I was a rookie firefighter going on my first structure fire. Ours is a small fire district with a combination department. We got the call at about 5:30 AM on a Wednesday morning and the driver, lieutenant, and I rolled out of bed and responded to a working fire in a 3 bedroom ranch style home. I was 2nd man on the 1.88" attack line. My lieutenant pulled the nozzle toward the fire in a bedroom on the C/D corner of the building. Thick white smoke was stacked down from the ceiling about waist high. I was humping hose across the living room floor when I noticed a five square foot black "stain" on the carpet. Under conditions at that time I could not determine if the mark I was looking at was in fact a stain or a wet spill of some kind. I rubbed my gloved fingers on it and could not see if wetness was on my gloves. Forgetting about my SCBA I actually raised my hand to my face to smell my glove but smelled nothing, of course, through my mask. I pulled the remaining hose needed and caught up to my lieutenant and asked him if saw the stain? He had not. He already had the fire knocked down and it stayed in the one room. With the fire out I quickly searched the home for any surviving pets as we found 2 dead cats and a dead dog. Turns out the large discoloration on the floor was gasoline. The homeowner had emptied a 5 gallon gas can inside the home and ignited it claim insurance fraud. Lucky for us, she did not open any doors or windows and the fire never got going. Also lucky nobody attempted any ventilation before the fire was out. Everything went fast and smooth and the fire was declared out exactly 15 minutes after the call came in.
LESSONS LEARNED: If I had that exact situation to do over again I would announce the "stain" on the radio. I would crack my seal on my mask enough to stick my glove in and get a whif, or step outside the structure long enough to smell my glove. Either way I would smell the accelerant, call for emergency evac of the structure and we would go defensive on that fire. At first we thought the animals died of smoke inhilation, but later found the the concentration of gasoline vapor killed them by asphixiation. It is still hard to think of what might have been if that fire had gotten a breath of air. I think the obvious lesson here is: Trust your instincts, if something looks suspicious say something. Then investigate it enough to rule out something dangerous.
