One detail in a scene from Chicago Fire season 3, episode 5 left real firefighter Anthony Martinez annoyed with the show due to an unrealistic approach during one of the team’s rescues.
NBC’s One Chicago show features plenty of instances of members of Firehouse 51 putting out fires and rescuing people trapped in burning structures. Many of these moments are harrowing, heroic sequences, mixed in with tragically unexpected results for some of their cases.
Speaking with Insider for their How Real Is It? YouTube series, Martinez revealed how one detail in a scene from Chicago Fire made him angry.
Starting at 5:45, the firefighter details how the roof rope rescue depicted in the show includes the characters not properly securing the rope and not having a proper approach to dealing with trouble arising during the mission. However, he still gives it a decently high score of 7 out of 10 due to everything else about the scene being accurate. Check out what Martinez had to say below:
I was actually very furious with this clip, because we drill on roof rope rescues a lot with my department. So when I saw him put the ax in and use the rope around a vent pipe, that’s a big no-no, because that is not substantial enough to hold the weight. We look for anything that would be substantial, a bulkhead maybe, or even if we had to, worst-case scenario, we would even cut a part of the roof and actually tie off to the actual structure of the roof to repel down. They had a portable saw right there that they could have used to actually cut a decent enough hole to actually tie off on a proper structure.
The chances of the window actually exploding like that, it’s very difficult to say, because a lot of these windows are tempered glass, and it’s not as easy to break as you would think. When the window actually does explode and you see the glass shatter, you see everybody actually look down. That’s actually correct. The minute you hear any glass shatter, you always want to go and look down. The last thing you want is glass in your eyes.
He did give correct advice as far as cutting the cable and trying to loosen it from the mechanism. However, you can actually see two instances where she almost lifts herself up. Those are the no-nos, because the minute you go and take your weight off that rope, it has the potential to loosen up the hook or wherever it’s tied off to, and you have a potential for a fall. But as far as like the realism goes, they could have did a little better, but I would still give it a 7, because the techniques are still there.
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Even during the current Chicago Fire season 12, there have been many action sequences during fires that aren’t always one-to-one with how reality would play out. However, the show’s primary focus is on being a procedural drama, focusing on the lives of its ensemble cast and the impact their jobs as rescue personnel have on their day-to-day lives. Because of this, the biggest focus of the show is to make the characters and their struggles engaging, even if it costs some realism to do so.
The clip from season 3 illustrates how, despite some level of realism making the show feel like it could happen in real life, other parts are dramatized for the sake of the show’s engagement. However, Martinez’s points are still valid, as the firefighting scenes could potentially paint a dishonest picture of what to expect a real rescue crew to do during a major fire. Even so, Chicago Fire‘s status as a drama means not everything will be realistic, even some elements that would seem real to the untrained eye.
Since the show’s drama is a key factor in its presentation, it wouldn’t be surprising if Chicago Fire season 13 continued the trend of having unrealistic firefighter scenes for the sake of the dramatic. While they’ll no doubt make it so Martinez’s criticisms hold up, it’s also possible they can improve upon their scenes to make them more true to life. Either way, though, it seems the show will continue having its characters in dangerous scenarios, even if the reality of those situations isn’t always true to how it’d really play out.
