Michael Meadows

Photo from the late 90's. Fire in a 300 to 500 foot commercial in South LA. Around midnight, I heard the call and was only 10 minutes away. Arrived on scene right after Task Force 33, who, was returning from a call and saw the column of smoke...Noticed a firefighter, a very young Sean Wonders from Truck 33 heading to the back of the structure with a rotary saw and decided to follow. Climbed on a roof to get a better view and saw Sean start to cut the iron bars off to get to the slide up metal door. Sean had only cut one or two bars off when the roof collapsed. A loud whoosh" and there was fire every where. Got the shot of Sean starting to recoil as the fire blew out all the windows and came "through" the metal door that hadn't ever been opened, that's how much pressure was behind that roof going in. In the shot you can still see the sparks from Sean's rotary saw. in the air. Had that loading dock door been open, don't want to even guess what the outcome might have been. Obviously the fire became a defensive one right away. A now, much older and wiser Sean is now the AO at Task Force 89's in North Hollywood. Ran in the LA Times a day later. Sean and I remain good friends and had a chance to talk about that fire at a recent incident so thought I'd post a small story about one of the most spectacular shots I think I've ever gotten.