Episode 22: Chief Thomas Mills - Maglite HERO SERIES - PART 2

A horrific fast moving fire is ripping through a row of townhomes with people trapped inside.  Chief Mills must manage this crisis with a team of all volunteer firefighters including a rookie who has never seen a live fire.  The race is on to put out the fire and stay alive themselves.

Transcript:

Producer:

Welcome to the MAGTAC Hero Series with your host, Lou Desmond. Join Lou as he talks with honored hero, Chief Thomas Mills of the North Beach Maryland Volunteer Fire Department. Let's join Lou and Chief Mills to hear the first part of this heroic story.

Lou Desmond:

So the reason that we were there was to give you an award for being a firefighter hero in the aftermath of a horrible incident that happened in your town. This fire that came out of nowhere, swept through several townhouses, killed two civilians, and almost killed a couple of your volunteer firefighters. Can you start from the beginning and just tell us the story of that day, Chief Thomas Mills, please?

Chief Thomas Mills:

Yes, sir. Wednesday, April 3rd, 2019, approximately 4:00 in the afternoon, I was at the boatyard, which, I am a charter boat captain for my full-time job, I fish for a living, and I had just finished painting my boat, and I went to get some lunch. And as I was walking into the restaurant and I sat down, and when I walked in to sit down, one of the guys from the boatyard called me and I was like, "Oh, what's he want? I must've left something out." So I answered the phone and he says, "Chris," he goes, "you guys ever going to put this fire out over here by the boats?" And I was like, "Well, Bobby, what are you talking about?" He said, "The apartments and the townhouses are all on fire." I said, "Come on, man. I literally just left." It wasn't 10 minutes.

Chief Thomas Mills:

So I walked out the door of the restaurant and I looked in the direction of the boatyard, and I seen a large column of black smoke and I was like, "Holy cow." Well, knowing that we didn't have too many drivers that day, I knew I had to come to the firehouse and drive the apparatus, so I pulled up on the front ramp, and as I was pulling up on the front ramp, the county 911 center was dispatching the call. When I came up to the front doors, one of the young kids had the door open for me, and I told him, I said, "Look," I said, "do yourself a favor and get dressed now, both of you." I said, "Because it's one fire. There's no doubt about it."

Chief Thomas Mills:

So we got in the firetruck, I waited for them to get dressed. We got going down the road, it's less than a mile, I think it's like three tenths of a mile from the station.

Lou Desmond:

Yeah, that whole town is like five miles long on that main drag.

Chief Thomas Mills:

Yeah. So I made a right onto the main drag into the development, it was in between a water park and a convenience store, and the smoke was so bad, the wind was blowing 30 plus miles an hour that day, and the smoke was so bad that I literally had to slow down to less than 10 miles an hour to get down the main road because of all the cars and people that were running around and the cars were trying to get out of there. So when I pulled into the complex, I told the young man that was riding in the seat, I said, "No need for you to talk on the radio." I said, "Danny's already give a size up." Which is my safety officer. He was over at the boatyard working on his boat, so he was there rather quickly. I said, "We're going to lay out here at this hydrant." I said, "I'm going to pull down here."

Chief Thomas Mills:

So we laid out, I pulled down. Well, in the midst of pulling down, there was a couple gentlemen, they pushed a car out of a parking spot that was broke down in the middle of the road and hindered me from getting past the townhouses for my game plan, so it threw a little monkey wrench in there, so I kind of beached the wagon, or the engine you guys would call it, off to the left so I could leave room for the tower ladder to get in there. And I noticed the main townhouse that was fully engulfed had separated four feet from the other three townhouses that were in a row. There were four to a row, and the end unit had started to separate already by about four feet.

Chief Thomas Mills:

And about that time, the control center, the dispatch center called back and said, "Hey, we have a lady on the phone. Her and her granddaughter are in the bathroom." And she give us the address, which turned out to be the end unit that was fully engulfed. So when I exited the firetruck, I helped the young-ins stretch the line, came back, I grabbed my three inch, hooked it up, I charged their line, and in the midst of me charging the line, the end townhouse started to come away from the rest of the townhouses.

Chief Thomas Mills:

So about a minute into the whole incident, there's a gentleman standing behind me on my back and he kept yelling, "No! The people are in the second unit! The second unit!" Which would have been the unit next to the one that was pulling away. Well, Safety Officer Morrison, who is a very experienced firefighter and he's a career fireman in Prince George's County, Maryland, I went directly to him and I said, "Danny," I said, "there's a couple people trapped in there. This guy's telling me they're in that unit there." I said, "You're going to have to use best judgment. If you can go in and try to get them, that would be great." And I left it up to him, and him and one of the young gentlemen that were on the piece, Max Andrusi, who was wet behind the ears, never been on a fire, I don't think he's ever put a Scott bottle on in a real situation.

Lou Desmond:

Wait, wait, wait, wait. So this massive townhouse fire, wind's blowing 30, 40 miles an hour, everything's getting engulfed, you're all volunteers and this kid has zero experience in live fire and he's got to jump into it?

Chief Thomas Mills:

Yeah. Well, no, he's been through our academy-

Lou Desmond:

Well, the academy, but you said not a live fire like this.

Chief Thomas Mills:

He's never had a live burn like this.

Producer:

How will the rookie, Max, handle his first live fire? Chief Thomas Mills continues his amazing story on the next episode of The MAGTAC Hero Series.