San Antonio Firefighters Learn From Mistakes at Blaze

Two minutes before a second alarm that triggered a request for more resources to fight the inferno that eventually destroyed the historic Wolfson Building downtown last October, a pair of San Antonio firefighters found themselves in the heart of the fire.

The men, whose names were not released, had separated from the crew leader, thus committing one of the San Antonio Fire Department's cardinal sins because it makes pinpointing firefighters' locations impossible.

While the two firefighters scaled a ladder to check for any victims inside what they believed to be residences, the crew leader began to place a ladder at a different window, further away from the dangerous flames.

The fire and the department's response are detailed in a post-incident analysis, a report used to assess SAFD's actions - good and bad - on every multiple-alarm fire, recently released to the San Antonio Express-News in an open records request.

"They came in a window and got tangled up in furniture inside an office, where you couldn't see your hand in front of your face," said Assistant Chief Mike Walsh adding that another firefighter had to tell the crew leader his men were inside the building. "They knew they got themselves in a hot spot."

Another firefighter told the crew leader where the two firefighters were, and he climbed the ladder and found them. Conditions had worsened after other firefighters placed a large fan in the building at West Commerce Street and North Main Avenue in an attempt to quell the fire.

The crew was ordered out of the limestone and heavy timber building, and SAFD's command staff realized the incident was much more severe than they'd originally thought.

Walsh said the men were verbally reprimanded for their actions - separating themselves from their officer - during the department's review of the incident, which lasted for about three hours and took place a month after the destructive fire. Other ill-advised actions were also discussed in the review, Walsh and Chief Charles Hood said, including "freelancing," in which firefighters make their own assignments instead of awaiting orders. Things done well were retold in the analysis, too, such as a safety officer's reports that caused the battalion chief to move fire trucks before the building collapsed. Overall, the fire, which also damaged the adjacent high-rise Riverview Towers, an office building, was seen as a devastating-yet-successful incident, Hood said.

"It was spectacularly challenging, and it was a 'career fire' for everybody that responded to it," he said, meaning a fire of such magnitude that typically occurs only once in a firefighter's career. "It was a combination of training and luck that nobody got cut, nobody got burned, nobody twisted an ankle climbing 21 flights of stairs."

Firefighters who responded to the multiple alarms had been working all night, and some had worked a two-alarm fire just before the Wolfson Building alarm was sounded. Their fatigue, combined with a lack of the building plans, a fire that had been smoldering for longer than SAFD initially thought, the building's partial collapse and flames that spread into an adjacent high-rise, added to the fire's challenges. Of the 216 SAFD staff at the scene, one firefighter was hospitalized after he was found to have high blood pressure while being medically evaluated at the scene, but he was treated and released the same day.

Although no evidence of the cause of fire remains, arson investigators have "no doubt that it started in the kitchen of the barbecue restaurant," Walsh said. Employees at the Meat Market Barbecue, which leased space on the bottom floor of the 1880-built building, told investigators they'd cooked until 3 a.m., when all employees left.

SAFD wasn't called to the building until 4:19 a.m., records show, indicating that the fire had been smoldering inside the cavernous building for more than an hour. Arriving fire crews had a difficult time finding the origin of the blaze, Walsh said, but they thought it wouldn't take long to extinguish. By breaking windows and ventilating the Wolfson Building with large fans, SAFD actually fed the oxygen-starved fire more.

Crews also lacked a site plan of the building, which made locating stairwells and navigating through the pieced-together building's partial walls difficult, Walsh said. Firefighters were still trying to locate the source of the fire until just before a second flashover, an occurrence in which everything catches on fire. Then, 73 minutes after SAFD was called to the scene, an exterior wall partially collapsed.

"We were anticipating a collapse, but we were scrambling to get everybody away from the collapse zone," Walsh said. "If we worked the same fire today, we would definitely be more careful with where we placed our apparatuses (vehicles) initially."

Walsh said following the analysis, SAFD instituted training that directly related to lessons learned from the massive fire, including on firefighter accountability to ensure freelancing and crew separation doesn't occur, and bought needed equipment. Recommendations have been made for better microphones that would allow firefighters to communicate better while depending on oxygen tanks to breath, and the fire department has requested more BlitzFires, used to better direct water from fire hoses.

Meanwhile, the building's owner, Paul Carter, is meeting with city staff soon to discuss options for redeveloping the property.

Aside from some limestone slabs, a plaque commemorating the site as the camp of General Santa Ana after the battle of the Alamo and a mural by prominent Hill Country artist Porfirio Salinas that miraculously survived the blaze and is being restored by the Witte Museum, not much was left of the building, Carter said.

"That was the project that my family put together as a labor of love for the city," he said, adding he misses the building and passes it daily. "It was my first real estate development project."

Originally home to the Wolfson's Dry Goods and Clothing store, the building was damaged by a fire in 1904 and later housed Bell Furniture Co. Most recently, the building was home to the Main Street Ballroom, the Poblano's on Main restaurant and the headquarters of Mama's Café.

"Whatever will go there will definitely include the marker plus a new one, and hopefully even a painting of what the building used to look like," Carter said. He expects the project to include residences and other mixed uses, he said, adding he's open to the property being developed by someone else. "It's a great chance to save a piece of San Antonio history."

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Twitter: @EvaRuth