http://www.ctnow.com/news/local/northeast/hc-race_fire.artsep12,1,7078270.story?coll=hc-headlines-northeast
Frank Harris III
September 12 2004
On a muggy July evening, I approach the Dixwell Fire Station with its long, wide driveway for the big white engines that could come rumbling out at a moment's notice. Save for the light traffic gliding past, all is quiet. I pull around to the back of the station and park beneath some catalpa trees with their thin, banana-like pods hanging amid green leaves. A firefighter leads me in through a winding hallway to a room where several men are gathered. Dawud Amin comes forward and extends his hand. He is wearing a navy blue T-shirt printed with the words "New Haven Fire Department" in a small circle. He is short, and I suspect he faces the same thoughts I read in people's eyes when they see me in person the first time: "Gee, he looks taller in his picture."
The picture I have of Amin, 29, is the one millions of others might have. The one from a January afternoon earlier this year depicted in newspaper photos and television news footage that aired nationwide. The one that showed him near the roof of a smoking, burning house in New Haven's Morris Cove charging a window, kicking it in, and reaching in to help pull a fire captain out. That was the afternoon when he became known as a hero whose actions would seemingly snuff out any embers of racial animosity that might arise within a department that has had its share of racial battles over hiring, over promotions, over discipline and most recently, over test scores.
Dawud Amin is black; the firefighter he saved is white.
Why mention race? Isn't it just one person helping another? Why black? Why white? Because in addition to the history of racial issues in New Haven's Fire Department, there is a special feeling that arises when people of different races are involved in a rescue. The feeling is difficult to describe. Perhaps the word is affirmation. Yes. A quiet message of affirmation saying: Yes, we can get along. Yes, we do care about one another. Yes, when the chips are down, we really don't see race, just another human being.
Beautiful stuff. Like that Coca-Cola commercial from the early 1970s where atop a hill people of different races, ethnicity and religions stand to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.
Corny as it may seem, I saw these two men - Amin and Howard McCann, rescuer and rescued, black and white - as affirmation that in the end, what truly counts is our humanity, not the racial stuff; our commonality, not our differences.
"We are about as different as we could be," Amin says in the Dixwell firehouse, about Capt. McCann. "We are completely opposite with opposite opinions - my upbringing, his upbringing. I imagine he's Catholic; I'm Muslim. We do talk."
His words are confident and measured. He describes McCann as a "comical guy" who speaks his mind and sometimes has to apologize for what he says. But Amin respects his openness and the fact they can talk about anything.
McCann agrees they do get along.
"I was brought up Catholic and baptized Catholic," McCann, 38, says when I speak to him the next day. "When it comes to work, that stuff really doesn't matter."
And their differences didn't matter when the alarm went off on Jan. 14.
Amin wasn't even supposed to be at the station that Wednesday afternoon when the call came in. Normally, he would be at Central Station, but Amin was on detail, temporarily filling an open spot at the Fair Haven Heights Station on East Grand Avenue. McCann says the call came in at 2:23 - structural fire -14 Cove St. - two-family house on Morris Cove along the water.
Usually the buildings that burn are old and not up to code, McCann says. This one on the Harbor Point Marina property was more than 125 years old but it had been refurbished.
"There were things that just started off bad," Amin says, referring to one fire engine that got into an auto accident, and a ladder truck forced into a long detour around a swing bridge stuck in the open position.
"When we got to the seawall, we could see smoke coming out," McCann says. "The smoke was white. White tells us that water is being put on fire. We didn't take into consideration that below 20 degrees, smoke is white. We're thinking it's being attacked effectively. We followed standard procedure and located a secondary hydrant, got out and made contact with Engine 16 and called out to see how they were doing. They said `all right.' They were hitting the fire."
McCann says they talked to an occupant to ask if anyone was in the house. The occupant wasn't sure, so McCann and Amin went up to the second floor. Amin was the "pipe guy," meaning he had the hose ready to hit the fire at sight. Upstairs, there was no fire and little heat. Just smoke. Smoke that choked the second floor, forcing them to grope their way along, their hands reaching blindly.
