OLLU fire gave Hood a chance to show what he’s made of

By Ken Rodriguez, The San Antonio Express News
When flames ignited at Our Lady of the Lake University last week, fire Chief Charles Hood was in an air-conditioned gym, more than 20 miles away, lifting weights. Thirty minutes later, Hood was on campus, lending support as the city’s first four-alarm blaze in nine years threatened to spread from the Main Building.

Hood didn’t assist from afar. He entered the burning edifice, assessed the ground floor water damage, exited, circled the Main Building and talked strategy with the Incident Commander Larry Trevino.

Hood immediately noticed a silver spire atop the building in peril.

“I knew the steeple was going to fall,” the chief says, and he didn’t want anyone getting hurt.

So Hood established a safety perimeter with fire-line tape to keep the crowd away from the blazing structure.

Hood promised he’d be a hands-on chief when he arrived from Phoenix last year. He’s kept his word. The chief rides regularly with EMS units. He rides on engines to fires. He manages the troops from the field.

“I like the guy,” one paramedic says. “He’s out there at the scene with you, getting his hands dirty.”

Hood never wanted to be a behind-the-desk chief. He wanted to work soot-filled trenches.

The chief arrived at OLLU around 8:15 p.m. May 6. He left more than six hours later at 2:45 a.m.

San Antonio isn’t accustomed to fires the size of OLLU’s. Twenty engines, 13 ladder trucks and more than 180 firefighting personnel responded to the blaze.

The last four-alarm fire occurred April 18, 1999, at an apartment complex on Thousand Oaks Drive. The blaze caused $4 million in damages.

Fire officials estimate OLLU damages at $14 million. The destruction could have been worse. A hard-blowing wind turned powerful water streams into mist as fire swept through the attic of a century-old structure.

“I fully expected the fire to extend vertically,” Hood says, “and go down to the third floor.”

It didn’t.

Others feared the fire would spread to nearby Sacred Heart Chapel or Moye Hall. It didn’t.

“If the fire had gone to the chapel,” says OLLU spokesman Dan Yoxall, “the emotional blow to the community would have been devastating.”

Yoxall was writing an e-mail on the fourth floor of the Main Building when the fire alarm sounded. He looked out the door, saw smoke, grabbed his laptop, car keys and cell phone and raced downstairs — “four steps at a time,” Yoxall says.

Firefighters arrived within minutes. Yoxall met Hood not long after.

“He seemed very calm and reassuring,” Yoxall recalls. “He said, ‘We are trying to contain the fire to this part of the building. We have x number of firefighters, y number of trucks.’”

At OLLU, Hood wore many hats. He was strategist, exhorter, on-the-ground helper and information specialist, debriefing the university president and addressing the media.

It was his second big test in five months. He mishandled the tragic case in December of Erica Smith, an accident victim incorrectly presumed dead and left untended for an hour. Smith later died. Hood expressed sympathy for her family, but regrettably said the fire department had nothing to apologize for. Weeks later, Hood revealed a litany of errors his staff committed.

The OLLU fire, though, showed Hood at his best. He credited the Incident Commander for making the right calls, and praised the troops for a job well done. Then he rolled up his sleeves and went back to work.