against the walls” he said, in an unusual conciliatory tone.

 “If any of you has had enough smoke make your way out and wait in the drill yard,” he said, pointing to the metal door which opened onto the staircase leading up and out to the drill yard.
“After I have lit the crib and I will put some horse-hair stuffing on the fire. It’s the same horse-hair you might find in a mattress or in a settee or an armchair; just look and learn.”

Even standing some 10 feet away we felt the temperature rise in the confined space. The heat of the fire was reflected on the squads' faces as our eyes smarted and watered from the pungent wood smoke.

As the flames engulfed the wood in the crib the instructor moved closer to the blazier. Taking large handfuls of the horse-hair from a sack he piled it onto the fire almost smothering it. The nature of smoke changed immediately as did the smell. No longer was it a light translucent smoke with a blueish tint, but became an ugly thick brown smoke that quickly obscured our vision. For some of the recruits who had smelt burning hair they quickly recognised the unpleasant odour. It was a smell that we recruits would, in the months ahead, become all too familiar with when attending fires in private dwellings. The smell was noxious. It was pernicious.

An extract from my book, 'London’s Firefighters' an anthology. The Hills Hotel fire. 1971.

The Denmark Place fire occurred on 16 August 1980.

Until the recent tragic North London Grenfell Tower fire the worst post war UK fatal fire occurred in London’s Soho. It killed 37 people and injured another 30. Outside of terrorist attacks it remains the worst single event mass murder on mainland Britain. The fire was the result of an arson attack. The majority of those who perished were believed to have been Spanish and Latin American customers and staff of the unlicensed club and drinking bar. 

Located at 18 Denmark Place were two unlicensed, but popular, Soho bars. Both were located on the building’s top two floors. Named ‘The Spanish Rooms’ they were a late night bar, frequented by locals, and a salsa club popular with Latin American immigrants.

Admission to either bar was restricted to members who obtained entry by shouting up from the street below in order to obtain a key. Access was through the locked front door and up a fire escape enclosed with plywood. Being unlicensed the bars were obscured from the outside world by boarded up windows. The door in Denmark Street that led to the fire escape was bolted shut. The Metropolitan Police were planning to shut the place down on Monday 18 August. A farewell party was being thrown over that fatal weekend.

On the night of 16 August, John ‘Gypsy’ Thompson, age 42, had entered ‘The Spanish Rooms’ and drank there. Thompson, a petty drug dealer, was known to the police. Believing that he had been overcharged for the drink an argument and then a fight ensued with the bartender. Thompson was ejected from the building and the entry door was locked behind him. Thompson had found a 2-gallon container outside the club before hailing a taxi and then travelled to a 24-hour petrol station in Camden. There he filled the container with petrol before returning to 18 Denmark Place. In the darkened alley of Denmark Place he poured the petrol through the letterbox of No 18’s front door followed by a lit piece of paper.


The petrol erupted with explosive force. The burning petrol swiftly igniting the staircase owing to its considerable timber construction. Flames, and superheated gases, rose upwards with great energy and force. The fireball found those on the upper floors. The searing heat peeling skin whilst cloths caught fire. People could not easily escape their fate due to the boarded up windows; the locked fire escape and the lack of any fire safety precautions owing to the bars unlicensed status. The club, being unlicensed, was off the London Fire Brigade’s inspection radar.


The fire moved quickly up and through the building, destroying the main entrance and the exit from the bars. Some patrons tried to escape via the back door but found it locked. Others smashed windows and jumped out onto the street below. On Denmark Street there was a music shop that backed onto the clubs and some patrons were found here trapped behind the security shutters fearful the fire would follow them. Some were clearly luckier than others.


Soho’s firefighters, in their Shaftsbury Avenue station, were still up having recently returned from another call on a typically busy Soho night shift. They were chatting in the mess-room. In fact they were listening rather than chatting; listening to their Guvnor, Station Officer Turk Manning who was reminiscing about the ‘good old days’. At 03.33 the station bells sent the Green Watch crews on their way once again, However, the address given was Denmark Court, off Charing Cross Road and Turk Manning knew that there was no Denmark Court on Soho’s ground. He contacted the Wembley Control room immediately by radio message and told them so. Whilst the crews waited for the control room staff to check the address someone came running up to Soho fire station to report a fire in Denmark Place. Manning instructed his crews attend Denmark Place.


When Soho’s crews arrived Turk Manning looked down Denmark Place and saw what he thought, at first, was a rubbish fire some way down the narrow alley. As he went to investigate a man came out of the night, a man who Turk Manning thought might have been in a fight by the way he looked and staggered. The man, clearly distressed, said “There are people in there-lots of them.”

As Station Officer Manning reached the building he saw smoke escaping from around the shuttered windows, then the flames appeared from the first before showing from the second floor windows too. The fire was spreading and very fast. Instructing that a hydrant be set in and jet got to work Station Officer Manning sent a priority message making ‘pumps four-persons reported’.


Soho’s crews had struggled to break into the locked door as shards of hot sparks and glowing embers showered down on them. They watched as people ran off into the night despite some clearly being injured. But from inside the building, other than the sound of burning, nobody was heard calling for help, not even a shout of panic.

