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HFD should have used on-site thermal scanner, federal report says
By BILL MURPHY
The Houston Chronicle (Texas)
A year after the death of a Houston fire captain, a federal report questions whether aggressive firefighting tactics cost him his life.
The document, recently released by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, echoes concerns raised in previous reports on the deaths of four other Houston Fire Department firefighters killed in the line of duty in the past six years. It especially calls attention to the department’s failure to rely on available high-tech equipment such as thermal-imaging cameras at fire scenes.
As a matter of policy, NIOSH does not criticize firefighting tactics in its reports, but makes recommendations on how similar future fires ought to be fought. Its recommendations, however, often amount to veiled criticism.
Capt. Grady Burke, 39, was killed when a ceiling collapsed on him as he battled a fast-moving fire in a vacant Southeast Houston home on Feb. 19, 2005.
Burke and his crew launched “a fast attack” to reach and extinguish the blaze before it spread because they thought someone may have been trapped inside, Fire Chief Phil Boriskie said Friday.
According to the report, Burke should have been out of the building when the ceiling collapsed at 6:11 a.m. Four minutes earlier, the district chief supervising HFD’s efforts had radioed headquarters to say an interior search for survivors was no longer possible. The district chief failed, however, to order firefighters out of the building, the report said.
When it is too dangerous for firefighters to continue searching for people, those trapped inside without a firefighter’s gear and breathing apparatus would almost certainly be dead, Boriskie said.
In fact, the one person who had been squatting inside the vacant building was gone by the time firefighters arrived.
Jack Cordua, who was homeless at the time, confessed to starting the fire accidentally while smoking crack cocaine at the house in the 8500 block of Brandonwood. He fled after the fire started. Cordua was sentenced to 12 years in prison late last year after pleading guilty to manslaughter in Burke’s death.
NIOSH recommended that fire departments nationwide conduct better risk-versus-gain evaluations when deciding whether to mount an interior attack or battle a fire from the outside.
The report quotes retired New York City Fire Chief Vincent Dunn who said self-preservation should come before saving burning buildings.
“When no other person’s life is in danger, the life of the firefighter has a higher price than fire containment,"Dunn said.
NIOSH has recommended fire departments learn to use thermal-imaging cameras to help spot fire above ceilings and behind walls and rely on that information to help decide when to call off a fast attack. HFD has a national reputation as a department that launches aggressive fast attacks, which can save lives and prevent extensive damage.
On the morning Burke lost his life, a ladder truck arrived within moments carrying a themal-imaging camera. The device, about the size of a hand-held video recorder which displays images from heat generated by people or fire, was never used that day.
“The use of a TIC during initial size-up and entry into the structure could have confirmed that the fire was already burning in the attic area overhead,” the report says.
In reports on other recent HFD firefighter deaths, NIOSH voiced similar concerns about the department’s failure to use available cameras before it mounted interior fast attacks. Boriskie said the department has learned from the five deaths it has recorded since 2000.
“We are fighting more fires defensively,” he said.” We have learned from the (deaths). Any type of change is difficult. As a department, we have undergone a cultural change in our way of attacking interior fires.”
Houston fire officials have reported that three HFD deaths might have been prevented had thermal-imaging cameras been used.
Killed in those incidents were Lewis Evans Mayo III, 44, and Kimberly Ann Smith, 30, at an empty McDonald’s on Bissonnet Feb. 14, 2000; and Capt. Jay Jahnke, 40, at the Four-Leaf Towers on San Felipe on Oct. 13, 2001.The McDonald’s fire erupted about 4:30 a.m., when the restaurant was closed and no one was inside.
Firefighter Kevin Kulow, 32, died April 4, 2004, in an arson fire at El Festival Ballroom in 7600 block of Kempwood.
“It is highly unlikely that firefighters would have had trouble locating an exit or locating a downed firefighter if all crews were equipped with imagers. This is the second firefighter incident in two years in which an imager may have saved the lives of department firefighters,” an HFD report on the Four-Leaf Towers fire concluded.
A NIOSH report found that the crews at the El Festival didn’t follow department standard operating procedure, for using an imager to locate the source of a fire or bodies.
HFD received a grant last year, allowing it to buy thermal imagers for all its engines and ladder trucks.
On Sunday, Station 46, where Burke was based, will hold a small ceremony commemorating the one-year anniversary of his death.