National fire agencies warn that vacant structures make firefighting even more dangerous. It would take four additional hours and the help of an excavator to recover Butrim’s body, which had been buried deep. Six hours of digging later, they heard an alarm on Butrim’s oxygen tank ring out, signaling it was empty. Once dawn turned to daylight, a chaotic hour passed after the collapse before people realized Butrim, the lieutenant on Truck 23, also was missing, two firefighters told the state inspectors. They were taken to Shock Trauma, where they were pronounced dead. It took about two hours to extract Lacayo and then Sadler. The rescue operation grew to nearly 100 firefighters, who lifted and dug through rubble weighing hundreds of pounds to reach their colleagues in the basement. Once free, Hoffman and Shiloh immediately joined the rescue effort, spraying water at the blaze surrounding those trapped inside. He sustained eight burn wounds and spent an additional five days at a burn center. Rescue crews heaved McMaster from the smoldering rubble in minutes and took him to Shock Trauma at the University of Maryland Medical Center, where he spent four days.
Thick, suffocating smoke filled his mouth and nose. Inside, McMaster started pushing himself up when more burning material dropped from the above floors, knocking off his helmet and oxygen mask. Hines, standing at the door, quickly pulled him out while a rescue team removed Shiloh. Hoffman had made it 6 feet inside the house when it came down.
Taps is played on a hill above during the funeral for three Baltimore City firefighters, Lt Butrim, Lt Sadler, and FFPM Lacayo, at the Fallen Heroes Memorial at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens. The front and back of the house remained standing, but its interior was gone, condensed into a pile. Smoke and debris poured from the front door and lower window. The collapse sent a shock wave into the street, pushing others away from the building. Sean Davis, also assigned to Truck 23, peered inside the house after pulling plywood off a boarded, first-floor window and saw members of Engine 14 inside. Then, things went blurry.Ĭhristopher Kwarta, who drove Truck 23, was about to step onto the roof from an aerial ladder when he realized the roof was no longer there. Moments before, Shiloh had just crossed the first floor when he noticed something strange on the ground - a piece of the floor above him. Hines turned and walked back to the stoop, where he watched the house crumple. Hoffman, meanwhile, entered the house and yelled for everyone to pull out. Hines left the stoop to tell Ellis, the battalion chief who had just arrived, about the threatening fire conditions inside. Hines, holding a hose, had tried minutes earlier to radio for McClung to pump water from the engine but couldn’t get through the heavy radio traffic. Wood beams that lack the protection of plastic or drywall are directly damaged by flames during a fire, causing a structure to quickly weaken. They didn’t like the look of the exposed ceiling beams that supported the vacant building’s floors.
Chad Hines and Hoffman stood on the house’s front stoop and worried.
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