# asheville



## cda (Aug 22, 2011)

Anyone have any further info???????????????

ASHEVILLE — A new city report points to a faulty water pipe intended to help put out fires as contributing to the death of a firefighter in a medical office building blaze last month

Firefighters also went without water for longer than previously thought, according to emergency radio recordings released with the report.

Nearly 38 minutes passed from the time the first Asheville Fire Department trucks left the station to when firefighters were able to get water on the blaze, a problem due largely to a faulty standpipe.

There is no evidence someone tampered with the pipe, one of two in the five-story building, Fire Chief Scott Burnette said.

Standpipe failures are exceedingly rare, Burnette said. And the standpipe in the fire July 28 passed a required inspection in April and passed several post-fire tests, according to city records and Burnette.

Capt. Jeff Bowen, a 13-year department veteran and father of three, was overcome by heat and smoke and died after being hospitalized. More than 200 occupants of the building at 445 Biltmore Ave. escaped unharmed.

Investigators already have determined someone set the blaze by pouring fuel in four spots inside a fifth-floor suite. The arsonist had a pass key to get inside the suite, authorities have said.

A company called 445 Biltmore Center Properties owns suite 500, according to county deed records. No one with the company could be reached.

The State Bureau of Investigation and city are handling the criminal case. Police Lt. Wally Welch has declined to say whether investigators have a suspect.

The fire incident report was authored by division chiefs Carlton Denning, the initial fire incident commander, and Michael Clark, who later took over command of the operation. The department produces fire incident reports to provide information to the U.S Fire Administration for tracking national data. It also uses the reports, about 15,000 a year, for its internal records to document every incident needing Fire Department response.

(Page 2 of 4)

Some are brief and open-and-shut, such as a report involving car wreck. Others, like the 23-page Biltmore Avenue fire report, can take months to complete.

The report, made public last week after an open records law request by the Citizen-Times, is still being completed, Burnette said.

The Citizen-Times, also through the records request, obtained radio recordings lasting 3 hours and 30 minutes and a list of police calls for service to the building for the past year. The calls showed nothing out of the ordinary.

Nearly every city truck and crew responded to the Biltmore Avenue blaze, according to a list in the report and Burnette.

Questions on standpipes

Firefighters encountered a tough situation from the start, including the building’s lack of a sprinkler system.

“Locked doors, extreme heat and low visibility contributed to the delayed fire attack,” Denning wrote. “Problems with using (the) standpipe system also contributed.”

Firefighters typically use one stairwell and standpipe to fight a fire and the other stairwell for evacuations.

The building’s two standpipes were “wet,” Burnette said in an interview Thursday. That means they were connected to a city waterline underground.

The Fire Department originally thought the pipes were “dry,” or not connected to a water supply, as is the case in some buildings, Brunette said.

Firefighters, under the department’s policy, still used a hydrant and a fire engine to pump water into the pipe through an outside connection even though the standpipes were wet. The process increases water pressure, Burnette said.

Engine 2, Engine 1, Ladder 1 and Squad 1 were the first crews dispatched at 12:28 p.m., according to the report and radio traffic recordings.

Engine 2’s captain, about 45 seconds later, reported heavy smoke and flames visible on the top floor, according to the recordings.

The engine officer called for a second alarm.

County dispatch sent a fire marshal, a fire safety officer, Battalion 1, Engine 6 and Rescue 3 — Bowen’s crew — to the blaze

(Page 3 of 4)

Denning, Division chief 4, checked on as responding and later took over command from Engine 2.

Crews from Engine 2 went to the fourth floor to hook up to the standpipe station while Engine 1 hooked to the standpipe connection on the Biltmore Avenue side of the building.

But the water never came.

It was nearly 38 minutes before firefighters, using a hose brought in through a window from a ladder truck, got water on the fire, according to the radio recordings.

Burnette in his interview Thursday did not dispute the time frame, though he said it was still being investigated. He said it took an “extended” amount of time before firefighters were able to mount an effective interior attack.

Bowen injured on exit

Nine firefighters were treated for injures sustained during falls while handling charged hose lines, from overexertion and exposure to heat and smoke, according to the report.

Eight were treated at the hospital.

Bowen’s crew was originally assigned to search for occupants. When that was completed, the crew moved to fire attack operations.

Burnette said that is standard procedure at the Fire Department. Rescue comes first, he said, and then everyone works to extinguish the fire.

The standpipe plagued Bowen, whose radio call number was 301, the entire time his crew was in the building.

He repeatedly told Denning he needed water to the north standpipe.

When Bowen learned a crew from Engine 6 was attacking the fire with the hose from the ladder truck, he told Denning he would stay inside the building as backup.

Bowen then told the captain of Engine 6 he was nearby on the fifth floor and could help if needed.

The Engine 6 captain told him his crew was continuing to ventilate by breaking windows and to move in, but Bowen again radioed that he could not get water from the standpipe.

Denning told him to pull out. The operation had been going for 40 minutes.

“We cannot get water out of the standpipe,” Denning told Bowen. “Go out of the building.”

“10-4,” Bowen said. “I am leaving.”

Bowen, about 3 minutes later, tells Denning he is out of air. Denning directs him to a rehabiltation area Biltmore Avenue.

Page 4 of 4)

Denning calls for “PAR” on all interior crews. The acronym stands for Personnel Accountability Report. It is a roll call.

Bowen answers seconds later.

“301 has PAR,” he says. “We are on our way out.”

The safety officer in car 3 breaks in 22 seconds after his transmission.

“OK interior, wherever you just opened up those windows we now have flames in that location,” he says.

He tells Engine 6 there are flames on the west side of the building.

Fourteen seconds later, according to the timeline on the radio recordings, Bowen breaks in with a mayday.

The distress call put the Rapid Intervention Team assigned to the fire into action, though the rescuers were not immediately able to find Bowen and his crew, according to the fire incident report.

Denning calls for a fourth alarm, sending more firefighters to the scene.

Firefighters with Engine 2, Engine 8 and Squad 1 found Bowen and Firefighter Jay Bettencourt about 15 minutes later, according to the report and the radio traffic timeline. The firefighters suffered exposure to heat and smoke, the city has said.

The rescue response time was better than an average recorded in a test by the fire department in Phoenix, Ariz., after a line of duty death about 10 years ago. Burnette said the test showed it took at least 21 minutes to find a downed firefighter in a large, single-floor warehouse.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which also investigated the 2007 fire in Charleston, S.C., that killed nine firefighters, is examining the fire department’s response.

A report could be complete in six months.

Chief awaits federal probe

Burnette this week started his own examination of the radio traffic. He said firefighters took the appropriate steps.

An unofficial recording of the radio traffic published on Youtube after the fire made the incident sound much more chaotic that it was, Burnette said. The recording had multiple channels on top of each other.

“Our department, our incident commander and our command structure, they managed that incident very well,” he said.

Burnette said the federal safety agency is in the best position to offer an objective view of the fire and the actions of the firefighters.

It, along with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, is also looking into the failure of the standpipe.

The federal safety report will help the city department, and other fire departments, learn from the incident.

“Our practices on July 28 will be looked at very objectively by NIOSH,” he said. “And that’s why we are grateful that they are able to assists us because the third-party review has no stake in the process and can objectively tell us were your actions sound, do they need to be improved, is there anything that the department needs to do differently to be a better department and make sure this doesn’t happen again.”


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## cda (Aug 22, 2011)

wondering about the standpipe


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