"We were trying to get to a window to open it," Amin says. "Then the smoke got intense."
McCann says everything about the fire to that point was normal. They crawled on the floor and the line was charged with water, ready to go. Both men could hear each other for a few minutes, then the only voices they heard were their own. They had lost each other.
Amin and I head over to a dining area where several casual tables and chairs are arranged on the green-and-white checked floor. A TV sits high on the wall in a corner. On an adjacent wall are several local newspaper articles. On another is a large mural of three racing white horses pulling a steam fire wagon and two New Haven firefighters in blue. City hall is in the background, along with a Model-T car. Several pedestrians watch as the fire wagon heads off, one firefighter holding the reins and a whip, the other holding on.
Both firefighters are white. They were all white. That was New Haven early in the last century.
Much has changed. Early in this still-new century, New Haven's fire department is diverse and in the Dixwell Firehouse on this July evening, the atmosphere is light and easy. Blacks and whites seem to get along here, in contrast to numerous news accounts about fractious racial divisions over test scores that have led to lawsuits, accusations and insults.
The New Haven Fire Department has a history of racial flare-ups over black candidates' access to entry-level jobs and promotions. There was the issue of "stacking," which was when firefighters would be promoted to positions for which there weren't any openings. When positions became available, those in the stack - who were almost always white - would be first in line.
I tell Amin how moving it was to see what he did and have everyone united. Yet now it is all forgotten away from the smoke and flames.
A female voice breaks in over the intercom. A call comes in.
"I'll be back in a few minutes," he says.
While he's gone, another firefighter passes by. Gary Cole is white and has been a firefighter for six years. He says they all get along great and it's a "very select" group of guys who aren't getting along.
He also says the politics of city hall has fueled the dispute, as well as the news media.
"The media makes it sound like it's a racial war. I think it has toned down a lot," Cole says. "Do I think the test should have been thrown out? No. I think the tests were very fair. The process was fair."
I look at the wall of newspaper clippings. I'm thinking they are stories of Amin and the January fire, but the picture is from February 1992 and the story chronicles the injury and steps toward recovery of New Haven firefighter Thomas Kelly.
Also displayed are unit citations. Lots of them.
The irony of fighting fires in the winter is how it can be so doggone cold outside and then, just like that, you're sweating in a blazing oven. On the second floor of 14 Cove St., conditions suddenly and rapidly deteriorated.
"I could feel it getting hotter," Amin says. "I called out a warning - `Captain! Fire's coming up! It's getting hot!'"
There was no response.
He called out again and again.
"Captain, fire's coming up! Captain, where are you?"
On a warm May evening, near the New Haven Fire Training Academy on Ella T. Grasso Boulevard, the wind whistles with sounds of fast cars and barreling trucks on the I-95 overpass. No one else is here. Then a television truck pulls up. A car, and then another car and several motorcycles trickle in like ants finding their way home. They are off-duty New Haven firefighters. A few are in uniform, but most are casually dressed. One black firefighter used to be a neighbor in West Haven, his daughter once went to kindergarten with my oldest daughter at Washington Magnet School; another white firefighter has a daughter who has danced with mine at Gloria Jean's School of Dance since they were little. I speak with both men, shaking their hands.
I do so separately, though openly.
They are good people with different points of view. They are brothers in dispute.
All around there are firefighters. There is some tension in the air. The blacks and whites keep a respectful distance, like boxers before entering the ring. I am aware of perception. I talk to members of each group as these members of AFL-CIO Local 825 - and they are all men - gather outside before meeting to vote on whether the union should sue the city of New Haven over the firefighter's exam.
The highly guarded exam, which is unavailable to the public, is said to contain 100 questions. New Haven firefighters take it to qualify for promotion to lieutenant and captain. The exam is the flashpoint for the current dispute within the department and between Local 825 and the city. Those with the highest scores have the best chance at promotion. The exam results released in January showed the highest scorers were all white, except for one Hispanic. No black firefighters were among the high scorers.
Many black firefighters, led by Wayne Ricks, president of the Firebirds, a fraternal organization for minority firefighters, question the results and the exam.
