Smith

A March 26 fire call to Center Avenue in Butler started like any other for assistant chief Kevin Smith of South Butler Volunteer Fire Department.

Smith, 46, is a veteran of 200 fires. And on that Sunday morning, with the three story building at 339 Center Ave. burning through the roof and smoke filling its hallways, Smith was where he should have been: manning the nozzle on a 1¾-inch hose as he led his attack team into the building in an attempt to extinguish the fire.

But as Smith's team pressed through a third-story fire door and into hallways pitch black with smoke and cluttered with entanglements, the fire refused to budge. With firefighters on the exterior preparing to cut holes in the roof to allow smoke and heat to escape, the call came for the team to exit the building.

That's when “normal” turned into a life-threatening situation for Smith, who had dropped the nozzle of the hose to untangle it from an unseen obstruction. As other members of the team followed the line back out of the building, Smith lost track of the hose and became disoriented.

His most fail-safe method of finding the exit gone and his oxygen tank running low, Smith tried to follow a wall back the way the team had come. But cloaked in the oppressive smoke, he made a vital mistake.

“I just went the opposite way as everybody else,” Smith said.

Read more in Sunday's edition of the Butler Eagle.