//------------------------------//
// Push On 
// Story: Report From Rescue Company 1 
// by BRBrony9 
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'So, you had another date last night, huh?' 

Ember Dawn gave his brother a nudge and winked at him. 'How did it go? What did you two get up to?' he asked. The two brothers were preparing the lunch for the whole firehouse, salad and soup this time around. Neither of them were exactly expert chefs, but everypony was expected to take their turn and try their hoof at cooking something. Legendary meals would be photographed and posted on the firehouse notice board to annoy the other shifts and boast that the best chefs were on one particular tour of duty, while terrible dishes would be consigned to the wall of shame. Most, of course, fell somewhere in between.

'Yeah, another date,' Blaze replied with a nod as he stirred the large pot of vegetable soup. 'Don't tell me this is all I'm gonna hear all day again.'

'Oh, you can guarantee it,' Dawn grinned. 'What's this now, the fourth, right? Where did you take her?'

'We went to the ice rink,' Blaze replied. 'You know, at the Rockepony Center.'

'Since when can you skate?' Dawn chuckled. 'Oh wait, yeah...we used to go, didn't we? With Dad, when we were about...I dunno, six? Seven? You have a long memory, huh?'

'It's like riding a bike,' Blaze assured his brother. 'You don't forget. Maybe you should take Rosebush there?'

'Ah, it's too far,' Dawn replied. 'All the way to midtown just to fall over and embarrass myself? I can do that in my own home.'

'I bet you do, frequently,' Blaze teased. 'Every time you come home drunk. Unless Rosebush makes you sleep on the couch then, of course.'

'Nope. Our couch isn't even big enough to sleep on,' Dawn retorted, slicing up bread rolls to go with the meal. 'Hey, make sure you and Licorice get a big couch, otherwise you might find yourself pretty cramped when she makes you sleep on it.'

'Come on, it's four dates.' Blaze rolled his eyes. 'It's not like we're announcing our engagement.'

'But you like her though, right?' Dawn gave him another nudge.

'Yeah, of course. But let's hold off on talking about the size of our furniture for a while, huh?' Blaze grinned, turning the gas off. 'Soup's ready...we'd better get the bowls.'

'Lunch, yo! Lunch!' Dawn called, banging a saucepan to alert the rest of the fireponies, who were scattered around the firehouse performing various tasks. He grabbed the bowls and Blaze served the soup with a battered and well-used ladle which was a veteran of the firehouse. The rest of the crews trickled in to be fed, a tasty treat in the middle of the working day to set them up for the afternoon. Fireponies needed plenty of calories, for they could burn them off at a prodigious rate when performing a rescue or battling a fire, which was why there was plenty of dessert usually offered as well. Today it was cookies and muffins, calorie-dense and infinitely palatable to the hungry crews. They munched away, and the meal was not added to the hall of fame, or the wall of shame. It was just another feed, one of countless hundreds for the long-serving members, and just like so many, it fell at the perfect time.

Beep-Boop.

'Engine. Battalion.'

'I'll eat your cookie for you!' Blaze called after his brother, as Dawn disappeared out of the break room, leaving the Rescue crew lounging in their chairs to finish their meals. Despite Blaze's promise to eat his brother's food, that didn't happen. The bond of firehouse life meant that each pony knew that they needed the energy and sustenance. As a result, the meals abandoned by the Engine would be in exactly the same state when they returned.




'...Reporting fire on the 14th floor. You have Engine 40 first due, Engine 25, Engine 34, Ladder 35 and Ladder 4, K.'

'Battalion 9, 10-4.'

Firebrand replaced the radio in its cradle as Pumpkin Punch, his driver and aide, guided the SUV through traffic. They were going to 10th Avenue and 53rd, where apparently an apartment was burning. Engine 25 parted vehicles ahead of them, making their run much easier as they headed up 8th Avenue.

'Engine 40 to Manehattan?'

'Go ahead Engine 40.'