"This is the first time that this has occurred that blacks didn't do well," Ricks says, adding there usually will be at least one black who qualifies. "I don't think blacks are getting stupid. I will say something is not right."
Ricks says the exam wasn't the one used in the past. This one was much more comprehensive and drew from several sources, not just the materials firefighters are advised to study. Ricks says it seemed designed more for New York City firefighters than New Haven, and provided as an example, a reference to "uptown" and "downtown."
Ricks says something else was particularly troubling. Usually posted before an exam is the material the exam will cover and what books firefighters should use to study for it. Many black firefighters in various fire stations, he says, noticed white firefighters looking over the designated materials even before the exam and list of books was posted.
"How did they know what to study for before the exam materials were posted?" Ricks asks. "That's the magic question."
But while Ricks says the exam was unfair, many white firefighters, led by Patrick Egan, the union president, say it was fair and (whites) studied for it and did well.
The city, which wants a diverse force on all levels, sought to have the results tossed out. A vote by the city's Civil Service Commission on the exam's validity ended in a tie, which led the results to be invalidated. The exam was thrown out, which meant those firefighters who did well could not reap the rewards of a possible promotion. This in turn led to the union vote on whether to sue the city.
So as firefighters gather for the vote, I seek out Amin and McCann. Amin is on duty, but someone brings me McCann.
He is a big man at 6 feet, 230-plus pounds. He wears bandages from his burns and tells me he is still recovering.
"He was my Muslim angel," McCann describes Amin. "He's a great firefighter. He's a great person."
McCann says he felt this way even before the fire, saying Amin was someone he could talk and joke with about anything.
After Amin pulled him out, McCann laughs, a black firefighter joked he'd probably be changing his name from Howard McCann to Howard Muhammad.
I ask him about the reported racial dissension within the ranks.
"I understand about equality," McCann says. "No one came to the (white) firefighters and gave them the answers. It's very competitive. Everybody for himself."
He says there was nothing racial about the exams.
"I thought things were getting better," he says. "I hate that the department is like this. But I don't know what can be done."
Then he has to go. They all have to go. The firefighters head into the training facility for the union meeting and vote. I follow along, hoping to get in, but this is for firefighters only. They close the doors behind them.
At the heart of the dispute is a question that plagues many tests, from college entrance to job promotion exams: Why do blacks often score lower than whites?
Some of the white firefighters say the tests were fair and they scored well because they studied and blacks did not. There is the suggestion of laziness.
Some of the black firefighters say whites hold an advantage because they have access to information about the exam that blacks do not. There is the suggestion of cheating.
Both groups are miffed. No one wants to be called lazy. No one wants to be called a cheater.
On that smoke-filled second floor, the flames soared out of nowhere. Amin saw it shoot straight up the stairwell; McCann saw it light up the ceiling and roll toward him. Both felt their hearts race.
"It was the scariest moment in my life," Amin says.
McCann, fear gripping him, called out to Amin to hit the fire. Amin never heard him. He didn't have to. At that instant, he was turning the nozzle - only to have the line go limp.
"I tried to hit the fire, but there was no water. It was like a water gun," Amin says. "I dropped the hose and started running from the fire."
Over the radio, McCann heard the transmission ordering everyone out.
"I called out to Dawud that it was `time to go,'" McCann says, "but I couldn't hear him. I called again and got no response. There was fire all around me. Even the air was on fire. It's not like fire in the movies. All you see is orange on the ceiling and on the wall. I couldn't make out anything. At that point I was concerned because I had lost my partner."
"I can't see," Amin says. "The smoke is thick. I'm banging the walls looking for a window. I'm calling the captain's name and banging the wall looking for a window. I hear glass break and dive out. There was like an explosion of fire."
At the same time Amin dove out the second-floor window, the firefighters below scrambled out the first-floor windows. For Amin, his good fortune was the roof-like ledge that saved him from a major fall. But once on the ledge, he realized the captain had not made it out.
The union, in a vote that went along racial lines, votes to sue the city of New Haven. Black union members don't want their dues used to pay for a suit that would work against them. Many black members express anger that the vote is conducted by a public show of hands.
