Question

Scenario:

Anytown FD is a combination department with one station. Its district is surrounded by four other districts, one fully paid, the other three are also combination. A mutual aid agreement is in place with each department. An automatic aid agreement is in place with Next Town FD. The relationship with North Area FD is friendly but the two rarely work together because of personality conflicts among the leaders of the departments.

The Anytown FD has a full time chief who responds as a firefighter during work hours, a paid driver each shift and a paid firefighter. The driver and firefighter work a 24/48 shift schedule.   At any given time there are between 15 and 20 volunteers on the roster, of which four or five are old timers who come around to support but don’t participate in the heavy work any longer. The six paid firefighters respond back when requested.

The Chief answers to a fire commission of five members which is elected by the public. The commissioners serve a three-year term but the election cycle is rotating so not all seats are open for election annually. The commission is responsible to ensure that the finances are managed appropriately and that the chief effectively manages operations.

The chief is a well liked but does not hold any management or leadership credentials. His training consists of basic fire department classes and 20 years as a paid and volunteer firefighter in smaller departments like Anytown. He has been Chief for five years.

The department requires minimum training to comply with federal and state standards. The chief appoints someone to lead training and rarely shows up for training himself.

The equipment varies from an engine that is less than five years old to a reserve pumper that is over 20 years old. There are a total of three engines, a tanker, a service/rescue truck, a special purpose ATV side-by-side, and a brush truck. The department received a grant for a thermal imaging camera and new SCBAs two years ago.   Most of the firefighters wear gear that fits them fairly well. A few are in newer gear fitted for them while others are hoping to be issued gear that fits properly and isn’t tattered.

On the day in question, the paid crew consisted of a young firefighter who is relatively new to the fire service and a driver who has been in the fire service as a volunteer for over fifteen years but had only recently began working part-time shifts when one of the full-time drivers is on leave. The firefighter received his training from the state fire academy. The driver received basic training years ago and has been receiving “on the job training” ever since.

The day of the incident was a Wednesday. The chief was across the county at a chiefs’ meeting. The part-time driver was working because the regular driver had taken several shifts off for vacation. A newly appointed volunteer Lieutenant was in the fire district on this day. The officers are elected by a popular vote of the members. This Lt had been a member of Anytown for less than five years and had been in the fire service for only seven years.

At 0900 Anytown FD was dispatched to a service call at a residence. The dispatcher said there was a child caller reporting a funny odor in the house. The paid crew, two volunteers and the volunteer Lt arrived at the two story residential structure with a detached garage. There were no cars in the driveway. The house sat off the road on approximately an acre of land. The fire crew rang the doorbell and left when no one answered the door.

While enroute, a volunteer who was a new driver that had just completed the driving course and one hour of supervised driving around the district, responded in the second engine.   While responding in the engine the new driver missed a turn and tried to perform a three point turn in the road. During his turn around, he managed to get the engine stuck in a ditch. After clearing from the service call the other members helped get the truck out of the ditch.

At 1015 Anytown was dispatched to a second call at the same address. This call was received by the dispatcher from the alarm monitoring company as a residential smoke detector activation.

Upon arrival there was light smoke visible and still no cars in the driveway. The paid crew and the volunteer Lt arrived at about the same time. They went to the front door and, through a front window, noticed a small fire on the first floor in a room on the back side of the house. There was no hydrant nearby and no other trucks were responding.

The Lt assumed command and worked with the on-duty firefighter to stretch hose lines to the rear of the structure. The paid driver operated the pump. The Lt and firefighter noted more smoke building in the upstairs area of the house. They forced a door open on the back of the house and without entering the structure, extinguished the fire. They made their way back to the fire apparatus without searching the house or initiating any ventilation other than the back door they left open.  

No mutual aid was called and only one other volunteer arrived.

The home owners, who received a call from their alarm company, arrived just as the now four firefighters were beginning to go back into the house to clean up and ventilate the smoke. They immediately began asking about their nine-year-old son who was supposed to be home.

The child was found upstairs beside a bed, deceased.

In the days following, the parents questioned why a small fire even occurred if the FD had been there just a few minutes before. They also questioned why, if there was no fire upstairs and no significant heat damage upstairs, the child had died.

Questions to consider:

What duties existed?

What duties were breached, even if there was no injury?

Were any of the breaches causally connected to an injury?

What injuries exist?

Did the commission limit training and equipment?

Did the chief prevent better training and a more sufficient level of equipment?

Did the firefighters receive sufficient training but execute it poorly?

Was the driver properly or sufficiently trained?

Was the officer qualified?

Should a mutual aid agreement have been utilized?

Were commonly accepted fire attack practices utilized?

Were the standards of care for fire attack and incident management followed?

Who are the parties that could be named in a civil suit?

Could a criminal case result? If so, who would the parties be?

How could this have been avoided?

What can other fire departments do in order to minimize their chances of experiencing a similar incident?

What lessons can large, fully staffed fire departments learn from the liability issues of situations such as this?

How would proper documentation help the fire department in this situation?

Are there standards or laws that can, or do, help to minimize these types of injuries?

Answer 1

The duties were to ensure that no living being was in danger and saving human life was a primary concern.

The first thing that a firefighter needs to check if any living being is trapped inside the house .This was not done and was the first breach.

The breach resulted in the death of a child.

The commission only arranged for minimum training to satisfy state and federal regulations which might not have been adequate.

The chief was not involved in the training sessions ,so his lack of involvement may have resulted in the debacle.

The firefighters lacked experience. A senior firefighter should have been present to guide a younger guy at all times.

The driver was clearly untrained for handling emergency situations.

A mutual aid agreement should have been present .

A civil suit would be initiated against the fire service department. A criminal case may also be filed as a death of a child has occurred and this could be dubbed as criminal negligence.

In a criminal case this would be the deceased’ s parents vs the state firefighting department

Proper training could avoid similar situations in future. The firefighters should learn from this incident to avoid future disasters .

Documentation has nothing much to do here,

Laws should be adequate to initiate criminal proceedings instead of civil.