Capt. Villarreal can't stay away, no matter the pain

Today, Chris Villarreal will be there at two ceremonies for the firefighters who died in the Sofa Super Store a year ago.

A lot of guys at the Charleston Fire Department say they aren't going, can't stand to return to that site. Too painful, too many nightmares. No one can blame them.

But Villarreal can't stay away from any memorial for those guys, no matter how he feels, because it is nothing less than a miracle that he is not one of them.

On that day, it had been fairly quiet at Engine Co. 10. Villarreal, captain of the engine, went out to train with Nathan Hawkins, and when they finished they were planning to grill pork chops at the station. They were on the way to the grocery store when the call came. Two minutes later they were on the scene, and someone, Villarreal can't remember who, ordered him to the back of the building — where the fire started.

Villarreal and Hawkins went in the back door and ran smack into one of the oddest things they'd ever seen: The fire wasn't burning anything, it seemed, it was just floating there. Villarreal told Hawkins to hit the ceiling with water, cool the place down. When the flames disappeared for a moment, Villarreal thought, "We've got this thing licked."

But then, in a matter of seconds, the pressure of their hose dropped and the fire rolled over them. They were surrounded.

"The fire was wrapped around us. It was everywhere," Villarreal remembers. "I remember thinking 'We're going to die in here.' "

Then, out of nowhere, an opening in the flames.

The fire had severed their hose, cutting their pressure, but water was still shooting out of the line, creating a curtain of water — a doorway to safety for Villarreal and Hawkins.

They got another hose and went back in, but were barely 10 feet in the building before the call came for everyone to get out. The building collapsed on the spot where they had been minutes before.

The last year has been horrible for Villarreal. Some days he is terrified by the thought of how close he came to leaving his two children without a father. Other days he wished he'd perished, and avoided the hell that has been the fire's aftermath — the controversy, the finger-pointing, the horrible memories.

He can't sleep, and when he does Villarreal sometimes dreams about those guys. He put Brandon Thompson on that ladder truck that night. It was his job to do it, but the decision still haunts him.

Like a lot of firefighters, he's bitter that "stubbornness and ignorance" kept department brass from providing better training to the guys.

Villarreal remembers a conversation he once had with Louis Mulkey. They were talking about the lack of training in the Fire Department, the policies and procedures that just didn't work in the modern world.

He remembers Mulkey saying nothing would change until somebody got killed.

"I think he knew all of this was going to happen," Villarreal says, fully realizing how eerie it seems.

So no matter how much it hurts to relive that night, or how much he would like to avoid the ground where those men died, he cannot. It's not just a billboard slogan when Villarreal says he will never forget.

"By the grace of God, we made it out. I owe it to them to be there," Villarreal says. "That's the least I can do."

Reach Brian Hicks at bhicks@postandcourier.com or 937-5561.