"The majority of the body voted to support the union and challenge the city's decision," Ricks says. "It turned into race."
Ricks says had it been a written ballot, things might have been different. He says the show of hands subjects everyone to peer pressure. The union will spend money fighting the city's decision. The case could take years and ultimately the union may not win. Meanwhile, for many black firefighters there is the added sting that the union is using their dues to fight against what they support - the tossing of the exam.
"The whole testing program is flawed," Amin says. "I personally feel the training should be spread more evenly. The testing process is going to always be biased. I'm a first-generation firefighter. I don't have an advantage. Lots of whites are second or third generation. That's no fault of their own, but they have an advantage. The department needs to recognize it is an advantage."
McCann disagrees.
"Everybody black and white knew what the system was," says McCann, who acknowledges there are some bad feelings about the test all around. He says each test is different and is not conducted the same way.
"Across the board we have the feeling that these numbers are played around with," McCann says. "Blacks and whites and minorities. If we are talking about how [broken] the system is, we should come up with some agreement. I don't think waiting for results to come out and then arguing the process is the way. That's my biggest beef. I would be surprised that blacks didn't place well. I know some very sharp minority candidates."
Outside the window, Amin yelled to the battalion chief that McCann was still inside.
"Once I realized the captain had not made it out, I felt a serious, serious, overwhelming sense of guilt," he says. "I felt we were in there together and I got out. I felt I had abandoned him and it was so against my nature."
In the building, McCann crawled through every room, groping by hand. At one point he stuck his head in a toilet. His primary concern was Amin. He says he thought Amin had fallen through a hole in the floor.
As the fire raged around him, he reached what he calls a turning point.
"I had a fight-or-flight response and had nowhere to go," he says, noting the stairwell they used was now a conduit to fire.
Panic set in. His heart raced. He called on the radio for help. He heard the battalion chief tell him to get to a window. He couldn't reply, but he started moving around trying to find a window.
About halfway through the room, his low air-pressure light went off. He had but a few minutes.
He came to a window and lifted his head to call out, only to knock his helmet off against what may have been the windowsill. The fire roared over his head, its heat and flame providing what might have been the final knockdown as he sank heavily to the floor.
"I remember the time I called for help on the radio and the time I took off the mask and ran out of air," he says. "It was in between that time I was panicked. But by the time I pulled my mask off I was overcome by a sense of inexplicable calm and focus. Really, I had exhausted all the options and was unbearably hot. There was no relief from heat or fire anywhere on the second floor - period. I felt my head was in a vise."
McCann prepared to die.
At the Dixwell Street station, Amin goes out on another call and I realize not all calls are about fires. Firefighters are summoned for traffic accidents, injuries and other situations that may require their help. When he returns we sit down again to talk.
He says race has never been an issue with him. He gets along with everyone. His parents raised him as a Muslim, and being one has enabled him to answer questions and dispel myths that others might have about his religion.
He says he attended predominantly minority schools in New Haven and then high school in predominantly white North Haven. He is continuing his education by taking courses part-time at Southern Connecticut State University, majoring in political science.
He is friends with people of both races and says there needs to be an end to the bickering and a beginning to the mending of fractured relations. To suggest that black firefighters didn't study for the exam, he says, is an insult and creates the perception that they are second-class firefighters.
"I know I studied," he says, adding that so did other blacks.
Outside, away from the heat, smoke and fire, Amin was racked with anguish. As the flames licked inside, time was running out. The quick plan among the rallying firefighters was to get the ladder up from the late-arriving ladder truck and run a hose line in, but Amin couldn't wait a moment longer.
"Because I was in there with him I felt I had to do something," he says.
Throwing off his helmet, Amin rushed to a window and started kicking. He kicked until it broke, and with glass shattering, stuck his head inside the inferno.
"I saw him laying there on the floor face-down," Amin says. "He was cooking."
McCann heard glass breaking, not from the heat but a deliberate break. He caught a quick glimpse of a hand and the reflective stripe of a firefighter's coat.
