The two reports, one federal, the other produced by the Boston Fire Department, about the 2014 Beacon St. fire that killed Boston Fire Lieutenant Ed Walsh and firefighter Mike Kennedy make for tough reading.

The communications timeline, with Walsh repeatedly calling for water that didn’t come because their hose had been burned through, is especially hard to read.

What is not said explicitly in the reports, but which is clearly evident from reading them is this: Ed Walsh and Mike Kennedy did nothing wrong.

In fact, they did exactly what they were supposed to. And if they responded to the same alarm today, under the same conditions, they would have done the same thing. A combination of unforeseen and unseeable human interactions and nature’s fury conspired to kill them.

Engine 33 was the first firetruck to arrive. Walsh, the commanding officer on the engine, reported smoke showing from the first floor of the four-story brownstone.

From the BFD’s 218-page Board of Inquiry report: “Two civilians exiting the fire building reported that the fire was in the basement and that there might be someone in the basement apartment.’’

Kennedy and Walsh went into the basement with a 1¾-inch hose, looking for the resident and the fire. They didn’t know it, but the apartment was empty. When they went downstairs, there wasn’t even that much smoke coming up at them. Another firefighter on the sidewalk outside said residents “exiting the building displayed no sense of urgency.’’

From the Board of Inquiry: “The Board believes that when LT Walsh and FF Kennedy initially reached the foot of the basement stairs they found a smoke condition with no visible fire because the fire had not yet breached the window in the door separating the entry foyer from the basement hallway.’’

The double layered ceiling insulated them from the heat of the fire. The voids in the old building allowed the fire to snake around, like a viper, unseen in crawl spaces.

But that changed in a matter of seconds, when the window at the entry foyer door gave way. That created a pressurized flow of superheated fire and gases, pushed by the high winds coming off the Charles River at the rear of the building.

“This sudden and dramatic deterioration of conditions trapped LT Walsh and FF Kennedy in the apartment as the hallway became untenable,’’ the board found.

That sudden flow of fire, meanwhile, burned through their line, leaving them without water to push back the advancing flames, and made it impossible for other firefighters to extricate them.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health report noted a series of contributing factors that made a fire started by unpermitted and improperly performed welding on an adjacent building worse; a delay in notifying the fire department; a maintenance worker left open a door at the rear, creating a wind tunnel that fed the flames; there were no hydrants on the private road to the rear of the building; there were not enough firefighters on responding trucks; there were no sprinklers in the building; a lack of training on wind-driven fires.

In the two years since the fire that killed Ed Walsh and Mike Kennedy, the amount of training Boston firefighters undergo annually has increased dramatically, tripling in the 18 months since Fire Commissioner Joe Finn was appointed.

Three years ago, Boston firefighters underwent 8,900 hours of training. Last year, it had grown to 24,200 hours and is projected to be higher this year. Deputy chiefs have traveled to Philadelphia for training on how to fight high-wind fires.

Finn, who as then-deputy chief was incident commander of the Beacon Street fire, said the reports on the fire were accurate, but that he didn’t need them to know that training had to be prioritized after it had fallen off during the latter years of the Menino administration.

Lost in all the words and recommendations of the two reports is the fact that Walsh and Kennedy did the right and courageous thing, after learning that someone might be in the basement apartment.

“I think every Boston firefighter would have made that commitment, hearing that someone was trapped,’’ Finn said. “Eddie and Mike did exactly what they were trained to do.’’

Mike Kennedy’s mother, Kathy Crosby-Bell, was frustrated by the tone of some of the coverage of the reports. One of the TV stations called the reports “scathing,’’ as if they were assessing blame when they in fact were explaining why things happened.

“Mike and Ed did all the right things,’’ she said. “But, as for the recommendations, the bottom line is the fire department needs more money in order to follow best practices.’’

What surprised Crosby-Bell, long before the reports were released, was learning that there have been no major thermal improvements to fire hoses in the last century. They are as vulnerable to being burned through as they were 100 years ago.

The Last Call Foundation, which Crosby-Bell founded in memory of her son, gave Worcester Polytechnic Institute a $75,000 grant to study fire hose burn-throughs. Already, they’ve documented more than 170 of them nationwide.

Crosby-Bell believes that a public campaign to pressure hose manufacturers to make hoses more flame resistant could go a long way to improving firefighter safety.

But hindsight only gets you so far, on Beacon Street, in life, in death. Kathy Crosby-Bell knows that if her son and Eddie Walsh pulled up to a fire on Beacon Street today, and the wind was howling, and they were told somebody might be trapped in a basement apartment, they would have done the same thing they did on March 26, 2014.

They wouldn’t have stood on the sidewalk, conducting a debate, saying, “Well, maybe the back door has been left open and the front window might break and create a wind tunnel. And maybe our line will burn through. And maybe . . . ’’

The only maybe that mattered, in that moment, was that maybe someone was inside.

They did what they were trained to do, what their selfless hearts compelled them to do, and that was run into a burning building to save someone. You can’t quantify that in a report.

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeCullen.