HOUSTON — Fire departments across Texas will stand down Friday to review basic safety training and standard operating procedures.
The Houston Chronicle reported that the stand-down comes as Houston prepares to memorialize the four firefighters who died in a roof collapse last Friday.
“There are a lot of very basic safety messages we forget about because we’re caught in the daily operations of medical and routine calls,” Chris Barron, executive director of the State Fireman’s and Fire Marshal’s Association of Texas, said. “Up until this year, we’ve seen a decline in line-of-duty deaths.”
So far this year, 18 Texas firefighters have died in the line of duty, three times as many as the annual average, according to the report.
The cause of the hotel fire remains unclear and a multi-agency investigative team has focused on the area above the kitchen in the restaurant, according to the report.
Barron said Friday’s fire gave him and other leaders in the state firefighting community the final push to speak out about the number of on-duty deaths, according to the report. He also said many line-of-duty deaths occur because the command structure break down or firefighters skip basic risk analyses before beginning fire suppression tactics, according to the report.
“We’ve got to send out a safety message. We need to do it now,” Barron declared. “We’ve got to take a stand to end line-of-duty deaths.”