The phone rang with an angry edge. It was my father calling me from the Jersey Shore: “Did anyone from work call for me?” he asked. This was a time before cell phones, and he was obviously concerned about something work-related.
He told me to turn on the TV because there was a bad job in Center City. I turned on the local news and was astonished at what I saw: A 38-story high rise in downtown Philadelphia was billowing smoke. The fire was now multiple alarms, and firefighters from all over the city were being recalled to duty. My father, a veteran lieutenant, wanted to know if such a call came in for him. Thankfully it had not.
I didn’t know it at the time, but three Philadelphia firefighters had already perished as a result of this raging inferno at One Meridian Plaza. The date was February 23, 1991.
Slaying the dragon
It would be another year almost to the day before I joined the ranks of the Philadelphia Fire Department. I came into a department wracked by turmoil in the aftermath of the One Meridian Plaza catastrophe. The deaths of Firefighters Phyliss McAllister, James Chappell and Captain David Holcombe, all from Engine 11, were still fresh wounds that festered with the knowledge that the department had been beaten by the dragon.
It was a dragon they knew well, had confronted many times before, and had always managed to subdue. This time, however, things were different. The dragon won. It won by using traps to confuse, confound and eventually overwhelm them. It won by counting on firefighters’ bravado and overconfidence. It won by smothering them when they got too close, when it was too late to escape. The dragon claimed three of our bravest—and nearly claimed eight more.
When they realized their brothers were in trouble, like many departments would, they sent more firefighters to help. These brothers also nearly fell victim to the dragon’s labyrinth, only to be rescued at the last second by a helicopter. Miraculously, the surviving brave ones crept away to lick their wounds, and for a generation, the dragon remained silent.
Today, we live in the shadow of the dragon's lair, waiting for it to rise again. Yet as the knowledge of that heroic battle fades from memory, we once again let our complacency blind us to reality. Our blindness to our past foretells our future.
Telling the tale
If this sounds like a medieval folk tale, it should. All good stories follow a formula: a good guy on a sacred quest against impossible odds, selfless and heroic, versus an evil bad guy trying to do him in. There’s always a dramatic setting, some sidekicks to help out along the way, etc.
The story of the epic firefight at Philadelphia’s One Meridian Plaza is that kind of tale. Heroic firefighters fighting against overwhelming odds to tackle a monster, a once-in-a-lifetime fire in a downtown high-rise building. It has tragedy: the loss of three of our bravest. It has heroes: a chief who rode a helicopter to the roof to save the rescue party that had become disoriented searching for the lost members of Engine 11. It has drama: the fire chief at the command post agonizing over the decisions he had to make as the buildings systems failed one by one. It also has a supporting cast of hundreds of firefighters who did everything they could to win the fight. Finally, in an anticlimactic ending to the epic struggle, the building’s fire sprinklers did what all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t do—slay the dragon and send it back into hiding.
Epics are told and retold throughout the world’s cultures. Oftentimes these stories are meant to deliver a message. Likewise, tales told around the kitchen table in every firehouse around the globe pass on the lessons of previous generations to the next as cautionary tales about what to do and what not to do, lessons learned. Against this backdrop, we ask ourselves if we have we forgotten the lessons of One Meridian Plaza. Sadly, the answer is yes.
Today the Meridian fire is a seminal event in the history of the American fire service. Like the fires of Coconut Grove, Our Lady of the Angels and others, this fire forces us to confront our mistakes and what we’ve done to ensure that they’re never repeated. I’m fairly confident that if One Meridian Plaza was still standing and on fire again today, many of the mistakes our department made that cold February night a quarter century ago could be repeated. It pains me to say the results could be tragically similar, because like most fire departments in this nation, when faced with conditions like One Meridian Plaza, we don’t see what our mind won’t let us see. We see “our job,” what we’re called upon to do. How often must we tragically lose firefighters in the same fashion as previous generations? A wise old chief was heard to say, “Firefighters don’t invent new ways to die, they just forget the old ones.”
