The Forgotten War: Fire and Death

By Joseph F. Maraglino

While in the process of writing this book, a catastrophic event occurred in US firefighting history. An elite force of firefighters, nineteen in number (eighteen men and one woman), died while fighting a forest fire in Arizona. A wind shift placed this raging inferno head-on into this force.

One TV announcer claimed the winds were gushing up to fifty miles per hour. Television programs showed viewers what these firefighters had to protect themselves. They lay flat on the ground and put this tentlike apparatus over them, which was probably made of a fire-retardant material, but this could not protect these heroes from thousand-degree temperatures and gusting winds, which turned this inferno similar to a flamethrower.

As a firefighter, even though youve fought similar fires, many times you never take anything for granted. As you will see in this book, fires thought to be under control were turned into second and larger alarms. The red devil sometimes throws you a curve ball, and it can cost you your life and civilians lives. While you have this story fresh in your minds, say a prayer for these firefighters who got burned alive.

And on the eighth day, God created firefighters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524534141

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Copyright © 2016 by Joseph F. Maraglino.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 08/27/2016

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Pre-Introduction

Introduction

How This Book Started

The Beginning

Ladder 42: First Day

149th Street—Smoke in the Hall, Eighth Floor

First Multiple Alarm

Marriage and Back to Work

Paying Tribute to Firemen

A Couple of Runs and a One-Room Tenement Fire

Extracurricular Activities

A Bad Day in the South Bronx. As Usual

Hot Spot

I Was the Chauffeur That Day…

We Had to Strike

Using Two Halligans and an Axe, We Attacked the Door

Runaway Truck and Other Stories

Ladder 50

Bad Accidents

Winter Snow, Winter Ice

Computers at Last

Stories

Neighbors’ Fires

The Lieutenants’ Exam

Training the Younger Firefighters

A Couple of Runs

A Move to City Island

The Fireman’s Heart

I

dedicate this book to all firefighters, paid and volunteer, who are constantly putting their lives on the line for the protection of others’ lives and property.

FOREWORD

W hile I was writing this book, a catastrophic event occurred in U.S. firefighting history. An elite force of firefighters, eighteen men and one woman, died while fighting a forest fire in Ari zona.

The winds shifted, and a raging inferno raced head-on into this force. A TV announcer claimed the winds were gushing up to 50 mph. Television programs showed viewers what these firefighters had to protect themselves. They lay flat on the ground and put tent-like apparatuses made of a fire-retardant material over themselves, but they couldn’t protect these heroes from the 1,000-degree temperatures and gusting winds that turned this inferno into a flamethrower.

No matter how experienced they are, firefighters can never take anything for granted. Fires thought to be under control can suddenly explode into second-alarm and worse fires. The red devil sometimes throws curve balls that can cost firefighters and civilians their lives.

Say a prayer for these firefighters who were burned alive.

PRE-INTRODUCTION

I call this the pre-introduction because I left out some facts in the book itself that I will include here. The city’s finest are the policemen; the city’s bravest are the firemen. The bravest people I have ever encountered were the troops in our wars here and abroad; they are the bravest of the b rave.

Between 1967 and 1977, the fire department handled two wars. Though we might win some battles in one, we will never win the war itself. It was fire, and that will be with us until we die. The second war was between 1967 and 1977. In Report from Engine Co. 82, author Dennis Smith called these people animals, but animals kill to protect themselves and fellow animals or for food. These other people I call savages; they killed just for fun, and only God knows why they targeted members of the New York City Fire Department They set booby traps for us in vacant and partially vacant buildings to kill or maim us. They threw sinks, rocks, and bricks off roofs at us. Others shot at us, who were armed just with hoses and hooks.

It was a bad time in the South Bronx, so bad that the BBC made the documentary The Bronx is Burning. And brother, was it burning. Six-story tenements, homes to hundreds, were burned to the ground. What was going on was an unreal travesty. I feel bad I didn’t get this book done a long time ago because I wanted to show respect to the men who passed away as a result of those fires or just passed away. I wanted to let others know how brave they were. It was unbelievable. You’d stay two or three years there. It was tough. Some guys stayed ten years or longer; they’re probably in boxes by now.

INTRODUCTION

I wrote this book to enlighten the families of firefighters who were fighting the war in the ’60s and ’70s in the South Bronx. Firefighters are constantly fighting the red devil—fire—every day, but in that era, it was diffe rent.

Firefighters take oaths to protect life and property, and they risk life and limb. But at that time, a group of savages were doing everything possible to hurt if not kill firefighters and keep them from racing into apartments to save the occupants. The savages set traps to slow them down or kill them. When you’d force a door open, you’d have to make sure there was a floor or you could fall ten feet down. We also had to deal with traps on fire escapes and staircases, which I’ll mention later.

