By Patrick M. O’Connell
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
Copyright 2007 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
ST. LOUIS — Laura Morrison was in bed and did not see her husband leave for work the day he died. But she says she can still feel his last kiss.
“I never opened my eyes that morning,” she told a crowd Friday at a gathering dedicated to firefighter safety. “I still wish I had.”
Morrison described a second wish: that the St. Louis Fire Department get rid of the kind of motion alarms - still in use five years later - that she blames for contributing to the death of her husband, Robert Morrison of Rescue Squad 1.
“The city needs to replace the equipment,” said Morrison, who noted that many firefighters tell her they still have trouble with the Survivair brand devices, which sound an alarm if the wearer triggers it or goes motionless.
In late September, the firefighters union asked Fire Chief Sherman George and other city officials to get new ones.
Department spokesman Steve Simpson said Friday that the gear is continually tested for reliability and that faulty units are replaced. But he said purchasing a “whole fleet gets to be very expensive.”
The department has not had a major issue with the Survivair gear since the 2002 fire, Simpson said.
Morrison’s family sued Survivair and got a settlement between $1 million and $5 million in September over his death at what had seemed to be a routine fire May 3, 2002, in a small business on Gravois Avenue. The suit claimed the device did not work properly.
A fellow member of Squad 1, Derek Martin, died trying to save Morrison. A suit by his family against Survivor is pending. Both men were 38.
A Survivair spokesman has said the firefighters died as the result of mistakes they and others made, not the equipment.
Laura Morrison’s speech to about 100 people was part of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation’s stop in St. Louis on a 19-city tour aimed at reducing firefighter deaths.
She said she met March 29 with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., to address her concerns. Kerry has called for a government investigation into reports of firefighter safety equipment failures.
“It’s been almost five years, and I still pray every day that this doesn’t happen to any other families,” said Morrison, the mother of Matthew, 16, and Megan, 13.
“I want every firefighter at the end of the night to be able to say, ‘Honey, I’m home.’”