BY FRANCIS L. BRANNIGAN, SFPE (FELLOW)
 Twenty firefighters had just evacuated this commercial building in St. Paul, Minnesota. The roof collapsed a minute later. [Photo courtesy of the St. Paul (MN) Fire Department.] |
Chief Jim Palmer and Deputy Chief Tim Verros of the St. Paul (MN) Fire Department reported the following concerning a fire in a one-story, concrete-block commercial building that housed a discount record and tape store. The fire was in the rear and involved storage and empty boxes. The 20 firefighters fighting the fire were ordered to evacuate because of high heat and heavy smoke. One minute after the last firefighter left the building, the entire rear of the roof collapsed (see photo).
The combustible metal deck roof was typically supported on steel bar joist trusses. The light construction of the trusses caused the bar joists to heat to failure after a few minutes of exposure to the high heat provided by gas from the vapor seal of the built-up roof [see Building Construction for the Fire Service, Third Edition (BCFS3), pages 302-308].
When the temperature of such a roof reaches 800°F, the burning gases can destroy it without any help from the contents. Smoke often obscures the burning gases. Such a roof cannot be safely ventilated. In tests, a 56-square-foot vent was required to be effective in a 20-foot 2 100-foot building with no contents burning. If possible, cool the steel from a location outside the collapse area; otherwise, the building will destroy itself and anybody on or in it.
Dallas, Texas, firefighters went to the roof of such a building to ventilate. The elongating steel pushed the block wall down and dumped it into the fire. Fortunately, the firefighters were at the edge of the roof and were rescued.1
Our engine companies should be called “heat removal units,” and Command must decide which is the most important heat to be removed:
- heat leaving the building and going up to the sky,
- heat consuming contents already totally damaged, or
- heat igniting or damaging structural elements.
When you think about it that way, the answer is obvious, and the dangerously simplified “put the wet stuff on the red stuff” is discarded. A thermal imaging camera (TIC) should absolutely be in the hands of the first attack unit and should be used before the unit enters the building. Failure to have and use a TIC would be very damaging in a lawsuit by a dependent of a deceased firefighter and might even be evidence of criminal negligence. The camera costs money, but so did breathing apparatus when they were first available. Maybe a local service organization will help out. Perhaps there should be a public appeal for funds. Or, the money might be obtained by eliminating a few “bells and whistles” on a new apparatus. Think up your answer to this question that may be presented in court: “Chief, I note that you spent $$$ on chrome wheels and elaborate gold lettering for the new truck. Do these in any way contribute to extinguishing the fire or saving firefighters’ lives? If they had been eliminated, would you not have had the price of a thermal imaging camera, which would have shown the attack crew the hole into which a firefighter fell and died?”
SLOPPY OPERATIONS GET BY UNTIL THE BALLOON GOES UP: UPDATE
Some fire departments have been getting by on inadequate and dangerous procedures and can congratulate themselves on their accomplishments because they have yet to be put to the test. Read the following summary of the defects in Washington (DC) Fire Department (DCFD) operations that may have contributed to a firefighter’s death. It was provided by DCFD’s Battalion Chief Mike Smith, one of my former students.
A reconstruction committee consisting of DCFD officials, members of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), representatives from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), members of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), [and] representatives from the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) and the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) was formed after the 1997 (one-firefighter fatality) incident. This committee issued a document that targeted the problem and gave recommendations to prevent future fatalities within the DCFD. It also provided answers to factors contributing to the death of the firefighter.
Some of the problems and recommendations were [the following]:
- Problem: Department members and companies were “freelancing” on the fireground by not following established Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and the Incident Command System (ICS).Recommendation: Any deviation from established SOPs and the ICS must be brought to the attention of the Incident Commander (IC) immediately.
- Problem: This incident occurred at the change of a shift. Several firefighters arrived at the fireground and simply went to work. Also, members of the oncoming shift reported to the fireground and relieved off-going shift members without being assigned to do so. Many of the relieved members remained on the fireground. All of these factors made accountability impossible.Recommendation: Enforce the current departmental rule that no one is relieved on the fireground unless permission is received from the IC. If the IC gives permission for shift relief, members reporting to the incident scene must report directly to the Command Post, and the Accountability Tags must be collected before oncoming shift members are assigned to any fireground functions.
