In the heart of the city, Seattle Fire Department’s Station #6 houses Ladder Company 3. Renowned bamboo rodsmith Jimmy Watts stands in the kitchen of the busiest station in the city boiling freshly caught Dungeness crab with his fellow firefighters when the brass alarm bell begins to ring. Ladder Company 3 is called to nearly 2,000 alarms annually, but there’s no monotony in the shrill, always sudden clang. Snapping to attention, the 20-year veteran turns off the burners on the stove, as his fellow crew members abandon workouts, naps, showers, shaves, stopping whatever they were doing to move in unison toward the rig.
Some alarms call Ladder Co. 3 to shootings and scenes of violence, or to deliver babies from the back of vans parked in alleys, or to rescue elderly couples from burning apartment buildings, but this one in early March harries Watts and crew seven blocks north to aid a middle-aged woman who has collapsed in her apartment. Entering the tiny seventh-floor studio apartment, Watts surveys the bleak scene, regarding the victim and her 20-something daughter who’d made the call — needle marks on their arms, paraphernalia nearby — and a young girl, perhaps 8 years old, the victim’s granddaughter. The victim isn’t breathing, and Watts is the first to reach her, to check her pulse: nothing. Within moments, the crew is performing CPR, inserting a breathing tube down the victim’s throat, and initiating multiple IVs with various cardiac medicines. Coolly employing their thousands of hours of training and experience, they work while the daughter paces the room wailing inconsolably and the girl sits curled against the wall.
After nearly an hour of CPR, defibrillations, and countless doses of medicines administered, the victim
