SAN DIEGO - While officials planned for an increased number of incidents following the death of Baltimore man in the spring of 2015, public safety resources were quickly overwhelmed.
Jeffrey Segal, assistant chief of administration and Mark Wagner, assistant chief of operations told attendees about the department's response following the April 19 death of Freddie Gray during the "Civil Unrest: A Real Threat to Public Safety (Baltimore Riots Lessons Learned)" session in Firehouse World Big Room.
“We deal with a lot of stuff, but neither Jeff nor I ever dealt with anything like this,” Wagner said.
The two pointed out that previous contacts through hazmat incidents and incident management teams enabled them to call for additional resources as the events grew worse.
“We were challenged and it happened very quickly,” Segal said. He said the department is well equipped, but like FDNY on Sept. 11, sometimes you don’t have all the resources that you need.
The city had seen protests in the recent past, including events following the deaths of men by police officers in New York City and Ferguson, Mo.
During those events, Baltimore City Fire Department (BCFD) crews shadowed the police department and assisted where they were needed, including the use of apparatus to block protestors from accessing highways.
On April 24, five days after Gray died, BCFD activated their Incident Management Team to pull together resources and create Incident Action Plans (IAPs) for various scenarios should unrest occur following the arrest of the officers and Gray’s funeral.
The next day groups peeled off from the peaceful, non-disruptive protests and moved towards the Inner Harbor where violence broke out. Protestors were fighting with patrons at local eateries and baseball fans who were going to Camden Yards. The protestors tossed garbage cans and street barriers.
“It got ugly late on the 25th,” Wagner said, noting that police cars were vandalized.
Gray’s wake was held April 26. That same day the Baltimore Orioles baseball team was scheduled to play the Boston Red Sox and Wagner went to the game. “I thought, ‘phew, we dodged a bullet with this,’” he said when he the streets cleaned up and the downtown area relatively quiet.
Police monitored social media and on April 27, it called for students to do a “purge” – a scene from a television show that allows people to take part in violent actions for a day without repercussion.
“Social media can be your friend, or it can be your enemy,” Segal said.
Around 4 p.m., students began violently protesting near the Modawin Mall.
Public safety crews established a safe zone at Engine 52’s firehouse located only a few blocks away. They staged resources there, should things get worse.
As more media vans showed up, the violence increased. Rioters threw bricks and bottles at cops and forced them to retreat.
One SWAT medic later commented to Wagner that they found debris that was a homemade mixture of glass and concrete that they believed protestors made to cause destruction.
First Fires Reported
“We’re looking at this and we’re in our command centers. We only have a couple of hours of daylight and the media was blowing this up,” Segal said. “We knew it was going to get dark soon and we were going to have trouble.” That trouble included fires.
“We enjoy a tremendous relationship with the citizens of Baltimore. When Engine 13 hooked to the hydrant and they started getting hit with rocks we abandoned it,” Wagner said of an incident when they tried to extinguish two burning police cars. They left the scene and left the cars burning.
Shortly after a CVS store was broken into, it was set on fire and crews responded under the protection of police.
They showed a CNN news video clip where a protestor used a knife to puncture a supply line while crews were inside that fire.
At 5 p.m., the city activated the Emergency Operations Center and they called for additional resources.
“I need 20 engines and 10 trucks and I needed them five minutes ago,” Wagner said he told Segal on a phone call to the EOC. Eventually, 31 fire and EMS units responded from 12 agencies to Baltimore.
Before 6 p.m., Baltimore firefighters were being dispatched to multiple reports of structure fires.
“If you don’t control a rowhome fire in one or two units, you can close that block. We couldn’t afford that,” Wagner said.
They said they received 134 9-1-1 calls for vehicle fires.
Wagner used the city’s video security system to check on the vehicles fires and said they would only send resources if the fire threatened structures. Of the 55 true vehicles fires, they only responded to 22 of them.
“We saw this one on the television at the EOC,” Wagner said as they showed helicopter footage of a large building that was fully engulfed. Officials at the EOC questioned if that fire was even in Baltimore and they were not aware of it.
“What the police wanted us to do was put out the fires as soon as possible,” Segal said, noting that the police commissioner asked them to extinguish the fires as quick as possible to avoid the growing the protestor’s excitement.
Minutes later, they were dispatched and it turned out to be a three-alarm fire at a massive wood-frame nursing home under construction.
“That fire could have easily been a six-alarm fire, but we didn’t have those resources,” Wagner said of the fire at the nursing home.
By 6 a.m., the fires were under placed under control.
In a 15 hour span, they responded to 33 structure fires, including two three alarm fires. Showing a map of the city and fire locations, they fires were reported through the city.
The volume of medical calls during the riots dropped dramatically they said.
One auxiliary firefighter received minor injuries after being hit in the head by debris. A windshield was damaged by rocks thrown at a Howard County pumper and a Baltimore fire chief’s SUV received a broken window from a beer bottle being thrown at it.
Communications and Command
The rapid developments of the protestor’s actions bogged down the city’s radio system. Between the number of calls being dispatched and tactical channels needed for crews in the field, the radio system was maxed out.
“We thought we had a pretty good communications plan, but we quickly found out that we were overwhelmed,” Segal said.
They set up a staging area at the Old Town Fire Station and brought the radio technicians in to expand their fireground channels and update radios, plus add communications abilities with mutual aid units.
Despite plans to stage mutual aid units, they were often deployed before reaching their staging points, Segal said. That created some challenges when they did not have direct communications with Baltimore and many units did not have Baltimore’s coupling threads for hydrants.
By 9 p.m., the city suspended both emergency fire dispatch and emergency medical dispatch.
They limited the number of units dispatched to incidents twice, eventually only sending one unit to most emergencies.
Lessons Learned
Wagner called the IMT an insurance certificate that allows all agencies to know the plan of attack.
During the recent trials for the police officers, BCFD created IAPs and distributed them to the surrounding jurisdictions.
“You’re going to have mutual aid partners sending resources and I want to let you know where your apparatus are and what’s going on where they are there,” Segal said. “They are not going to be as inclined to help out if they don’t know what’s going on.
They stressed the need to develop partnerships with neighboring agencies. Established early, these can help you get the resources needed without getting caught up in the political process that can slow the critical responses.
The BCFD will be increasing the number of members who are trained as IMT members and add to those who can work at EOCs. Crews are also receiving training to improve their fire reports to help all parties better understand incidents.
They plan to strengthen their check in/check out policy to better track resources for both safety and accountability.
“It can happen anywhere. Early on I didn’t’ think it would happen to us in Baltimore,” Segal said.
“The good people of Baltimore came out the next morning and helped us clean up the city,” Wagner added.
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