Read Report from Engine Co. 82 for Free Online

smiles, in that ironic way that means he knows more than we do.
    It is now after 10:00 P.M. as we back again into the firehousc. The men of Engine 85 and Ladder 31 have already eaten the Irish footballs, and are now
     washing their dishes and cleaning up. Billy-o sees us coming and begins to cut the meat for us. McCartty already has a big
     pot on the table, and he is forking cabbage quarters onto each plate.
    I have taken only one bite of tenderloin when the bells come in again: two—seven—three—seven. That’s a lucky break for us.
     The housewatchman yells, “Get out, Engine 85 and Ladder 712. Chief goes too. Vyse Avenue and 172nd Street.”
    The Chief was sitting behind me, and he walks past with a paper napkin to his lips, saying, “It never fails, never fails.”
     I once kept a running account of how many meals I could eat in the firehouse without interruption. It went for three and a
     half months, and in that time I never ate one uninterrupted meal.
    I am eating now as fast as I can, but the bells come in. At least I have finished half—enough to satisfy me anyway. The housewatchman
     yells, “Two, Seven, Nine, Three, Boston and 169. Get out 82 and 31.” Forty seconds later we are racing up 169th Street, past
     Stebbins Avenue, past Prospect Avenue, past Union Avenue. Benny Carroll leans to the side of the apparatus and looks up the
     street. He looks at us now—me and the other men working tonight: Vinny Royce, Ed Montaign, and Carmine Belli. We are huddled
     on the back step of the fire engine, gripping the crossbar. He says, “Looks like this is our night for accidents. There’s
     a guy up there just knocked down the traffic signal.”
    The pumper stops in the middle of Boston Road, a broad, main thoroughfare in the Bronx. There was once a traffic stanchion
     standing in the middle of the road. It is now laying flat on the ground, partly covered by a new Continental. The car evidently
     climbed five feet up the pole before the pole came crashing down.
    There are six people in the car. Four are unconscious, and one, a woman, is dazed, and muttering incoherently. The driver
     has the steering post through his chest and looks dead.
    Herbert and McCartty come with Ladder 31’s first-aid box. They begin unraveling bandages and applying them to head wounds.
     The two other women begin to come to, and one starts screaming, “Rufus, Rufus, Rufus.” She is hysterical, and Herbert and
     O’Mann lift her out of the car and lay her on the ground. The conscious woman gets out of the car and sits down next to her.
     The third woman is moaning, and bleeding badly from the mouth. All her front teeth have been knocked out. I climb into the
     back seat and sit next to her. I put my arm around her, and her head falls onto my shoulder. I begin to clean her with a gauze
     sponge.
    A lanky youth, about nineteen or twenty, leans in the car, with his hands on the floor. “What do you want?” I ask.
    “It’s okay,” he replies. “I’m the man, man.”
    “Well you go be the man somewhere else,” I tell him.
    There is a crowd around the car, and people keep poking their heads in the rear. I keep telling them to keep back, until Carmine
     comes over and stands guard by the door.
    Chief Niebrock responds from the other alarm—it was an MFA (malicious false alarm). He holds his portable lamp close to the
     driver. “Better take him out,” he says to Ken Lierly, Ladder 31’s lieutenant.
    The man is obviously the worst off of the six, and the only way to give first aid is to remove him from the car. He is a heavy
     man, and it takes four firemen to lift him. He may be dead, but only a doctor can say that for sure, so Bill Finch, the Chiefs
     aide, applies the resuscitator to him. The other two men in the front seat have hit the windshield, and their foreheads are
     wide open. McCartty and Herbert have more room to work on them now.
    Two police cars are at the scene, one from the Forty-first Precinct, and the other