The last transmission the firefighter sent was that he was low on air. I heard this. He said he had gotten "separated from his partner" and was low on air. When command told him to exit the building, he said he couldn't find his way out and that "the [hose] was covered with debris".
The incident got very serious very fast. Merely two minutes into the incident, command requested an additional ladder from College Station, and that fire admin be notified of the incident and should respond, something that I only recall happening a few times in my nearly 10 years of listening to scanners. Then, things went chaotic. Command ordered all units to evacuate the structure. After the firefighter said he was trapped, command requested that a crew go back in to find him. When that happened, there was a series of muffled, confused transmissions that I couldn't quite make out, and then someone saying they had a "firefighter down". After that, command requested an additional four ambulances, as well as a second alarm. More units responded. Again, command ordered all units to evacuate the structure. A little while later, command requested the two helos and a third alarm, and then ordered all units to "back off" and go into "defensive mode". At the time, I didn't know who was being transported and why. I originally thought that maybe there was an event going on and that the people who were being transported were attendees. Injured firefighters were the last thing I would have thought, let alone a fatality. So I was shocked this morning when I checked the news and heard that there were injuries and a fatality, and even more so when I realized I had heard Lt. Eric Wallace's last transmissions. I can't remember a firefighter ever getting killed in an incident before around here.