Hazmat vs. high-rise challenges and training
Firefighting in high-rise buildings is an incredibly complex and difficult undertaking. The vertical challenge adds enormous burdens to every aspect of the operation. From overcoming the forces of gravity in pumping water up to the fire floor to the superhuman exertion required of the crews, to problems with communications and evacuations, nothing is easy. Despite these and other known hazards, many departments devote almost no resources and little training to the issue. Many departments choose to rely almost exclusively on model fire codes that require sprinklers to extinguish incipient fires. This is negligent complacency.
Here’s a simple comparison: During the early-1970s, environmental protection exploded into our collective social consciousness in a big way. In the decades that followed, environmental protection laws were passed by government at all levels. I remember as a young firefighter getting calls to “wash the highway.” This was usually after a car accident or some other type of road spill. Back then, we would simply use a booster line to wash whatever was on the highway into the closest city sewer and call it a day. After these environmental laws passed, this practice ended. Today, absorbent is used to mitigate spills and it’s then collected for proper disposal.
The federal government in particular, with the passage of the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA), paved the way for cleaning up the environment, thereby beginning many fire departments’ hazardous materials (hazmat) units. Back then, encountering dangerous environmental pollution and substances was very common in the fire service. However, most departments lacked the training and equipment to safely mitigate these hazards. Sadly, many firefighters were contaminated over the years, with some dying as a result, before hazmat units and comprehensive training became the national standard.
With the success of the environmental laws came a natural decrease in willful contamination and pollution of the environment and a corresponding decrease in hazmat incidents. Businesses now follow strict policies to guard against environmental contamination or they can face serious fines and penalties. This doesn’t mean the need for hazmat teams has gone away. To the contrary, while domestic hazmat incidents may be decreasing, criminal hazmat calls have filled the void. Today the threat of terrorism has forced fire service hazmat teams to refocus on the criminal use of hazardous materials and substances and the Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosives (CBRNE) threat. This has allowed them to work closely with our partners in law enforcement and develop new and better methods of detecting and mitigating threats. It’s safe to say that federal legislation played a big part in establishing this branch of the fire service.
In contrast to the above, there is no corresponding federal legislation regarding high-rise building firefighting. Despite hundreds of millions of dollars in damage and many lives lost in high-rise fires over the years, the response protocol to these incidents is still strictly a local affair. It’s time we look to reexamine this situation.
According to a construction website that tracks development in the Philadelphia area, there were 32 high-rise buildings under construction in the city at the beginning of 2017. This is in addition to the hundreds that already exist.
With each new building, architects use new construction methods, field new systems, use new materials and explore the limits of design in order to create the newest and grandest buildings money can buy. These glass towers and their complex environmental systems house thousands of people who depend on the fire service should anything go wrong. Unfortunately, when we’re most needed, our firefighters may not be up to the task. The pace of change in these buildings has outdistanced most departments’ ability to stay current with the equipment, training and staffing needed to safely combat a serious high-rise incident.
Thinking about the above example I used of the hazmat unit, make a quick survey and think about where your department falls on these issues:
- Are high-rise fires as staffing-intensive as hazmat jobs?
- Do hazmat jobs require special training or knowledge? Do high-rise fires?
- Do you regularly train for hazmat incidents? What about high-rise incidents?
- Do hazmat jobs require special equipment? Do high-rise fires?
- How many hazmat calls do you get in a year? How many high-rise calls?
- How many firefighters have died in hazmat incidents in the last 25 years? Not including 9/11, how many firefighters have died in high-rise incidents in the same span?
- What level of expertise does your department (especially your officer corps) have employing the Incident Command System in a high-rise scenario?
The fire service has gone to great lengths to prepare for the threat of hazmat incidents, yet it has done almost nothing, comparatively speaking, to address the increasing risk of a catastrophic high-rise scenario. What’s eerily similar is the high-rise threat actually parallels the hazmat threat. While domestic or accidental high-rise fires may not be a paramount consideration, we have completely ignored the intentional threat.
Al Qaeda has successfully attacked high-rise buildings in the past with spectacular results, and they have been known to return to methods that brought them previous success. The threat of terrorists attacking a high-rise building sends shivers down my spine and keeps me up at night. After I wrote the first draft of this article, I was watching the recent high-rise fire at the Grenfell Tower in London, and sadly, I was thinking, “Was this an intentional act?”
