By Charlene Bielema
Daily Gazette
STERLING, Ill. — Aaron Brown knew Garrett Ramos.
Brown, a captain with the Dixon City Fire Department, and Ramos, a Sterling Fire Department lieutenant, had each been hired by their respective departments about the same time — Brown in 2011 and Ramos in 2012.
They were their unions’ presidents at the same time and often found themselves at the same training sessions.
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They also ended up in the same place the evening of Dec. 3, 2021, when a fire broke out at 10031 Ridge Road in rural Rock Falls. Ramos was on the first Sterling fire engine that arrived just minutes after the Sterling and Rock Falls fire departments were dispatched to the scene.
It was Brown, who went to the scene when the Dixon City Fire Department was dispatched, who would discover Ramos’ body in the burning home’s basement and lead recovery efforts.
Brown described what he saw and did the night of the fire during his testimony in a Whiteside County courtroom Wednesday, Nov. 5, the second day a 12-member jury heard testimony in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Ramos’ widow.
Brittney C. Ramos is suing the city of Rock Falls, former Rock Falls Fire Chief Cris Bouwens, and former Deputy Fire Chief Ken Wolf, who is now Rock Falls’ fire chief, claiming that willful and wanton disregard on their part caused her husband to fall through a burning floor and into a basement, run out of air and die of asphyxia.
If Brittney’s legal team can prove that Bouwens and Wolf showed conscious disregard for Ramos’ safety through the decisions they made, the jury could award damages. Those damages, for pain and suffering to her and the couple’s two children, could reach into the tens of millions of dollars, according to attorneys.
Lead Ramos attorney Michael Gallagher has said Bouwens, who was the incident commander, made missteps at the scene that included not asking homeowners if there was a basement under the home and having firefighters continue to fight the fire from within the home even after they knew all occupants were out safe and the home was heavily damaged.
The city, Bouwens and Wolf have countered that Ramos was partially responsible for missteps that contributed to his own death.
Through witness questioning Wednesday, Ramos’s attorneys focused on proving that command staff had not been following National Fire Protection Administration protocol after they heard two mayday calls coming from an unknown firefighter.
Brown was called upon to answer questions about how events unfolded shortly after he arrived at the scene about 55 minutes after one of the home’s residents at 11:04 p.m. made a 911 call reporting the fire.
Brown said that shortly after he arrived, a mayday call could be heard over radio traffic; a second mayday call would be transmitted a short time later. While the firefighter didn’t identify who he was, Brown noted that the firefighter was screaming and mentioned a partial collapse.
Brown said he was near Wolf.
“I said ‘Chief, we have a mayday,’” Brown said.
Brown said Wolf was looking at the tracking board but didn’t reply. He said neither Wolf nor Bouwens issued a personnel accountability report to immediately account for all firefighters.
Brown said that what should have happened after the mayday call would have been an immediate call for a PAR. He said the incident commander — in this case Bouwens — or the accountability officer in charge of keeping track of firefighters’ whereabouts — in this case Wolf — should have issued a call on the radio to have crew leaders prepare for PAR.
The leader of each crew — in this case a leader from each firefighting team — should have reported to the accountability officer as to whether each firefighter on his team was accounted for.
That didn’t happen. Brown said that four minutes after the mayday, it was Sterling Fire Chief Mike Dettman who said: “All units give me PAR.”
Even though Brown said a PAR should be immediately issued after a mayday call, Ramos’s attorney Michael Kosner, repeatedly played a three-minute portion of a video from the scene that showed no PAR issued within that three minutes — a delay Brown agreed was letting valuable lifesaving moments slip away.
Brown said the PAR was incomplete in that crews weren’t being asked to reply with the name of their department, truck number, and number of firefighters in that group and whether they were accounted for.
Instead, Brown said, there was a focus on one firefighter — O’Brien — who was thought to be missing. Wolf at one point said over the radio, “Interior has PAR,” according to testimony.
Brown and his crew were sent out to do a 360-degree survey around the outside of the house to see if there was a basement. An earlier interior search of the home, in which all doors were opened, did not turn up any stairs to the basement.
He said that from the outside he could not see if there was one; as it turned out, one basement window was hidden under a deck, and another was boarded up and painted over with paint that matched the foundation.
Brown said that upon returning from the search, he asked Dettman, who was an operations commander near the burning home, if the PAR was clear. Dettman replied that O’Brien had been found.
Brown said he was uncomfortable as to whether everyone was accounted for, but he didn’t push Dettman on his reply.
It was about 30 minutes later that Brown heard Ramos’ partner say he hadn’t seen Ramos for a while. Brown said that when he heard that, he asked Dettman to send out another alarm for more firefighters to the scene since he knew there would have to be a search alongside firefighting operations. The alarm was sent out, and firefighters were told to search for Ramos.
He and his crew accessed the basement by dropping a ladder into it. Brown went down the ladder first. When he got to the bottom of the ladder, he was on a pool table. He got to the floor, and after yelling to have firefighters turn down the water being pumped into the building so he could hear, the sound of an alarm could be heard. The alarm turned out to be coming from Ramos’ body and was sounding because his tanks were out of air.
Brown said his crew pulled Ramos’ body to the pool table and up to the ladder; after two attempts to get him up the ladder, webbing and a carabiner were used to lift his body out of the basement.
Testimony will continue Thursday, Nov. 6.
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