Bravo, Commissioner Richmond!
DEPARTMENTS
EDITOR’S OPINION
The tragic events in Philadelphia, PA, on Monday, May 13,1985, have fallen to the scrutiny of Monday morning quarterbacks. A careful and thorough critique of decisions made and actions taken or not taken will prove valuable in handling similar incidents in the future.
However, with the luxury of 20-20 hindsight, we must never forget one thing: In our profession, major decisions, in this case both life-saving and life-threatening, must be made and orders given within split seconds, based only on the real facts known to the incident commander at the moment.
All residents surrounding the heavily fortified structure at 6221 Osage Avenue had been evacuated prior to the police moving in to evict MOVE, a radical group described by Philadelphia’s Mayor W. Wilson Goode as “urban guerrillas.” A letter from MOVE to Philadelphia officials, quoted in part, gives some indication of the situation:
“The raid will not be swift and it will not be clean. It’s gone to be a mess. If MOVE go down, not only will everybody in this block go down, the knee joints of America will break and the body of America will soon fall. We going to burn them with smoke, gas, fire, and bullets. We will burn this house down and burn you up with us.”
“Attention, MOVE,” Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor called through the bullhorn in the early dawn hours, “this is America!”
Firefighters, directed to train large caliber streams on the two-story row house, were forced to retreat as gunfire from inside was exchanged with police forces outside. After a day-long battle and a 10-hour stalemate between police and members of the radical group, an explosive device was dropped on the barricaded structure.
Questions remain as to whether the fire that followed, which destroyed two blocks of row houses, spread naturally or whether it was the work of inside MOVE members’ use of accelerants. In any event, 30 minutes after detonation of the explosive device, Fire Commissioner William C. Richmond was quoted as saying that the fire was no problem. Forty-five minutes after detonation, the fire had spread to several adjacent structures and the media reported that firefighters were seen trying to control the blaze.
The fire had spread to an entire block almost two hours after the blast, and still armed members from the radical group were reported exiting the house and exchanging gunfire with the police.
The radiant heat source of an entire block of burning two-story houses is a considerable control problem; couple this with the added concern of fire forces operating amidst gunfire and the decisions facing an incident commander reach awesome proportions.
We applaud the actions of Commissioner Richmond. His responsibility to protect life then property was fulfilled. With the civilian population accounted for, his most severe life hazard was his men. To contain the fire to the row structure would have necessitated strategies and tactics that would have severely and unnecessarily exposed helpless firefighters to the gunfire of radicals as well as the return fire of police officers.
Richmond had demonstrated his department’s ability to cope with and reverse a major conflagration in May of last year, when fire was confined to one square block in Philadelphia’s Center City (see FIRE ENGINEERING, August 1984). That time, however, the department had only one enemy— the fire.
This May, the range of controlling fire streams was not able to outdistance the range of over 60,000 rounds of ammunition.
Bravo, Commissioner, to you and your splendid, brave, and professional department.
