//------------------------------//
// Complications 
// Story: Report From Rescue Company 1 
// by BRBrony9 
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Progress report for Manehattan 10-60 5th Alarm, Unusual Occurrence Box 0711, 57th Street and 11th Avenue. At this time, Car 3, Chief of Department Starfire Storm, reports we have an aircraft down into multiple buildings. We have heavy fire throughout five single-storey taxpayers, heavy fire throughout three six-storey brownstones, a partial collapse of two six-storey brownstones, damage to four other buildings, and fire in an additional three buildings. Passengers from the aircraft are being extricated and moved to triage. At this time, EMS is reporting eight black tags, fifteen red tags, twenty seven yellow tags and nineteen green tags. We currently have nine lines stretched and in operation, four tower ladders in operation, and two Satellites for water relay. Marine 1 continues to stand by to provide additional water if required. By orders of Chief of Department Starfire Storm, we are currently establishing a north staging area at Columbine Circle, and a south staging area at 53rd Street and 10th Avenue, for additional resources not yet on scene. Searches of most buildings will be delayed due to heavy fire and damage. Primary searches of 780 and 785 11th Avenue have been conducted and are negative, with the exception of a total of six residents who have been evacuated with no reported injuries. Special call two additional tower ladders, one additional Division Chief, the planning vehicle and one additional SOB Support Ladder. This incident remains doubtful will hold, K.




The elderly couple were only too glad to leave their building once Grey Spike had persuaded them to look out of the window and see the carnage unfolding below for themselves. They had been ushered down to the street and to safety, where other fireponies and police were waiting to help take uninjured survivors to somewhere warm, either in a city bus commandeered for the purpose, or in the lobby of an undamaged building, perhaps into a coffee shop where they could be given a cup of something hot and calming to soothe their nerves after the ordeal. The aircraft passengers had no such luxury, however, for they were whisked instead to the medical triage area set up just north of the scene. Due to space requirements, this had to be set up outdoors. There was no large warehouse or empty store which could be used for such a purpose, nor indeed a building with a doorway wide enough for stretchers and wheelchairs to be constantly moved in and out.

As a result, the victims who had to be treated were being gathered in the street, on the large colored tarpaulins that indicated the severity of their wounds. Once patients had been rapidly evaluated by paramedics or doctors from the disaster team who had rushed down from Meadowbrook Memorial, they were shuttled as quickly as possible into somewhere warm; an ambulance for the critical patients, one of the MERV or MRTU medical vehicles for the yellow-tagged moderately injured, and onto one of the city buses for the green-tagged walking wounded. 

Those who had been assigned black tags were moved into the lobby of a hotel, out of sight of the news cameras to await the inevitable with at least a tiny modicum of dignity. They were the ones deemed to be beyond help, even with Meadowbrook hospital just couple of blocks away. In a normal situation, a car crash for example, a patient in such a dire state would be rushed to the emergency room and every effort would be expended to save their life. Some of them might well be saved with diligent care and a fully prepared trauma team and surgical theater, but that simply wasn't an option in a mass casualty incident. With so many critically injured passengers and passers-by, those given red tags by the medics in the triage process, who were quite likely to survive with good hospital care but would certainly die if they didn't receive it, they had to take priority over those who were so badly hurt that they were highly likely to die even with prompt care. That was the sad calculus of triage, but it was a necessity. 

'Car 3 to Division 3, K?'

'Division 3, go ahead.'

'We've received the passenger list from the airline. They report that there were a total of two hundred sixty eight passengers and ten crew on board, K. I'm relaying that information to the medical branch director and both sector commanders. Make sure we get proper records of exactly how many patients and bodies we recover from the aircraft,' Chief of Department Starfire Storm ordered in her usual stern but efficient voice. She was the latest in a long line of Chiefs of Department, and like many of them, she had risen through the ranks holding every single intermediate rank in the MFD- Probie, Firefighter, Lieutenant, Captain, Battalion Chief, Deputy Chief, Deputy Assistant Chief, Assistant Chief, and finally the ultimate coveted prize of the highest-ranked uniformed member of the MFD, the Chief of Department, answerable directly to the Mayor and the mayoral appointee, the Fire Commissioner.