'Box 0783, we made contact with the doorpony. He says they have a fire on the 14th floor but we didn't see anything from outside. We're going to check the alarm panel, K.'

'10-4, Engine 40. Battalion 9, received?'

'Battalion 9, 10-4, we're 10-84,' Firebrand replied, as they pulled up outside the building. It was a tall structure, though far from the tallest in the borough, some twenty stories of luxury apartments, rented out to the highest bidder. Engine 40 was parked up outside, next to a hydrant in case it should be needed.

Fireband got out of his car and looked up, a stiff wind blowing his mane as he surveyed the exterior of the building. There was no fire belching out of a window, nor any visible smoke. Or was there? He peered at the 14th floor. There was no smoke coming out, but there was one window that was starting to look a bit discolored.

'Engine 40 to Battalion 9?'

'Go ahead, 40,' Firebrand replied into his radio.

'The alarm panel is showing an activation on the 14th floor, Chief. Heat detection and sprinklers, apartment 1405.'

'10-4, Engine 40.' Firebrand switched from his personal radio to the SUV's radio to call the dispatcher. 'Battalion 9 to Manehattan?'

'Go ahead, Battalion 9.'

'Transmit a 10-77 for our box, we have a fire on the 14th floor,' he informed them. The discoloration of the window combined with the confirmed alarm activation told the experienced Firebrand that there was, or at least had been, a fire, without even visiting the fire floor. The discoloration was due to the soot and ash produced by a fire burning in the apartment, but there was every chance the sprinklers had knocked it down already. Nevertheless, it was always better to be safe than sorry, and transmit the 10-77 signal- fire in a high-rise multiple dwelling.

'Engine 40, get a line up to the 14th floor. Engine 25, back them up and bring a second line. Ladder 35, primary search on the fire floor. Ladder 4, primary searches on the floor above,' Firebrand issued his orders, following the well-practiced routine, honed over the many years of the department's service.

Ember Dawn helped Striker grab the nozzle and several lengths of hose, tied up in easy to carry bundles which could be joined together on the fire floor. A high-rise fire was always fought using the building's internal standpipe system, a network of pipes that could provide pressure and water for their hoses, either with its own pumps, a gravity-feed from a roof tank, or after hooking up an Engine Company to a street-side outlet and using its pump. If the system was out of order for some reason, however, hose would have to be stretched from the street, which could require an inordinate amount of hose lengths that would have to be joined together. 

Fortunately, the building was well maintained, and the standpipe system, confirmed by the building engineer, was fully functional. Engine 40 and Ladder 35 piled in to one of the building's elevators, and Engine 25 and Ladder 4 into the other. The ride up was short, less than thirty seconds, both elevators stopping on the 12th floor- two floors below the fire, as per standard procedure. To exit on the fire floor could be fatal if the flames had already spread into the hallway outside the elevator and caused its mechanisms to fail, trapping the fireponies. As a result, elevators were always stopped two floors down, and the crew walked the rest of the way up, just to be on the safe side.

Walking up stairs in full turnout gear was tiring, which was why, despite the potential risks, fireponies always rode the elevators in high-rise buildings whenever possible. In some of the major skyscrapers that dotted Manehattan's skyline, it could take up to an hour to climb all the way to the top, and upon arrival the crews would be utterly exhausted from lugging their gear up a hundred flights or more, and be in no fit shape to actually fight the fire anyway. Fourteen floors was more manageable, but it was still much faster to take the elevator, and so the crews found themselves on the twelfth floor of the high-rise.

Ember Dawn, as backup, stuck behind Striker as they located the fire stairs and began the climb. There was no indication of any flames or smoke, but the sound of a ringing fire alarm could be heard above them. The staircase had positive pressure, designed to keep smoke from flowing into it from a fire in the building, so that it could be used either for evacuation or for emergency service access from below.

