Chapter 274 - 215: A ’Critical’ Firefighter

Wu Di turned his head, his face troubled beneath the mask.

"The observer says the water output is still far from sufficient, the fire isn’t suppressed, and we’re not allowed in!"

Fang Huai’s face wrinkled as he looked towards the observer wearing the lieutenant’s insignia.

"Lieutenant Comrade, who made the rule that we can’t save people if the fire isn’t suppressed? What are we using this equipment for?

One of the offices inside, I just rappelled into it from outside the building to observe. The fire is blocked by the door, and there are no open flames. My squadron received orders from the detachment—to rescue personnel within a limited time!

Now, we need to carry out the orders. Under the cover of the water gun, we will quickly enter the inner rooms, move the people inside out, and confirm whether there are any other offices inside and if there are any survivors!"

The lieutenant glanced at Fang Huai: "The situation inside is not what your eyes can see!

The smoke is dense! Even if there is no fire indoors, you won’t be able to see! You think just entering will do? What people can you find?"

Unable to see, then why did you let me rappel down for reconnaissance just now?

Fang Huai cursed inwardly once again, but he also felt somewhat helpless.

The rules were set by others.

But in a real fire scene, his eyes could still see.

"How can you be so sure I can’t see?" Fang Huai persisted.

Upon hearing this, the lieutenant laughed:

"Wait."

With that, he turned around and walked out of the corridor.

...

In a little while, the lieutenant came back, holding five or six large pull-tab cans that resembled WWII US military meat cans.

Without speaking, he opened the door, entered the room, and then closed the door.

In that one-second glimpse as the door opened, Fang Huai noticed that the room was a rather large transfer room, connected to at least three other rooms with closed doors.

Fang Huai smiled to himself.

Quite a good choice of location, no wonder no one on the tenth floor could be found—they’re probably all inside those few rooms.

Only the sound of "hiss, hiss" could be heard inside.

The lieutenant came out quickly.

Inside, it was filled with yellow smoke.

A tiny space, bombarded with several smoke grenades, visibility was even crueler than in the actual fire scene.

The effect of smoke grenades is usually not enough to completely block one’s view.

But, unbearable when there are many!

That room inside was damn well sealed, the smoke could not dissipate.

Just unsure how those pretending to faint inside were holding up.

A few seconds passed.

"Go in," said the lieutenant with a smirk.

Fang Huai couldn’t help but give him a thumbs up.

Hehe, this is truly real.

Fang Huai activated the alarm switch on his two-way radio, which emitted a loud alert.

He also symbolically turned on his headlamp.

Then, he shouted:

"Water gun, follow the sound and cover me with spray! Special Duty Squad, crouch and follow behind the water gun operator! Follow me!"

After speaking, Fang Huai bent down and quickly rushed inward.

How should I put it?

Eyes penetrating, like a wallhack cheat, places that should have been completely obscured were completely discernable in terms of light and shadow.

The closer he got, the clearer it became.

Unsure how the teammates following behind felt in the midst of it all.

But turning back to see them groping all over the floor, fearful of bumping into something, it was clear he was leading a group of blind men.

Forget it, such a description isn’t nice, it makes oneself sound like a guide dog.

Inside, all three rooms had their doors opened and were filled with smoke grenades.

Fang Huai didn’t choose to head in the direction of the office he saw earlier. Inside there, everyone was already dead.

Instead, he moved towards another door.

He stood by the door, glanced inside, cursed, and turned to leave.

The room had three stiff corpses.

He moved on to the last room.

The door was half-open, Fang Huai pushed it.

"Ah!"

One was still alive.

Someone was actually lying behind the door, probably unable to see clearly, hiding there to avoid the smoke.

Fire smoke grenades don’t harm the human body much, but the burning canister releases some pungent odors, and this guy must have found it quite unbearable.

When the people in the back heard the sound, they got excited:

"There’s someone! Pull them out, quick!"

