Fire and water: The crisis and the cure.But it took 20 hours of steadfastly blasting the latter to extinguish the roiling conflagration of the former last week at the Badminton and Racquet Club of Toronto.Bringing the blaze to heel — preventing it from leaping to condos and businesses on the four corners of St. Clair Ave. and Yonge St. — required a collective yeoman effort over three days: 520 firefighters, 167 fire engines, pumpers and three tower trucks with articulating booms, hazardous materials unit, dozens of hoses pumping simultaneously, an excavator and countless air cylinders consumed.And still, days later, small spot fires continued sparking back to life.A tall chore, killing a fire; throttling it.This is how it was done:Fire Hall 311 is situated almost directly behind the club. The D platoon answered the first alarm — one alarm — Tuesday morning, at 9:35, dispatching a pumper truck with a crew of four that had to manoeuvre around the traffic of club members racing to get out of the lot. Capt. Steve Green was first-in at what originally manifested as light smoke emerging from an electrical outlet in the ballroom area of the complex. The building’s superintendent reported he’d used a fire extinguisher and believed he’d doused the problem.“We don’t take anybody’s words until we investigate thoroughly ourselves,” recounts Dennis Graba, driver of Pumper 311. “It kind of presented initially as a routine electrical fire, nothing significant. There were no flames visible.”One alarm.Green suspected the problem was above, beyond the ceiling. They went up the stairs. “We could tell there was definitely something more aggressive burning up ahead,” in the small mechanical room, says Graba. “As it was burning up it was pushing down and out.”Within moments, Green had orchestrated a preliminary rapid-attack plan, his crew hooking into on-site hose ca ...
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