By Phoebe Wall Howard
The Detroit News
MACKINAC ISLAND, Mich. — Covered in snow and ice, the tiny restaurants and hotels along Main Street sat empty like a scene in an old postcard.
On this last Saturday of February, some three dozen firefighters on Mackinac Island lined up with fire trucks in front of Ryba’s Fudge after reports of smoke filling a third-floor apartment above the popular sweet shop.
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These folks in fire uniforms all have day jobs. They include the front desk clerk at the Chippewa Hotel, the bartender at the Mustang Lounge, a bicycle tour guide, an ice cream shop owner, horse-drawn taxi drivers, a hotel security officer, an island cop, a window cleaner and the president of the Grand Hotel.
“These 34 men and women, separated from the world by five miles of water, are protecting upwards of 15,000 people on any given July day, half-a-billion dollars in property and Michigan’s crown jewel vacation destination,” Mackinac Island Fire Chief Jason St. Onge said. “This is a responsibility we take very seriously.”
This moment didn’t look or feel like Mackinac Island, a magical place on Lake Huron with buildings that date back to the late 1800s and charm that attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists from all over the world each year. No cars are allowed. The beautiful island offers solitude in addition to great bars, restaurants and dancing when it gets late on summer nights.
Instead, the island firefighters and colleagues from departments in Ann Arbor and Detroit strapped on masks and air tanks on a snow-covered street and climbed flights of stairs as dense smoke poured into the tight spaces, creating a thick fog that made sight almost impossible. They scoured the rooms with flashlights, trying to find residents who might need rescuing. Daylight didn’t seem to help at all.
Firefighters checked the cupboards, closets and bedrooms for people, announced “all clear” on the radio to the team waiting outside in frigid temps. Townspeople volunteered to play the fire victims for this drill. A body lay between the couch and coffee table, unseen by multiple rescuers.
Trial firefighter Emily Sturgis, 27, a state parks guide from Eastpointe, found the survivor in the living room and assisted another firefighter in walking her to the stairs, while another firefighter carried her down. A firefighter overcome by smoke had to be strapped onto a stretcher and carried away.
This training, done on the last two days of February, marked the 10th year of immersive fire drilling and active management with volunteer island firefighters. They must be prepared so that when the population swells from 300 to 6,000 residents between April and November, no one will die in a fire.
Last year, the island had more runs than ever with 178 — including fires, alarms, storm damage and various rescues. “All of it,” St. Onge said, up from 89 runs just two years ago.
If not caught immediately, a fire could wipe out everything. In July and August, the Mackinac Island Fire Department had runs almost every single day, including cliff rescues.
Island responders learn from experience
This unlikely partnership with Detroit evolved a few years ago when Detroit Battalion Vhief Bernie Storm, 56, of Sterling Heights, stopped by the firehouse for a souvenir T-shirt.
Every year without fail, Tom Wickman, 64, of Byron, now a retired Detroit battalion chief from southwest Detroit, travels north to work with island firefighters. Teaching fire safety is in his blood.
He grew up the son of a waitress and a millwright at Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. He has spent three decades training security teams at Ford plants throughout North America in protocols related to medical, fire, confined space and hazardous material emergencies and rope rescues.
When firefighters on Mackinac Island set an active fire that gets so hot it warps a metal shipping container, Wickman discusses the rate of speed that heat and smoke rise, and how to navigate the conditions. The crew has built obstacles inside the shipping container to mimic windows, like a residence, so firefighters can practice navigating tight spaces under extreme conditions.
“You will never come across better brotherhood or family than what you see among firefighters,” Wickman said. “Seniority matters. You learn from things going bad, and that’s why it’s important that we share what we know. You learn from mistakes and accomplishments. This requires more than textbooks. It takes experience. In Detroit , you can do six to eight runs a day. You can’t teach experience. You have to live it.”
When one of the guys on the island left to get married, Wickman drove up to take his place and ended up making two runs — an electrical fire and a water rescue. On this day, he pointed to smoke rising during one of the drills and said, “Look at this and see how it breathes. Fire does that. You learn to read fire.”
The D claims island boy
Aaron Riggs, 25, of Sterling Heights is a member of the Chippewa nation whose family has been on the island since the 1700s. He worked construction and went from the Mackinac fire crew to a Detroit fire crew.
“My son grew up in a land of peaches and cream. Now that he’s working in Detroit, it makes me very proud and scared to death,” said his mom, Nicole Horn, 51. “He called me one morning around 5 or 6 a.m. to share that he had just delivered a baby on the side of the road.”
