Sofa Super Store Fire: Facts Can't Be Spun, Fire Was Command Disaster

The fire chief and Mayor may take liberties with the facts but the community of firefighters is fully aware of the horrific strategic and tactical decisions, plus a lax safety culture, and how they contributed to the outcome.

Janet Wilmoth gave an interview to the Post & Courier and stated:

Janet Wilmoth, editorial director for Fire Chief magazine, has known the six-member city panel for years and expects that the group will deliver an honest report that pulls no punches.

"I think they are going to tell the story like it is, and it is not going to be pleasant," she said. "Those nine firefighters should not have died, and we are lucky they didn't lose more."

The city is now trying to use the 19 minute window as an excuse. They claim so much occurred in the time span, with rapid fire development, that no department could have managed the fire. This is blatantly false.

Rather, it serves to focus on the lack of training, command structure and a complete lack of command training. The size of the fire didn't overwhelm the commanders. Instead, because there was no system in place to organize firefighters, it became freelance, run in the building, attack the fire mode. No risk analysis could be performed because no one had training in it.

Once the fire took hold because of poor decisions the outcome was sealed. This doesn't mean rapid fire development, coupled with 19 minutes, will always equal disaster. In fact, most often it does not. Large fires are fought daily around America. The difference, in many cases, is leadership, command, and a grasp of the fundamentals of firefighting principles and tactics by department command staff.

Paul Grimwood, a good friend of the author's, stated today in an interview with the Post & Courier:

Paul Grimwood, who served 35 years with fire departments in London and New York and is now an author and consultant on firefighting tactics, disagrees. He said commanders likely could have taken actions that would have saved lives if they had paid attention to signs of problems that night. He said a controlled evacuation should have been called long before the maydays were heard.

"There were clear fire behavior indicators; possibly some structural collapse warning indicators; and an obvious failure by on-scene commanders to act on the fact that an excessive number of firefighters had deployed inside the structure whilst the interior fire was rapidly developing, but their water supply was failing," he said.

Roger Yow summed up the entire question about accountability:

Roger Yow, a former Charleston fire captain and president of the local firefighters' union, said firefighter accountability was practically nonexistent. "That's why it was hours before they even realized it was nine guys."

Why is the fire chief still allowed to wear the uniform?

Comments

[SpinDoc]

I was at a fire downtown once where the chief was in the backyard hollering himself red in the face telling us to go in. We were on the roof of a back porch looking in the windowof a small approximately 10x12 room. This space had 8 or 10 firemen in it and we had to tell them to get out of the way so we could appease the idiot in command. That's all they know: get in, get in.

[SpinDoc]

It was at a lawyers office somewhere around Cannon St. Jay you might have been at that one. Probably 12 or 14 years ago but management still thinks the same.

[JanSued]

It was a bad fire in a bad building, for sure. But this alone doesn't kill firefighters. In this case, bad leadership is definitly to blame.

Since reading the NIOSH report, I normally admired US Tactics and their way of Fire Fighting. But I'm more than astinoshed, that there is no way to put that John Wayne fire chief out of service. This all sounds like a third-world-country story to me...

FF from Germany

[Topeka Joe]

Chief Rusty Thomas has long been known to want firemen in the fire scene building and if he caught you outside you heard about it! Can any CFD brothers back me up on this assertion ? This attitude is part and parcel of the culture of the CFD during Thomas' tenure.

[firedog]

Topeka Joe i can back you up with that statement.because all you heard about was going in no matter what or RT would have your ass.but now we all have to stand up to him and tell him he needs to go and cry to his daddy.because his daddy is still running that dept.oh by the way has anyone see or heard from his daddy about this matter ?

[SlimShady]

Russell Thomas Sr. rode the gravy train for a long time. People always wondered what he had on Mayor Riley.

[David Grahl]

The difficulty of explaining what went wrong at this fire is that so much was wrong and that all of it was standard procedure dating back decades. This was the final inevitable collapse of the “traditional” system. As Chief, Thomas is responsible for fifteen years of doing nothing to progress professionally. This was done in spite of efforts by the union to promote NFPA compliance. The Mayor and Chief also ignored a state executive order on adoption of the incident command system. These deliberate actions and their statements following the fire establish these deaths as the result of professional negligence and their guilt as the leaders responsible.

This was a “perfect storm” of bad procedure, inadequate training, under-staffed apparatus, obsolete equipment, ignorance of fire tactics, disregard of safety measures, and incompetent command – plus a dangerous fire. A fire department subscribing, in its staffing, equipment and procedures, to NFPA standards and tactics could have mounted a strong, well-supplied attack and probably controlled this fire. If control was not possible, then the property had to be written off as lost and exposures protected by a powerful defensive operation. Such a decision would have had no impact on saving the structures – they were completely lost as it was, but it could have saved the lives of nine firefighters.

If the Mayor thinks the first 19 minutes were just more than any fire department could handle, well that just shows his total ignorance of firefighting. The fire overwhelmed the CFD command because they had inadequate dispatch procedures, unnecessary radio traffic, a terrible size-up by the first BC and the AC, no command system, an antiquated and totally insufficient water supply procedure and hoselines, chief officers ignorant of basic building construction hazards, fire tactics, hydraulics and risk assessment.

The refusal to accept responsibility and resign on the part of the Chief is an embarrassment to our profession. The refusal on the part of the Mayor to hold the Chief accountable and remove him, and to accept his own share of the responsibility is an embarrassment to our nation. - east3

[CFDffwife]

Just talked to my sister in Fayetteville and she said that the AP published a great article in the local paper there about the report. The word is spreading!

[ChiefMO]

The problem is that the people in N.C. don't elect the Mayor in Charleston. I love that the word is getting out, but we need to think of a way to get the word out to the people that can do something about it so that we don't have to be the '...laughing stock of the civilized fire service' again.

[cfdwife]

MO-I think about that previous quote sometimes: "civilized fire service". I think it's an oxymoron. The fire service is not civilized (when you look at it as a whole). You can't teach 5 year olds the alphabet without state and national certs that you earn on your own before you can even apply for a job. What are the min certs for a Fire Chief in this state/country? I hope the Charleston situation evolves the fire service up a few wrungs on the professional ladder.

[Arthur Scheuerman]

We really are sill not wary enough about bar joist roofs or floors. Bar joist trusses were responsible for the collapse of the WTC Towers and will continue to be responsible for firemen's deaths until we get more respect for the vulnerability of these floors to heat. Unprotected bar joist construction fails in as little as 10 minutes when exposed to severe heat. There should be some kind of warning that a building has bar joist floors such as some marking outside the building that would warn firefighters that truss construction is involved. With a large fire in such a building it should be fought from the outside. No one should be allowed into such a building if a large fire develops which exposes the trusses.

Arthur Scheuerman,
Ret. Battalion chief, FDNY

[Michael Bernstein]

In the east,all truss constructed buildings have placards.
Is that not a country standard?

[Michael Bernstein]

MO, best way to get word, in my opinion, is to go to Spoleto and ALL other major events in Charleston and communicate with EVERYONE there.
The T-shirt thing is a great idea.
You know me, I have a big mouth and it works osmetimes when your fellow buddies back you up.
You are one of the most intelligent firefighters I have met, so put that BIG, BALD brain to work.