Report From Rescue Company 1

by BRBrony9

Fire & Water

Beep-Boop.

'Battalion. Rescue.'

'Alright, Box 0295, East 14th Street and the Celestia Drive. Electrical fire!'

That drew a lot of exchanged glances from the fireponies in Firehouse 25. The location and the nature of the call could not be a coincidence, surely?

East 15th Street and the Celestia Drive was the location of the Pone-Gen power plant which supplied electricity to a large part of the whole borough, and also parts of Hooflyn. It was a large complex of connected buildings and transformer yards that abutted the East River, using natural gas to produce the steam to spin the turbines. So long as the power flowed, the lights would remain on, but a serious electrical fire in the plant could force a shutdown, and the last thing the city needed in the midst of a storm was for the power to fail to a large area.

The fact that Battalion 9 was being assigned to the call told a lot about the state of the city's fire protection at the height of the hurricane. Battalion 6 was the first-due Chief to that location. Battalion 4 was the next nearest, to the south, while Battalions 7 and 8 were both quartered closer to the power plant than Firebrand was. They must all have been tied up with other incidents.

Together the Rescue and their Chief geared up and their vehicles roared out into the gale again. There was always a chance that the fire was not in the plant; after all, the address that had been given was one block south of where the plant entrance was located. The dispatcher came over the radio.

'Manehattan calling Battalion 9, K.'

'Battalion 9,' Firebrand replied. 'Go ahead.'

'We're going to change your box to 0300. We just got a call from the Pone-Gen supervisor stating they have a fire in the transformer yard of the power plant there, K. You're getting Engine 3, Engine 8, Engine 65, Ladder 1 and Ladder 5. We assigned Rescue initially in case it was the plant, and you're getting Squad 288 acting Squad 18, K.'

'Battalion 9, 10-4.' Firebrand signed off. A fire in the plant was the last thing they needed. Hopefully it would just be something minor, some debris that had somehow caught light, maybe a small sump oil container burning. Battalion 9 and Rescue 1 headed south, sloshing through lying water that now covered most of the roads they had to traverse. Those unaffected by flooding from the river were nevertheless swamped with rainwater as drainage systems clogged up with debris or simply couldn't handle the quantity of surface runoff effectively.

They reached 14th Street, which was one of the few streets in the borough along which traffic could flow both east and west. As they turned onto it and headed toward the power plant, the sky suddenly lit up with a brilliant blue-green flash, catching millions of raindrops in its glow and turning their vision into a confusing mess for a few moments. The flash grew in intensity for several seconds before fading away. The sky returned to its normal dark shade, and it took a second for the fireponies to realise that all of the street lights, traffic lights, and illuminated storefront signs had gone dark.

'Shit...' Captain Grey Spike muttered. 'Looks like the transformer blew...'

''Ladder 1 to Manehattan, urgent!' came the call over the radio.

'Go ahead Ladder 1.'

'Box 0300, transmit the 10-75. We just had a transformer blow inside the Pone-Gen plant. We're on scene with the plant supervisor who says they had a fire in a transformer that spread to the oil retention pond underneath it, K.'

'10-4, Ladder 1,' the dispatcher answered. The alert tones sounded before she continued. '10-75 has been transmitted for Box 0300, East 15th Street and Celestia Drive, for a transformer explosion and fire in the Pone-Gen plant.' She repeated the call before raising Firebrand on the radio.

'Battalion 9, on the 10-75, Engine 16 will be your fourth engine, Ladder 21 will be your HOOF Truck. Division 1 and RAC 1 assigned also, K.'

'Battalion 9, 10-4,' Firebrand answered, and the Chief and the Rescue arrived at the gates of the power plant. A large, red brick structure with two tall chimneys, the power plant was fenced off from the surrounding roads by chain link, adorned with Danger Of Death- Keep Out signs that now rattled in the wind as it whistled through the fences. Fire Department units were never supposed to enter Pone-Gen stations without an escort from a supervisor from the power company, instead waiting at the main gate until one appeared. This time their supervisor was already on the scene, clearly concerned for his plant. Firebrand approached him for a situation report.

