Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue
Chief Jeff Johnson
Personnel: 250 career firefighters, 125 volunteer firefighters
Apparatus: 18 career engines, seven volunteer engines, two ladder trucks, two squads
Population: 320,500
Area: 216 square miles
The Aloha area of Washington County, OR, is urbanized yet unincorporated. Lying between the cities of Beaverton and Hillsboro in the western suburbs of Portland, the community is a mix of high-tech, light manufacturing and older residential occupancies. Much of Aloha's housing is large apartment complexes, built in the last 20 years to accommodate a rapidly growing population.
Photo courtesy of Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue The front of the fire building. Deaths occurred in the apartments to the upper left, on the third floor. Residents of the first-floor units were able to escape through patio doors leading to the parking area and rear walkway.
The region's construction and high-tech industries are booming and residents are flocking to the area. Newcomers from other parts of the country are being joined in growing numbers by immigrants from Mexico, who frequently live in the apartment complexes in large, extended families. It is common for those who have established a toehold there to share quarters with recent arrivals. This close-knit togetherness would contribute to and make poignant a tragic fire at the Oakwood Park Apartments in the early morning of June 28, 1996, when six children and two adults would lose their lives in a fire that was intentionally set. This was the largest loss of life ever suffered in a single fire in Washington County.
Mix Of Occupancies
Washington County forms the western border of the City of Portland. The east end of the county is densely populated and comprised of several medium-sized cities and towns connected by unincorporated areas that contain high-tech industrial parks, shopping malls and large upscale neighborhoods. This section of the county is protected by Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue (TVF&R), Oregon's largest fire district. Under the direction of Fire Chief Jeff Johnson, TVF&R covers eight cities and parts of unincorporated Washington, Multnomah and Clackamas counties with 250 career firefighters (105 of whom are paramedics), 125 volunteers and 20 fire stations, 14 of which have advanced life support (ALS) staffed and equipped apparatus.
The night of June 28 was warm and dry, with little humidity, typical for early summer in Oregon. At 1:25 A.M., TVF&R's fire dispatch center, FireComm, called a commercial box alarm for a reported fire in an apartment building at SW 170th Avenue and Heritage Court. This complex is known to have a large Spanish-speaking population this would be a significant factor in hindering rescue operations during the fire.
Fire company pre-plans indicated the complex had six three-story buildings, with each building having 24 individual apartments. The buildings were constructed with a center fire wall that divided each structure into two halves. Open stairways running from front to back through the center of each half provided the only access to the four apartments on each floor. Ground-floor units were provided with patios; upper-floor units had wood decks extending off the living room. The fire building was at the end of a narrow parking area and faced a long wood frame carport. A double fence separated the back of the fire building from a large field, providing no rear access for fire apparatus.
Reports Of People Trapped
Battalion 2 Chief Dennis Katz was assigned to the first alarm. While responding, he overheard a radio report of smoke in the area from a company returning from a different fire. FireComm then reported to Katz that it was receiving reports of people trapped, and asked whether a second alarm should be sent. In light of the 911 center's information, Katz ordered the second alarm at 1:30, prior to the arrival of any first-alarm companies.
Engine 254, a three-person company, was the first to arrive at 1:31. Lieutenant Darrell Parham gave his size-up: a three-story wood-frame apartment complex, with fire engulfing all three floors of the north stairwell and one top-floor apartment fully involved. The engine company immediately began attacking the fire, then ordered the next-in engine to lay a five-inch line and passed command to Katz. Because the stairs were fully involved, it was impossible for people to exit their apartments using the main door. Therefore, people were jumping out of upper-level windows and off rear decks to escape the flames. Truck 254 with Captain Bernie Otjen arrived next, staged in front of the fire building and immediately took ladders to the rear of the complex to assist with rescue. Residents who ran to their rear decks to escape had already leaped, however, and were making their way toward the front parking area, where they awaited medical care.
Photo courtesy of Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue The rear stairway led directly to a narrow walkway where two fences, rear patio storage and no apparatus access added to the difficulty firefighters faced while trying to rescue residents. Apartment 36, where two victims were located, is at the upper right.
As Katz arrived and took command, he noticed that a number of injured people had gathered in a nearby carport. He ordered Rescue 267 Paramedic/Firefighter Norvin Collins to set up a Medical Branch. FireComm was notified that a Medical Branch was established and that additional ambulances would be ordered. By then, Truck 254's crew had returned to the front of the fire building, where Otjen was ordered by Katz to take Division A with search and rescue a main priority. (Under the incident command system used by TVF&R, Division A is the "address" side of the building, generally where the main entrance is located. Sides are then given sequential letters in a clockwise direction, so Division C would be the rear of a standard four-sided building.)
Engine 252, arriving about 30 seconds after Truck 254, took a hydrant within the complex and prepared to lay-in to Engine 254. Engine 267 and Engine 259 were also simultaneously arriving, and Engine 259 assisted with providing a water supply while Engine 267 was ordered to report to Division A and assist with rescue and evacuation of the injured from in front of the fire building. While Engine 252 was taking the hydrant for the primary water supply, Katz ordered the first-due second-alarm company to take another hydrant and provide a secondary water supply.
