Firefighters ignored command procedures, kept other crews away from hot spots and used incompatible radio frequencies while responding to April’s N.Y. wildfire, officials said.
An unreleased report prepared by Suffolk County Fire Rescue and Emergency Services detailed a number of missteps in the response to the Ridge-Manorville wildfire, according to Newsday.
“People were injured, could have been killed and equipment was lost,” one official said after reading the report.
Reportedly, commanders did not know that a Manorville Fire Department crew was responding with a brush truck to the fire, much less that members had been injured and transported,
But officials praised the firefighting efforts shortly after the fire was extinguished, Newsday said.
“The firefighters who fought the Ridge and Manorville brush fires did an outstanding job with approximately 1,000 acres affected,” said Suffolk County’s director of communications, Vanessa Baird-Streeter. “There were no lives lost and very minimal loss of property.”
Some of the missteps during the response to the fire according to the report:
- Some department units bypassed the command center and simply followed roads to where they could see smoke, which “hindered ability to direct departments to where they were most needed and hindered ability to know what was out there”
- When one chief called for mutual aid, some responding units went instead to Manorville because the fire there was bigger, “chasing fire” rather than following assignments - Parking was also an issue: Instead of going to the dedicated refresh and rehydrate staging area, some firefighters stopped on area roadways, blocking access for on-duty units to get to fire spots
- Incident commanders could not communicate because there was so much chatter on the line and some departments were using incompatible frequencies
- The injured firefighters used cellphones to report their situation instead of radios. A sudden wind engulfed them, and they had to abandon their brush truck and walk for hours because they lost communication
The fire, the biggest on Long Island in almost 20 years, burned 1,123 acres, three homes and several structures. It also required thousands of evacuations and hurt three firefighters in nearly 100 departments called to help.
Although authorities do not plan to release the report, it also offered suggestions for improvement, such as a dedicated channel for commanders and more training for volunteer firefighters.
“It points out some of the things that could have been done differently, which . . . is the purpose of any after-action report,” Suffolk Legislator Edward P. Romaine said. “I think the county is taking the wrong approach with this. I think it should be released.”