Fire swept through a South Carolina furniture warehouse, collapsing its roof and killing nine firefighters inside in the US' deadliest single disaster for firefighters since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"I lost nine of my best friends," said Fire Chief Rusty Thomas, choking back tears on Tuesday. "To the families, you gave them to us and we protected them as best as we could."
The cause of the fire Monday night at the Sofa Super Store, and exactly how the men were killed, were under investigation, but officials said arson was not suspected.
flashover
One fire captain said the men might have fallen victim to a flashover, in which superhot gases heat a building and its contents so intensely that they literally burst into flames.
Buildings that contain a lot of furniture are especially vulnerable, because of the wood lacquer, polyurethane foam and other combustible materials that can reach flashover at a relatively low temperature, sometimes within minutes of a fire's outset.
Other officials, however, said the roof collapse might have killed the firefighters.
The fire chief said there was no indication his firefighters did anything wrong.
"They did exactly what they were trained to do," Thomas said.
The blaze plunged the city of 106,000 and its 237 surviving firefighters into mourning.
Through the night, firefighters, police officers and other rescue workers saluted as the firefighters' bodies were carried from the smoldering ruins, with the last victim removed around daybreak.
exhaustion
Some firefighters wept. Some fell to their knees, others held their heads in their hands, or sat slumped on the bumpers of their firetrucks, their faces etched with grief and exhaustion.
Later in the day, as mourners left flowers outside fire stations and state officials ordered flags lowered, firefighters draped an American flag over a sign near the front of the store.
Many in the department said emotions were too raw to talk about the tragedy.
"I can't say much without crying," one firefighter said at a station mess hall.
Officials said the fire started in a storage area of the Sofa Super Store, a huge showroom and warehouse on a commercial strip of car dealerships and body shops.
the call
The first emergency calls came in at about 7pm and firefighters were told two employees were trapped.
Later, the fire chief said only one employee was believed trapped.
The employee made it out alive, Thomas said, but it was unclear that it was firefighters who rescued him.
Firefighters searched for victims and battled the fire, picking their way among rows of sofas and mattresses stacked five and six high on racks in the cavernous warehouse, a corrugated-metal structure next to a gas station.
"It was burning everything. As fast as they would put out one side, another hot spot would pop up," said Lesley Broughton, who lives in the neighborhood and works as a clerk at a convenience store near the furniture store.
"Then glass started breaking and they told everybody to get back and finally it was just an inferno," she said.
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