In Chaos, Firefighters Become Masters of Risk

When Truck 12 arrived on the scene, fire officials had already made the call to go defensive.

Two ladder trucks blasted the building from the front, and two were positioned in the back.

A library staff member approached Schultz, telling him that the library's Peabody Room, on the second floor, contained precious documents and artifacts.

A cupola in the center of the roof had already fallen, and Schultz feared that sending a crew in would be too much of a gamble. Nonetheless, he made an unusual decision: to give the historical documents a level of protection usually afforded only to people. He sent in Special Operations Chief Craig Baker and about 10 other men.

"I was a bit nervous," Schultz said, but he was confident that Baker wouldn't take unnecessary risks.

The crew quickly covered the Peabody Room with salvage covers -- plastic tarps to help guard against water damage.

On the way out, Baker and his crew grabbed whatever paintings, maps and other documents they could carry. The efforts were worth it. Fire officials later said that despite catastrophic roof damage, about 80 percent of the documents in the Peabody Collection can be saved.

And the ceiling of the room, on the building's eastern side, remained intact even as nearby steel beams were twisted by the intense heat.

How the ceiling remained "defies logic," Schultz said. Authorities said yesterday that the fire was accidentally caused by workers renovating the building. No one was hurt in either of Monday's fires.

For Schultz, who at the age of 12 knew what he wanted to be after he watched a documentary about firefighters titled "We're No Heroes," the day displayed the talents and dedication of the agency.

"We've had a tough year," he said. But "on Monday, the citizens of the District of Columbia saw how talented and committed 99.9 percent of our personnel are."