This was not a war firefighters had been trained to fight; they were being shot at; everything from bricks to kitchen sinks were thrown off roofs. We’d have to fight two or three good fires a night plus responding to alarms.

When you’re in the armed services, you expect to get shot at, and you know the enemy. Firefighters expect to fight fire, not the people they’re trying to protect from the fire. What was going on?

This book is about the South Bronx because that’s the area I worked; Brooklyn and Harlem were other areas taking a beating, but the Bronx took the worst of it. I don’t want to make this an autobiography; I centered it on the firehouses I worked in and the fires I battled.

To say that the city was in a state of civil unrest would be an understatement. The Vietnam War was going on; ultimately, 58,000 troops came home in body bags. Special police units such as the TPF (tactical police force) had to be formed to control the unruly mobs that formed for any reason at all. Hot summers were good enough reason to start a problem. This was the South Bronx, and in time, this war spread up to almost Fordham Road (North Bronx). It got so bad that riding on the Cross Bronx Expressway, you’d see many burned-out tenements.

The NYC Fire Department has been branded the bravest. When I was working in the South Bronx, I encountered many men from the surrounding companies whom words couldn’t do justice to. I knew men who rushed into fires not thinking of their safety or what would happen to their families if something happened to them. Why would they have charged into these fires? They probably heard the words, There’s somebody in there! They’d run into these fires to save people’s lives.

A burning apartment or house can emit heat up to 1,000 degrees or more. Light a match and place it near your skin––that heat is nothing compared to that of a burning apartment. You wonder why people jump from windows to escape this pain. The World Trade Center fire got close to or above 2,000 degrees. People were jumping from seventy or eighty stories to escape the pain. Your skin would sear or melt on your body just like a steak on a hot grill would. These brave firemen put their lives in jeopardy to help the people no matter their race, color, or creed. These men should not be called the bravest but the bravest of the brave. God bless them.

Firefighters and policemen are our first line of defense. Nowadays, they call them first responders. It doesn’t matter if a firefighter is in the slowest or the busiest station, the red devil is always finding ways to take new victims. Upon leaving my house to go to work, I always kissed my wife good-bye, even if we’d just had a fight—and we had our share––but I knew that kiss could have been our last.

In the army, I saw training films about how to give first aid to our wounded brothers: tourniquets for missing arms and legs, how to stop blood spurting from chest wounds, and what to do with intestines hanging out. It was so gory that I could hardly take it then, but it was nothing to what I encountered in the fire department.

This book is not just to praise the NYCFD; it’s for all firefighters, especially volunteers, who do their regular jobs and still respond during the night and day to help their neighbors. We all hear of warehouses and building fires in which firefighters die. Let’s not forget our brothers and sisters who die in forest fires. They fight the same red devil but in a different environment.

I’m close to seventy-five, and many of those who fought the red devil in my day are gone. I want to let the younger generation know what their fathers and grandfathers endured. Nowadays, firefighters say, We had a good job a week or so ago. What they mean is that they responded to a fire rather than a car accident, a false alarm, or someone having a heart attack. They call a job good when it demanded their fire-fighting skills and then some.

But in the late ’60s and ’70s, we were getting two or three jobs a night as well as ten or fifteen responses. Never in the history of New York had there been so many fires. I hope it never happens again. In my eyes, the men were all heroes, and I was proud to work with them. We were all little devils, but I hope the Man upstairs gives us some Good boy! points for doing our best to protect others.

Attached is a prayer my beautiful sister-in-law gave me over fifty years ago. I don’t know the author’s name, but it’s beautiful. When you hear of firefighters losing their lives, think of this prayer:

A Firefighters’ Prayer

When I am called to duty, God

Wherever flames may rage

Give me the strength to save a life

Whatever be its age

Help me embrace a little child

Before it is too late

Or save an older person from

The horror of that fate

Enable me to be alert

And hear the weakest shout

And quickly and efficiently

To put the fire out

I want to fill my calling and

To give the best in me

To guard my very neighbor and

Protect his property

And if according to your will

I have to lose my life

Bless with your protecting hand

My children and my wife

HOW THIS BOOK STARTED

A bout the second week in March 1994, I was sitting in a chair in my dining room shaking like a leaf. I’d been doing that for two weeks. A week earlier, I’d been admitted to the hospital for various tests to see why my stomach was acting like Mount Vesuvius and why my chest had stabbing pains. Everything came up negative; the doctors decided it was irritable bowel syndrome. They gave me medication, but I had a reaction to it. They gave me another pill, but again, it was to no avail. I couldn’t take it any longer—I hadn’t slept for twenty-two days, my wife wasn’t sleeping, and it was affecting the whole family. They were all getting sick.

