The Mount Morris Fire Protection District serves the Village of Mount Morris, 100 miles west of Chicago, and the 36 square miles surrounding it. The district is staffed by 30 paid-on-call firefighters, staffing three engines, one truck, a heavy rescue and three tankers as well as a grass rig and chief’s command vehicle. The district provides advanced life support EMS out of two ambulances staffed by career EMS personnel. The district responds to approximately 125 fire alarms and 700 EMS calls per year.
Built in 1968, Rahn Elementary School was not equipped with an automatic fire suppression system. Yet the school, erected just 10 years after the tragic Our Lady of the Angels fire, had many safety features that can be attributed to the changes in school design after that deadly fire in Chicago. Individual egress doors led from each classroom directly to the outside. The building was built of masonry walls covered by brick veneer. The roof was bar truss with false mansards of varying heights along the veneer wall. The school received awards from the Illinois Association of School Boards for its “state-of-the-art design” in 1968.
Simultaneous Alarms
At 10:22 A.M. on Feb.12, the Mount Morris Fire Protection District received a report of a structure fire at Rahn Elementary School, situated at the southwestern edge of the village. A teacher noticed flames coming from an unoccupied classroom and pulled a nearby pull station. At the same time, the school secretary called 911 to report the fire. As the 911 call was placed to Ogle County Sheriff’s office, dispatchers began receiving multiple automatic fire alarms from the school. The secretary reported that the fire was on the roof where a school district maintenance crew was working.
The Oregon Fire Protection District was toned for automatic aid for an engine company, which is standard on all in-village structure fires. At 10:24, the Mount Morris village police officer arrived on scene and reported fire and smoke showing. After receiving the report from the police officer, Mount Morris Fire Protection District Chief Rob Hough requested additional tones for Mount Morris for a working fire and an engine company from the Leaf River Fire Protection District to the scene. Mount Morris Ambulance 1-F-25 arrived on scene and relayed information to responding companies that all the students were evacuating and the fire had gained significant headway. Mount Morris Engine 5702 arrived on scene at 10:26 under the direction of Assistant Fire Chief Jeff Warren. He assumed command on a single-story ordinary school complex with heavy fire and smoke showing from the Bravo side. Engine 5702 laid 1,200 feet of five-inch supply line from a hydrant at the intersection of Brayton and Fletcher streets. The engine was positioned just off the Bravo-Charlie corner to allow room for Mount Morris Truck 5759 to make the Bravo side of the building. The truck staged 100 feet behind the engine.
Hough arrived on scene and assumed command. Warren was then assigned the task of interior division manager. Firefighters from Engine 5702 under the direction of Captain Bob Hopp had darkened down the fire room from the exterior, then immediately initiated an interior attack in through the Bravo side entrance down the main hallway. Interior companies faced extremely high temperatures and near-zero visibility. Horizontal ventilation was performed on the entire Bravo side of the school in an attempt to lift conditions in hopes that this would let interior companies attack the fire. Oregon Engine 5309 arrived and assisted Engine 5702 in the interior attack.
The command post was set up in the Bravo-side parking lot of the school. Retired Mount Morris Fire Chief Kenny Duncan arrived at the command post and offered his services. Command immediately asked Duncan to assist with logistics, due to his familiarity with the building pre-plan and knowledge of incoming fire companies and personnel. School officials then met with Hough and assured him all the students and faculty were out of the building. Command asked school officials to perform a second accountability and report their finding back to him. At this time, due to the heavy fire and smoke, and rapidly deteriorating conditions, command struck second and third alarms simultaneously. These alarms brought the following units: an Oregon truck and chief, a Polo engine, a Byron squad and engine, a Stillman engine, truck and chief, a Dixon City truck, a Dixon Rural mobile cascade and a German Valley ambulance.
Child Reported Missing
At this time, the school principal informed command that a kindergarten girl was missing. Command asked the principal to double-check that she had not been missed in the accountability and informed Warren of the situation. Warren ordered one of the interior companies to pull its line out and it was being redeployed in the entranceway to the kindergarten rooms when the principal told command that the girl had indeed been missed in the accountability and that all the students were accounted for.
