Progress report for Manhattan 10-60 4th Alarm, Unusual Occurrence Box 0711, West 57th Street and 11th Avenue. At this time, Assistant Chief Honeysuckle reports she has a confirmed aircraft down into multiple buildings. We have a partial collapse of two six-storey brownstones, a collapse and fire in a row of five taxpayers, heavy fire throughout three six-storey brownstones, and fires in at least two additional buildings. We also have structural damage to approximately four other buildings. We have confirmed survivors on board the aircraft. EMS is establishing a triage area and patients are in the process of being transferred and counted. EMS reports we have a total of two black tags, three red tags, eleven yellow tags, and six green tags. We have six lines stretched and in operation, two tower ladders in operation. Trucks are conducting primary searches of the affected buildings. Marine Company 1 is standing by to provide water relay and we are putting Satellite 1 into operation. By orders of Assistant Chief Honeysuckle, transmit a fifth alarm for this box and special call two additional tower ladders and two additional Battalion Chiefs. This incident remains doubtful will hold, k.
With the initial entry made and the primary searches of the jet completed, Rescue 1 found themselves reassigned. They were in high demand thanks to their expertise and training, while the more routine work of extracting injured passengers would be left to the SOB Support Ladders, supported by Squad 1, who had now arrived at the scene with their second vehicle that carried rescue and Hazmat supplies. Rescue Medics were inside the jet, checking on patients and identifying which ponies had the most severe injuries and required rapid evacuation to the triage area and thence on to hospital. Things were slowly falling into place as more and more units arrived at the staging area, providing personnel and equipment to deal with the widespread problems that faced the emergency responders.
Rescue 1, having completed the search, had been in contact with Chief Firebrand at the south sector command post, still obscured from their vision by blowing smoke, which made it difficult for the Chief to establish exactly what was going on, forcing him to rely on radio reports from the units under his command. Now, however, Deputy Chief Misty Morning had relocated from the command post at the orders of Chief Honeysuckle, and had now set up an operations post at the intersection of 57th Street and 10th, just north of the main fuselage and closer to the medical triage area. The nose section of the jet remained sitting in the intersection, where it had collided with at least one car and a soda delivery truck, which had spilled much of its load across the street, with cola siphoning away into the drains. The cab of the truck was a crumpled mess, reduced to a kaleidoscope of broken metal fragments and shards at all angles, like some metal flower in bloom.
The nose of the jet had been searched by other companies, finding survivors just as the Rescue had in the main section, but the fuselage and the passenger within it remained in danger. The buildings they had crashed into were unstable, as indeed was the fuselage itself. Collapse Rescue 1 were in the process of attempting to stabilise the fuselage so that the passengers could be brought safely out without any danger of it shifting or rolling during the operation. Wooden cribbing and metal struts were being slipped into place as gently as possible, in order to provide support and stop any possibility of movement. If the fuselage were to roll from its present position, it could either cause further damage to the building or possibly threaten the rescuers, as well as causing further injuries to the passengers who were still inside.
Captain Grey Spike met up with Chief Misty Morning at her relocated operations post for their next assignment. She gave Rescue 1 a new task; to search the two partially collapsed buildings above the downed jet for any survivors who may have been inside at the time of the crash. The buildings were not stable; the front walls had caved in under the impact, and there was damaged to internal walls and floors as well, with beams knocked out of true and plaster cracked and loose, but that was why a thorough search of the structures was so important. If they became more unstable at some future point of the operation, or if there was a further partial collapse, it would be too dangerous to send rescuers into them, and might jeopardize the evacuation of passengers from the jet as well.
The flight attendant had been taken to the triage area for treatment, carefully led as far as possible from the bodies of her co-workers which were lying broken in the street in an attempt to shield her from the worst of the trauma she was clearly already suffering from. More units had arrived in scene now, with several engine companies stretching hose lines, both to cover the jet in case of fire and to help extinguish the blazes in the multiple dwellings opposite, and the row of stores just to the south. The heat from the taxpayer blaze, stoked by jet fuel, could be felt clearly when standing in the street outside of the aircraft. There was a danger of it spreading to the damaged brownstones, which could exacerbate the structural damage and also threaten the passengers with toxic smoke and heat, hindering the rescue operation.
That was why two tower ladders had been brought in, driving straight through the smoke to park in front of the inferno. Two engines accompanied them to help slake their thirst, for their high capacity nozzles could pour heavy duty and accurate streams of water onto the fire from above, giving the option of attacking flames in otherwise inaccessible places and pushing the fire in a certain direction, cutting off its spread to the exposure buildings. In this case, the jet and the damaged buildings had to be protected, and the two ladders were set up, their buckets, each containing two fireponies, rising into the smoke to begin their relentless assault.