Fang Huai supported the man under his armpit, dragging him out and thought to himself, and then wickedly said:

"Water gun! Don’t worry about us, cover the injured and drag them out!"

Now, all the water from the water gun soaked him.

This person immediately covered his face and protected his pockets, completely awake now.

He yelled, "Mobile phone! Mobile phone! Don’t get it wet! I can walk on my own!"

There were two others in the room, obviously much smarter than the one who had been crouching by the door. They had each covered their faces with a jacket and lay comfortably.

But upon hearing the shouts from outside, they each took out their mobile phones from their pockets and clutched them in their hands.

The movements were significant.

They probably thought nobody saw them, but Fang Huai saw everything crystal clear.

Fang Huai smirked.

You’re giving me a hard time, aren’t you?

"There are two more inside, their faces covered by clothing, they might be struggling to breathe! I’ll drag them out, and you guys give them artificial respiration!"

"Damn, how can you see?"

"Just pull them out, I’ll do it!"

A voice came from outside.

Fang Huai stood up and approached one, wrapping around his armpit and started to pull him out.

He felt resistance.

The leather shoes on his feet scraped against the ground; he didn’t want to go out.

By the door, the shoes came off.

Perhaps at the edge of collapse, that guy’s eyes suddenly opened.

He still pretended to be weak, but those lines were probably learned from TV dramas.

"Water... water..."

Fang Huai burst into laughter when he heard the comment.

"We lack many things, but water, we’ve got plenty!"

"He wants water? Get the water gun! Spray his face a couple of times!"

The moment the words fell, a half-bloomed stream of water doused him from that direction.

"No need! I’m awake now!"

Another one recovered.

...

Seven or eight minutes later, eight dummy casualties were stacked outside the corridor.

The observing lieutenant tried to conceal a twitch at the corner of his mouth as he looked at Fang Huai.

He had actually found them all, without missing a single one.

Fang Huai was too busy to pay attention to him; he grasped three ropes in his hands, dragging a dummy with each, and headed downstairs.

Behind him followed three "concussion" victims who had recovered.

Following them, on a stretcher, lay a comrade under the age of thirty with a delicate makeup job.

Fang Huai had found her in the inner room of the third apartment and had carried her out directly.

After placing her at the door, Fang Huai, as usual, threatened to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Unexpectedly, the sister clenched her eyes even tighter and evened out the lipstick on her mouth.

Seeing this made Fang Huai furrow his brow and abandon the threatening therapy on the spot.

Her persistence earned her the privilege of being carried downstairs while lying down.

Honestly, working in the Firefighting service, you really do encounter plenty of female wolves, and there are quite a few opportunities for interaction.

The Firefighting doesn’t just take over some school military training but also some para-military and semi-military managed units’ formation training.

Many squadrons, fearing a bad influence, prohibit soldiers from giving their phone numbers to people from the training units.

So whenever the unit goes out for training, the number of letters piled in the evening guard pavilion at the gate increases substantially.

Some cast a wide net by distributing letters that don’t even include the recipient’s name, merely expressing an infatuation with dating a soldier brother, followed by a string of phone numbers.

Actually, some girls are probably moved by the solemn and serious demeanor of a certain People’s Liberation Army or People’s Armed Police soldier they happen to encounter.

But it’s not easy to find their gates!

Nor is it easy to get in.

So, who cares which type of soldier brother it is—try your luck with three different ones and see, Firefighting is easy to find and more approachable, so let’s look for Firefighting.

As a result, many girlfriends the Firefighters date were actually originally the province of the People’s Armed Police and the People’s Liberation Army.

The small Firefighting forces of just over a hundred thousand people are enjoying the benefits of two to three million military personnel.

...

As Fang Huai dragged the three dummies downstairs, some other floors, by various methods, also managed to bring the "unconscious" people down.

Fang Huai was clever, and the old soldiers weren’t fools either; they would slowly carry living people down the stairs.