As Mount Morris Heavy Rescue 5747 and Engine 5701 arrived; they were assigned to place additional 21¼2-inch lines into operation. Captain Ryan Fletcher led an attack into the fire room from the room’s egress door, but the crew was able to maneuver the line only about 75 feet into the classroom before debris and extreme heat and smoke pushed them back. The company had a thermal imager with them, but conditions were so poor that the image could not be seen unless the screen was placed directly against a firefighter’s facepiece.
Upon the arrival of Oregon Truck 5351 and Byron’s engine and squad, command immediately asked them to try to perform vertical ventilation. One Byron company went to the Alpha side and attempted to perform a trench cut, while the other tried to do the same on the Charlie side. Truck 5351 was positioned on the Charlie side along the gymnasium, allowing Byron firefighters to quickly access the roof, which consisted of three repetitive layers of insulation board covered by tar and gravel. These layers sat atop corrugated sheets of steel on top of bar trusses. This construction, as well as the multiple layers of material, made the task of ventilation difficult.
Stillman Chief Brian Kunce arrived on scene and met with command. Kunce assumed the position of accountability and safety manager, and quickly gathered accountability passports and tags after performing a 360-degree size-up of the building. Mount Morris EMS established a rehab area in the Bravo corner of the parking lot. (The firefighters are mandated to rehab after 45 minutes or the consumption of two air bottles.)
Conditions Worsen
Command was receiving reports from ventilation companies of quickly worsening conditions and stubborn roof materials making roof conditions unattainable. Leaf River Engine 2403 arrived and was assigned to advance a 21¼2-inch line in from the Alpha side. Leaf River Chief Brad Miller and Mount Morris Lieutenant Josh Armbruster, as well as several Leaf River firefighters, forced the Alpha entrance doors and tried to advance a handline down the north-south hallway. After firefighters advanced into the hallway and encountered searing heat but no fire, the line was backed out. All other interior companies reported the same conditions, with no change for some time. This information was relayed to command and after 50 minutes of strenuous interior work, command ordered all companies out of the structure. Apparatus airhorns were sounded and all companies retreated from the roof and interior. Kunce then made a personnel accountability report (PAR) with all companies operating in or on the building. After all companies were accounted for, command ordered the operation to be switched from an offensive to a defensive operation.
Numerous master streams and ladder pipes were then placed into operation. Oregon Truck 5351 was repositioned to the Delta side and its ladder pipe was put in operation. The Dixon City snorkel was positioned at the Bravo-Charlie corner and placed into operation. Polo Engine 5802 laid a supply line from the hydrant at Brayton and Botanic streets across the school’s playground to supply Oregon’s truck. Due to the large amount of water needed to sustain the 5,000-plus-gpm fire flow, command ordered simultaneous second and third alarms from Box 17, the district’s tanker card (each alarm on this card brings approximately 25,000 gallons of water). Shortly after requesting these alarms, command felt that a fifth alarm on Box 15 was needed as well as an additional fourth alarm on Box 17.
To supply all the streams now fixed on the burning structure, an east-and-west water supply operation was set up. Miller was assigned the task of water supply manager. To the west at the entrance to the school drive, on Fletcher Street, three engine companies – Byron 471, Leaf River 2402 and Oregon 5309 – were set up with two portable tanks apiece for a total of six tanks at the west supply. Each engine fed different operations on the Alpha and Bravo sides. A five-inch supply line was run from Byron Engine 471 to a five-inch manifold just behind the Mount Morris ladder. This manifold supplied Mount Morris’s ladder pipe operations as well as supplemented Mount Morris 5702’s supply. Leaf River and Oregon engines fed numerous ground monitors and handlines. To the east of the school’s playground, the east water supply was set up. Polo Engine 5802 and an engine from North Park also set up several portable tanks and supplied Dixon City’s snorkel.
Kunce instituted a 15-foot perimeter collapse zone. Due to the repositioning of apparatus and the change to a defensive operation, division managers were redeployed. Oregon Chief Don Heller was assigned Delta Division, Armbruster was assigned Alpha Division, Dixon Rural Chief Kevin Lalley supervised both the Alpha and Delta sides, and Mount Morris Captain Chuck Myers was assigned to assist Chief Kunce with overall scene safety.
The village street and water departments were used to improve access to the school. Trucks plowed paths across the playground to give companies access to the Charlie and Delta sides of the structure. Crews constantly spread salt to try and combat the quickly forming ice. Crews also spread several loads of gravel near the east water supply because the road base could not handle the traffic load.
