Chapter 7

Mr. Nomo worked his way up the firefighting food chain from the time he was able to join until the time he was forced to retire. 35 years of service, thousands of fire calls, and all it took was one shit-storm to screw it all up. The call came in as they usually do, at 3 in the morning, when most of the fire house was asleep and had just gotten comfortable after handling the last call from which they returned only 3 short hours ago. The alarm bell rang and roused them to their equipment and fire trucks. Sirens blaring, they headed out to the call. It was a house fire in a well-heeled neighborhood. Initially, it was thought that the fire was started by the careless use of an incense burner in a teenager's bedroom. With all of the flammable clutter surrounding the ignition source, it didn't take long for the fire to get out of control.

When Captain Nomo's truck arrived on the scene, there were already three police cars and an ambulance on the scene. The presence of the police concerned him at first, but then again he didn't have time to worry about them right now, he could see flames licking the eaves of the roof.

Firemen quickly set up the hoses and started to attack the visible flames and smoke. But then, Captain Nomo was informed that the house was the site of a possible meth lab and that extreme caution was needed so that the possible presence of flammable chemicals did not cause an unecessary explosions. Nomo didn't quite know what to make of that information, because the whole house was going to go up and if they didn't act quickly enough, the fire was going to take out the homes adjacent to the house on fire.

Captain Nomo gave the order to proceed fighting the fire and his men broke down the front door and most of the front-facing windows in order to try to flank the fire and kill the fuel source. All of a sudden there was a huge explosion that blew out the rest of the windows in the house and consequently set the nearby houses on fire.

Nomo quickly observed that he had a cluster-fuck on his hands. He was unable to reach his point-men fighting the fire from the inside and he had to assume that they were taken out by explosion. He called for backup, but the nearest fire crew was a good 30 minutes out. He had to take drastic action with the tools and the men he had left. He sent two teams to the houses nearby that had sustained damage from the explosion, and he helped a third team fight the fire on the first house so that they could at least get close to find the three guys that went inside.

After 3 grueling hours, daylight began to light the sky and Nomo's world was coming down around him. All three firefighters had died inside the house as a result of the explosion. One of the three was his son Jeremy. Grief and fatigue were taking their toll on Nomo and he was almost ready to just walk away from the entire scene.

Days later, a third party investigation had determined that Captain Nomo was at fault for pursuing the fire despite being warned about the presence of possibly dangerous chemicals. Of course it wasn't fair, what was he supposed to do? Stand there and watch the whole neighborhood burn down until it was “safe” to fight the fire? Ridiculous. He was asked to take early retirement and several years went by before he was even able to talk to people about what had happened. He was disgusted that it could come to this, but he buried his feelings well and was able to distance himself from the events, even his own son's death, and come to terms with what public officials had labeled a gross negligence of duty. That is when Mr. Nomo decided that he would combat this absurdity, by establishing his own fire science academy so that he could still have an influence on the next generation of firefighters.