As Engine 254 was attacking the fire with two 1 1/2-inch handlines and making headway up the stairs, more drama was unfolding in the parking lot. Engine 252 suddenly reported its hydrant was out of service. As the hydrant was opened and the line became pressurized, the hydrant suddenly erupted out of the ground and fell over. Water was now flowing freely out of the hole, flooding the complex. Engine 266 was just arriving and had located the next-closest hydrant, 1,300 feet away an 170th Avenue. The company rapidly laid in all 1,000 feet of its five-inch hose, and Engine 255, who was following, immediately picked up the hose and completed the lay-in. This ensured that attack crews were never without water. Personnel from Engine 252 and 259 were then ordered to assist with fire attack.
Katz then assigned Engines 266 and 258 to the Medical Branch director, and Engine 255's crew was sent to assist Division A. Engine 256 arrived next, finishing out the second-alarm assignment. The crew was assigned Division C, and pulled 500 feet of 2 1/2-inch hose to the rear of the building. Deputies from the Washington County Sheriff"s Office and Beaverton police officers, noticing that Engine 256's crew was experiencing difficulty getting the line around the building and through a narrow three-foot walkway, jumped in to help them pull hose. Division C operations were hampered by the double fence that severely limited personnel movement and ladder placement along the rear of the structure.
During this phase of operations, Katz was told by the Medical Branch that the department's Mass-Casualty Incident (MCI) protocol had been initiated. (The MCI protocol establishes a Medical Sector as part of the incident command system and assigns personnel to oversee triage, transportation, communications and staging. It oversees the assessment, treatment and transportation of a large number of patients in a way that expedites patient care and doesn't overload any one local hospital.) Fourteen injured people had already been identified through triage, several others were reported missing and at least two had been transported to a trauma center. The Medical Branch director asked for an additional three rescues, five ambulances and two engine companies.
Katz requested a third alarm at 1:38 A.M. This brought out TVF&R's Overhead Team, which staffs the major functional positions of the incident command system structure on all large-scale incidents. Administrative Chief Gary Nees arrived, was briefed by Katz and took command. Katz was assigned the duties of Operations chief, and struck a fourth alarm at 2:22 for personnel relief.
Searching For Victims
Significant knockdown of the main body of fire was achieved within 20 minutes after arrival of the first-alarm companies. As firefighters moved through the apartments extinguishing spot fires, secondary searches were undertaken.
Photo courtesy of Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue Occupants of apartments on the first and second floors of the fire building kept their doors shut during the fire and subsequent escape, sparing these units from significant fire damage.
Firefighters had difficulty accounting for all the occupants of the building. Command was receiving conflicting information from the scene and from the hospitals where patients had been transported. Families had been separated during the escape and subsequent triage, and some children who were dropped to safety and were now in the care of friends were initially thought missing.
Because most of the occupants were incapacitated or didn't speak English, verifying the last known location of potential victims was extremely difficult. Personnel from TVF&R and local law enforcement agencies assisted in translating but it took some diligent investigative work to determine who had escaped and the number of people who had been sleeping in each unit.
Surviving fire victims reported that several people had been trapped in Apartments 34 and 36. These upper-level apartments were fully involved upon arrival and, since the doors had been left open onto the stairwell, they had suffered extensive fire damage. Fire attack crews had found two severely burned bodies in these units after the initial knockdown and primary search, and personnel conducting secondary searches said they thought they had seen four more. Search crews were ordered out of these two units until investigators could arrive. The remaining apartments were found to be clear of any victims after a thorough secondary search.
After arrival of personnel from TVF&R's Fire Marshal's Office, fire crews assisted in conducting a detailed grid search of the gutted apartments. By this time, Medical Branch and Command, working with a police liaison and TVF&R's Community Services Division, had identified eight residents who were still missing. Search crews soon confirmed that they had found eight bodies. Four children and two adults were located in apartment 34, and one child and one young adult in apartment 36.
Suspect Targeted
Investigators became suspicious early due to the rapid buildup of fire and its concentration in a stairwell that lacked any obvious source of ignition. A joint investigation by TVF&R, the Washington County Sheriff's Office, Oregon State Police, and Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Agents determined the cause to be arson. Flammable liquids had been poured in the stairwell area and ignited, resulting in an immediate buildup of heavy fire conditions that precluded any escape through the apartment's front doors.
As investigators began focusing their attention on identifying possible suspects, one person of interest was an 11-year-old boy who resided in the complex. At the time of the fire, the boy alerted his parents to the blaze and received a great deal of media attention in the wake of the incident.
The investigation took an interesting turn three nights after the fire. TVF&R Engine 267 responded to a manual pull station alarm at a motel near the fire scene. When the company had trouble resetting the alarm system, it put out a call on the radio for assistance.
