IN THE VORTEX OF VIOLENCE:
FIREFIGHTING RESPONSE TO THE L.A. RIOTS
“OCD, from Battalion 13, did you copy my message? At Normandie and Manchester, do not send anybody to that auto fire there. Large crowds; rocks, bottles, and axes flying.”
“OCD, Engine 46, Florence and Figuroa.
We’ve got a number of buildings on fire here.”
“OCD from Light Force 35 from Western and 35th, we have a fireman shot, we have a fireman shot! We need help immediately.”
“Arlington I.C., Arlington I.C.,
I got a structure—Vernon and Vermont. Convalescent home with 92 patients.”
Photos by All Simmons.
On April 29, 1992, shortly after 3:15 p.m., fire dispatch channels in Los Angeles, California, saw a big surge in traffic. Initially, firefighters began reporting they were being subjected to a growing number of verbal threats, and rocks and bottles were being thrown at their apparatus. Those incidents quickly escalated into the Los Angeles Riots and what has become what some call “the largest civil disturbance in United States history since the Civil War.”
During a five-day period, fire service personnel responded to close to 11,000 incidents—862 of which were structure fires in the city alone. At least 54 people were killed and 2,38.3 civilians were injured, along with 46 firefighters. Property loss was estimated at close to SI billion.
When the National Cuard, federal troops, and law enforcement agencies regained control of the streets and began partial demobilization on May 2, efforts already were underway to determine how well local and federal agencies had responded and what had caused the civil disturbance.
IN THE VORTEX OF VIOLENCE
A few hours after the jury announced its “Not Guilty” verdict in the trial of four Los Angeles police officers accused of beating Rodney King, violence erupted in South Central Los Angeles. Motorists were pulled from their vehicles and beaten. Off-duty D>s Angeles firefighter Donald Jones, who lives in the area and was en route to visit a friend, stopped his car to come to the aid of an Asian who was being beaten. Jones eventually drove the victim to the nearest firehouse for protection.
As looters, violent citizens, and spectators took to the streets, firefighters were called to come to the aid of injured citizens. Captain Robert Munoa of the Los Angeles City (CA) Fire Department related one of those early incidents: “Just after 8:00 p.m., Engine 33 and Rescue 833 were dispatched to an assault in the 1200 block of Florence, just east of Normandy. As we arrived, there was a Hispanic man who had been beaten by a mob being dragged down the sidewalk by his friends. We pulled up and jumped out. We were taking a lot of verbal abuse from the hostile crowd. We grabbed this gentleman, who was bleeding from the head. He’d been hit with a pipe. We put him in the back of the rescue and made a quick U-turn to get away from the attacks that were taking place in the intersection. We then transported him to Martin Luther King Hospital.”
FIREFIGHTERS UNDER ATTACK
It wasn’t long before firefighters themselves became the targets of violence. Battalion Chief Terrance Manning and his driver were responding to an emergency when they were confronted by mobs. Manning recalled. “Initially we were attacked with rocks and bottles. We had no choice but to proceed through the intersection as quick as we could. An individual stepped in front of our vehicle with a large brand new champagne bottle and threw it directly right through the front window of our vehicle, missing my driver and 1, but showering us with glass.”
Moments later, the two men again were facing trouble. “We made an evasive move to the right curb to avoid vehicles that were parked and were starting to burn,” he said. “We spotted an individual with a red pickax, probably just taken from a hardware store. The man raised it over his head, came off the curb, and struck directly on my car —penetrating the roof but not going through the headliner.” Another rioter, wielding a steel pipe, charged the red sedan and smashed the window where Manning was seated, striking his arm but only bruising and numbing it, not breaking it.
