Courage Under Fire

By David Von Drehle

A veteran New York fire investigator was asked a few years ago to apply 21st century forensic science to the grim facts of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire, in which 146 young workers died in Manhattan. Ultimately, he found the inferno baffling. It just shouldn't have been so deadly.

It shouldn't have been, but it was. Science thrives on order: tidy laboratories and plenty of graph paper. Catastrophe dwells in chaos. No matter how much we learn, scientifically, about the behavior of flames or the criminal mind or the dynamics of war, chaos still has its dominion. We fill the gap between science and chaos, between the known risks and the unknowable dangers, with bravery.

Among the firefighters who charged into a burning furniture store in Charleston, S.C., on June 18 were veterans with decades of knowledge. They sized up the visible evidence and concluded they could rescue trapped employees and beat down the blaze.

Then chaos erupted with a flash and, as a witness put it, a "tornado of flames." Nine men perished when the roof fell into the inferno.

Science, technology and experience have drained a lot of risk from our lives. Death by fire, for instance, was a commonplace a century ago, when storms of flame sometimes consumed whole neighborhoods in a single night. Building codes, safe electricity and modern firefighting have saved countless lives. Today fire engines roll alongside ambulances to everyday medical emergencies, just to keep the crews sharp for the rare major blaze.

Yet the lessons of yesterday can never entirely answer the crises of tomorrow. An army of 9/11 heroes surged forward despite knowing next to nothing about the effects of burning jet fuel on skyscrapers.

Maybe there will come a day, as yet far off, when our skills and science overmaster chaos and the last surprise flashover consumes its last unlucky victim. Until then, we will have need for those willing to place themselves in the gap between knowledge and peril: the firefighter at the blaze, the police officer in pursuit, the soldier approaching an ambush, the fisherman nearing a gale. Though their perception may prove imperfect, their courage is never obsolete.