Division 3, Deputy Chief Misty Morning, was tipped by many to follow in Starfire's hoofsteps, as she was a veteran of the department with excellent prospects and plenty of nous and leadership skills rather following Starfire's mould. '10-4, Chief,' Misty Morning replied. 'We'll co-ordinate our patient counts and try to get seat numbers if we can. Be advised that the fuselage has split into two sections and we do have some confirmed victims ejected from the aircraft, K.'

'10-4,' Starfire Storm responded. 'Do you need any additional fire resources?'

Misty Morning looked around from her command post at 57th St. and 11th Avenue. As operations chief for the plane crash, she was directly responsible for overseeing the firefighting and rescue, while Starfire Storm and Honeysuckle co-ordinated the overall response, including strategic planning, working with other agencies, and deciding based on reports from Misty Morning and the sector chiefs exactly what next steps would need to be taken to mitigate the incident, save lives and protect property. That meant that she had to be in a position to directly observe as much of the ongoing operation as possible.

She could see the fire and the smoke, the debris-strewn streets, the stretcher-bound victims being wheeled and carried hurriedly to the triage area. The majority of the action was south of her; there seemed to be only superficial damage to buildings north of 57th Street. It was the area between 55th and 57th which had suffered the most damage, and the worry for the chiefs in command was that the majority of buildings in that section were residential, including the ones which had been damaged and the ones that were on fire. While the structures directly hit by the fuselage had been searched and cleared by the Rescue, those that were ablaze had not, and that task was made more difficult by the fact that the fire was not confined to a single floor. Burning jet fuel had been spread across the rooftops and drizzled down the front facade of the buildings, potentially cutting off the escape route for ponies who might attempt to flee, only to find the sidewalk and street outside their front doors engulfed in fire.

A very broad, early and simplistic picture of exactly what had happened could now be drawn up, based on the information Misty Morning and the other command chiefs had received from various units, including the Pegasi spotters and remote-controlled drone- the air recon chief aboard a police chopper had not responded due to the weather, with low cloud, wind and blowing snow. It seemed that the jet had come in from the river, clipping the rooftop of at least one building on 55th Street, where a water tower was now reported to be leaning dangerously. It had crossed 55th Street and its left wing had struck at least one more building, igniting the fuel tank if it hadn't already been burning, and leaving  a pool of fire on the roof which Engine 25 had extinguished. It had then skipped several buildings, drizzling flames into the street, before drifting again and clipping the trio of now-burning brownstones on the left side of the street, ripping at least part of the wing away and spreading burning fuel everywhere before the fuselage dropped into the street, striking the ground and sliding across the road, smashing into the residential buildings as the starboard wing sliced into the row of stores which were now burning merrily as a trio of tower ladders attempted to check the blaze with their heavy-caliber streams. They were having limited success, however, as there was a major supply of jet fuel feeding the flames.

Foam tenders and tankers had been assigned to the scene, and one was already present along with Satellite Company 1, a modified engine that could pump higher volumes of water and thus supply numerous hose lines or several higher-capacity streams. The Satellites also came with a fair supply of foam themselves, to supplement those carried on every engine, but to extinguish essentially an entire aircraft's fuel supply would need more than the frontline units could hope to supply. There were several more tankers en route, the remainder of the department's foam fleet, but they were still a long way away, coming from other boroughs.

