By Jeremy Boren
The Pittsburgh Tribune Review
PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh fire Capt. Jim Wyzomirski is afraid a fire safety kit he designed to help firefighters rescue children from burning homes won’t be around when they need it.
Wyzomirski said Tuesday and in letters he sent to City Council members that city officials blocked him from receiving a $25,000 grant to create prototypes of the “Wyz Kit,” an accusation Public Safety Director Michael Huss vehemently denied.
“There are 1,000 kits sitting down in the fire warehouse in the Strip District, and I’ve never been paid a cent,” said Wyzomirski, a firefighter for 17 years.
Huss said the city doesn’t have the grant money and doesn’t owe Wyzomirski any money.
“He kind of lost me when it went from a program to help kids to more of a business enterprise,” Huss said. “It would be wrong for us to take one employee and say, ‘Start your business; here’s the money.’ ”
The kit contains a whistle, LED flashlight, wooden mallet, smoke detector, American flag and instructional DVD in which a narrator tells viewers, “Signal for help by waving the flag out of the window and blowing the whistle so the firemen can locate and rescue you.”
Wyzomirski, 55, of Lawrenceville said he spent $48,000 developing the product, incorporating Wyz Kit Inc. and purchasing $1 million in product liability insurance.
He obtained a home equity loan last year to cover the costs of buying 1,000 sets of tools, creating a professionally produced video and designing a foam container.
In a letter sent to Wyzomirski’s attorney yesterday, City Solicitor Daniel R. Regan, said the city has no interest in the kit and asked the fire captain to pick up his prototypes.
Wyzomirski wanted to begin distributing the kits by October to children in East Liberty, where he works at station No. 8. He was among the first firefighters to arrive at a fire in June 2007 that killed five children. He created the kit after that.
Wyzomirski said he doesn’t want to retrieve his kits and sell them because it would betray his original intent of working with the city to help children.
“If I go down and take them back, I don’t want to be blamed if someone dies in East Liberty and the city turns around and says, ‘We were supposed to have a program to address that,’ ” Wyzomirski said. But he said he plans to retire from the Fire Bureau next year and sell the kits nationwide for $25 apiece.
Fire Chief Darryl Jones said Wyzomirski was told to work with Goodwill Industries to assemble the kits cheaply. The grant money was to go to suppliers of the flashlights and other tools, Jones said.
“He circumvented the process,” Jones said.
Jones said Risk Watch, the bureau’s fire safety education program for children, provides one hour a month of instruction to students in grades K-6 and smoke detectors to homes.
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