From the early moments of the civil disturbance, many of the firefighters found themselves in a combat zone. That was especially true for six firefighters who were confronted by a gunman while responding to a fire. The man had four or five individuals with him, all carrying either AK-47s or shotguns. A quick-thinking captain offered him a walkie-talkie, which seemed to appease him, but his accomplices got out of their car and waved their weapons in a threatening fashion. The firefighters looked around in vain for help, but no police were in the area. By then a crowd had gathered and was chanting, “Kill ’em, kill ’em!” The gunmen wanted to see the buildings go up in flames. Seeing that their demands were being met, they let their guard down, and the firefighters finally were able to flee on foot. They took refuge with a nearby family until the police were able to lead them to safety a half hour later.
During the civil unrest, three firefighters were injured as a result of shots fired at them. A bullet shattered the window of Battalion Chief Dennis Kean’s sedan, sending fragments flying into his face. Santa Ana firefighter Lenny Edelman was wounded in the thigh while fighting a fire at a church and shop. But the firefighter hardest hit was Scott Miller. The 33-year-old apparatus driver was critically injured when a bullet severed his carotid artery, partially paralyzing him. That bullet is still lodged in his neck. According to Captain Francis Howard, who was riding up front with Miller the night of the incident, Scott had slowed down because looters and spectators were running through an intersection. A bullet was fired from a passing car and struck Miller, who slumped forward in his seat. Since the rig was still moving, Howard pulled on the column brake. The rig came to a complete halt. The firefighters on board carried Miller to the jump seat. They made the decision to drive him to the hospital on the apparatus, a decision that probably saved his life.
(Almost four months after he was wounded, Miller was released from the hospital. He is still undergoing speech and physical therapy, and he has been promoted to captain. As a result of a S37,500 reward, follow-up on tips, and detective work, police have arrested a 25-year-old gang member and charged him in the shooting.)
COMMAND
During the civil disturbance, a Los Angeles City Fire Department helicopter flew to an army national guard base in San Luis Obispo, about 125 miles north of Los Angeles, and brought back 300 pieces of body armor. A similar shipment of bulletproof vests was sent to an air national guard base south of Los Angeles for distribution to county firefighters and mutual-aid companies.
When rioting first broke out. police called on the fire department to set up a trauma center at its command post at 54th and Arlington to care for the injured. At this location was a rapid transit district (RTD) bus yard, which was large enough and safe enough (it was protected by walls) to house the command function, the EMS/trauma center function, staging, refueling tanks, and rehab. Eventually victims were transported directly to area hospitals, not to the trauma center.
The fire department’s role quickly changed. As the firts broke out, the incident command system expanded to include a fire division along with EMS. The area’s mutual-aid plan was activated. It works as follows: Area A, for example, can supply approximately five or six engine companies. If an incident requires more, the Region is asked for assistance, then the Office of Emergency Services is asked, which taps other regions’ resources. Those resources come as an entity, with unit captains in charge of them and a battalion chief as strike team leader. That element then fits into the incident command system. Accountability’ rested mostly with individual units as well as the firefighters themselves because of the magnitude of the incident.
Because the incidents were so widespread, the County, working w ith the Office of Emergency Services (OES), established its own command post at its headquarters in East Los Angeles to respond to fires not covered by the city. That affected area was divided into five zones. Other county firefighters, dispatched as mutual aid to the city, worked directly with the Arlington ICS. The rest fell under regional command. Firefighters from as far away as the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego responded to the civil disturbance. An additional staging area also was set up.
Battalion Chief Tim Manning was the first incident commander at the Arlington command post. He said, “Recognizing that we had large numbers of structures burning and limited amount of resources, our strike teams [originally consisting of five engines and a battalion chief but later reduced] were given very specific direction. That direction was to stop conflagration. We didn’t want a single building to spread and take multiple city blocks of structures. Another priority was to stop the fire from progressing and moving to our residential area—recognizing our priority was life, then property. Another issue that we had to address early on was the safety of our personnel.”
Although the city has had a disaster plan in effect for many years, both the city and the county were concerned early on about the lack of police escorts for firefighters. Mayor Torn Bradley and departing Police Chief Daryl Gates were almost on nonspeaking terms at the time. Police officers and commanders had been warned not to provoke anyone. Gates later admitted his department also had made several mistakes, including waiting too long to call a “tactical alert” to bring in more forces sooner and retreating from the Florence and Normandie intersection.
