Report calls for more firefighter training
Will focus on escaping, preventing injuries
An in-house review of a Wilkinsburg fire last year in which seven firefighters were injured is prompting the Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire to require, among other things, additional training focused on escaping from a burning structure.
Fire Chief Darryl E. Jones put together a five-member committee to look into what happened during the three-alarm blaze at 1007 Ross Ave., the morning of Jan. 1, 2016. The committee, with the cooperation of Pittsburgh Firefighters Local No. 1, interviewed firefighters and reviewed recorded radio traffic to produce a 112-page report.
“This is not a ‘finger-pointing’ exercise,” Chief Jones said at the outset of the review. “No one will face disciplinary action for actions taken at the scene or for participating in the investigation and cooperating with the team.”
The goal, he said, was to learn from the experience and avoid future injuries.
The 911 fire call came in at 9:07 a.m. on New Year’s Day 2016 with a report that an elderly woman was trapped on the second floor of her burning home. Pittsburgh firefighters, who have been contracted to serve Wilkinsburg since 2011, arrived in seven minutes.
The first firefighters on the scene rushed into the building, unaware of where the fire had started, and within four minutes and four seconds were lifting 86-year-old Nannie Felder through her bedroom window to the roof of the front porch, where other firefighters carried her down a ladder to an ambulance. She died three weeks later at a hospital.
Roughly seven minutes after the woman was removed from the house, seven firefighters were injured, some of them critically.
The investigation showed that firefighters first observed flames in the first-floor kitchen, but it turned out that the cause of the inferno was a candle left unattended on a basement workbench.
“As firefighters opened doors and windows, the intensity of the smoke escaping the basement increased and traveled to the second floor via the rear stairs,” the report said, making it hotter and more difficult to see. When the fire spread to the front stairs, the firefighters “found themselves dealing with fire and heat from both the front and the rear. ... The members found themselves effectively in a chimney.”
Four of the trapped firefighters were injured after jumping from two different second-story windows. One of the firefighters landed on two others below, injuring them. Another firefighter jumped from a third-story window.
The report did not fault the firefighters for their actions.
“While operating at 1007 Ross Ave., the first two engine companies and trucks had been committed to the rescue of a trapped occupant,” the report said. “These efforts [came] at the vital expense of personnel, reducing the number of firefighters to aggressively assess and combat the situation at hand.
“Automatically dispatching an additional engine, truck and chief to the incident ... would enhance the safety of the initial operational companies.”
Other recommendations in the report involve equipment, training on “reading smoke” and proper ventilation, radio etiquette, multi-casualty procedures and the consequences of taking shortcuts.
The report noted that Pittsburgh has diverse building structures and a challenging topography “that leads to the need for continual fireground operating procedural review.”
Chief Jones, union representatives, training instructors and firefighters who were present at the Wilkinsburg fire will be holding a news conference in the days ahead to discuss the lessons learned.
The committee was made up of Deputy Chief Frank Large, Battalion Chief Daniel Herr, Capt. Richard Rutkowski, Lt. Danny Doyle and Lt. Ryan Shaw.
“If you have spent any real time on the fireground or elsewhere in the fire service and haven’t made mistakes, then you haven’t done ANYTHING,” they said in their report. “The challenge is to recognize what mistakes you’ve made and resolve to do better.”