This is a scenario for which most of our counterparts in law enforcement also have little training. Police for the most part train to deal with people; firefighters train to deal with buildings. As I frequently look at Philly’s ever-expanding skyline, a fire in one of those towers certainly fills me with worry, but a terrorist attack from insiders with some fundamental knowledge of building systems and services fills me with dread. This scenario could be a nightmare for our brothers and sisters who unknowingly enter an intentional deathtrap.
High-rise units
If you have high-rise buildings in your jurisdiction and you don’t have a specially trained and equipped high-rise unit, you should seriously consider creating one. This unit should respond on all high-rise calls and, if need be, stage until the situation is assessed. You should also have a complementary high-rise administrative unit.
The list of areas for which a high-rise unit needs to be proficient and how those areas interact with each other is comprehensive. Here’s what a model training program should involve:
- High-rise construction: Firefighters need to understand the materials and methods being used in modern skyscrapers as well as in legacy construction high rises. They need to understand what the buildings can and can’t withstand, and how fire will impact structural integrity. They also need to understand the difference between commercial, residential and mixed-use high-rise occupancies.
- Incident Command System: I can promise you that a real high-rise fire/incident will have you filling in boxes on the ICS chart you never knew existed. The incredible complexity of an incident in a high-rise building will tax your command staff and resources to the maximum and expose weaknesses in even the most proficient departments.
- Elevator construction/operations: Modern elevators are getting more complex, move faster and carry heavier loads than even just a few years ago. Designers are working on not just vertical lift systems but also horizontal systems. Does your department have a static training aid for teaching elevator operations? Is it a relic? Do you have someone factory-trained to teach elevators to your members, or is it ancient knowledge passed down through word of mouth?
- Alarm systems: Modern alarm systems are increasingly sophisticated like everything else electronic in our world. It’s not uncommon to see Internet-based systems that perform multiple, seemingly unbelievable tasks from a cell phone in the lobby. These systems are tied into many of the building’s other systems and often have dedicated monitoring, both human and computer as well as video. The downside is anything Internet-based can be hacked. A hack may be the first sign of an attack, if you even know if the system has been hacked.
- Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems: Like all other modern systems, constant evolution and increased performance is the standard. Just think about how improved the little window air conditioners people use in their home are today. They’re lightweight and super-efficient compared to the giant, noisy, energy-guzzling models of a generation ago. Now imagine the complexity of the system for a new 50-story building. It’s imperative for an incident commander to know what these systems can and can’t do. Environmental systems are attractive targets for sabotage and terrorists due to the fact they access every part of a building. A chemical agent released into an HVAC system could potentially kill hundreds, creating the nightmare scenario of a high-rise, MCI or hazmat incident.
- Other utilities like natural gas, electricity, water and even phone and information technology (IT) systems are also critical in times of crisis. Nearly everyone today carries a cell phone, which is really a handheld computer. In times of crisis, people instinctively turn to their phones for information and instruction. Communicating information can work both ways. For example, it may alert people to what’s going on and how to safely egress an area. Conversely, it may also alert terrorists to the actions of police and responders providing them time to adjust their tactics. Information management must be a part of every high-rise incident command structure.
Standing practice in many fire departments is to grab the building engineer or maintenance person to assist during emergencies. How many times is that person not on the premises? What if they are a new employee who just started and doesn’t know much, has fled with everyone else, or worse, may have been a victim of whatever happened? The answer: all too often.
In the fire service, time is in short supply. We can’t rely on building engineers or sprinkler systems to magically save the day. When you have that many variables in a situation, any one failure can lead to a chain reaction that spells doom for us and those we are sworn to protect.
In sum
Going back to One Meridian Plaza, Philly’s bravest had their hands full, as they would today with the same scenario if that building still existed. Now, let’s add all the multiple changes that have occurred in the last quarter century, and think about how quickly changes are taking place every day. Many of us when faced with today’s infrastructure and technology would gladly take the old days. However, we have to learn from the past in order to prepare for the future. Let’s pass on to the next generation not only tales of heroism but of wise decision-making and acting on lessons we learned the hard way. High-rise firefighting is getting more complex while our skills dwindle. That tale never ends well. Stay safe.