- Problem: Companies did not provide status reports during the 12 minutes that they were within the interior of the building. Recommendation: They should give progress reports at no greater than five-minute intervals. If progress reports are not given, the IC should request them.
- Problem: The majority of department members interviewed reported not having activated their PASS devices before entering the building. This is against department policy. It was also discovered that the firefighter’s PASS device had not activated when his body was recovered.Recommendation: Company and chief officers must insist that all personnel manually activate their PASS devices at all alarms when self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) are used, as required by SOPs. The department should purchase SCBA units with integrated PASS devices. With integrated units, the PASS device is activated automatically when the SCBA is turned on. The PASS devices now in use by the department do not meet the revised NFPA standard and are no longer being produced. (Reconstruction Report, 1997, 25-28)
The two firefighter fatalities in a May 1999 Washington, D.C., fire involving a building that was two stories in the front and three in the rear [see Ol’ Professor, January 2001] were investigated by NIOSH (www.NIOSH.com).3 The report, unfortunately, reiterated many of the same findings as the 1997 Reconstruction Report. This study relates to the Executive Analysis of Fire Service Operations in Emergency Management course “Command Functions of the Incident Command System,” specifically Module 1, in the following ways:
- Safety is a position within the command group, and the position answers only to the incident commander.
- Fire departments are concerned with safety.
- Averages of a hundred firefighters die each year, many from the same causes; yet fire departments cannot seem to control these fatalities.
On December 1, 1999, a new fire chief was appointed to head the DCFD. He immediately outfitted the entire department with new SCBA that had integrated PASS devices. He also replaced almost all of the top officials of the department. He reinforced the mandate that the safety of the members under his command would be the primary concern for his administration. He also directed that Incident Commanders would be held accountable for implementing the ICS on every incident when SCBA were placed in service. (Washington Post, January 25, 2000)
It is evident that the defects cited by the committee had been going on for some time, but it took a fatality to bring them out. Don’t let your people cut corners. If an SOP doesn’t work, modify it so it does work. Chief officers should be alert to any evidence of sloppy operations and act accordingly.
I can recall riding with a first-class shift commander to an apartment house fire. He asked the officer of the second truck why his unit was positioned on the same side of the apartment house as the first truck (free standing, approachable from both sides). Firmly, but not offensively, he led the officer to the conclusion that that position was wrong and that the SOP was correct and was to be followed unless the IC ordered otherwise.
NIOSH REPORT OF FIRE INVESTIGATOR FATALITY
NIOSH REPORT 99F06(1) describes the death of a fire investigator investigating the origin and cause of a fire that had heavily damaged a wood-frame building. He was working with two private investigators in an area near a 13-foot-high free-standing chimney. The men discussed the chimney and agreed it was safe because it had stood, in bad weather, for five days since the fire and had not moved; then one of the men pulled on a bar bracing it. The chimney collapsed and fell on the original investigator. It took several men to remove the chimney. The investigator died.
The NIOSH report recommendation was that an assessment of the stability and safety of the structure-roofs, ceilings, partitions, load-bearing walls, floors, and chimneys-be made before entering damaged structures (by fire or water, for example) for the purpose of investigations.
No information was given about the age of the house, but older chimneys are particularly suspect. They were made of sand lime mortar, without a liner, so gases can attack the mortar. When an old house is being demolished, the chimney looks like a pile of loose bricks after the bulldozer hits it.
A Florida garden apartment was fitted with gas fireplaces with the usual metal flue. The designer thought the metal flues were ugly, so solid masonry that looked like a chimney was built on the roof around the pipe. The tenant was cold and lit a fire of cut-up rubber tires. When the roof trusses failed, the false chimney fell in one heavy piece onto the second floor. Fortunately, no one was in its path.
