Tornado upended their world again
By Brendan McCarthy
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Copyright 2007 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
NEW ORLEANS — The two firefighters called each other at least six times Wednesday.
New Orleans Fire Capt. Richard Hirstius and Raymel Poché Sr. needed to recount the tiniest details of their run-in with the tornado, reconstructing the few seconds that flipped their world upside down Tuesday, inside a temporary trailer, outside a flood-ravaged Gentilly firehouse.
It hasn’t been easy fighting fire in this city, at least not for the past two years. Not in Engine 12 company. Still, they fight fires, with fewer men.
“We just can’t leave this city,” Hirstius said Wednesday, his voice cracking with emotion. “New Orleans is a little down and out right now. But we can’t leave it.”
Hirstius, a 13-year veteran of the department, had heard Monday that bad weather could be coming. From a trailer in the 5600 block of Franklin Avenue, Hirstius and his two-man crew were preparing Monday night for downed power lines, distress calls, anything Mother Nature could hurl their way.
They braced for the worst. Who knew what could happen with the city in the condition it’s in. The radio squawked about a tornado circling Jefferson Parish.
Then the TV flickered off, and a flash of light filled the room. Hirstius would later attribute it to short-circuiting wires outside, throwing off sparks.
Everything went dark. The wind whipped. Then came the sound, like a whistling freight train. Hirstius, 50, scrambled past the kitchen, into the bathroom adjoining his crew’s room, screaming bloody murder.
He started busting down the door to get to his crew and warn them. Then, suddenly, liftoff.
The trailer spun into the air, crashed into the dilapidated firehouse, then flipped onto its side.
Part of it landed on Poché’s green Honda Civic.
In the pitch-black bathroom, Hirstius fumbled for his radio. When he found it, he called fire dispatch.
“Engine 12 to dispatch. We’ve been hit by a tornado and we’ve been toppled over,” he radioed.
Then the radio went dead.
In the room next door, firefighter Adam Owens lay buried under a mess of furniture. Poché, in bed when the trailer lifted off, had landed inside the too-small room on his head, not knowing which way was up.
He hoped the others were alive. He knew he had to get them out of there. Poché found a rip in the trailer’s thin sheet-metal seam and started clawing.
He punched and kicked, punched and kicked. He crawled out and scrambled back to the front of the trailer, in search of his captain. By now the trailer had been torn open like a crushed can of tuna, its innards spilling out. Poché said he heard rustling inside.
He tried to rip the hole bigger. The captain is a big fella.
Hirstius and Owens crawled out.
Seconds later came the cavalry, firefighters from a nearby district.
Firefighters, like all first responders, have persevered through personal travails and adverse work conditions since the flooding after Hurricane Katrina. Hirstius, a father of two, lost his first wife about six years ago, lost his house in the flood, lost his engine house, too. He almost lost his life early Tuesday.
“I haven’t had time to deal with all this yet,” he said Wednesday.
When Poché goes to work, he leaves his own trailer and travels four blocks to another trailer, home of Engine 12.
After he crawled to safety Tuesday, he sprinted the four blocks to his trailer.
Shaken like a snow globe, the trailer had slipped off its foundation; Poché’s belongings had been tossed about.
Poché, 41, a father of three, remained optimistic.
“I learned from Katrina,” he said. “As long as my family is OK, my stuff don’t matter.”
Firefighters in other engine houses are familiar with the working conditions at Engine 12. Some stations sit stagnant amid deplorable conditions, waiting for repairs. Many fire crews live in trailers next to the shells of their old engine houses.
Down to three-man shifts instead of four, Engine 12’s men were in a 60-foot, three-room trailer that used to house a construction company’s office.
For now, Engine 12 has a new temporary, temporary home. It is operating out of Engine 13’s headquarters in the 900 block of Robert E. Lee Boulevard.
Hirstius and Poché said little will change. They’ll still show up for work, still work through “hell or high water,” whether from a torn-down engine house or a torn-up trailer.
“We are firefighters ‘til we die,” Poché said. “This is what we do. We’ll be there.” In line with the Fire Department’s schedule of one day on, two days off, Engine 12’s tornado-torn trailer crew will return to duty today at 7 a.m.