By Robert Patrick
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Vital safety equipment used by the St. Louis Fire Department can let water in and malfunction, endangering the lives of firefighters, a lawyer claimed in St. Louis Circuit Court Tuesday. Lawyer Daniel Finney, who represents the widow and two children of Rob Morrison, one of two firefighters killed in a fierce 2002 blaze, made the claim in his opening statement to jurors in a civil lawsuit trial that is expected to last two to three weeks.
The Morrison family’s lawsuit contends that a safety device worn by Morrison at the fire malfunctioned and failed to sound an alarm. That prevented firefighters from finding him in “zero visibility” conditions on the building’s second floor.
The device, called PASS, which stands for personal alert safety system, is designed to emit a loud alarm if a firefighter doesn’t move for about 20 seconds. Firefighters can also trigger the units manually.
Finney told jurors that Morrison’s PASS did not work because water had leaked into it. Firefighters couldn’t find him in the smoke until one searcher stepped on his prone body.
Morrison was pulled out after he had been missing 20 minutes, Finney said.
The device was not sounding when Morrison was found, Finney said.
The fire on May 3, 2002, was at the Gravois Refrigeration facility at 2241 Gravois Avenue.
The family of the other firefighter killed, Derek Martin, is also suing the maker of the PASS device, Survivair; its French parent company, Bacou-Dalloz; and St. Louis-based distributor Colt Safety, Fire and Rescue. The Martin family’s lawsuit says his breathing equipment malfunctioned, causing him to run out of air. It also says Martin never would have become trapped if Morrison’s PASS device had been working.
That lawsuit is still pending.
Survivair lawyer Lynn Hursh told jurors that no water had been found in Morrison’s PASS equipment and that it had tested fine after the fire. Although water in the battery compartment could cause a failure, no water was found in Morrison’s battery compartment, Hursh said.
Morrison’s family contends that water was in a separate electronics compartment. Hursh said water in the electronics compartment would cause the PASS to emit an alarm that could not be turned off. It was designed that way, he said, as a safety measure.
“You cannot make this device fail,” Hursh said.
Hursh said that although fire departments, including St. Louis’, had returned malfunctioning units, the only reported problems were units that would not shut off.
Hursh said witnesses would testify that they had heard a PASS device sounding while Morrison was missing. He also said Morrison should have left the fire before he became incapacitated.
The first three witnesses, who testified via videotaped depositions, were current or former Survivair employees who said that water could cause the PASS device to fail and not sound an alarm.
A Survivair employee -- who had worked to fix the PASS device so water could not get in -- testified that water could cause it to emit an alarm that could not be shut off, or that it could cause the device to fail to emit an audio or visible alarm.
Both sides presented heavily edited videos of the depositions for jurors. In the short defense version, the engineer was asked if he was aware of any instances of the PASS not performing as designed.
“As designed? No,” he responded.
Another engineer agreed that water could cause the PASS to stop working but said the problem might not be detected unless technicians examined the device right away.
In the defense’s version, he said the PASS would have to be submerged to get enough water in it to stop it from working. He also said he’d never seen enough water in a lab-testing situation to shut the PASS down.
Survivair head Jack Bell testified that the company was aware of units letting water in as early as 1999 but did not officially notify customers.
“The word was out there,” he said. “We decided that that did not require an official notice.”
Bell said the biggest customer complaint was about units that were too sensitive to lack of motion, so firefighters would have to do a dance to get the unit to reset. He said the malfunctions only had to do with the units not turning off.
“It was not a safety issue,” he said.
The deaths of Martin and Morrison were the department’s first deaths in the line of duty in 25 years.
Investigations by the department and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health concluded that a series of accidents and mistakes contributed to the deaths. They cited firefighters working in the building without partners, not properly ventilating smoke and using air tanks that didn’t start out full.
Morrison entered the fire with a visiting Lake of the Ozarks firefighter who was riding along to gain experience. They quickly became separated. That firefighter was unfamiliar with the department’s equipment and should not have been allowed inside, a department report said.
The Fire Department made policy, equipment and training changes following those reports, including posting a rapid intervention team of rested firefighters with full air tanks outside a fire in case rescues are needed.
Asked if the current equipment being used by firefighters was safe, St. Louis Fire Chief Sherman George said, “I don’t know all that yet.
“We’re looking into some things, but I want to see how this court case turns out.”