Chesapeake fire dept. dedicates station to fallen members

CHESAPEAKE

The alarm sounded on a bright mid-March morning: an electrical short at an auto parts store. It was a routine call the firefighters had heard a thousand times before - "smells and bells," they called them.

Capt. Steve Johnson heard it over the radio from the Chesapeake Fire Department headquarters that day 13 years ago. One of the first firefighters on the scene said it didn't look like much.

But then the radio chatter intensified, and a battalion chief said someone was trapped as he rushed down a hallway and out the door. The smoke had given way to a full-fledged blaze. Dozens of firefighters were there, but they couldn't find a hydrant hookup. The flames were getting close to an engine. Trucks were running out of water.

Johnson listened on a headset in the city's 911 center and learned that two firefighters were unaccounted for.

He heard their names later - Frank Young, with whom he'd gone to the fire academy, and John Hudgins Jr., with whom he'd chatted at the kitchen table during shift changes.

"If anyone could get themselves out of a predicament," Johnson said, "it would be these two guys."

But they were dead before anyone even knew they were missing.

Today, the squat and aged Fire Station 3 where Hudgins and Young answered their last call stands like an artifact across the street from a new one. A bronze and granite memorial sits out front of a 10,062-square-foot station with stainless-steel kitchen appliances and easy-to-clean tile floors and bay windows designed to withstand hurricane-force winds.

The facility replaces the city's oldest fire station, called the Washington District Fire Department when it was built in 1951. Hundreds gathered Friday to dedicate The Firefighter Specialist John Hudgins Jr. and Firefighter Specialist Frank E. Young Memorial Fire Station, renamed by a unanimous City Council vote.

The men were the first Hampton Roads firefighters to die in the line of duty in more than 20 years. None has died since. What happened to them shook a region and ultimately ushered in new standards for safety.

For a long time, Johnson remembered everything about March 18, 1996. Now the big stuff remains: The woman at Wal-Mart who didn't charge for the glossy prints of Young and Hudgins made from the Fire Department yearbook; the bright lights that illuminated the scene later that night; the bouquet of flowers left inside the burned building where the bodies were found side by side; the drifts of blossoms that encircled the flagpole at Fire Station 3.

Johnson remembers the firefighter who spoke for him when he was too overcome, the children who stood on the street with tiny flags as the miles-long funeral procession crept toward the cemetery.

He and the department continue to live the aftermath of that tragedy. The old way of doing things gave way.

"I believe they are positive," Johnson said of policy changes made since then. "I've seen the difference in the way we fight fires."

Two and a half weeks after Young's and Hudgins' deaths, the public learned that they had frantically pleaded for help but no one heard them, that the antiquated, two-channel radio system had been overwhelmed.

Further investigation revealed that the firefighters may not have known they were entering a building with a wood-truss roof.

"When they're on fire, it's a big problem," Johnson said. "They fall rapidly."

The roof at the auto parts store was misidentified in Chesapeake's fire plan - a serious violation, the state Office of Occupational Safety and Health concluded. No backup crews stood by when the firefighters went into the burning building, and a pumper truck had a broken gauge, the agency found.

Just after noon Friday, members of the Chesapeake Fire Department Honor Guard lowered the flag for the final time at the old station where men once fought fires with engines they built themselves. A second flag was unfurled and posted at the new station, and a white cloth flapped over the memorial to Hudgins and Young.

The men's families would unveil it, revealing the names in granite and a verse: "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

"We don't forget those who have given so much," Fire Chief R. Stephen Best told the crowd.

Thirteen years ago, Johnson said, firefighters rushed into burning buildings as fast as they could and stayed as long as they could. Sometimes, they'd do it without anyone standing by, without knowing what dangers lurked in side.

The deaths changed that, he said.

Every building in the city was examined after the fatal fire, ceiling tiles pulled out, flashlights shone inside in order to correctly identify all wood-truss roofs. A rapid intervention team is now in place before firefighters enter a building. A new system ensures that all are accounted for. A multi-station radio system keeps communication open.

"Everyone," Best said, "goes home at the end of the shift."

Pilot news librarian Jakon Hays contributed to this report.

Kristin Davis, (757) 222-5208, kristin.davis@pilotonline.com