By Jamie Thompson
FireRescue1 Senior Editor
CHICAGO — The first-arriving engine officer at the scene of the Sofa Super Store fire in Charleston has spoken of the fire conditions leading up to the minutes nine firefighters lost their lives.
“The flames were not burning anything, they were kind of just floating,” Captain Chris Villarreal told a session at Fire-Rescue International on Thursday.
“If anybody has seen that happen, it’s not a good sign. But at the time, I didn’t know that.”
Capt. Villarreal hosted the session to give a first-hand perspective on the conditions firefighters faced at the fire in 2007 and how the department has been radically overhauled in both its training and culture.
“It was so hot inside of there that our masks melted,” he told the session. “Our turnouts got burned. When you touched them, the material just kind of fell apart. The heat inside that building was intense.”
Having since gone through smoke-training classes, Capt. Villarreal said he now realizes the importance of firefighters being able to spot the first signs of rapidly deteriorating conditions.
“Now I don’t think I would go in, I would hesitate,” he said.
The session was told about the changes the department has undergone in the past three years, including SOPs and “doing away with booster lines,” which Capt. Villarreal said, while not an issue at the Sofa Super Store fire, had always been used as a fast attack line.
“The issue there was accountability, the education we had in the department,” he said. “Our accountability system has gotten so good now it’s not even funny.
“We used to have a RIT team established but the RIT team we had really wasn’t a RIT team. We really never went through a lot of training for RIT until after the fire.”
Capt. Villarreal went on to outline the mental toll the LODDs had taken on the department.
“I know some people left because of what had happened,” he said. “But some people are leaving because of all the changes we are going through. Imagine having to start all over; how everything you had learned was no good, having to start all over again.
“It hasn’t been easy. There have been days where we sit there and cry on each others shoulder. But we have become a little stronger as a department and as people.”
Addressing the drastic change in culture, Capt. Villarreal said he looks back in shock at some of the tactics previously used.
“We were very, very aggressive,” he said. “We would run into the building and just not care. We did a lot of unnecessary things.
“When I think about some of the stuff we did, I just think ‘Wow, that was stupid.’”