Kody Swanson, 29, a horse-drawn taxi driver from Sault Ste. Marie is training to be a firefighter. He observed crews extinguish a fire last summer started by an air-conditioning unit during peak season: “If it had happened at 3 a.m. instead of 8 a.m., it could’ve been bad.”
Firefighters aren’t in it for the money. Island firefighters earn $14 an hour when responding to incidents, St. Onge said, with leadership earning up to $29.80 an hour. The chief runs Cannonball Oasis, which sells hot dogs, fried pickles and ice cream at the halfway point around the island.
Firefighter Deshaun Gloss, 34, moved to the island from Saginaw and became a year-round resident in 2013. As a Black man, he said it initially felt like culture shock.
“It was the first time I was somewhere as a minority,” Gloss said. “But then I learned that people are not about race, age or where they grew up but instead about character and like-mindedness.”
He does island landscaping and pressure washing full-time, and considered accepting a firefighting job in Detroit with support from the fire chief. But Gloss decided to stay with the people he calls family: “I was looking for something that was right in front of me the whole time. There’s something special here.”
Focus on simplicity
Firefighter Johnny Morris, 41, a woodworker and a window-cleaning business owner on island, was a longtime bartender at the Pink Pony and great-grandson of Burt Proctor, the last lighthouse keeper on Round Island.
“Detroit Fire is the best of the best,” said Morris, a Cheboygan native. “We need all that wisdom passed down from senior officers. They teach us about simplicity, not needing fancy tools and different ways to do more with less.”
Cory Kaminen, 54, of Ishpeming is an island police officer. He tackles firefighting duties after his night shift ends. “Training on this weekend with Detroit is about tactics, search and rescue, extractions and talking through different scenarios.”
Veteran firefighters from Detroit talked about the need to sometimes crawl on your belly to see more clearly in a smoke-filled room and avoid heat.
Keith Krueger, 55, a Detroit fire lieutenant from Sterling Heights, warned that smoke can get so thick at times that firefighters can even get lost in a closet. It is essential to keep calm, avoid panic and keep going.
Stay together and breathe
It’s not OK for firefighters to separate from partners when making rescues. Details matter. Following the water hose — called a line — is like a bread crumb trail in smoke and darkness. A new firefighter said he learned the importance of having someone monitor the line at corners to prevent kinks in the hose. Most importantly, conserve air. Turn on the tank right before entering the building and no sooner.
“Everyone needs to practice air management, making sure you don’t free-flow your regulator while masking up,” said Rob Porter, 53, an Ann Arbor fire lieutenant from Fowlerville . “You want every bit of air in your tank to be breathable in case you get trapped. Two minutes of air left might mean life or death.”
Turning off the gas supply is key in commercial areas, St. Onge noted afterward. Every detail saves a life. And when it’s all happening at once and likely only seven officers are available at any one time, training matters.
The smoke during the active fire drills burned my throat and eyes, and I was outside and far away. I could taste it while I listened to air tank motion alarms that go off when a firefighter stops moving, meant to alert crew to trouble. That’s why firefighters do a little jiggle when they stand in one spot for too long.
Working blindfolded
Most volunteer firefighters don’t have the level of training they get on Mackinac Island, Wickman said.
He talked about the need to prepare for flashovers — the rapid movement of fire in an enclosed area, which can cause a room to explode into an inferno in seconds.
Storm, a battalion chief whose firehouse is between the Ambassador Bridge and the Gordie Howe International Bridge, played key roles in directing drills, too.
These drills remind firefighters how far hoses can stretch from ladders and through hallways. How far does 200 feet of hose go? Which ladder should you use for that kind of window?
“It’s good to know how to do things quickly, blindfolded,” St. Onge said. “This is how we cut holes in the roof to let toxins out, what we call venting. Which chainsaws to use where and when.”
Saving lives, keeping perspective
Unlike all the others, Riggs returns home with a Detroit perspective to share. He was working construction on the island when St. Onge suggested he apply for a job in Detroit. Now Riggs works split shifts on the fire truck and the ambulance in the Motor City.
“We go to a lot of structure fires and car accidents. We do maybe 250-300 runs a month. I might do 8-15 runs in a single shift,” he said. “In Detroit, you get a lot of trauma, including stabbings and shootings. You do basic life support and transport patients to the hospital. It’s always learning. I work with the paramedics, nurses in the ER and doctors to improve.”
Losing a pediatric patient is the worst part of the job, recently having seen a 1-month-old child go into cardiac arrest and quit breathing, Riggs said. “Sometimes you can’t get people back. The most rewarding is when you save a child. We have the best job on Earth.”
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