At a joint meeting with fire officials, the Sheriffs Department and the California Highway Patrol agreed to allocate more than 700 officers to serve as escorts for the firefighters working in the riot zone. Whenever city firefighters needed protection, the police was responsible for helping to coordinate the efforts to get the job done.
Deputy Chief Dave Parsons, who was the incident commander at the Arlington command post for most of the incident, said. “The way we ultimately managed that was w e had a firedepartment battalion chief in the police department command post who was able to work face-to-face with the person in the police department, who would send the message to their staging area to provide the officers and the vehicles necessary. We also provided a battalion chief at the point of dispatch, where the strike team was assembled, so that when the assembled police officers came forward, they had somebody to look for and the two units would be mated and then they would leave.”
Since the civil unrest, the state has convened several meetings with fire chiefs and law enforcement to improve response time and cooperation between the two departments.
OCD, the city’s operation control dispatch center, recalled staff to handle the flood of 911 calls. Some of the dispatchers were designated to handle only emergencies in the riot zone. The call load went from almost a zero normal level to a high of 279 incidents per hour.
Firefighter/dispatcher George James said, “So much was happening that the call takers were overwhelmed by calls. The dispatchers were frustrated. People in the field were calling in for more resources, which we didn’t have. There was nothing physically that we could do to help them. We would dispatch to the command post and just let them handle it once we got the call. And it was still very frustrating because it never seemed we had control of it for several days.”
Assistant Chief Merlin Rudd, w ho is in charge of the city’s fire dispatch center, analyzed the situation: “Between midnight on the 29th and midnight on the 30th, we processed roughly 4,839 incidents. And so if you look at that in sheer volume, obviously we had many more incidents than we had resources. At one time, we had given to the command post at 54th and Arlington 92 pieces of equipment. At the same time, at the height of it, we had 18 strike teams in from outside the city that we had to manage, and so this added 18 times 5. We had almost another 80 to 90 engine companies from outside the city. Where they created a problem obviously for communication is we operate on an 800-MHz conventional radio system, which is different than any of our adjacent communities. So immediately, we had to find bird dogs or companies to lead these companies around.”
The Los Angeles City Fire Department soon will move into a new S52 million computerized dispatch center.
LEARNING FROM WATTS
In 1965. there w as far less high-tech support for the department when Los Angeles was hit with the Watts Riots. Following five days of lawlessness that resulted in more than 200 buildings destroyed, 34 people killed including one city firefighter, and 1,032 people injured, law and order finally was restored. In the most recent incident, firefighters used the lessons they had learned from the Watts Riots to battle the fires.
Deputy Chief Donald Anthony, who was an engineer during the Watts Riots, said, “We do not send individual companies out. We go into a strike team or a heavy duty task force configuration. We go into heavy stream master appliances. We do not do any interior firefighting. We do not do roof ventilation. We knock the fire down and move on. We do not do overhaul. We normally do not go back to staging areas. We go from one incident to another. We work in groups. And certainly you need other agencies, and particularly the police agency, to protect the firefighters so they can do their jobs.”
There was plenty of physical evidence to illustrate that the mobs were bent on stopping the firefighters from doing their jobs. The county estimated damage to its apparatus at S1 5,000. Eighty-nine city apparatus were damaged, including nine that were hit with more than 50 bullets. There were at least 76 vehicles that suffered body damage as a result of attacks with bottles, rocks, axes, and tire irons.
LOGISTICS
Logistics was kept very busy during the unrest as well. Deputy Chief Rey Rojo, who handled that responsibility for the city, said, “We had a number of windows that were smashed. We knew if we didn’t repair these practically on the spot, it wouldn’t be long before we would be out of business. We didn’t know how long this disturbance was going to last. We had set up windshield repair for the apparatus at various locations in the city, and we were getting the job done. We also had tires that were shot out. Any vehicle with a flat tire isn’t going to go very far. And our heavy’ utility was out there and in short order was changing tires. This allowed us to have the mobility that we needed, because the fires were spreading throughout the city.”
