The sun had barely risen to the task of banishing the iron grey fog from the sky when the station's alarm bleared out, slamming into practice all the training I had recently completed in New York's Fire Departments Probationary Class Three. I was no longer one of the probes but fully trained in all the different building constructions, plumbing and car types, a wealth of information crammed into my head, and not least how to use the CAFS (compressed air foam system). The alarm call was for a 3 storey office building on 125th st, people were stuck inside, at least 7 people were thought to be in the building, maybe more! All this had been passed down through the Metrotech Center dispatch office.
Upon arriving the veteran Captain quickly ordered a frontal assault to clear the staircases while taking the Imaging technician with himself up the ladders to get to the 3rd storey as quick as possible. It seemed like no one but the Captain new what was really going on, lucky for us that the "@brokenmeeple" was there. Our affectionate name for the Cap as he once toasted the firehouse's only copy of Carcassonne as an example of how cardboard was extremely flammable if set alight; only one charcoaled meeple made it out alive!
Slamming into the front entrance the foam shoot through the flames licking at my thick turnout coat as I breathed through my face mask for clean air. With intense hear wrapping itself around me I heroically charged forward to the staircase dousing the threatening flames that erupted from the doors on either side. As the flames subsided the teams faithful rescue dog bounded past me into one of the side rooms, his super powered animal senses leading him to the rescue of our first victim, a women who had been stuck in the next door room, hiding under the table rather than getting out through the obvious back door not 5 feet from her hiding place! Pressing on with no spare actions saved for a rainy day I pushed up the stairs spraying foam everywhere making a thick retardant woolly blanket that would be nice to snuggle up to in the dead of winter.
I am fire specialist, I know that full well now as I dashed up the staircase to save the next floor from certain doom. With numerous dangerous hot spots lying scattered before me the medic and dog followed in my wake to drag yet more victims from the fire's red and yellow tentacles that grasped and grabbed at the building's failing structure like a boy tearing the delicate wings off a crane fly. I stumbled as an explosion rocked the building from the floor above. Blacking out briefly as smoke and debris tumbled up the staircase we had just come, I was momentarily seeing black damage cubes stacking up behind my eye lids. Get to my feet we quickly reconnoitred the floor finding only one more victim lying prone in an adjacent room. With the Trusted Rescue Dog pulling the person to safety I set my mind on plowing a field of foam through to the third floor.
Meanwhile the captain and imaging technician had taken the third floor and managed to bring our third victim down safely when around the Captain the mightiest of explosions drilled through the flimsy walls and windows to set nearly the whole floor alight... A gas heater with its full tank had gone in an instant covering the Captain in angry red flames. Even worse the spare canisters of gas stored in the kitchen on the ground floor exploded at the same time blowing out the windows and walls and blocking the Rescue Dog's route to safety... There is nothing worse than a cornered hound with its victim... All the action points in the world won't get it through the wall of fire without the sweet smell of barbecued dog joining the smoke and flames lapping at our feet.
I moved as quickly as I could, step, put out flames, step, put out flames. It was as if I was on autopilot with only one function in the world to do, that of dancing the two step with the best dressed flame of New York. Put even my fancy two step, along with a steady stream of water from the fire engine that the imaging technician had now repositioned, it wasn't enough to stop total blackness enveloping us all as the building clasped in on itself, 24 cubes of darkness surrounded our fiery graves. #ukge14 #bgg #boardgames #boardgamegeek #flashpoint