Grey Spike returned to the rest of the Rescue crew with their new orders. 'Masks on, everypony, some of that smoke is getting into those buildings,' he ordered. 'Flagstaff and Blaze, you're with me. We'll search the corner building. The rest of you, search the other building. Any survivors who are trapped or need extrication, put out a radio call. If they can walk, get them out to the street.'
'10-4, Cap!' Fairway replied, hustling with his team over to the building they had been assigned to clear. Blaze followed his captain, who approached the damaged corner structure. The first two floors had been opened up to the chill wind, curtains and hung up washing flapping in the breeze. Ponies had been living perfectly normal lives in the apartments within until their world had suddenly been turned upside down and torn apart by the crash. Some may already be dead, but other residents could easily be trapped inside, especially on the upper floors if the staircases had been damaged or destroyed.
'Take care in here,' Grey Spike warned his ponies as they passed by the front of the broken fuselage, where other units were offloading wounded passengers strapped down to backboards. Rubble from the collapsed curtain wall of the building littered the street underhoof, bricks and glass and plaster. The main entrance of the building had been taken out, the door crushed beneath the bulk of the fuselage which now blocked the most obvious entry point, the huge hole in the wall. There was space to potentially squeeze through, but squeezing for fireponies in full gear with air tanks and helmets was not exactly easy.
'Let's check round the back,' Grey Spike ordered, leading the way onto 57th Street, hoping to find a gate or alleyway that would grant them a way in to a rear door or service entrance. There were worrying cracks in the side wall of the structure, suggesting the impact of the aircraft had indeed caused more than just superficial cosmetic damage. At the end of the building was an alleyway leading into the rear where a string of large trash bins were stored, along with the ubiquitous and often inexplicable stack of pallets so common to back passageways in the city. There was also a rear door to the building, which was what they were seeking. Grey Spike tried the handle and found it locked.
'Irons, you're up.' He stepped aside. 'Get us in there.' Blaze approached the door. Working as the Irons firepony for the tour meant he carried the Hoofigan and axe for forcible entry, and he positioned the fork end of the versatile tool against the door. Flagstaff used her magic to hold the axe.
'Hit!' Blaze called, and she slammed the flat head of the axe against the other end of the Hoofigan. Blaze repeated the call twice more until the lateral motion of the angled forks cracked the lock and the door swung open for them. Grey Spike took the lead again and headed inside, lighting up his flashlight. There was a hallway ahead and a couple of doorways, which were searched to reveal utility and laundry rooms with no victims to be found inside. The hallway was dark and led from the back door to the front lobby, which was now a shambles. The roof and side of the fuselage dominated the room, having removed the exterior wall and much of the ceiling. The bottom few rungs of the staircase had been turned to splinters, but it was accessible and climbable, though not necessarily safe or stable. The building had an elevator but it was unusable due to the structural damage. They performed a quick but thorough search of the lobby, looking behind and under the desk and in the superintendents' office, finding nopony.
'Alright, careful here...Rescue 1 to Operations, have another company bring a portable ladder into the rear of the corner building, southeast corner...we'll need it to help evacuate victims down a damaged staircase, K,' Grey Spike put out the call, and Chief Misty Morning replied.
'10-4, Rescue 1.'
'Alright, up we go.' Grey Spike climbed over the gap, testing the stairs with one hoof before applying more weight. They were constructed of thick, sturdy wood, and they held, taking his weight despite the damage to the first few steps. Blaze followed, with Flagstaff bringing up the rear as they ascended to the first floor of apartments to search for victims. With the staircase still intact, it was always possible that the entire building had self-evacuated and joined the shocked throng of ponies who had been wondering about in the streets with dazed expressions on their faces. But some ponies might have been trapped due to structural damage which might have rendered them unable to open their doors, a common find in earthquake-prone areas. That, after all, was basically what had happened to this building, struck by an earthquake without any kind of warning.
The first floor contained a hallway with four doors, each leading to an individual apartment where, until minutes earlier, a pony or perhaps a whole family had been living out their lives. Two of the doors were open, suggesting the occupants had fled, but it was always possible the impact had knocked them open and that there was still a resident trapped somewhere inside who needed help. Grey Spike set them to check the street-side apartments first, as they were the ones that would have taken actual physical damage from the impact of the plane. The first door was open, and Grey Spike and Blaze stepped inside carefully, testing the floorboards with one hoof before proceeding in case they would not hold their weight.
