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Less than 48 hours after the city of Flint, Mich., laid off 22 firefighters and cut operations at two local fire stations, an alarm sounded for a house fire on Bennett Avenue.
Though cutbacks had idled the ladder and water truck at Station No. 5, its crew still was closer than any other, so Mark Kovach and two colleagues sped toward the burning structure less than 2 miles away in the station's equipment vehicle.
Kovach says they arrived at a chaotic scene where neighbors were frantically directing attention to the second floor where a 47-year-old man with a heart condition was trapped.
With no ladder and no water, Kovach and a partner attempted, then quickly aborted, a rescue mission that nearly killed them, he said. When they dived out of the inferno, Kovach's helmet and jacket were in flames, but there wasn't even water to "put me out."
Kovach now says that the department cutbacks, specifically the lack of water, slowed the unsuccessful rescue effort at the eastside home, where the homeowner was killed and three firefighters, including Kovach, suffered second-degree burns.
"You couldn't have scripted something like this," the 18-year veteran says.
While Flint remains the perennial backdrop for a nation in the grips of recession, the tragedy on Bennett Avenue is resonating in troubled fire departments across the country where thousands of firefighters face possible layoffs.
For the powerful firefighters lobby, the April 27 blaze in Flint has become part of a national campaign to guard against deep cuts during a grim budget year in cities across the country. For Michael Brown, Flint's interim mayor, cuts to the city's rapidly shrinking public safety efforts represent a painful reality for a community on the financial brink.
Battalion Chief Anthony Tinnin, who oversaw the department's response to the fire that night, also says it may be impossible to know whether the victim, Adan Recendiz, would have survived had the fire occurred before the cutbacks.
Tinnin's description of the incident closely tracks the account provided by Kovach, whose "heroic" rescue attempt and those of his colleagues, the chief says, have been largely overshadowed by the subsequent debate over the department's ability to respond to the fire.
"It was one of those really unfortunate situations," Tinnin says.
He says the first calls from Bennett Avenue started coming in at 11:23 p.m. Although it was known that a water truck was unavailable at Station 5, Tinnin says Kovach and two other firefighters at the station were just a short ride away.
When the crew arrived, heavy smoke and flames were pouring out of the house.
Using a ladder found at the victim's home, some of the neighbors attempted a rescue of their own but were turned away by the smoke and heat, Tinnin says. Recendiz's wife, Tinnin says, had managed to jump to safety before the crew arrived.
Despite the lack of water, Tinnin says Kovach and a partner launched the rescue mission, because Tinnin says "there was little doubt that somebody was still in the house."
Kovach says water finally arrived shortly after the aborted rescue.
Since the tragedy, Brown says the city has found funding to re-open Station 5.
"We have been constantly evaluating the situation. The response from the community has been supportive of what we are trying to do," Brown says.
Some in the neighborhood still feel uneasy.
For several nights after the fire, Patrick Leverette, one of Recendiz's neighbors, says he couldn't sleep. "Sometimes you think that if that station was open, everybody would be OK."
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