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We had several apartment fires where grease or paint helped spread the flames. One stoned hippie had caught the oil-based paint he was using to paint his room on fire. He thought it would be real cool if the only light he used was an open candle. Of course, while admiring his work he let the candle melt the wax which flowed into the spilled paint on the floor. He wanted to see if the paint and wax would blend creating a flammable material. This experiment did not take long to get out of control. He was trying to put it out with a mop, and by the time we got there he had spread the flames all over his floor. He was starting to lose it and became erratic. He was hopping around getting flammable paint all over his clothes. The paint started to ignite. One of our guys threw him in the bathtub and turned the water on him. He spent a little time in the Klinik coming down. He decided not to try painting again on psilocybin. He claimed it was the candle that started it all. It told him to pour hot wax into the paint. Another scary one was a fire in a candle maker’s room. He had set up a melting process and left the room to visit friends. While he was gone, the pan spilled. Pouring hot melted wax on to the open flame alcohol burner. The alcohol mixed with and ignited the wax. Pouring hot liquid and flames all over the table, chair and wood tile floor. Somebody saw flames coming out the windows and called the Fire Dept. We had the fire out by the time they got there and no real investigation was pursued. Remember this was before the “towering inferno” high rise fires happened in Toronto in the late 70’s. After the F.D. left we opened the cupboard about 4’ from the desk. It was full of cans of alcohol and oil based scented liquids. We analyzed the possibilities of the heat rupturing the cans which would probably flow in the same direction as the water when a line burst or a waterbed leaked which would be down the window side of the building on the inside. We envisioned a wall of burning “Greek fire” pouring down the building setting the whole thing ablaze. All candle operations were then shut down. Another close call was when one of our residents decided to get into the used tire business and started to stockpile old tires in the sub basement. He was the kind of aggressive character that basically bullied and cajoled his way around. He had hornswoggled the front office and security to let him set up his business. The Fire Marshal happened to do an inspection and found the pile. The F.M. set him straight with a fine and a threat of police action. The tires were quickly removed. But, had his pile caught fire it would have taken the building. This is a demonstration of the chaotic control certain residents had over the building management. Add to that all the various heads of hair catching fire as they went too near a candle. You have to believe that at the end of the day we were really lucky. No deaths from fire. The heating system was a freak out. The whole building would be affected if any part of it broke down, which it always did in cold weather. Basically, the system had too many elbows in vulnerable positions. The opening windows, right above the radiators were so big they let in more cold air than the rad pipes could handle. This always happened on extremely cold days. The elbows would freeze and pipes would burst. Flooding the apartments for a couple of floors below, draining the system and shutting down the heat for the whole building. People would go away for a couple of weeks and leave their windows open not having a clew as to what they were doing. Then complain about the mess & water damage when they came home. They would rage that it served us right to not have any heat for a day or two. Look at the mess they had to clean up. It was the building’s fault there was not enough heat. Some people have to be right all the time. One night the vestibule heating radiator broke in the bank on the 1st floor. The whole bank was flooded drowning the alarm system. The bank, their security and the police did not know what was going on at this location. At one point while we were opening up the interior wall so we could find the problem we heard a big click. We looked over in the direction of the noise and watched the vault door swing open. Now I was in a closed bank with the alarms drowned with a crew of 6 guys, 3 of whom had spent time in prison. It was illegal for those guys to be unsupervised inside of a closed bank. My 3rd class engineer was one of the best safe crackers in Toronto. Now the vault was open. I called the police as well as the bank manager because I didn’t want my guys to be caught inside the bank with the alarms decommissioned without an escort. I didn’t say anything about my crew’s prison records. I figured the authorities already knew about them. The person on the other end of the lines with both the bank and police just asked me not to leave until they arrived. What surprised me was the slowness of the response before the police and bank management got there. Did the police and bank management trust my supervision? Did nobody want to come out on the coldest night of the year? Was traffic that bad? Nobody answered when I asked but they did inspect the open vault. The one police man that would talk to me simply said the bank was insured and there was not a robbery. Previous Exit Next |