LA County housed and fed mutualaid companies at its East Los Angeles training facilities. They also were given the use of shower and recreational facilities at nearby Cal State Los Angeles.
During the early moments of the rioting, both the city and the county had set up additional command posts at their main headquarters to monitor the local television news coverage. Captain Steven Ruda, head of community affairs for the Los Angeles City Fire Department, said, “Initially our main source of information was television news, specifically helicopters. That was where we were getting most of our information.”
Ruda and his staff kept in close contact with various assignment editors at each news operation. The public information officers supplied the news media with fire-related information and corrected mistakes made by reporters. An executive producer of at least one television station said that the LAFD had asked news helicopter pilots, when giving their reports, to state on the air the addresses of the fire locations, to help the fire department respond to incidents. Both the city and county used their own helicopters to get a better assessment of the situation, flying reconnaissance missions day and night. In all, 105 square miles had been affected.
Deputy Chief Anthony spent many hours in the air reporting the location of tlie fires. He said, “At about midnight, it became evident that our command post at 54th and Arlington did not have a real good handle on exactly where all the fires were. Had we covered all the fires, realizing that we were having 40 to 50 major fires an hour breaking out in about a 30square-mile area? We weren’t really sure if we were getting all of the notifications on those fires and if in fact we had the resources on them or if we could get resources to them.”
And the job wasn’t easy. Anthony said, “I went up in one of our helicopters and did an air recon of the area, sometimes as low as 300 feet to identify intersections, to identify certain buildings, to set priorities for the command post with regards to which buildings to let go. That meant that there were no exposures around it, the building was already well involved with fire, it didn’t expose a residential area, and there were crowds around the building. There was no reason to put our resources there. We also identified the exact perimeter of the fire area, whether they had fire resources on them, or whether or not we could save the buildings. I basically went up to give a prioritization and an overview for the command post of what was going on.”
INVESTIGATION AND ANALYSIS
Once a curfew w as in place and the National Guard, federal troops, and law enforcement had regained control of the streets, the number of incidents dropped rapidly. Even before the last flames were extinguished, arson experts from the city, county, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms combined forces to start investigating many of the fires. Equipped w ith bulletproof vests and sidcarms, they traveled to each location in convoys. At least on one occasion they were the targets of a driveby shooting.
The investigators photographed the sites and used a one-page outline to complete their preliminary study of each incident. The objective was to do a quick analysis of each situation, earmark those cases that were worthy of a follow-up, and move on. Investigators did find evidence in some of the buildings that led them to suspect the fires were set by people other than looters.
There also was a gruesome task connected with the arson investigation: body recovery. It was possible that not all of the looters were able to get out of the buildings before they were consumed by fire. Several weeks after the riots had occurred, investigators found a body.
The fire department has been trying to document how much it cost to fight the fire in an effort to get reimbursement from the state and federal governments.
Analysts have been going over radio dispatch information and notes to help accomplish this. Dennis Kemper, chief management analyst for the LAFD, said, “From the data that we have so far, it appears that the first two or three days of the incident were costing our field forces SI million a day, and we believe that through the first week of the incident, we’re looking at a bill of S4 to S5 million for the total cost of the operation.”
Kemper also emphasized the importance of firefighters keeping records of their responses to incidents. He noted that S14 million in FEMA money was at stake. “I know in a time of emergency of a major incident it’s hard to think of documentation as being important,” he said, “but I really suggest that individuals try to keep this in mind as an incident progresses. If you have a lined tablet or scratch paper with you, something on which you can start writing down times, locations, names, things of that nature, you w ill be able to use that information later on to reconstruct w hat has actually happened.”
