# The Sally Fire.



## Cpt Dick Brooks (May 13, 2013)

One evening while working at the Salvation Army hostel in Fore Street, Ipswich, for homeless men... after I'd served supper to the residence and eaten my own dinner... I was lying back in my chair in the reception office with my feet up on the table. Mr. Hornsby came up to the reception hatch and reported that he could smell smoke on the first-floor landing.
This was an old roost to get me to leave the reception area in order to smuggle in alcohol for a little get-together... or even a woman for a party. They knew that I couldn't lock the lobby door leading outside in case it was a real fire, so I'd just have to trust him, and the CCTV cameras around the building. No fire alarm had sounded, though, which raised my suspicions even more. 
When I got to the first floor landing I could smell burning, and there was the faintest wisp of smoke in the air. I'd had this before when some of the scallies set fire to newspaper to set off the smoke alarm... yet again to smuggle women, booze and drugs into the Centre. I looked around the lobby and peered into the library, and then went through the lobby door leading to the first-floor corridor. One of the residence on that floor pointed at wisps of smoke coming from under the door of Room 9.
As I approached it, another resident on that floor... who had once been a fireman in the local fire service... came towards me along the corridor. "What is it, Richard?" he asked me.
"Looks like we may have some trouble." I felt the door, but it was cold. "Get a fire extinguisher," I instructed him. "We'll see what we've got." I was puzzled, as the resident of Room 9 had left the Centre and walked into town. I'd watched him turn right on the CCTV monitor after leaving the hostel on his way to the Lord Nelson public house.
When I tried the handle I realized the door was unlocked, so I pushed it open a little wider... and to my horror, the room exploded into a fireball when I did as the oxygen rushed in through the door. I ducked down just in time, and a roar of flames seared across the ceiling and out of the door above me. All the fire alarms on each floor sounded at once, turning the quiet hostel into a pandemonium of uproar and noise.
I held the door open so the ex-fireman could duck right down under the flames and smoke and direct the jet of foam from the fire-extinguisher at the inferno. It seemed to be coming from the bed, and my first thought was that the resident had inadvertently dropped a cigarette on his bedcovers as he left the room without realizing it... but then I smelt the lighter fuel... this was no accident, but a case of arson. Other residents came running, and I asked them to bring more fire-extinguisher from further along the corridor. I passed another one to the ex-fireman just as the one he had was using spluttered dry.
I'd fought five fires before on board ships, where I'd had to use my diving gear to go down into engine rooms to start generators and deck pumps while flames seared up all around me. On one of our company tugs in Dubai, the crew were directing a three inch water hose straight into the engine room while the generator was still running. Why they weren't electrocuted was anybody's guess, but I got them to stop before someone was killed. Once more donning my diving gear, I went down into the smoke to fight the flames in their engine room.
Once things were under control in Room 9 of the hostel, and the conflagration was less fierce, I left the small crowd to deal with it, as I knew the residents would be waiting in the reception lobby for news of the fire. They should have just popped their keys into the box, and waited in the holding area for permission to re-enter the Centre, but the holding area was a hundred yards from the hostel, and many of the elderly were already in their nightwear. I told them to wait down by the front door in the reception lobby... which was never used.
The first thing was to call the fire service and report the fire, and then phone the duty officer and let them know what had happened, and what steps I'd taken to evacuate the building. "This is for real!" I told Peter Bellis. "It's not a false alarm!" He knew it was true from the seriousness of my voice. He'd spent several years at sea himself in the Royal Navy, apart from serving in the local fire service, and he was more than aware of the implications. This was the first genuine fire that had occurred at the Centre.
I got a sheet of paper from the photocopier and started writing down the names of all the residents, and then ticked them off against their key-fobs. I had to have this list ready to hand to the chief fire officer as soon as he walked through the door. Before the business of fighting the fire could begin, he has to be sure that everyone in the building was accounted for. The alarm was still shrieking its head off, but I wasn't allowed to turn it off until instructed to by the chief fire officer to do so.
The phone rang... it was the fire engine asking for directions to the Centre... so it was clear they were coming from outside the town. The next minute, the ex-fireman and another resident carried the smoking mattress through the reception lobby and dumped it outside the outer door... and just as all the fuss had simmered down, the fire crew walked into the Centre.
I handed the list of the residents to the chief fire officer, and informed him that the fire had been extinguished. There were some three residents still unaccounted for, and he sent his officers up to their rooms to locate them. He sure looked peeved at me at discovering the fire was out, as they had driven at break-neck speed through the traffic on blues and twos to get here.
Peter Bellis came puffing into the Centre... just after the fire service had left. It had taken him less than ten minutes to drive the seven miles into town from Claydon. The three individuals that had stayed in their beds, despite the fire alarm going off, were severely reprimanded, and then we got down to investigate what had caused the fire.
As it turned out, two new residents had been homeless and living rough together, and had slept for months in adjoining tents in a nearby park. While one of the rough-sleepers went into town to sell the 'Big Issue'... a magazine sold by the homeless and long-term unemployed... the other had seduced his girlfriend and had had sex with her. Her boyfriend returned to their campsite carrying the bags of groceries that he'd bought with his profits, and when he realized what had happened, he gave the other rough-sleeper a good hiding.
They were both evicted from the park by the police, and they moved into the Salvation Army hostel... the girl moving to the female hostel at West Villa. They had carried their vendetta with them, and the one who'd suffered a beating, took his revenge out on the other by setting fire to his room after he'd left the building. The police arrived just in time for the miscreant to be handed over to them. All the best, Cpt Dick Brooks.


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