The cause of the fire was simple enough; the power plant had been trying to compensate for the loss of several substations in Hooflyn due to the weather, which were meant to relay power to the city from a nuclear plant out beyond the city lines to the east of Pone Island, upon which the boroughs of Hooflyn and Princess lay. The transformer in question had taken too much of the load and overstressed itself, starting a small fire within its casing. Like many large transformers, this one was surrounded by oil which acted as a cooling agent, but which was, naturally, flammable. The fire in the transformer itself had spread outside of its shell and ignited the oil, which in turn burned the rest of the transformer until it blew so spectacularly and lit up the sky. The explosion had apparently spread the burning oil outside of the protective dyke which was meant to contain it, and now there was the threat of oil running through the transformer yard and starting other fires. Some of the smaller transformers were not protected by external dykes, and the burning oil could easily trickle down to them and cause further damage and more explosions which would black out even more of the city.

The supervisor told Firebrand that they had shut down the power to every transformer in the yard, but there was still a danger of residual charge. That was always a problem with fires in large electrical equipment, and a power plant was one of the most potentially dangerous places to fight a fire. There were wires and cables, junction boxes, transformers, condensers, turbines and all manner of switching gear, any of which could prove a deadly hazard to fireponies. Extreme caution had to be taken at all times.

Firebrand ordered units to dismount from their vehicles and grab hoses and cans of foam concentrate. The foam would have to be sprayed onto the burning oil; water wouldn't extinguish it, but would instead simply spread it around more readily. Most flammable liquid fires had to be smothered, and the foam was ideal for that purpose, forming a blanket over the burning fluid and stopping air from reaching it, thus extinguishing the flames. He also gave the order not to bring any metal tools into the power plant grounds, a sensible and standard precaution given the potential for electrical charge to still be present among the various pieces of equipment.

Ember Blaze and the rest of the Rescue were ordered to enter the power plant building itself and conduct searches. Thick, toxic smoke from the burning oil had wafted into the structure, and while the supervisor had not reported any injuries or lost employees, the building had to be searched anyway, just in case. Blaze kept his mask at the ready as they made their way through the confusing interior, all maintenance corridors, equipment rooms and storage areas. The main generating room, a cavernous chamber with four huge pieces of machinery that produced the steam to spin the turbines, was suffering from only a light haze of smoke, and the employees there were continuing to work despite the disruption. Conditions inside were acceptable, but outside, smoke was still billowing from the affected transformer. Pieces of its casing lay scattered about, thrown by the explosion. Burning oil was running in two directions, toward the main building and toward a row of half a dozen unprotected, though much smaller, transformers.

Firebrand ordered two foam lines to be stretched from the engines parked outside the fence. One hose would protect the power plant building, and the other would try to cut off the flow of burning oil from the transformers by providing a protective wall of foam to hold back the tide. The power plant itself was protected from flooding, though it lay on the river, by a high concrete wall that ran along the bank of the East River and was designed to be proof against even the largest potential rise in water levels. The whole transformer yard being flooded would be a disaster for the power grid, but the somewhat precarious location on the waterfront was necessary for cooling and the release of waste water from the plant for the same purpose.

The two engine companies went to work while Firebrand put in a radio call for a foam tender to come to scene. More foam would likely be needed to extinguish the blaze within the dyke that protected the transformer which had exploded. The hoses were turned on with a careful application of foam, cooling and coating the burning oil and stopping it from flowing toward either the power plant or the transformers, forming a barrier and holding back the tide. While the incident had been dramatic, lighting up the sky like some kind of alien invasion scene in a Ponywood blockbuster, the actual firefighting was relatively routine. The foam barriers stopped the spread of oil and protected the endangered exposures. Most of the units who had responded to the scene had little to do. Once the foam tender arrived with its extra cans of foam concentrate, attention turned to extinguishing the blazing transformer itself, and the pool of oil that surrounded it. Gallon after gallon of foam was sprayed onto the transformer by two additional hoses, gradually cooling it down and smothering the oil beneath. Even when no more fire was visible, more foam was continuously applied. Any gap in the blanket of foam, caused, for instance, by rain washing down from above and melting it away, could lead to the oil flaring up again. A thick enough blanket had to be applied that it could keep fresh air at bay for long enough for the oil to cool below its ignition point.