I knew my problem was mental. I had my wife drive me to the mental health unit of the hospital––my health insurance would cover me for thirty days there. After a two-hour wait, I saw a psychiatrist; he knew exactly how I felt and gave me some pills. He explained that I didn’t belong in an institution, that I needed medication and help.

A few days later, I was lying in front of a psychologist who immediately taught me exercises to calm me down. After a few sessions, we tried to unravel my disturbed mind and see what was causing the stress. When I finished telling him my background and what problems I had, his diagnosis was that my issues were multifaceted. If you compared my problem to a bicycle wheel, the wheel itself was the main problem and the spokes were the causes. I agreed with him. We went from one problem to another until he told me that my main problem was post-traumatic stress brought on by my duty with the NYCFD. No way! I said. I loved my job. I even miss the action. Or did I?

Another week passed. Spring was a little closer. I was going to the psychologist once a week and calming down with each visit. One day, I went outside to burn old wood and leaves and had a reaction I never would have expected. I was holding a water hose for safety. The wood was crackling, and the leaves were turning to ash. All of a sudden, I got the sweats. My chest was on fire from within. My legs buckled. I collapsed. What’s this? I asked myself. So I fear the fire? I stared into the flames and felt limp. I was scared of a fire in a three-by-six-foot pit, flames lapping out about four feet high. Oh my God! Twenty-four years fighting the red devil and I’m cringing at the sight of this campfire.

We had a warm day in April, so I decided to barbeque some steaks. I lit the match, heard the little pop from the propane ignition, and went in for the steaks. I returned to the barbeque; it had heated up enough, so I threw on the steaks. The flames lapping over the meat and the sizzling sound of the fat sent me into another fit. Again, my chest was on fire, my stomach was heaving––I was going to vomit. What is this? Then the flashbacks started. The burned bodies we had taken from fires not once but many times.

I didn’t eat much that night. I didn’t barbeque for a while.

The flashbacks from my years with the department were becoming more frequent, my stomach was grumbling more, and the pains in my chest were getting stronger. I decided to go to a psychiatrist, a doctor who could prescribe medication, while my psychologist could not. I was given Prozac and Klonopin. They did their job; they calmed me down. I continued going to the psychologist because that soft-spoken man with his knowledge of relaxation exercises really helped me. His work in conjunction with the pills prescribed by the psychiatrist put me on the road to recovery.

It’s been two years now, and I’m no longer taking the Prozac or Klonopin. I still get the nerves now and then, but that’s my nature; I’m definitely a type-A personality. My flashbacks persistently return. My family and friends were constantly telling me to put it in writing, let people know what firefighters went through with the riots when the Bronx was burning. I also heard from volunteer firefighters who hadn’t even been born when I was fighting fires in the Bronx back then. They were greatly interested in reading about my twenty-four years on the job.

I’ll share my flashbacks with them and you.

THE BEGINNING

O n December 4, 1939, the future firefighter Joseph F. Maraglino was born. His father was a firefighter, but he shouldn’t have been because of his heart. He’d had a rheumatic heart since he was a child. The army had refused to draft him, but the fire department accepted him. (He died of his heart condition on September 11, 1962.)

Joseph’s grandfather was also a firefighter in Harlem. The results of a fire claimed his life. He went into a coma, came out of the coma, and died.

My father told me stories about the fires he encountered; they kindled a rush in me, but I never entertained any idea of becoming a firefighter. I was just an average boy as far as athletics and school were concerned.

At age fifteen, I joined the Marist Brothers (they teach in catholic schools) thinking that was my destiny. At age seventeen, I realized that wasn’t my calling and left this excellent Christian training. It was time to decide if I wanted to go to college. It was then that I decided I’d try to become a fireman, but my mother encouraged me to go to college. I loved math, and she wanted me to be an accountant.

When I turned eighteen, I walked into the draft board, started filling out the paperwork to register, and noticed young clerks, all girls, laughing at me. It came to my attention later that day that they couldn’t believe I was eighteen. At that time, I was five five and weighed 115. (I continued growing until I was twenty-three and ended up at six feet.) I was sure I didn’t want to go to college. I quit, got a job as a clerk, and went to Delehanty’s to use the gym and to train for the written test for the fire department. I was never in such good shape as when I worked out at Delehanty, climbed ten-foot walls, crawled through tunnels, and made broad jumps. All in a certain time.

The fire department test came; I did great on the physical but scored only about an eighty-four out of a hundred on the