Poor planning and the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department's failure to follow national safety standards resulted in the death of a recruit last year during a training exercise at Port Everglades, according to a report released Tuesday.
Wayne Mitchell, 37, a lifeguard who waited years for a chance to become a Miami-Dade firefighter, died Aug. 8 when he got separated from four classmates and several instructors at the Resolve Fire & Hazard Response Center.
The exercise, which entailed the recruits making their way through a steel structure designed to simulate a burning ship, was meant to be controlled, but it was not, concluded a report released Tuesday by the Miami-Dade Office of Safety's risk management division.
The report listed a number of regulations broken during the exercise, including:
The training scenario was too complicated for recruits going into a live-fire exercise for the first time.
The plans for the live-fire training exercise were incomplete and included no safety plan.
No safety officer was designated to attend the training exercise.
The recruits were not given a walk-through before the start of the exercise.
Two fires were burning inside the building at once. The recruits were told to walk past one, leaving it raging behind them.
Among the report's most startling revelations were that there was no group of firefighters, known as a rapid intervention team, waiting outside to rush into the building in case of an emergency. Complicating matters further was the lack of a waiting ambulance to provide advanced life support in an emergency.
All of these regulations are required by the National Fire Protection Association, which sets standards for firefighting and fire training. The association's requirements are part of Florida statutes.
The county's report, which is dated Nov. 4 but was released Tuesday, recommended the department:
Follow all National Fire Protection Association standards in the future;
Get the safety officer more involved and have the officer report directly to the fire director;
Institute a policy that exercises are not conducted if there are safety concerns or issues.
Another report, compiled by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, is expected to be released soon and likely will echo the county's findings. The Broward Sheriff's Office has also conducted its own investigation.
Battalion Chief Stan Hills, president of the department's fire-rescue union, said the report raises "several serious concerns." But he also said the report is flawed because the Safety Office did not interview several high-ranking members of the department.
Hills has his own list of things that went wrong the day Mitchell died.
He said recruits were forced to train at a center outside Miami-Dade because county officials never built a training facility that voters approved and funded 10 years ago. Several people who acted as instructors that day were called up at the last minute and did not have the proper training or experience, he said, and no one inside the building was carrying a radio.
When Mitchell got lost inside the dark, smoky, sweltering building, he had no way to call for help.
"I don't even want to think about what Wayne went through," Hills said.
The inside of the building was so hot that two instructors, one of whom had equipment problems, bailed out through emergency exits. That left only one instructor to guide the recruits out, according to the Safety Office's report.
No one realized Mitchell, the class leader, was missing until his exhausted classmates stumbled out of the building. They were all suffering from burns or heat stress, the report said.
Two instructors went back into the building to find Mitchell, but their efforts were hampered because they were not outfitted with thermal imaging cameras and had to make two passes through the container before finding Mitchell collapsed near the hose line.
Another factor cited in the report as contributing to Mitchell's death involved fire-rescue department managers' decision to hold two simultaneous recruit training classes. The training division was unable to handle that kind of load, the report said.
Lt. Shanti Hall, a spokeswoman for Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, declined to comment on the report Tuesday.
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