July 28--He remembers every bit of that hot, miserable summer night.
He remembers the chaos on the radios, the blinding smoke, and the hole in the floor that may as well have been bottomless.
He remembers the crushing acceptance, as bricks rained into the alley around him and the Mithoff Building started to come down, that they had failed and his friend was dead.
Twenty-five years later, and the memories are as sharp as razors.
"It was just a terrible, terrible night," Lt. Vic Runkle of the Columbus Division of Fire recalled this week.
On July 25, 1987, the city of Columbus lost acting Lt. John Nance to a three-alarm fire at 149-155 N. High St. The fire later was ruled arson, making his death one of the city's unsolved homicides.
Nance, the last Columbus firefighter to be killed while battling a blaze, was six months from retirement. He was 51.
That the case remains open frustrates firefighters and police alike. Investigators determined the fire was set, likely for insurance money. But arson cases notoriously are hard to solve, and the Mithoff fire had all the makings of a professional job.
"We could never really establish who had it torched," said James McCoskey, a retired homicide detective who worked the case with fire investigators.
About 10 years after the initial probe stalled, the Fire Division's arson squad pushed extremely hard to close the case but again hit a wall, McCoskey said. The case was rife with "shady characters," he said, but investigators couldn't make a strong enough case against any of them.
"We had a lot of names and talked to a lot of people, but it never went anywhere," he said.
Though only a few firefighters who worked beside Nance on the night he died remain with the division, his name is known to every recruit coming through the fire academy, said Bill Ehrgood, a division spokesman.
Recruits are schooled on what is known as the "Nance drill" or the "Nance maneuver," a method of rescuing firefighters who have fallen through floors and may be unable to save themselves due to injury or disorientation, he said. Devised in response to lessons learned that night, the Nance drill now is taught in fire departments from California to New Jersey.
In Nance's old station, pictures of him and a plaque hang in the kitchen where he was known as a top-notch firehouse cook.
Runkle, now 61, went through eight bottles of air that night trying to reach Nance, who plunged through the first-floor into the basement, where someone had started the fire with gasoline.
As other firefighters tried to get a ladder to Nance or go down the hole after him, Runkle went into the basement using the stairs. All were driven back repeatedly as the conditions deteriorated.
Runkle recalls asking Battalion Chief Jerry Lindsey for "one more shot."
"Chief Lindsey said, 'Vic, I don't want anybody going back in there,' " he said.
But Lindsey relented, allowing Runkle back in only if he had a rope tied around him and another firefighter by his side.
They weren't in long when the horns sounded, ordering everyone out immediately.
"Everything was falling down," he said. "I knew John was gone. The chief was right. It was too late."
Runkle doesn't like to talk about that night. The 25th anniversary passed on Thursday without him mentioning it to his wife. A friend called later that night, sobbing.
"He wouldn't tell me what the problem was," he said. "I kind of figured it out."
The years have not eased his pain, either, or stopped him from second-guessing himself. He has arrived at a decision, should he ever again search a burning building for a fallen friend.
"I'm going down with him, because I ain't coming out without him," he said. "I'm not going through this again."
Anyone with information on the fire that killed Lt. John Nance should call the arson squad at 614-645-3011 or the police cold case squad at 614-645-4036.
Copyright 2012 - The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio
