On Beacon Hill, this equation was so hopelessly skewed in the fire’s favor that sending a fire department to face it was like sending plumbers to confront a bursting dam. Most of the hose streams deployed were evaporating long before they reached the flames. The situation facing those patchwork crews in Beacon Hill—now a textbook firetrap—was not so different than that facing the firefighters marching resolutely up the stairs of the World Trade Center: it was nothing they had dealt with before, it didn’t feel right, and the prospects weren’t good, but there were people up there, so they went.
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