LESSONS LEARNED AND REINFORCED
Critique and analysis by the Los Angeles City Fire Department yielded some important lessons, among which are the following:
- Such an incident cannot be handled without a unified incident command system that facilitates cooperation and communication among various response agencies. Command post officers must be assigned to coordinate and communicate to the incident commander the many facets of such an event. These officers include communications, logistics, medical, safety, tactical operations, staging, apparatus, interagency liaison, and media/public information officer. Reconnaissance and field division commanders also are necessary.
Swift and successful implementation of the large-scale command system cannot happen overnight; considerable training, tabletop exercises, and mock disaster exercises are essential. Have an incident command system that you work with on a daily basis, and expand on that. Preplanning for large-scale emergencies should be part of your regular training program. Prestage the command post location. Don’t let your organization or segments of your organization become part of the incident—control incident response.
- Work with local law enforcement personnel and educate them in the scope of the incident command system, how it works, and where law-enforcement fits in. Cooperation and planning with the police department are vital. Law enforcement liaison personnel must interface with other agency personnel at the unified command post. Discuss, in the planning stage, the level of resources required for fire department escorts during such a crisis.
- The Los Angeles riots required a massive fire department response. On one night, 203 fire suppression companies were dispatched; at the same time, the department was handling anywhere from 50 to 100 other emergency incidents even’ hour. You must have resources to do that—a mutualaid system that works. A graduated mutual-aid network —city, county, region, and state—will help deliver additional resources as the incident expands.
- Dividing the affected area into zones/divisions at a large-scale incident will assist in mounting a more controlled, well-coordinated response.
- Protection for firefighters is crucial for response to civil unrest situations. Police protection is a must. Body armor also is necessary. Plan ahead.
- A strike-team approach works most effectively for civil unrest response that involves conflagration potential.
- Provide an officer(s) at the point of strike team dispatch to ensure that each team departs with police escort.
- Tactical priorities change for events that require massive fire suppression response. A “knock-it-downand-move-on,” heavy-stream “blitz-attack” philosophy may be the onlyoption available to suppression units. An interior attack mentality, with attendant tactics and tasks, is not feasible when large sections of the city are burning.
- Prioritize the fires at such an incident. If possible, commission a helicopter and make detailed reconnaissance by air.
- Additional personnel may be required to serve as guides for incoming mutual-aid units/strike teams due to unfamiliarity with the area and incompatibility of radio systems.
- Create communications center contingency plans for recall and dispatch personnel.
- The communications process for civil disturbances can be enhanced by practicing status-keeping. Communications center managers in departments that operate in manual mode should plan on taking high volumes of traffic and determine how these calls will be processed.
- Accountability is a top priority. Company officers and strike team leaders must account for the safety of members and must remain accountable to the IC through the communications sector. Accountability also rests with individual members. The importance of exercising companydiscipline at such major incidents must be emphasized. At such stressful incidents, emotions and the “commando” attitude too easily can take over and lead to free-lancing.
- Apparatus repair and fuel contingency plans should be enacted. Onthe-spot, makeshift repairs may be required. Tires will be shot or slashed and windows broken during responses involving civil unrest. LAFD dispatched roving heavy-utility repair units for this purpose.
- Designate an officer to interface with the media. Information is a twoway street at such operations. The department not only should disseminate information to the media but should use the media to its advantage as well.
- Reach out to the community. Prior to the rioting, the fire department had spent much time creating an outreach program to the community. This included fire drills and safety demonstrations at schools and at public gatherings. Firefighters also sponsored and participated in community sports activities. Thus the attacks on them came as a surprise. Captain Steven Ruda stresses that the department’s goal is to again reach out, especially to people in the community who don’t understand the work of the fire department or understand that during a crisis the fire department should be allowed to help them without interference.
- Fire investigators should be protected from physical attacks during their work. Body armor and sidearms are indicated.
- In riot situations resulting in hundreds of fire incidents, quick investigative analyses are required to identifycases worthy of follow-up.
- Documentation of the fire scene by first responders should be stressed.