As entry was finally made from Denmark Place they saw the fire which was consuming all before it. The staircase was fully engulfed in flame. Turk Manning had sent a firefighter to check the other side of the building. When he arrived he had found six people trapped behind security grills of an adjacent shop. With an entry affected the people inside were rescued, all suffering various degrees of serious cuts or burns. It was through that shop that the first effective attack on the fire was made. Turk Manning had also instructed Soho’s turntable ladder be pitched to see what rescues it might be able to perform and to assess the true extent of the fire from its high vantage point.

Divisional Commander Roy Baldwin.

With Assistant Division Officer Tom Kennedy now en-route from Paddington, the ‘A’ Divisional headquarters, Wembley control’s Officer of the Watch rung the Divisional Commander, Roy Baldwin, at his Paddington quarters to inform him of the incident. Balwin was not required to attend this size of incident but responded immediately. Balwin was later to comment that; “Manning would not normally make-up unless he had a good job and his fours were normally worthy of a six!”


At 0341, eight minutes after the time of call, Station Officer Manning made pumps six. Balwin would take command of the fire two minutes after he arrived at the scene. Details, on the ground, were scant about who and how many people might still be in the building? Balwin found the street filled with ‘foreign-looking’ people all seemingly in great distress. None would give answers to the firefighters requests for information about who else might be inside the burning building. It was a policeman that informed Balwin that the building was used as illegal club and as many as 150 people may have been inside it.

Sub Officer Ron Morris. QGM.

It was Soho’s Sub Officer Ron Morris (QGM) who led his crew to the main staircase and made a successful attack on the fire, although it was not out by any means. Now Balwin and Manning could make a preliminary survey of the devastating effects of the fire. Balwin’s message back to the Wembley control room gave the initial body count as eight. But what was evident to the experienced fire officers looking at the severity and pattern of burning was that this was no accidental fire. The smell of an accelerant, most likely petrol, was still present at the base of the staircase. The fire was deliberate and Baldwin sent a request for the Brigade photographer to attend the scene and the police to commence their investigations.

The main fire was put out in just under two hours. Crews had used three jets and breathing apparatus. Now as the damping down started the death toll rose to 13 as five more charred bodies were found on the second floor. The total number in the clubs prior to the arson attack was never actually determined but 50 people were recorded as escaping the blaze and 30 of those were treated in hospital for a variety of injuries and some with serious burns. 

No 18 Denmark Place

It soon became difficult for the crews to give Balwin a definitive number of fatalities. The speed of the fire was so rapid that many of the bar patrons died where they were sitting or standing. So firefighters found bodies slumped exactly where they had been when the fireball hit them, some apparently still clutching glasses. Bodies were pilled one on top of another or filling tiny spaces after they had crawled in attempting to escape the horror of the flames. Others had tried to escape by clawing at the walls and windows. Some did break through into the guitar shop behind the club on Denmark Street and used electric guitars to smash through its front window. (It took forensic experts two months to identify all the victims and who came from eight countries.)

Now the daunting task of body recovery began. It was a harrowing assignment for those concerned. Baldwin was later to comment to the Press that he had nothing but praise for the firefighters performing their unenviable job. “It was above and beyond the call of duty and I am proud and privileged to serve with such men.”
  

As Soho’s Green Watch left the scene at 9 a.m. they were replaced by the station’s Red Watch who continued the task of removing the charred bodies, many unrecognisable, from the scarred building. Lowing the bodies to the ground proved problematic too. Despite the firefighters desire to handle the bodies with dignity some body parts fell to the ground whilst another broke in two hitting the round with a sickening thud.

 The charred remains of people trapped in No 18 Denmark Place.

‘Gypsy’ Thompson was arrested nine days later while drinking at a club a short distance from his own crime scene. He was tried at the Old Bailey in May 1981 and charged with just one murder, that of Archibald Campbell, 63. (It was apparently simpler that way.) His trial clashed with the Yorkshire Ripper’s, drawing most reporters to the next-door court. Thompson’s life sentence earned a few column inches. When he died of lung cancer on the anniversary of the fire, in 2008, handcuffed to a hospital bed, nobody noticed.

Footnotes;

More striking than the actual fire was the speed at which it was forgotten. There were headlines the next day, once the bodies had been counted. “If it was arson, it could be the worst mass murder in British history,” The Sunday Times reported on its front page (This was, before Harold Shipman got caught). The Observer quoted a fireman: “I have seen worse fire damage, but I’ve never seen dead bodies packed together like that before.”  Then the coverage fizzled out. 


Look today and online searches reveal only a few mentions. Two or three little-known books devote a passage or two to the mass murders. Although Martin Lloyd-Elliott’s ‘City Ablaze’ give a comprehensive account. Many of the victims’ families still know very little about the fire. Seven years later, when 31 people died in the King’s Cross Underground fire (including Station Officer Colin Townsley GM, from Soho) inquiries, services, documentaries and memorials followed. Princess Diana unveiled a plaque. Yet at Denmark Place there was never any memorial service, there is no plaque! The only commemorative plaque in the area is devoted to the inventor of the diving helmet. Moreover, there was never a public inquiry. The clubs were illegal. There seemed to be few lessons to learn, no institution to blame. This also means there is no official account. The Metropolitan Police’s archive contains only basic facts, which it only releases in response to a Freedom of Information request. 

No 18 Denmark Place was gutted for demolition in 2016. It, like the dreadful fire, to be forgotten.