Kate Hardy - The Firefighter's Fiance

‘There’s after-school club for the kids whose parents are still at work,’ Ray said tersely. ‘I know Finn won’t be there, but some of her friends might be.’

‘Hey. Might even be a false alarm—like it usually is when we get a callout to the university,’ Paul said.

‘Let’s hope,’ Ray said, his voice clipped. ‘Police and the ambo team have been called as well.’

But when they turned into School Road, they could see smoke.

Ray swore. ‘They don’t have a sprinkler system, except in the new block.’

Kelsey remembered that the main part of the school was Victorian, a rambling building that had grown along with the urban sprawl of the town. It was full of corridors and small rooms and with varying levels to the floor. The kind of building that always worried firefighters because the layout wasn’t logical and the access points weren’t always clear. She also knew that Ray, as a school governor, had been agitating to get sprinklers fitted to the main building but the project had been tied up in arguments between the planning authority and the education authority over listed building regulations. There had been holdup after hold-up over the proposed changes to the building while they had tried to reach a compromise that would satisfy both areas. With sprinklers, the fire would be less serious. Without, who knew what they’d face?

‘Guv, they’ve probably got everyone out. The teachers’ll be waiting in the playground, having ticked all the kids’ names off,’ Kelsey suggested.

‘Maybe. But you know as well as I do that the worst time for us is after-school club—the numbers attending vary, and some of the kids there don’t go there full time so they don’t really know the layout of the building. It’s not like daytime where everyone knows exactly what’s going on. Right, everyone. Full PPE on.’ Personal protective equipment—because this could easily turn nasty. ‘Joe, stay with the vehicle.’

‘Right, guv,’ Joe said as he parked the fire engine.

‘Paul, I want you as BAECO.’ The BAECO, or breathing apparatus entry co-ordinator, kept the control board with all the firefighters’ tallies in place, so he knew who was in the building, how long they’d been in there and when they’d need to be out again.

‘Right, guv,’ Paul said.

‘Kelsey, you and Mark set the hydrant and get extra water while the other crew start putting water on the blaze—the tanks aren’t going to be enough for this.’ Each fire engine carried eighteen hundred litres of water in its tanks—enough to deal with a small bedroom fire in a house, but not enough for what could potentially be a huge blaze.

‘Right, guv,’ they chorused.

The fire alarm was shrilling; there were four adults and a number of children marshalled on the grass at the side of the building furthest from the fire.

One of them came straight over to the fire crew. Clearly the head or one of Finn’s teachers, Kelsey thought from the way she greeted Ray—she obviously knew him.

‘What happened, Brenda?’ he asked.

‘I heard a bang, then the smoke detectors went off. I think the boiler must have exploded,’ Brenda said. ‘I’ve got one of the after-school groups out but the other’s cut off in the far end. One teacher, two assistants and around twenty kids.’

Ray called in to Control. ‘I want another engine in and as many BA sets as you can give me,’ he said. When fighting a fire, the crew went through breathing apparatus sets more quickly than usual, so they needed as many available as possible. ‘We’ve got three adults and twenty or so kids trapped. We’re going to get them out and start on the blaze.’ He turned back to Brenda. ‘Any flammable stuff we need to know about?’

‘Most of the classrooms have art materials. Paper, glue, paint and the like. There’s the chemistry stuff in the lab, but that’s at the far end.’

‘Near the trapped kids. So far, not near the fire. OK, we’ll bear that in mind.’ He nodded and turned to the crew. ‘We’ll split the building into three sectors. Andy and Neil, I want you two in sector one where the boiler is. Pete and Tom, I want you in sector two, the classrooms between the boiler room and the toilets in the middle of the school. Kelsey and Mark, I want you in sector three—the far end of the school. It doesn’t look as if the fire’s there yet so get them out as quickly as you can. We’ll see how the fire’s going after that, and I might need you to work on the science lab.’

They all checked in with Paul, handing him the tallies from their breathing apparatus sets. He slotted them into the board, wrote their names and the time in beside them, checked the pressure of the oxygen cylinders and used the dial to work out the time when they needed to be out, and marked that on the grid next to it.

Kelsey and Mark took axes with them and headed for the classroom at the far end.

‘Has to be a window,’ Mark said.

The windows were tall and narrow, typically Victorian. ‘I’m thinner than you,’ Kelsey said when they’d cleared the glass from one of the frames. ‘Makes sense for me to go in.’ She unbuckled her breathing apparatus.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Mark demanded, sounding shocked.

‘There’s no smoke in the classroom right now so I don’t need my BA set—and, anyway, it’s easier for me to climb through the window without the extra bulk, let alone carrying the thirty pounds of kit,’ Kelsey said. ‘Give us a leg up.’

‘But, Brains—’

‘No time to argue. Let’s get them out.’

‘OK, but I’m putting the BA set through after you. And you make sure you put it on when you get back in,’ he demanded, ‘even if you don’t have the mask on.’

‘Deal.’ She clambered onto the window-sill with Mark’s help and squeezed through the gap, then took the breathing apparatus he pushed through after her. ‘Hi, my name’s Kelsey. You might remember me from last week when Finn’s dad brought the fire engine in,’ she said, smiling at the children. ‘Now, we’re going to have to go out of the room a different way today, because we can’t use the door.’ No smoke was seeping through it yet, but there were no guarantees it would stay that way. ‘Can you all be brave for me?’

Some of the younger ones were sobbing. The sound ripped at her but she forced herself to ignore it. She had a job to do. And her first duty was to calm everyone right down. Giving in to her emotions and crying or screaming herself would just scare everyone and make it harder to get them out.

‘Hey, give us a smile. Makes it easier to lift you,’ she said. She turned to the three adults, who’d been trying to keep the children calm. ‘I need one of you to help me lift the children through the window, and two of you outside—one to help lift them out into the playground and one to check off the names.’

‘I’m Jane, the classroom assistant. I’ll stay inside,’ the youngest one said immediately.

‘Thanks. Can you get them all to line up, littlest at the front? And can you two help me get a table to the window?’ she asked the other two adults.

Together, they dragged a table to the window. The two older women clambered onto the table, squeezed through the window and were helped down by Mark. Then, between them, Kelsey and Jane lifted the children one at a time onto the table and handed them through the window into Mark’s waiting arms.

‘Just think, you can tell your mum what an exciting day you’ve had and how you’ve climbed through the window like a real firefighter,’ Kelsey said, trying to reassure the children.

A couple of the kids were still crying.

‘But it’s not exciting. There’s a fire, we’re trapped and we’re all going to die!’ one of the older kids said, his voice shrill with panic.