As expected, the apartment was a shambles. The outside wall had collapsed, meaning the two fireponies were able to look out across the street, with snow swirling in through the newly created opening, driven by the strong wind coming off of the river a block away. The wall that separated the bedroom from the lounge had disappeared, and the bed now lay teetering on the edge of tipping and falling down onto the roof of the jet which lay wedged firmly against what remained of the floor, the stronger timbers having caused scrapes of bare metal where they had scratched the paint away. Other structural members had turned into matchwood under the force of the impact and the collapsing walls. Water dribbled down from a severed pipe somewhere in the apartment above, while part of the dividing wall separating the apartment from its neighbour had also been smashed, allowing a small glimpse into the adjacent living space. The bathroom door had flopped forward onto the carpet, while the plates and dishes in the small kitchen had been strewn across the floor and shattered. There was no sign of any resident being present, the open front door having suggested flight in terror, and understandably so given the violence and surprise of the crash and the damage it had done to the apartment.
Blaze searched the bathroom with negative results, while Grey Spike did the same with the bedroom, finding it equally empty. A newspaper was spread open on the kitchen counter, perhaps indicating what the resident had been doing at the moment of impact. With the apartment cleared, they moved out and rejoined Flagstaff, moving down to the next apartment on the street side of the building. This time the door was locked, and just like the rear entrance to the building, it would have to be forced. Blaze got to work with the Hoofigan, but all it took was placing the tool against the door jamb. There was no need for Flagstaff to strike it with the axe, because something somewhere was clearly damaged by the crash, and the door simply fell into the apartment with a thud.
Grey Spike stepped inside and began the search, while Blaze followed. This apartment was in an even worse state than the first one. Most of the floor was missing and what remained had been forced upward by the fuselage of the jet, snapping floorboards and pulling the carpet away from the walls. The bedroom had collapsed entirely into the lobby below, a shattered mass of broken wood and brick with the remains of the bed poking incongruously out, the sheets draped over the rubble like a burial shroud, though Rescue 1 had already conducted a quick primary search of the rubble pile when they entered the building, and seen no obvious signs of any victims being trapped within it. Nor did they find anypony in the apartment. Perhaps the occupant was away on holiday, or had already gone to work for the day, escaping the horrors which had been unleashed upon their home and their neighbors.
Now, they had to search the apartments on the other side of the hallway. These were located away from the impact site, and thus would logically have sustained less damage, but still needed to be checked- experience had shown that some ponies could, quite literally, sleep through anything, and if they could sleep through an earthquake, then theoretically they could sleep through a jet slamming into their building, too.
'Fire department!' Grey Spike called, banging on the first apartment door. 'Anypony in there? Is anypony trapped on the first floor? Anypony?'
He got no reply, and repeated his call twice more. If there was a way to prevent having to force the doors, by alerting any remaining residents who could open them themselves from inside, that was usually considered preferable if at all possible, rather than causing unnecessary damage- although in this case, the building was likely to be rendered uninhabitable anyway thanks to the structural damage, meaning it might be a moot point. With no reply, Blaze and Flagstaff then forced the door and they searched the apartment, along with the other which had an open door already. Nopony was present, and so they climbed up to the next floor and repeated the process, doing the same again and again until finally reaching the top floor, where the sound of sirens from the street below was reduced from a piercing shriek to a more manageable background noise, so common to residents all across the whole city of Manehattan.
Here, too, there were four apartments, all with their doors closed. Grey Spike tried calling out to alert any residents, but again he got no reply, just like the other floors below. They set about cracking each door for a search, only to come face to face with a surprised elderly couple as they entered the second apartment. The stallion was reading the morning newspaper, while his wife was cooking hay pancakes. To add to the surreal nature of the scene, the tv, on mute in the background, was displaying a large banner proclaiming BREAKING NEWS- Plane Crash In Manehattan, while the two concerned news anchors discussed the situation from their desk.
'Sir, ma'am!' Grey Spike stepped into the apartment. 'You need to come with us.'
'What's that, sonny?' the stallion questioned, looking over.
'Oh! Look dear, some nice fireponies are here,' his wife informed him helpfully.
'You need to come with us, we need to evacuate this building,' Grey Spike repeated. 'There's been an accident.' He pointed to the tv screen, prompting the stallion to lower his paper and squint.
'I can't read that! Where are my glasses?' he grumbled.
'Oh, they're just here, dear!' his wife replied. When she moved away from the stove, Grey Spike went over and turned off the gas to the appliance for safety.
'There's been a plane crash,' Grey Spike informed them, as the stallion read the headline thanks to his glasses. 'There's damage to the building and we need to evacuate it.'
'There's been a plane crash!' the stallion announced redundantly. 'Oh, I wondered what the noise was!' Grey Spike rolled his eyes. It was always amazing what ponies could disregard or ignore, or simply not notice, despite the noise and the building surely shaking after the plane slammed into it. Grey Spike remained with the couple to make sure they were going to follow him out, and sent Blaze and Flagstaff to clear the two final apartments, which turned out to be empty. With the whole building searched and seemingly cleared, it was time for them to leave, back to the street outside as soon as possible, both so they could be redeployed and so they could get back to safety in case of a further collapse of either building. They were cleared, but there was still much to do.