1818 East Grand: Tales from the Detroit Fire Department

By Frank English

This is the story of one Detroit firefighter. It chronicles the period of Detroit from 1973 through 2007, which was the start of his career. Join us during those tremulous days of unbridled chaos and arson throughout the city. Many journalists and photographers from literally around the world came to witness and photograph this period.

The author writes about a dark side of the city’s history—a period of suppressing the truth about the men and women of the DFD who worked with personnel shortages, beat-up equipment, and for a time, inadequate fire protective clothing.

The author recognizes that much in Detroit and the Detroit Fire Department has changed for the better.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662440069

Book preview

Why a Firefighter? Why Detroit?

Here I am, minding my own business, living at my rental house in a great East Side neighborhood (my old neighborhood in which I owned a house was devastated by the federal government’s HUD program, and we were driven out). I’ve got hair down to my shoulders and owned four motorcycles and was working for a motorcycle company when an old buddy of mine stopped by to tell me about the city’s hiring of firefighters (they were called firemen back then). I really wasn’t interested, but he said I could just apply; if it was not what I wanted, I could just not enter the academy. That sounded reasonable, so I put my paperwork three days before the cutoff and waited. Four weeks later, I’m taking a written exam in Cobo Hall with what seemed like a couple of thousand other guys. Four weeks later, I was told to go to the fire academy to take an agility test. My total score was high, and lo and behold, I had to make a decision. Actually, by that time, I was converted. When I entered the academy to test, I fell in love. Everything about that job looked cool. So there really wasn’t a decision to make—this job was for me.

The sixteen weeks in the academy flew by, and before you knew it, it was over. However, before we left the training school, I would learn a lesson about where I lived and worked and who controlled it. There are many organizations you can sign up to join, but there was one I could never be a part of. The Phoenix of Detroit was it. The White guys in class were told to tune out while a lieutenant from community relations tried to enlist the Black guys in class to join. He said it was a group that helped poor people in Detroit. Stupidly, I asked if I could join. He said that most of the poor people in Detroit are Black, and that’s why it’s only for Black firemen. I asked if there were any poor White people in the city, and he asked me to be quiet. Obviously, I wasn’t allowed to join. That nonsense from that lieutenant didn’t really change my feelings about my new love, but as time went by, I learned lessons about how things were going to be.

DFD Fire Academy

Graduation from the Detroit Fire Department Training School occurred after about sixteen weeks of intense training. We were so short of firefighters in the field that we were a double class. We had forty men training days, forty training afternoons, for a total of eighty fire recruits. This took place beginning January 22, 1973, and if you were the unlucky class working afternoons, your fire evolutions, as they called it, made for hairy experiences. For example, fire escape exercises were conducted on an ancient icy metal fire escape. This really wasn’t all that scary; however, roof exercises consisted of raising a thirty-five-foot sectional ladder against a frozen icy parapet. You were then expected to climb up the ladder over the top and then hump your line up as well. The top of the ladder slid side to side on the icy walls and top of the building, and generally, you just prayed for the best. The instructors knew what they were doing, and no one was injured, but we sure as heck didn’t know if we were going to survive. All in all, it was a wonderful experience. However, it was difficult to maintain 85 percent averages; we had to form study groups or face expulsion if we couldn’t cut it. My little group of four guys all made it, though I’m the only one still on the job. Two were injured at fires and disabled. The last retired several years ago but died of lung disease in a little over two years after his retirement. We sat through long lectures of fire science and fire theory in close little classes with radiators hissing, keeping the room very warm and making it very hard for the trainees not to fall asleep.

Ah, but practical exercises were great. Even though it was freezing outside, it was still so much better than sitting in little classrooms, listening to instructors drone on and on and while trying to pay attention. We did engine ops, which taught us how to pull, lay, and repack hose lines. In addition, we learned how to use every piece of equipment on that pumper, not to mention memorizing where it was stored on the rig. Rigs are standardized, so where the equipment went on this rig was the same all over the city. In addition, we did truck or aerial operations. In Detroit, the main pieces of apparatus are the engines (pumpers), trucks (aerial ladders), and squads. We also have other specialized equipment like platforms (aerial ladders with enclosed steel shell which will hold two firefighters and contain two water cannons) and of course, our fire boat. The boat is rarely used, and I can only remember two fires in which we used it. Truth be told, it has always been underutilized. Platforms are called to multiple-alarm fires and, as of late, used at large fires that don’t go to extra alarms.

One of my most vivid memories was the infamous smokehouse. Long closed and shuttered, it was a recruit’s nightmare. The instructors would go into this little shack and set fires made up of paper, clothes, and plastic. Heck, today, those would be considered hazardous materials. We were told that failure to enter the house would result in expulsion; no ifs, ands, or buts. This was my second to the last week in the academy, but no one was happy about entering that shack with black smoke pouring out of every nook and cranny. One by one, we all entered the smoking structure. One by one, we all exited, coughing, puking, and teary-eyed. No facepiece, no SCBA, we didn’t even have protective clothing on. Like I said, it has been shuttered for years, but that little ditty really gave you a sense of what this business is all about.

Finally, the training comes to an end