Author's Note:

This story was partially inspired by historical events, magnified and dramatized for the world of Emergency! Fanfiction.

"In 1975, a fire of unknown origin swept through a switching center at Second Avenue and Thirteenth Street in lower Manhattan on February 27, 1975, causing the worst single service disaster ever suffered by any single Bell operating company. Starting around midnight in the cable vault under the eleven-story building's basement, the fire spread rapidly upward. Alert work by New York City firemen confined it to the lower floors and saved the building itself from destruction, but dense smoke from burning cable insulation suffused the unburdened parts of the building and virtually all the equipment in it was put out of service. By afternoon, when the fire was finally declared under control - with no loss of life to either firemen or telephone people- twelve Manhattan telephone exchanges, embracing three hundred city blocks and 104,00 subscriber lines serving 170,000 telephones, were out of service, and among the institutions bereft of working telephones were six hospitals and medical centers, eleven firehouses, three post offices, one police precinct, nine public schools, and three higher education institutions, including New York University." (See privatelineDOTcom/issues/p.)

New York Telephone mounted a massive effort, 4,000 employees working 12-hour shifts around the clock to restore the 170,000 phone lines knocked out of service. Work that would have normally taken a year or more to accomplish was completed in twenty-two days, at a cost of approximately ninety million dollars (in 1975 dollars) helped by the fact that the entire building had not been destroyed and that there was spare switching capacity in nearby central offices.

While it was originally reported that there was no loss to life for firemen or NY Telephone company employees, sadly subsequent reports are that a dozen or so fire fighters eventually died from this incident, after the fact, as a result of inhaling massive amounts of toxic fumes which led to varying types of respiratory ailments and cancers.

I began writing with much of this story mapped out in my head but it would have not been written as is without the support and encouragement of a number of people. Special thanks to Kelmin for correcting my many technical fireground and EMS errors and very grateful thanks to Kelmin and The Delirium Threeman for beta work, especially on the final chapter with which I struggled.

I am endlessly grateful for those of you who read and regularly reviewed. You encouraged me to get the chapters done, polished and posted and kept me on track. You all know who you are.