At the fourteenth floor doorway, they halted, to pull their fireproof hoods and helmets on and get their face masks in place. Lifegiving oxygen flowed into their lungs as the fireponies from Engine 40 hooked up their hoseline to the standpipe system and charged it. This was the calm before the storm, like paratroopers or Pegasi assault troops waiting for the light to change from red to green so they could hurl themselves from the safety of their aircraft and into the unknown and dangerous skies. Striker and Dawn stood by with a second hoseline. If it was needed, it could be hooked up to the standpipe on the floor below, but most apartment fires were handled by a single hose, and as the first-due company, that was Engine 40's responsibility. Ladder 35's job was to search for victims, in the fire apartment and elsewhere if necessary, and they opened the stairway door as Engine 40's nozzlepony aimed the hose through it, just in case.

They didn't need it. There was no fire in the hallway, and only a light haze of smoke. The door to one apartment was open, and proved to be the source of the smoke, which was steadily seeping out from the room beyond. Engine 40 and Ladder 35 advanced down the hallway, the truckies banging on apartment doors, shouting that the fire department was here and that any residents who hadn't already evacuated should leave. The other apartments on the floor would be entered and thoroughly searched once the flames had been knocked down, but the immediate need was to clear the burning apartment. Though the open door suggested that the resident had fled, there was no guarantee that was the case, or that everypony who lived in the apartment had made it out, or that somepony else hadn't gone in to try and fight the fire with an extinguisher and been overcome.

Dawn and Striker, along with Coppertop and Dark Flash, awaited at the stairway door. If needed, they could quickly hook up their line and move to back up Engine 40, most likely if the fire was found to have already extended to one of the adjacent apartments through the walls. If they weren't needed for that, they could help the Ladder searching the rest of the floor, or take over from Engine 40 once they got tired or their air supply ran low.

But as Engine 40 approached the apartment door, ready to make entry, a gout of flame suddenly roared out of the room, like the tongue of a dragon, licking across the ceiling. The fireponies scurried back down the hall as the heat washed over them. Their bunker gear could handle temperatures in the hundreds of degrees, but anything above that would soon lead to burns despite the protective gear, leading to a mad scramble 

'Battalion 9 to all units, urgent, urgent, urgent!'

Their radios crackled as Chief Firebrand broadcast a call. 'All units, be advised. The window of the fire apartment just failed!'

The failure of an exterior window would not usually have too much of an effect on an apartment fire, but the circumstances conspired to make sure that was not the case this time. The apartment was high up, and it was a windy day, which meant that the usual exit route for the smoke and heat, out of the now-broken window, was cut off by the inrushing wind. As a result, thanks to the apartment door being left open, the only other way it could go was out into the hall, funneled by the wind into a blowtorch effect, the breeze acting like the bellows of a furnace and superheating the blast of fire which had erupted over the heads of the attack team. A wind-driven fire was much harder to fight, and much more dangerous, than a fire in an unventilated apartment would be. Fireponies used ventilation strategically, to deliberately manipulate the direction of heat, smoke and fire. A window here, an open door there, a broken skylight to draw the worst of the fire's energy upward as appropriate. An uncontrolled ventilating of a fire could be disastrous, because the safety of both victims and fireponies could be placed in extreme jeopardy.

'Back out, back out!' somepony called on the radio, as Firebrand repeated his warning, though the fireponies on the 14th floor didn't need him to tell them that something had clearly changed. The hall quickly filled with smoke that banked down, driven out from the apartment by the wind to accompany the fire, driving down visibility. The ponies of Engine 40 and Ladder 35 crawled back along the hall to the doorway where they had entered, while at Lieutenant Coppertop's order, Striker and Dawn hurried down one flight of stairs to hook their hoseline up to the standpipe system as the radio came alive with calls.

'Engine 40 to command, urgent! We have heavy fire in the public hallway on the 14th floor!'

'Ladder 4 to command, urgent! We have fire extending into apartment 1505, directly above the fire apartment!'

'Ladder 35 to Ladder 35 Irons, what's your location?'

'Ladder 35 to Ladder 35 Irons, what's your location, K?'

'Ladder 35 to command, mayday, mayday, mayday! We have a missing firepony!'