Liverpool: Paper Mill fire presents challenges for firefighters
It was a building fire that presented a trifecta of challenges: an active construction site with no water supply and no lifts. Liverpool firefighters recall a night that will go down as one of the most unique jobs they’ve attended.
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When the first call came in with vague details about a fire at a multi-storey building somewhere near the Liverpool’s CBD, it was business as usual for senior firefighter Rod Toms and his colleagues, who hit the road immediately.
But when they arrived at the call address — an industrial precinct in Moorebank — about 8pm on September 7, 2017, nothing was amiss. All was as it should be.
The fact the caller had seen flames gave the report credibility though, and the crew knew they would have to investigate further.
“We’ve gone to that address and there was no sign of anything going on at the address, but as we’ve done a U-turn and come out of the cul-de-sac we’re in, we could see something, like a flicker,” Mr Toms said.
It was the faintest of flickers, but it was a sign all was definitely not right in the neighbourhood. Now to just figure out where it was.
Using their local knowledge they drove to the other side of the Georges River, at which point it became clear the Paper Mill, one of the Liverpool’s newest and swankiest apartment precincts still under construction at the time, was on fire.
As the first crews arrived at the scene, a team headed up the building to start attacking the blaze, which had started on the 16th storey among building materials.
Carrying packs designed for high-rise incidents, they made their way up the floors via the stairs. Lifts had not yet been installed in the building.
“They had just extinguishers … they actually were beating out flames with their tunics just to try and get some headway and more or less stop the gap until they thought the water was going to get there and they were going to put the thing out,” Mr Toms said.
But the water didn’t come. The building’s internal standpipe system wasn’t operational.
“Then it became a long process (of) just keeping safe. The crews more or less stayed up there a floor below just to keep an eye on what was going on and we tried to facilitate getting some water up there,” Mr Toms said.
Senior firefighter Mitchell Curran was part of the team that tackled the blaze on the fire floor.
He remembers how “physically taxing” it was to carry 30kg of equipment up the stairs to reach the blaze.
“When you’re carrying all the gear you have to wear as well as carrying all the firefighting gear … it gets the heart rate going,” he said.
It would be more than an hour “at a guess” before they were able to “do anything meaningful”, Mr Toms recalls, as crews rushed to establish a water relay running all the way from the Hume Hwy.
Eight trucks had to be connected to an aerial appliance which then connected to hoses on the 10th floor to attack the blaze, which had spread to levels 13, 14, 15 and 17.
“You’ve got to keep running to and from the trucks, so it’s like the mother of all shuttle runs,” Mr Toms said.
That it was a construction site posed its own problems with firefighters on the fire floor navigating a scaffolded work area as they attacked the blaze.
Acting Zone Commander Metro South 3 St Andrews Mick Carroll was a duty commander on scene that night. He described his role as the equivalent of a ship commander.
“When I arrived at that fire in Shepherd St … there was major concerns of water supply and straight away I knew I had to organise something to make sure that they had the fire protection because straight away I’m thinking of making sure no one is injured,” he said.
And while it was clear the building was still a construction site, it wasn’t just the safety of firefighters that had to be considered.
“When we get to the fire floor we still have to make sure that there’s no one there,” Mr Carroll said.
“The initial thinking is, how did this fire start? If you’ve got someone who illegally entered the premises for whatever reason and there’s a fire up there, you’ve still got to think this fire started somehow … and you’ve got to make sure everyone’s accounted for.”
Investigators later determined the fire was caused by a discarded cigarette.
The complexity of the incident certainly made it a memorable one for Mr Toms, who described the major response as a “team sport”.
“Technically, this one was definitely a challenge because of all that stuff we were missing. Stuff we would normally take for granted just wasn’t there. Everybody says what do you fight a fire with and it’s water, and when you don’t have water you’re thinking, ‘my god, what am I going to do now?’
“Call in a helicopter. I think even that might have been discussed,” he laughed.