The fire at Augusta and Ashland on May 27, 1992, was the third of the day for Michael McGuire, a fire fighter with Engine Company 30. The fire was blazing in the back of a coach house and spread quickly to the neighboring houses across the oil and trash that someone had put down to accelerate the fire. McGuire’s truck was one of two called to the scene.
“A fireman comes up to me and says he’s hurt,” Dennis McGuire says. “What happened? Blew out his knee. No problem. He ain’t dead. He ain’t had his fucking arm torn off and he hasn’t been burned and he ain’t gonna die. I called in. I said, “Truck 19, Battalion 3. We have one injured man back here.’ No problem. They throw him in the back of the ambulance. We continue fighting the fire.”
It wasn’t. Despite the fact that there were witnesses to McGuire’s injury and despite the medical opinions dictating that he could not return to duty, the Firemen’s Annuity and Benefit Fund began a long and protracted series of hearings aimed at discrediting him. The fund enlisted a private detective to see if he was faking his injuries. On November 17, the fund came back with its answer. Miriam Santos, city treasurer and one of six board members, declared, “Your motion is denied.”
You’ve got to be careful when you ask him questions, because though he is often affable and a wonderful storyteller, the slightest thing can set him off. Take, for example, this particular day in which we are sitting in his office–basically a desk, a bed, and a couple of chairs on the second floor of a firehouse at Chicago and Milwaukee. We are discussing a woman who was laid off from her job with the department, despite the fact that there had never been any complaint from her supervisors.
“My comment was she was a superior person in the field. Her immediate supervisors would all say she was good. And you said, “Oh, that’s strange.”‘
“I have to go and search and rescue the third floor. Like I really want to go in a smoke-filled building where there’s supposed to be a bomb and I can’t see nothing. I’m searchin’. Searchin’ for what? You can’t see nothing. I come downstairs and I find this World War II practice sand bomb, something the gang probably just had for the hell of it. Probably had a hundred broads make love on the bomb. Well, it was lying on the floor, so I pick up the bomb and I walk out the front door. “Is this what you’re looking for?’ Coppers a block away are looking through binoculars, thinking I’m nuts. It is a mindfuck, because you are always on the edge. I am always on the edge.”