For now, they would have to make do with what they had. That was enough to keep the incident in check and stop the fires from spreading out of control, but not to extinguish them completely, nor to properly treat every injury. More ambulances were arriving at the staging area every minute, both those operated by the MFD and others that were controlled and dispatched by individual hospitals through the emergency phone dispatch network. Paramedics and fireponies, as well as police officers, were doing their best to treat the steady flow of injured ponies coming not just from the jet, but from the damaged buildings too, as well as those caught up in the street, pedestrians and drivers finding themselves very much in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Starfire Storm had asked if she needed any more fire resources, and the answer was yes. '10-4, I could use at least one more tower ladder and two or three engine companies, personnel only, to assist with stretching additional hose lines,' Misty Morning replied over the radio. With such a widespread incident the need for fireponies outstripped the availability. There were so many tasks to complete; stretching hoses, searching apartments, extricating patients from damaged vehicles, evacuating the aircraft, properly shoring up the damaged buildings, replacing the temporary seal on the leaking fuel tank with something more permanent and effective, bringing foam to supply the tower ladders and master streams, treating the wounded, shutting down utilities to compromised structures to prevent further fires, removing and searching through debris where it was safe to do so.

While there were now large numbers of police officers and medics at the scene, many of those necessary actions could only be carried out safely by the fireponies, for they were the ones with the training and equipment that was needed. It wasn't safe to run into a burning building without full turnout gear and breathing apparatus, after all- and not exactly risk free even with that outfit. More specialist tasks such as shoring up the damaged buildings couldn't be done by just any fire unit, either. Only the Rescue Companies, Squads and Collapse Rescue vehicles had the right supply of cribbing, struts and lumber to be used for such a job. Rescue 1, fresh from searching the buildings, was now directed by Misty Morning to assist Collapse Rescue 1 with shoring up the overhanging floor and exterior wall that were located above the fuselage of the jet, and risked further damage and injury if it should collapse on top of the plane while the evacuation was still underway. There were several hundred passengers still to remove, a delicate and slow operation, especially for those who were seriously injured and had to be removed on backboards for safety.

It was not an easy task to accomplish. Applying too much stress to any particular part of the building could result in a further collapse, and even the movement of a single pony could cause that. Great care had to be taken not to disturb the aircraft wreckage, either, though it was already partly propped up by other units, who had placed metal struts on both sides to try and stop it from rolling or tipping over as the fireponies evacuated the passengers from it. That could easily be disastrous, and had to be prevented at any cost.




Meanwhile, with the rooftop fire extinguished and a truck company brought in for overhauling, Engine 25 had been redeployed. Their hose line had been left in place, not normally something that would happen, but their resources and expertise were needed elsewhere. Chief Firebrand had ordered the engine to move up to 56th Street and 11th Avenue and to hook up to a hydrant there to help out with the trio of blazing brownstone residences, which were stretching the resources of the units already trying to fight and contain the fire. Flames were licking across the windows and smoke was billowing out from within where the fire had taken hold. With the wing of the jet having smashed into the buildings and spilled burning fuel everywhere, the free-flowing liquid had found every possible route to follow gravity, following into air vents, cracks in the roof, under the bulkhead door and through open windows, spreading throughout the buildings and compounding the problem of trying to fight it. The buildings were not constructed to be internally watertight, which was why calls for water leaks were commonly received in such buildings from the apartment below the one where the actual problem was. In this case, it wasn't water flowing, but jet fuel.

Engine 25 repositioned by walking, while Deep Blue drove the rig around to the next intersection, navigating through the debris and nosing carefully and slowly through the blowing smoke with all the lights on and an occasional blast of the air horn to alert any first responders or survivors who might be in the roadway. Once she arrived, she parked up and dismounted, hooking up the engine to a hydrant on the corner, the only one not already in use. Other engines were feeding the tower ladders that were trying to darken down the fire in the stores on the other side of the street. Due to their positioning, the corner of 56th and 11th was as close as Deep Blue could bring the engine to the fire buildings, which were at the other end of the block.

The rest of the crew set to work pulling more hose lengths- they would need plenty to stretch a line to the nearest of the three buildings. Other supply hoses already criss-crossed the street, running to the tower ladders and smaller attack hoses running into different buildings to extinguish spot fires or prevent the spread from the brownstones into the exposures. Things were starting to stabilise with more units on scene, but the three burning buildings were a cause for concern due to the spread of fire within them. Lieutenant Coppertop ordered Striker and Dawn to take the nozzle and backup positions, as they had done with the rooftop fire. They were going in again, but this time, the situation was not quite so clear cut.