Getting the "injured" from the exercise to get up and walk themselves was something Fang Huai had learned from the old soldiers in a past life.

Some would pat them on the shoulder, give them a cigarette, cozy up to them, or share their woes about there being too many people and ask if they could walk on their own. Some used intimidation; each had their own trick.

However, the sight of Fang Huai slipping along with three dummies was particularly explosive.

"Excuse me, excuse me!"

The people ahead only heard a series of "thump, thump, thump" sounds and when they turned to look back, Fang Huai, accompanied by a group of "deceased," was quickly going down. They were all startled and quickly moved aside.

Damn, was he driving a hearse?

This was beyond a hearse; this was the traditional craft of Xiangxi!

But it still wasn’t fast enough.

The others were escorting "patients" down another passage.

Only Little Black was left, also dragging two dummies by the hand and rushing downstairs after him.

Halfway down, they encountered someone from the observation team who stopped them and loudly asked, "Why are you not dragging the dead by the rules?"

Fang Huai, having been stopped, glared and shouted,

"What rules are there when saving lives? If there really was such a fire and the task was this urgent, I would save them just like this!"

Having said that, he pushed past the observer and continued charging downward.

The dignity of the deceased, at this moment, wasn’t worth mentioning.

If it really were that urgent, needing to extract dozens of bodies from a high-rise fire in just half an hour, managing to deliver even just a mutilated body would be the greatest respect for the relatives.

The unlucky ones would end up being cremated along with the building, and later, fragments of bones or ashes gathered into heaps would be handed over for the relatives to hold two fistfuls each in silent tribute.

If he ran too slowly, he too would remain here, waiting to be picked up.

Upon reaching downstairs,

The "deceased" were stacked up in the lobby on the first floor, while the "patients" were examined one by one by the doctors waiting outside.

The hospital teams were actually waiting for a real patient to treat, to give them a chance to rescue someone.

Because the municipal government’s emergency response plan was initiated today, they had to let the municipality’s Propaganda Members get some footage of their own units involved in the rescue to take back with them—they couldn’t all just watch the Firefighting forces busy with rescue and firefighting, while their own units stood around like fools, right?

The comrades from the Traffic Police were even more anxious.

Damn, the City Bureau chief was still at the scene.

So, a piece of content was naturally born.

A soldier from the Nanming Squadron came out of the building to fetch a hose and slipped on the wet floor tiles while descending the stairs.

He fell all the way down the stairs, tumbling over four or five steps.

Actually, he was fine; he was wearing a thick combat uniform, built tough.

But just as he was about to get up, several doctors from the medical units sprinted over a hundred meters and forcefully pinned him to the ground, completely surrounding the firefighter who had just sat up.

"The patient needs to be checked for possible internal bleeding!"

"Any problems with the ribs or spine?"

"Abdominal organs might also be ruptured!"

"He needs urgent surgery!"

These words had been prepared well in advance.

The soldier looked bewildered: "I’m fine!"

"Lie down!" one of the doctors ordered sternly.

I am the doctor; if I say you are sick, you are sick!

"No, I’m not a patient, I’m Firefighting!" the firefighter struggled desperately.

Firefighting? Even better! You rescue others, we rescue you!

This is how our importance is highlighted!

"The patient may have severe fractures! Get the stretcher!" shouted a leading doctor on the scene.

After giving the order, he walked over to a responsible person from the Traffic Police team and loudly said,

"Traffic Police comrade! We have now received a seriously injured soldier! He needs to be urgently transported to the hospital. Please clear the way for us!"

The Traffic Police officer’s eyes lit up.

Finally, there’s something to do!

"Received! Squadron three, assign four officers to clear the way and escort the patient to the hospital!"

As the two exchanged information, the municipality’s Propaganda Member went crazy with the camera clicking away before moving the lens to capture the stretcher, the ambulance, and the Traffic Police motorcycle with its siren activated.

And that firefighter, for his minor scrape, was taken away by a crowd to the hospital.