Bricks are expensive; wood is cheap. It was a widespread custom to erect a wood platform to the height at which the stove pipe entered the chimney, which was built on the wooden platform. I have seen this from Prince Edward Island, Canada, to Sitka, Alaska, and points in between. [Photo by author]2
A student gave me a picture of a country church that had changed to central heat and thus removed several individual stoves. The unused chimneys were left standing hidden in the attic. The bricks above the roof had been removed, so there is no indication of the hidden hazard.3
HISTORICAL FIRES: UPDATE
Some fire service people were upset that the homeless couple who accidentally started the six-firefighter fatality Worcester, Massachusetts, fire but failed to report it was not punished, since it is not illegal to neglect to report a fire.
However, not sounding the alarm is not an action confined to poor homeless people. It is a common practice in many buildings where alarms are intercepted at a guard office and the guard has the authority to hold up the alarm. Often the guards are instructed to investigate before transmitting the alarm. I consider this contradiction of the fundamental concept of fire resistance to be worthy of being recorded in a journal so that the lessons will not be lost. A searcher of the literature on high-rise fires may come upon the One Meridian Plaza fire in Philadelphia and details about how the building was destroyed but most probably will not find an article detailing the devastation of the tenants.
The fire, which totally destroyed the building, was started in a bucket of rags. The chief causes of the disaster were management’s fighting off installing sprinklers and its policy of delaying fire alarms until they could be investigated.
The lesson is that all these consequences are results of management’s policy to hold up alarms, causing the fire to be out of control when the fire department arrives. Despite the building’s fire protection design and the “state-of-the-art” hose valves, the fire department was deprived of its only weapon-water.
A guard in the One Meridian Plaza building was sent to the fire floor when the alarm was received. He opened the elevator door right at the fire. Lying on the car floor, he radioed the guard at the desk and instructed him in how to get him down. The fire was first reported to the fire department from a building several blocks away. Such a report indicates a multialarm fire an arrival. “State-of-the-art” hose valves (my definition: “We don’t know if this will work. We are trying it out on you”) on the standpipes deprived the fire department of adequate water. Three firefighters died on a floor above the fire. I am not aware of any outcry to punish those whose policies permitted a trifling fire to become such a disaster.
This was almost an exact replay of the First Interstate Bank fire in Los Angeles some years ago. An employee sent to investigate the fire died in the elevator in that case. This fire was also first reported from several blocks away.
I believe that the fire department should require notification of all alarms. Perhaps a reduced assignment could be sent initially and could be built up to a full assignment when the fire is confirmed. This might satisfy management’s objection to having a huge response to an accidental alarm. Some will object: “We always go all out on the first notification.” The difficulty with that position is that the first notification might be when a fully involved fire attracts attention from several blocks away.
HAZARD AT RECYCLING PLANTS: UPDATE
When I was taking the picture on page 306 of BCFS3, someone was urgently commanding me: “Stop right there. Don’t take another step.” An alert firefighter had noticed that I was backing into the 40-foot-deep pit into which paper is dumped to start the recycling process. The pit was filled to the top with water; debris floating on the top made it look like the littered floor. A firefighter falling into such a pool very likely would drown. I speak from experience. In October 1944, while instructing at the Navy Firefighting School in Norfolk, Virginia, the crew tossed me into the drafting pool at a celebration of my promotion to full lieutenant (Army rank 4 captain). My boots filled with water, and I could not swim up. Fortunately, I was near the vertical ladder and was able to climb out.
The building is your enemy. Know your enemy.
Endnotes
1. Before and after pictures of this narrow escape can be seen in Preplanning Building Hazards, Fire Engineering, Feb. 1998, 117.
2. This building was made famous by the book Anne of Green Gables.
3. You can access NIOSH reports on the Internet at www.cdc.govnioshfirehome.html.
FRANCIS L. BRANNIGAN, SFPE (Fellow), recipient of Fire Engineering’s first Lifetime Achievement Award, has devoted more than half of his 57-year career to the safety of firefighters in building fires. He is well known for his lectures and videotapes and as the author of Building Construction for the Fire Service, Third Edition, published by the National Fire Protection Association. Brannigan is an editorial advisory board member of Fire Engineering.
