By Matt Buedel
Journal Star
BARTONVILLE, Ill. — There’s no guarantee that a different strategy would have resulted in a different outcome — that the victims would be alive today if something as mundane as an administrative spreadsheet had one more agency added.
But in each of four fatal fires over the last 11 years, the structure of mutual aid calls for volunteer fire departments just beyond Peoria city limits has resulted in scenarios that appear to contradict the most basic tenets of firefighting.
In each instance, when the primary firefighting agency called for help, that call did not go to the next nearest fire station, where full-time crews respond around the clock.
The calls instead went to other departments staffed by trained volunteers, either personally selected by a fire officer on scene or according to a predetermined order on file with the agencies and dispatchers.
In practice, that meant calling firefighters who had to assemble at a station as far as a 15-minute drive away rather than the crew already on standby at a station within a few minutes of driving time from the scene.
And that practice appears inconsistent with the notion that the most successful firefighting outcomes result from getting as many firefighters as possible to the scene as quickly as possible.
“Thirty or 40 years ago, you’d have 15, 20, maybe 30 minutes from the time a fire started until it engulfed a room; now it can occur in maybe five or 10 minutes,” said Jim Keiken, deputy director of the Illinois Fire Service Institute in Champaign.
The institute trains firefighters from across the state on a variety of skills, from firefighting techniques to leadership principles. The group also conducts research on health and safety for firefighters.
Modern construction practices and contemporary building and home decor materials present particular dangers to occupants of burning structures and the firefighters who come to rescue them, Keiken said.
Newer houses burn faster and collapse more easily, all while emitting smoke more lethal than that of burning untreated lumber or solid-wood furniture. Statistics show that smoke kills most fire victims, as it did with all four local fatalities.
Those factors make fast response and attack times paramount, but the institute’s training leaves room for the unique characteristics of each emergency to influence decisions.
"(Training) gives you a set of skills and knowledge to make good choices, but there really isn’t a magic number for when you do something,” Keiken said. “When do you call for help? When it looks like the resources you have on scene aren’t adequate.”
When fire erupted at a Bartonville home on July 17, firefighters recognized within three minutes — before any firefighters were on the scene — that the severity of the situation necessitated reinforcements.
With a 4-year-old boy trapped inside, a Bartonville fire captain activated the department’s Mutual Aid Box Alarm System (MABAS) for a first-level response, according to dispatch records.
MABAS identifies which departments to call for backup under a variety of scenarios and in different regions, with each department tailoring its cards in agreement with the departments specified for mutual aid.
“It’s all predetermined mutual aid. ... It’s about providing aid to those agencies that are stricken as quick as possible,” said David Tuttle, director of city and county emergency communications and chief in the Logan-Trivoli Fire Protection District. “It works extremely well.”
The fire departments in Peoria County have 124 MABAS cards on file with the emergency dispatch center, according to documents the Journal Star obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Just a handful of cards include the Peoria Fire Department in the first call for reinforcements during a fire incident. The only other MABAS cards to involve Peoria in the first round involve specialized equipment or training, such as hazardous materials or technical rescue responses.
Bartonville’s MABAS cards were last updated in December 2007. When the first call for backup went out July 17, four volunteer fire departments were notified: Tuscarora, Limestone, Logan-Trivoli and West Peoria.
Tuscarora did not immediately have a driver, according to dispatch records. Neither did Timber Hollis when it was called as a substitute. The full-time Peoria firefighters on standby at Station 4 in South Peoria — 2.7 miles from the scene and the closest station to the fire — were never called.
“We had an excellent response time — we put a lot of people at that fire, and we put them there quick,” said Bartonville Fire Chief Mike Cheatham. “It is what it is, the cards speak for themselves. ... We have called the city of Peoria (to other fires) — we have no animosity toward the city.”
Similar situations have unfolded with three other fatal fires in West Peoria in the last 11 years: at 2008 W. Laura Ave. on Aug. 12, 2007, when a 19-year-old man died from a fireworks prank gone awry; 2016 W. Heading Ave. on Dec. 31, 2012, when a 95-year-old woman died; and 2103 W. Callender Ave. on Oct. 21, 2016, when the fire killed a 60-year-old man who had previously burned down other homes.
With Station 3 of the Peoria Fire Department at 1204 W. Armstrong Ave. between 1.1 and 1.6 miles from those fires, West Peoria fire officers instead called for backup from Limestone and departments as far away as Peoria Heights and Hanna City, according to dispatch records for each fire.
A message left for West Peoria Fire Chief Terry Schadt at the station was not returned.
The issue is not new, nor is it limited to the Peoria area. A family in Yorkville, N.Y., has filed wrongful death claims against that village and its volunteer fire department for alleged negligence in the death of a woman and her 6-year-old daughter.
The volunteers in that instance on Jan. 18 called other volunteer units for backup but did not call full-time firefighters at a Utica, N.Y., city fire station less than 2 miles from the scene of the fatal fire. The claim is pending.
Firefighters and elected officials in the Peoria area have lamented a lack of cooperation between volunteer and career firefighters in the past, but most only speak of it publicly to deny an unspoken rivalry. Past promises to change practices appear to have resulted in little to no actual changes.
“It’s a touchy subject for us because we’re not trying to push ourselves off on anybody, and we’re not Superman and think that if we had been called it would have made any difference,” said Peoria Fire Chief Ed Olehy. “We are more than willing to jump over and help out where we can.”
The Peoria Fire Department has similarly ignored the closest volunteer stations for backup in some areas of the city, but Olehy said he plans to revise his department’s MABAS cards to include more volunteer units where appropriate.
“In the game of fighting fires, time is your enemy — every minute that passes, things get worse,” Olehy said. “It really comes down to who can get there as quick as they can, and what’s your best resource to call when you need help. ... We want ours to be the closest station, and we’d like them to do the same “
Chief Olehy added: “We need some good, open dialogue. We need to get rid of the elephant in the room and sit down and talk. The bad thing about this is since we didn’t go, we’ll never know (if we could have made a difference), and that leaves us open to these questions: Why are we not giving every opportunity, and if nothing else, taking away the question mark?”
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