Deputy Fire Marshal Al Kellas, one of the principal investigators on the Oakwood Park fire, was working that evening in civilian clothes. Kellas responded to the motel, one in which a number of displaced fire victims were being temporarily housed, to assist the engine company. When he asked the crew who had pulled the alarm, they identified the 11-year-old boy from Oakwood Park.
Kellas contacted the boy, engaged him in conversation about the fire and was startled to learn that the child knew a lot of details about the fire that hadn't been made public. Kellas calmly bid the boy good night and then called sheriff's investigators to report what had happened. The following morning, detectives contacted the boy. At midday, he was taken into custody and charged in connection with the fire. (The trial was pending at presstime.)
Thirteen engines and four trucks with 66 firefighters responded. Mutual aid was received from the Hillsboro Fire Department, Cornelius Fire Department and Portland Fire Bureau. The Tualatin Valley Water District shut down the hydrant that broke, determining that it had been damaged prior to the night of the fire.
Oregon law requires that landlords provide and tenants maintain smoke detectors in all rental properties. After the fire, a check of other apartments in the Oakwood Park complex found that 66% of the detectors were missing or not working. TVF&R's Community Services Division issued news releases on the day of the fire advising renters to check their smoke detectors. In addition, local police and fire crews immediately began checking smoke detectors on every emergency response that took them into a house or apartment.
Three weeks later, TVF&R responded to another apartment fire that took the lives of three people and injured one. Engine 267 and Rescue 267 were able to pull one victim to safety but two adults and a 16-month-old child died. Although this fire was determined to be accidental, five of the 10 smoke detectors in this complex were found not working.
Lessons Learned
Several lessons were learned or reinforced as a result of these fires:
- An organized incident command structure is essential for events of this magnitude. TVF&R utilizes the National Interagency Incident Management System (NIIMS) on all fires and major medical events. Personnel are familiar with the procedures and terminology used, and expanding the size of the command structure to accommodate these multi- faceted events was smoothly accomplished.
- The news media were on-scene early in Oakwood Park fire. A local TV station aired a live report repeating a rumor that the broken hydrant had, in fact, been hit by a responding engine and that firefighting efforts had been hampered. Public Information Officer Karen Eubanks and Community Services Director Tim Birr moved quickly to knock down the rumor, going so far as to enlist the help of water officials in showing reporters the evidence of pre-fire damage to the hydrant. These actions resulted in immediate, on-air retractions and headed off adverse publicity.
- The on-scene efforts of public information staff, continual monitoring of news accounts of the fire and a long history of proactive media relations combined to pay dividends during this tragic incident. In addition to providing information about the fire, TVF&R staff used the event as a mass media "teachable moment" to get out fire safety messages.
- The fire district has a strong customer service orientation, and demonstrated its concern by supporting the relief effort done by the American Red Cross and a local church, helping tenants remove their possessions from the building, allowing part of a nearby firehouse to be used for temporary storage and helping to arrange for grief counseling. In addition, a community meeting was set up with bilingual firefighters to let non-English-speaking victims of the fire receive information and ask questions about the incident.
- From a public education standpoint, the fires pointed out the need to re-focus TVF&R's efforts. For a decade, district firefighters had routinely done door-to-door smoke detector checks in residential areas and provided free detectors and installation to households that lacked the life-saving devices. Apartments, however, had generally been left out of the program, since Oregon law requires landlords to provide the units.
These fires graphically pointed out the failure of significant numbers of tenants to maintain detectors in working order and, as a result, TVF&R intensified its educational efforts in apartment housing. A new program, ironically planned before the fires, now has fire companies visiting apartment complexes in their first-due areas, conducting smoke detector checks and passing out fire prevention literature. Fire companies select the complexes for visitation based on firefighter assessment of risk.
- Before the fire at Oakwood Park, TVF&R had already produced Spanish-language fire safety materials, including a video on residential smoke detectors. In the wake of the fire, the district stepped up its effort to communicate with this rapidly growing segment of the population and made use of local Spanish-language media to communicate information about both the incident at Oakwood Park and fire safety in general. In addition, TVF&R officials joined in the formation of a community coalition to work with the Latino community in improving translation and bicultural support in major incidents and disasters.
Challenging Incident
When seen from the proper perspective, every event becomes a learning experience. However, when a single incident results in eight fire deaths, implementation of mass-casualty incident procedures, multi-jurisdictional fire investigations, juvenile arson charges, language-barrier problems, microscopic media attention, critical incident stress debriefing and challenging tactical problems, the "learning" process can be overwhelming.
By analyzing every aspect of these events, both individually and collectively, TVF&R will continue to identify and validate those procedures and tactics that were successful and incorporate them into its training exercises. Using the same methodology, the department has recognized weaknesses in some procedures and public education activities. These have been addressed through the implementation of measurable improvement programs.
Dennis Katz is a battalion chief with Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue. A 25-year fire service veteran, he teaches fire science at Portland Community College. Paul LeSage is a TVF&R captain. In addition to his 15 years with TVF&R, he has seven years' experience as a flight paramedic. Tim Birr is a TVF&R division chief supervising community relations.
