By Julie Benamati
The Tribune-Democrat, Johnstown, Pa.
 AP Photo/Richard Drew A New York City firefighter distributes two-way radios to colleagues as part of a drill to test a prototype radio. |
COUPON, Pa. — While a state police fire marshal on Monday investigated the cause of a Sunday afternoon blaze that destroyed a historic church in Coupon, emergency responders say the county’s new $2 million communications system hampered firefighting efforts.
Ashville fire Chief Rick Zupon even went as far to say that firefighters’ inability to communicate with each other threatened the lives of volunteers inside the structure, who narrowly escaped life-threatening injuries when a brick chimney on St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church collapsed.
But Brian Feist, executive director of Cambria County Department of Emergency Services, disagreed — and told Cambria County Commissioners in an e-mail that the blame rests on the firefighters.
“What problems that were there were caused by people on scene either getting too excited or not practicing the basic rules of radio communications,” Feist said in his e-mail.
Zupon said in no uncertain terms that communication was very poor as firefighters tried to save the 100-year-old church, which was deemed a total loss.
State police fire marshals ruled the cause of fire as undetermined, but said evidence shows a strong possibility that the origin was electrical.
“We had no communications,” Zupon said Sunday. “I couldn’t communicate with 911, they couldn’t communicate with me, and I couldn’t communicate with my equipment coming in.”
Zupon said he tried to make contact several times with 911 to update the progress, and response was sporadic at best. Communication from the supply engines, which were pumping water from a dam about 1,000 feet away to the attack engines, was non-existent.
“They couldn’t hear us,” Zupon said.
“I had to actually send runners down, to tell them to charge the lines.”
He said when firefighters could get a signal, communication was jumbled and spotty.
But most troubling was no communication from firefighters inside the church to the outside.
“I had two crews inside, and when we gave the order to evacuate, they couldn’t get the signal inside to evacuate,” Zupon said. “They couldn’t hear the radios. My deputy chief did hear the word “evacuate” once at one point, and knew then they needed to get out.”
That’s when the engines’ air horns went off, alerting firefighters to evacuate the burning structure.
“When there is an evacuation, all the air horns on the fire trucks go off,” Zupon said. “And that’s all they heard.”
Feist said he listened to the situation as it unfolded, and when he heard Zupon’s statement about the radio system, he immediately called the 911 supervisor, asking if there were any problems.
“They indicated there were not,” Feist said, adding that he and communications Director Carol Peretin met later to review the communications recordings.
“As I heard with my own ears during the incident, our equipment worked,” Feist said.
He further explained that Sunday’s blaze was the first of its magnitude in the northern part of the county since the new system went into operation on April 29.
“As far as (Sunday’s) incident, the recording shows the issues that were there were user-oriented, not because the equipment failed,” Feist said. “People are still getting used to these radios ... and they were using the radio improperly on the scene.”
He explained that with 12 companies and about 150 firefighters on the scene, responders started talking over each other. To be used effectively, one person has to speak at a time, and should wait for open air before transmitting.
“The systems start fighting themselves,” Feist said. “One other thing we saw with this system is that we had too many people talking on the radio who shouldn’t have been.
“There needed to be more control of the radio using the incident command system here,” Feist continued. “This is a shining example for the need of more training.”
Before the system opened, Feist’s department traveled throughout the county, and offered classes to both fire and ambulance personnel at different times and dates, in an attempt to get as many people trained on the new system as possible.
“They were very sparsely attended,” Feist said of the training seminars. “We had very few takers on the offering of training, and that’s not good.”
Feist said he is hoping Sunday’s incident will prompt emergency responders to get more training.
“It’s not an equipment issue, but one of training, education and limiting the number of radio users to the ones who need to use it,” Feist said. “The equipment did what it was supposed to do.”
Copyright 2008 The Tribune-Democrat