I've decided to start posting reprints of some of my old journal entries from my street cop days, since I think some of them are pretty darn cool.

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September 4,2000

Central, 264 ... 10-65 for a 52F?

The tone of the dispatcher's voice alerted me that something was different about this call--that and the fact that I was even being dispatched to a 52F--a fire. Usually the dispatcher merely notifies us of fires in our zones; we seldom go to them.

264, central... 10-71

52F at Bob's apartments. Report of someone trapped inside.

On go the lights.

I arrived at the same time as another deputy, and could see that it was a trailer that was on fire, with the entire front of the trailer already completely engulfed. It was loud with flames furiously roaring up and out and people yelling at us that there was someone still in there. The heat smacked us when we were still a hundred yards away, but Gordon and I ran toward the trailer, hoping that maybe the victim was in the back part.. the part that wasn't an inferno.

Smoke was pouring out of every crack and crevice in the structure, billowing out in choking gusts. We ran around to the other side, finding a corrugated tin fence in our way, and knocking it down with frenzied kicks. Gordon and I pulled our batons out and smashed out a window on the other side, knowing that we were going to help ventilate the fire, but hoping we could have enough time to locate the victim and get him out. We were both yelling, trying to get the attention of anyone inside, but all we could hear was the flames roaring and the blood pounding in our ears.

We ran back to the other side, to the back door where smoke was pouring out in a menacing stream from the gap where the door was barely ajar. We scrambled onto the rickety wooden porch, and I placed my hand on the door, not wanting to experience a backdraft. As soon as Gordon saw that I wasn't getting my hand burned, he took his baton and pushed it open.

Smoke poured out at us and over us, and an instant too late we dropped to the ground to avoid the smoke. We both started coughing immediately, but we crawled forward, trying to see if we could get inside, or at least see inside. We got barely six inches inside the door though, before the smoke was overwhelming, threatening to smother us and we both had to back off, crawling off the porch, and then both of us bending over at the waist, hands on our thighs, coughing and trying to get our breath. My throat burned, and I felt like there was a weight in my chest and in my lungs.

Fire trucks arrived right about the time we had to back off from the trailer, firemen in their protective suits and breathing apparatus. I looked back at the trailer, at the door that we were just in and saw flames roaring out of the opening. After a minute or so I felt like I could breathe again, though I continued to have a nagging cough, and I found the fire chief.

"Bystanders are saying there was someone in there," I told him. He nodded slowly, and then looked at the fire. He didn't have to say what we both knew. Gordon and I stood back and watched as the firemen put water on the flames, slowly bringing it under control, and then finally extinguishing it to the point where could go through the trailer and look around. About five, maybe ten minutes later, the fire chief came up to me, touched me lightly on the arm and said, "We found what we were looking for." I nodded, knowing what he meant. I'd already taken statements from witnesses and neighbors, and knew that the victim was a 29 year old white male with relatives in Mississippi. It was a small consolation to us that he'd been in the front part of the trailer, and that there was no way we could have saved him.

The fire department had their arson investigators out there (even though we were fairly certain it was accidental--still you have to investigate) and we notifed the crime lab and the coroner's office to come out. The crime scene tape went up, and the bystanders were gently shooed back. And we all went to look at the body.

The walls had all burned down, so we could see without going into the trailer--which would have been impossible anyway, since the floors had nearly burned through. But we went to the front of the trailer, and shone our flashlights on the charred lump in what had been the bedroom. It took a second to identify the brown and black object as a body, but then features began to coalesce, and it was possible to see that that was his back, and there was a shoulder, and yes, that black round part was a head. And no, it wasn't like you read in the stories where there was a "smell of charred flesh." No, there were too many other burnt smells, wood and plastic and insulation, that coiled together into a sickly sweet miasma that got into your nose and permeated your clothing.

I was drenched in sweat, with my pants sticking to my legs and my vest chafing my stomach, and I was covered in a thin layer of dust and grime. The coroner's office arrived, with the big van and the bodybag. The firemen had to pull more of the tin fence apart and lay pieces of it down on the burned floor of the trailer so that the COs wouldn't fall through while trying to get the body onto the bag. We watched as they rolled the body over, stiff and unmoving, with his arms curled up by his chest, fingers--what was left of them--crooked tightly. When they turned him over we could see parts of a black tee shirt that had been protected from the flames by his own body. But the rest of his clothing was long gone, and if he'd been wearing pants there was no trace of them anymore. All of the flesh was gone from his calves, and the bone was black and charred. I thought at first that his feet had been burned off, but then I saw that his feet were merely pointed straight out, a perfect extension of his shins. His thighs looked like overdone turkey legs... where the meat has pulled up on the bone, and left the joint free and clean, though charred.

Then finally the body was gone, the fire out, the crime scene tape dropped. We turned out the lights on our cars and drove away, leaving the husk of a trailer, and stunned bystanders and neighbors still staring numbly at where someone had died.