Five-alarm fires are complicated. All fires are loud and chaotic, but five-alarms are uniquely burdened; there is a visceral desperation that heightens in intensity as departments keep arriving.
One crew is not enough. Neither is two, or three or even four. The name of the game is reinforcements upon reinforcements, a calculation of exponentiation that no one wants to make.
Like getting a snake bite flushed in the hospital, there is no such concept as too much water. One cannot simply douse a fire; the flames must be smothered with an avalanche that is just as unrelenting and merciless as the blaze.
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