NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. – Fire Capt. Ken Dammand stood sharply in his dress uniform, his eyes reddening, as the families of nine dead firefighters filed past him and into a packed coliseum for their memorial service Friday.
“These people are dealing with a mountain of grief,” said Dammand, who worked his shift in Everett and went 40 hours without sleep to make it to South Carolina for the ceremony. “If we can take on some of that, that’s why we’re here.”
Dammand and a colleague were among thousands of firefighters who traveled from across the country to mourn the Charleston firefighters killed in a furniture store blaze Monday night. It was the worst single loss of U.S. firefighters’ lives since the Sept. 11 attacks.
They traveled to a region that normally draws out-of-towners to its beaches and historical landmarks, but where city offices were closed Friday as piles of flowers and cards and remembrances of the slain men have grown over the past four days.
Some came in fire trucks that took part in a procession that wound its way past hundreds of onlookers, past the rubble of the Sofa Super Store and past the dead men’s fire houses before arriving at the coliseum.
Dammand and Everett firefighter Tim Hogan came by plane, working a 24-hour shift back home before leaving, and waiting out a six-hour layover in Atlanta before getting to Charleston on Thursday.
They stood shoulder to shoulder with comrades from Virginia Beach, Va., Saginaw, Texas, and Peoria, Ill. It was a trip they said they felt compelled to make to share the painful collective grief.
“It makes it a little hard, every one we do,” Hogan said. “But the families deserve this. The fallen are fallen, they’re looking down on us smiling right now. Their families … we’re here for them.”
The Everett firefighters didn’t care that they couldn’t get in to the coliseum. It was filled to its 9,000-seat capacity, so they joined several hundred others who watched the service on screens in a nearby convention center and outside the arena.
Inside, a row of nine coffins sat before a row of nine large photos of the fallen firefighters: Capt. William “Billy” Hutchinson, 48; Capt. Mike Benke, 49; Capt. Louis Mulkey, 34; Mark Kelsey, 40; Bradford “Brad” Baity, 37; Michael French, 27; James “Earl” Drayton, 56; Brandon Thompson, 27; and Melvin Champaign, 46.
The ceremony started with somber classical music and bagpipers that led family members, each wearing a red carnation and preceded by an officer carrying a fire helmet bearing the number of their fire house.
The mayor called the men heroes. The governor wondered aloud whether questions about a higher purpose for the deaths would ever be answered.
“Who we are crucially depends on what we’re willing to stand up for in life. In short, are we willing to walk the walk?” said Gov. Mark Sanford. “They walked their walk right into the company of angels and to heaven’s gate.”
Federal investigators have not confirmed where the blaze broke out, but recordings of some 911 calls released Thursday bolster the assertion several city fire officials have made that it likely started at the back of the store in a covered space between the showroom and a warehouse crammed with furniture.
Investigators planned to give an update today at the site of the blaze, which is where Dammand and Hogan went after Friday’s ceremony.
They gathered at the demolished store with other firefighters, who placed T-shirts and flowers on a growing memorial. They took some photos and gazed at the rubble. “My goodness,” Dammand said.
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