Box System Activated
Due to the sheer volume of firefighters operating at the scene, the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System (MABAS) was activated. (MABAS consists of hundreds of fire departments in Illinois, northern Indiana and southern Wisconsin, and provides for an orderly move-up of equipment to fires and other emergencies. Equipment is deployed according to pre-determined lists, called “box cards,” for responding to specific types of incidents in specific areas. MABAS was organized in 1968 by the Elk Grove Fire Department, borrowing from the Chicago Fire Department’s box card system of fire management. Most divisions and departments use the incident management system combined with MABAS protocols so that departments can work together to assure that all personnel are accounted for and act as a single team.)
MABAS Division 8’s Rehab One was requested to the scene. Rehab One is a “retired” Rockford City Transit bus that was converted by Division 8 members. The bus carries dry socks and gloves, and is staffed by volunteer paramedics and EMTs. The bus also gives firefighters a shelter from harsh weather and a place to have vitals taken in a much larger area than an ambulance. MABAS Division 8 and Division 15 were requested to help supplement the alarm response already operating at the scene. Several outlying departments supplied companies for a change of quarters to cover districts that had multiple companies operating in Mount Morris.
As tankers arrived, the water supply situation on the fireground improved greatly. At the peak of the operation, nearly 7,000 gpm was flowing. A flow of this rate started to tax the village water supply. After a discussion with Village Water Superintendent Gene Ashton, command chose to divert half the tankers to the Quebcor World Printing plant at the north edge of Mount Morris to use its private water supply. Quebcor has several million gallons of water in circulation that is used in the plant’s printing operations. Two fill sites were set up at the plant that allowed the tanker shuttle to be less of a burden on the village’s system. A fifth alarm was struck for Box 17, the tanker card, to help insure that the water flows on the fireground could be sustained.
Under Control
After several hours, the black, rolling smoke began to lighten. The building’s unique construction of bar trusses with false mansards was finally failing. After several roof collapses, command brought in an excavating company, R.E. Wolber and Sons, to open up the nearly windowless brick walls to let companies extinguish the still-burning building. As operations were scaled back at about 5 P.M., command started releasing distant mutual aid companies.
At 8 P.M., command struck out all the MABAS alarms and an hour later all companies were taking up and returning to quarters to begin cleaning equipment and putting companies back into service. Mount Morris detailed a company to the building throughout the weekend to extinguish lingering hot spots.
Two firefighters were transported to a hospital for exhaustion; both were treated and released. When one looks at the 25-degree weather and all the water and ice, slips and falls could have easily multiplied injuries. Couple this with the magnitude of the operation and the exertion demanded by the firefight, the fact that there were only two injuries is amazing.
A joint investigation with the Office of the State Fire Marshal and Mount Morris Fire District found the probable cause of the blaze was a commercial-grade heat gun being used by school maintenance workers attempting to thaw a frozen downspout and leaving the heat gun unattended. The heat gun ignited combustible material in the mansard on the Bravo side. The fire raced unimpeded across the trusses, unknown to the staff and students below. The fire alarm system did not detect the fire because the truss space was not equipped with any detectors, although the ceiling below the fire was so equipped. Investigators talked to staff who reported hearing “a rumble overhead” 10 minutes before the alarm sounded. They knew there were roof problems and assumed the noise was made by workers walking on the roof. The faculty and students were commended for their quick evacuation from the building. Obviously, a delay of only a few more seconds could have had a disastrous ending. The school’s fire evacuation procedure worked well and was performed in a flawless manner.
Lessons Learned
- Fire drills work. As monotonous and disruptive as fire drills can be, they work. The 375 pre-K to fifth-grade children and 40 faculty members in the school evacuated safely as smoke and fire filled hallways and classrooms.
- Pre-incident planning is paramount. Pre-plans had identified this area of the village not having water supplies that could support high fire flows. The building’s construction type and inaccessibility were noted as known hazards and were rapidly dealt with upon arrival, thanks to previous knowledge of the building.
- Communications on an incident of this size are difficult. Thanks to MABAS, all responding companies had at least one common radio frequency from which to work. The Ogle County Sheriff’s dispatch center did an excellent job of dispatching multiple agencies as well as coordinating multiple tasks with command.
- The incident command system works. This incident would not have been possible to manage without ICS. Repetitiveness is what makes us creatures of habit; implement ICS on every call, regardless of size. When you get “the big one,” it will be run more effectively.
