Untitled Lescroart 2005

1 By location alone, a block from Fillmore Street as it passes through the upwardly challenged Hayes Valley, Alamo Square would not be among the sexier neighborhoods in San Francisco. But one of the most popular and recognizable posters of the City by the Bay captures a row of beautifully restored and vibrantly painted three- and four-story Victorians that face the park on Steiner Street'the so-called ?Painted Ladies.' The poster created a certain cachet for the area such that the cheapest of these houses now go for three-plus. Million.The blaze at Paul Hanover's, in the middle of this block, began around 8:00 P.M. on May 12, although the first alarm wasn't called in until nearly 8:30. Fires love old Victorians. Even though Hanover's house had been stripped to the bare bones twenty years earlier'retrofitted for earthquakes and freshly insulated with fire-resistant material'it is the nature of Victorian design to have funky interior spaces, oddly-shaped rooms, crannies and closets and unusual passages. Within the walls, since heat wants to travel up, fires employ the vertical stud lines as flues, almost as chimneys, to transport themselves effortlessly and quickly up and up into the roof spaces, where billowing smoke is most often noticed first. Even in a neighborhood of great sensitivity to the threat of fire'of old, very valuable wooden houses in wall-to-wall proximity'no one noticed anything amiss at Hanover's until the fire had progressed to the unfinished attic. The late-arriving fog camouflaged the first appearance of the smoke, and the wind blew it away. By the time one of the local residents realized that what he was actually seeing was not fog but thick clouds of smoke pouring out from under the eaves of his neighbor's roof, the fire was well advanced. As soon as the first alarm's fire trucks arrived'three engines, two trucks, two battalion chiefs, an assistant chief and a rescue squad'the two-man aerial ladder team from the first engine began climbing to Hanover's roof, intending to ventilate it by cutting a hole into it with axes and chainsaws. Meanwhile, four men in Nomex turnout pants and coats and wearing Scott Air-Paks'the initial attack squad'got to the front door, found it unlocked and opened it right up. Although they were armed with Akron fog nozzles that could spray water over a wide angle and get them closer to the flames, in this case they were greeted by a roiling cloud of hot thick black smoke, impossible to see through. They could make no progress. Al Daly, officer of the initial attack squad, spoke matter-of-factly into the headpiece of his walkie- talkie. ?Front door is breached, Norm. We got a working fire here.' Daly was speaking to his battalion chief, Norm Shaklee, out front in the street. The words conveyed great urgency. A working fire meant they would need at least one more alarm'four more engines, another truck, two more chiefs. In a house this size with so much exposure to the homes on either side, this working fire could go to five alarms, San Francisco's maximum. All four stories of Hanover's home might already be'probably were'involved. Shaklee, in his white helmet, placed the next alarm call and looked up as the sound of chainsaws stopped. Over the roof, he saw a churning pillar of black smoke erupt into the sky, and spoke into his walkie-talkie. ?They're through on the roof, Al. Back out a minute.' He was telling Daly that ventilation was about to start working, potentially a very dangerous moment. If the smoke inside the house was hot enough'and no one knew if it was'the addition of oxygen to it might at this time cause a tremendous and often lethal backdraft explosion. So the initial attack squad waited in a kind of suspension down the front steps out in the street until, a minute and forty seconds later, the smoke column spewing from the roof suddenly exploded into a fireball that lit the night for blocks around and rose to heightLescroart, John is the author of 'Untitled Lescroart 2005', published 2004 under ISBN 9780525948445 and ISBN 0525948449.