"I thought he was gone," Amin says. "His mask was off. He had no oxygen. There was a lot of fire in the room. His head was hot to my hand. He started speaking. He says I was still in there. His first words were, `Where is Dawud?' I said, `Captain, I'm right here.'"
McCann says it was not until Amin stuck his face into McCann's face that he realized Amin was there.
"I thought I lost him; he's thinking (he) lost (me)," McCann says.
How Amin found McCann is something McCann calls "chance," considering he could have been anywhere. Amin says he just felt McCann's presence and sensed where he was, and with adrenaline flowing, reached his 5-foot 6, 140-pound frame through the shattered window to help pull the bigger man out.
Afterward, the roof freezing from the water, they held on to keep from sliding to the ground below.
"My time in the building was nine minutes," McCann says, recalling what was told to him. "It seemed longer to me."
Later that night, at New Haven's Hospital of Saint Raphael, Amin sat alone with McCann. His wounds were serious. One firefighter remarked about the smell of burning flesh. He had suffered first- and second-degree burns on his head, and third-degree burns on the back of his neck.
"I'm happy to see him, but I'm higher than a kite from all the medication," McCann says.
Together they watched the television news footage from the afternoon fire. They saw Amin kicking out the window and reaching in. They pieced together what happened. They considered how they thought they'd lost each other, how it could have gone either way, how much of it was chance.
`In the paper it says no one is getting along," Amin says in the firehouse as the shadows start to creep in. "There are some who live for controversy, but for the most part, although we have differences of opinion, we are friends first. We get along during the day," Amin says.
To hear some say it, New Haven has a fire burning in its fire department. But a talk with some firefighters suggests it is being blown out of proportion. To a man, they say that despite their differences, they are professionals who won't be sidetracked from responding to fires and other emergencies. They won't be deterred from helping each other.
It is evident in all. When we as people are threatened, we pull together and forget our differences. It's when the danger is gone that we return to where we were before. That can be a good thing, a bad thing, or nothing at all.
Amin says since the rescue he has received a lot of phone calls from firefighters everywhere. However, he doesn't think of himself as a hero, mentioning that veteran firefighters have experienced much worse and done much more.
"It was the tip of the iceberg about what I would do for my fellow firefighter," Amin says.
Amin certainly would like to advance in rank, but for now he wants to be the best firefighter he can be. He does not know how he did on the exam. Although typically firefighters learn how they scored, after the last exam, the only information posted was the top 15 scores and the race of the exam-takers, but no names. Because of the dispute, individual scores were never released.
"I just wish it would get better," Amin says about the dispute. "It's hurtful. The job is challenging enough. You're getting along with everyone, then this happens."
He says it's important for everyone to respect each other.
"(Gary) Tinney (a black lieutenant at the Dixwell station) has been labeled as racist by some," Amin says. "But what happens is when guys work in this shift, they find he's an all-right guy. On the other hand, I might hear some say a white officer is a racist, but I see white officers do things that show they are all-right guys."
Amin says the dispute brings out the ugliness in everyone and he hopes everyone can come together to fix what he calls the inequities. He wishes everyone could say how he really feels, but too many firefighters are closed like books. He wants everyone to stop using the paper to embarrass and insult each other. He says he'd like mediation.
"This is my city," he says, urging that everyone try to make the department better.
But for now the union has filed its lawsuit, which is still pending in state Superior Court ... Some like union president Egan are reluctant to talk about it anymore, saying it is old news.
"It's in the court's hands now," Egan says.Meanwhile, Firebird president Ricks says black firefighters everywhere are looking at New Haven's dispute over exams.
"We anticipate several members of the Firebirds might be interested in withdrawing from the union," he says.
Today Amin and McCann work in different fire houses: Amin at Dixwell, McCann at East Grand Avenue. McCann says they haven't had a lot of time to talk and not enough time has gone by to really say anything of substance.
"What do you do," McCann says, "but keep saying thank you?"
Frank Harris III, of Hamden, is chair of the Southern Connecticut State University Journalism Department whose column also appears Mondays in The Hartford Courant. He can be reached at fh3ownword@rcn.com or P.O. Box 185061, Hamden, CT, 06518.
Copyright 2004, Hartford Courant