By Ted Clifford
The State
COLUMBIA, S.C. — The legal fallout of an Irmo firefighter’s death two years ago is growing, with the city of Columbia accusing the Irmo Fire District of lying about events at an apartment complex fire that killed James Michael Muller.
Muller was killed on May 26, 2023, when a ceiling collapsed on him while he fought a fire at the Tropical Ridge Apartments. At the time, the Irmo Fire District was assisting the Columbia-Richland Fire District at the fire just off of Greystone Boulevard near Riverbanks zoo.
Two people had been rescued from the burning building, and the highly flammable structure was beginning to buckle when firetrucks from the Columbia-Richland Fire District trained their powerful “deck guns” on the roof. Shortly after, the top floor crashed down, trapping four firefighters.
Three were rescued, but Muller died of asphyxiation under the wreckage.
The 27-year-old firefighter’s death shocked the close-knit firefighting community. In April, his widow, Emma Muller , sued Richland County and the city of Columbia. The lawsuit followed the release of a report on the fire from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health that criticized both the Irmo Fire District and Columbia-Richland Fire Department, the agencies responding to the fire.
The institute is a federal agency that investigates work-related deaths.
Drawing on many of the federal agency’s conclusions, the lawsuit laid the blame on the Columbia-Richland Fire Department as the lead agency at Tropical Ridge .
Emma Muller’s suit alleged that her husband’s death was caused by inadequate training and a failure to keep radio channels clear, leading to confusion about how many firefighters were in the building, leading to a fatal delay in rescuing Muller after his mayday call was missed.
Now, Columbia has fired back. In an answer to the lawsuit filed June 13, lawyers for the city alleged that much of what the Irmo Fire District has shared with Muller’s family, reported to the media and told to federal and state investigators are lies.
“Employees and agents of the Irmo Fire District should have known of the falsity of the statements at the time they were disseminated,” and “acted with malice in reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of the statements,” wrote lawyers for the city.
When reached Monday, Irmo Fire District Chief Michael Sonefeld said his department was aware of the allegations but was unable to give a comment at this time.
Columbia is seeking to have the Irmo Fire District added as a so-called third-party defendant to Emma Muller’s lawsuit, which would allow Columbia attorneys to argue that the Irmo district is actually responsible. As automatic aid agencies, Irmo and Columbia-Richland fire departments provide each other with support, but part of their contract states that they will not hold each other liable for damage to equipment, injuries or even deaths.
In their filing, Columbia’s attorneys argue that if the city is found liable for Muller’s death, the terms of their automatic aid agreement would require the Irmo Fire District to reimburse the city.
Earlier this year, Sonefeld told The State that his department would not change its policy of providing automatic aid to Columbia-Richland.
Mike Desumma, a spokesperson for the Columbia-Richland Fire Department, said that the department was not able to comment on pending litigation.
City challenges narrative of fatal fire
Columbia’s lawyers have rejected allegations of errors in handling communications during the fire or that there was any delay in rescuing Muller, calling the claims “abjectly false.”
These claims “will be disproven with complete audio recordings of the radio traffic during the incident at Tropical Ridge Apartments,” wrote the city’s lawyers.
The lawyers denied charges of problems with training or that firefighters struggled to access a fire hydrant at the apartment complex. Instead, on-scene leaders functioned as expected, and their actions, including the use of the deck guns on the building, were within accepted industry standards.
Muller died after he and another Irmo firefighter “entered into a room which was in danger of the ceiling falling on them, despite being warned by ( Columbia-Richland Fire District ) personnel not to enter.”
The lawsuit contradicts a version of events laid out not only in Emma Muller’s lawsuit, but also in the NIOSH report.
According to the report, as Muller’s crew prepared to enter the building’s second-floor, they were warned that the floor was beginning to sag. That information never made it to supervisors on the scene, according to the report. On entering the building, Muller and crew “found the floor of the second floor to be solid and were unsure what sagging (Columbia fire) was referring to,” according to the report.
Instead, Muller was killed when the ceiling of the room he was in gave way.
It was just one of the many miscommunications that NIOSH said led to Muller’s death. The federal investigators said in their report that leadership at the scene appeared to be unaware that Muller and another Irmo firefighter were trapped in the building. Muller’s mayday call was not picked up until more than 20 minutes after it went out.
“Prior to this, the incident commander did not know how many firefighters were trapped or which (department) they were from,” according to the NIOSH report.
But Columbia’s lawyers say that these conclusions, along with citations from the South Carolina Occupational Safety and Health Administration, were based on “incorrect information” provided to investigators by the Irmo Fire District.
Both the Irmo Fire District and the Columbia-Richland Fire Department were cited and fined $3,600 by the state OSHA. Irmo is contesting those fines in administrative law court.
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