It would be a long and tedious operation, but it did not require any specialist expertise at this point. The Squad and the Rescue were cut loose, made available for more calls. Ember Blaze got back on board the rig, soaked through from the rain, but thankful that the fire hadn't spread into the plant building or to the other transformers. Things were bad enough in the city as it was, without losing another huge chunk of the power grid. Apparently much of southern Hooflyn was already out of power- including the neighbourhood of Poneway Beach, where a major incident was underway. Blaze idly wondered if they would be called to the scene or not. He got his answer quickly.

'Manehattan calling Rescue 1, available?'

'Rescue 1, 10-4,' Grey Spike replied.

'Rescue 1, respond to Box 0835, 10th Avenue at West 34th Street, reporting a motor vehicle accident, K.'

'Rescue 1, 10-4, we are responding.' Fairway flicked on the sirens and lights and they set off twenty streets north. At least for now, they would not be going to Poneway Beach.

Ember Dawn, however, was. Not long after they left 206's firehouse, they could see the glow in the sky to the south. It was a foul reddish-orange, simmering on the horizon, indicative of a big, big fire. The closer Engine 25-Acting-Engine-206 got to Poneway Beach, the more evidence of the storm's destruction they found. There were power lines and telephone wires down, snaking across the street through deep pools of water. Trees had fallen, sometimes just branches and sometimes the entire thing. Fence panels were missing, tiles stripped from rooftops, satellite dishes, antennae and signs hanging loose at crazy angles. Any of those things, in normal circumstances, could constitute a reason to call the fire department. But with power out to the area, the wires were no danger. There were no pedestrians around to be hit by falling signs or traffic lights, nor were there any cars to be inconvenienced by trees in the roadway.

Their red and white emergency lights reflected from the windows of houses on both sides of the street. Perhaps ponies were hunkered down inside, riding out the storm as best they could, listening to their window shutters rattle, taking an occasional peek outside to make sure water levels were not rising too high. Or perhaps they had all evacuated already. Some buildings were boarded up with wood across the windows and doors. Stores had their shutters down and locked- although that hadn't stopped the wind from wrenching one of them loose and bending it like the open lid of a can of corn.

That same wind rocked the Engine, especially when they started to cross the causeway that led to the isolated community of Poneway Beach. There were only three ways to reach the neighbourhood- a vertical lift bridge, which had been closed to traffic ahead of the storm, the long way round traveling around Princess Celestia International Airport and approaching from the landward side, and the causeway across which they were now traveling. Poneway Beach was a narrow strip of land separated from the rest of Hooflyn by a body of water called Broad Channel. Its residents loved the proximity to the beach and the surf, and it had historically been one of the destinations of ponies from the borough of Manehattan heading out on their summer vacations. Now it was a peaceful neighbourhood of clapboard houses and small, friendly local stores. And right now? Right now, it was suffering hell.

Ember Dawn looked out of the window as the Engine pulled onto the Veterans Bridge, a sturdy structure which had remained open to emergency traffic, as it was one of the few ways to reach that particular area of the city. Driving some fifty feet above the water below put them right in Gilda's eye, and the rig rocked and swayed noticeably. Indeed, the whole bridge was moving, rather disconcertingly.

'Are you sure we shouldn't have taken the long way round, Lieu?' Dark Flash asked Coppertop nervously. 'I don't wanna be that firepony who drowned when the bridge went down under her.'

'We'll be fine,' Coppertop replied. 'They build things to last in Hooflyn, remember?'

'Yeah, like that aircraft carrier?' Dark Flash muttered. 'Did they decide what they're gonna do with her yet?'

'It finally got through committee a couple of days ago,' Ember Dawn informed her. He had kept up to date with the saga of the ENS Canterlot, as it had only seemed right. It was his first fire, after all. 'The Navy decided to continue with the overhaul. They say she'll go back into service in six months.'

'They're gonna put that floating coffin back on the sea?' Dark Flash shook her head. Many ponies had died in the fire. Some accepted the necessity for the ship to be put back into service, while others felt she should be scrapped to honour the dead. But the government and the Navy had made their choices.

The Engine made it off the bridge safely, and arrived at the staging area. The sky to their immediate west was ablaze, yet already there were floods in the streets they had to wade through to reach the intersection. There were several dozen pieces of apparatus already on scene, and now Engine 25-Acting-Engine-206 had arrived as well. They looked into a vision of hell. They, and every other firepony on scene, would be very much needed.