‘What if’ questions dominate thoughts of responders to deadly blaze a day later
Copyright 2006 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
All Rights Reserved
By JOHN COTE
The San Francisco Chronicle (California)
RICHMOND, Calif. — A day after a fire raged through a Richmond townhouse, killing three young children, firefighter Will Bachman looked through the emptiness where a window had been, wondering if things could have been different.
“If we had known they were in here, we could have put a ladder up,” he said, gazing out from the second-story back bedroom where the children had huddled under a blanket before succumbing to the smoke. “Would that have made a difference? I don’t know.”
Moments later, he was more strident.
“If we had any idea at all — Grandma, a neighbor, a kid screaming out the window — this isn’t how it would’ve been,” Bachman said, standing over waterlogged Scooby-Doo bedding on the floor. “All we had was speculation that there might have been (children in the home), and then to find three ...” His voice trailed off.
“It’s frustrating,” he said. “Frustrating.”
Bachman was one of three firefighters from the Richmond Fire Department to first reach 908 View Drive as flames engulfed the Hilltop neighborhood townhouse Friday. The three siblings were at home with their grandmother when authorities were alerted to the fire at 5:35 p.m.
The flames scorched the outside of the bedroom door where the children had huddled but did not enter the room, where on Saturday a pair of silver Spiderman sneakers hung unharmed in a shoe rack on the back of the door.
Devieonne Portis, 9, Jerimiah Cradle, 4, and Isis Cradle, 2, died of smoke inhalation, a coroner’s deputy said. That bedroom was one of two rooms left relatively unscathed in a two-alarm fire that burned so hot it melted aluminum window frames and glass panes.
The children’s grandmother was taken to a hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation, fire officials said. She was “distraught and emotionally traumatized,” said Fire Chief Michael Banks.
Fire department investigators were still trying Saturday to determine what caused the blaze, but Banks said it started in the kitchen. Bachman said he and his crew, who were nearby on another call, arrived minutes later to find flames and smoke pouring out windows and doors.
A woman who stumbled from the home before they arrived — apparently the grandmother — was in shock, said next-door neighbor Archie Linville.
“She didn’t say anything,” said Linville, 50. “She didn’t say her name, she didn’t say, ‘Can you help me?’ She was paralyzed.”
Linville said that at the time, he didn’t know if there were children inside the building.
“I didn’t hear no screams or nothing,” Linville said. “It was like, what the hell is going on?”
The children’s parents could not be reached for comment.
The dispatch report said there possibly were victims inside, and firefighters began battling the blaze and working their way into the building, Bachman said.
But with only three firefighters on the scene before reinforcements arrived, and a shortage of staff in the department, resources were stretched thin just to beat back a blaze that reached at least 1,200 degrees, Capt. Laura Barnaby said.
“We’re flying by the skin of our teeth,” Barnaby said. “This is the fire we’ve been dreading, where maybe an extra company or extra staffing on each rig could have made a difference.”
Thermal imaging devices — to find people through the smoke by detecting body heat — proved useless because of the strength of the blaze, Bachman said. A fire captain ultimately found the children by feel after making his way to the second floor, he said.
“Had we had just one more person on the engine company, that person could have been doing their best to hit upstairs,” Bachman said. “Maybe that would have made the difference.”
Banks acknowledged that there had been a shortage of funds but said more money recently had become available.
In the clear light of Saturday, with the faint smell of smoke in the air, bunches of flowers and a balloon formed a makeshift memorial for the children by their front gate. A rocking horse and bicycles lay untouched on the patio. Two neighborhood boys stood looking at the charred home.
“They used to always say ‘Hi’ to me,” Robert Bill, 12, said of the children who had lived a block away. “They were nice.”
Bachman, who has been a firefighter since 1981, said this one would stick with him.
“Fifteen years from now, you remember calls like this,” he said. “Personally, I just wanted to call home and hear my son’s voice.”