FHWorld16: Lessons Shared from Houston's 'Darkest Day'

SAN DIEGO – A fire chief talked with hundreds of Firehouse World attendees Tuesday afternoon to help prevent future tragedies.

“We lost four firefighters, but this was the last alarm for seven firefighters,” Houston Executive Assistant Chief Richard Mann said about the May 31, 2013 fire now known as “Houston’s Darkest Day.”

Killed were Capt./EMT Matthew Renaud, 35, Engineer/Operator/EMT Robert Bebee, 41, FF/EMT Robert Garner, 29, and Probationary Firefighter Anne Sullivan, 24.

Previous Deaths in Houston

Houston has lost 70 firefighters since 1883.

The first firefighter to die during interior operations was Ruben Lopez in 1996. Since his death, the department has lost 17 members and most were during interior operations, including the deaths of two firefighters inside a McDonalds in 2000.

“These are numbers that I’m not proud of. I’m embarrassed and we’re working really hard to change that. That’s why I’m here today.”

And the department has made changes to reduce deaths.

Following the 1984 death of a Houston firefighter who fell from the back step of a fire truck, the department stopped allowing members to ride that position.

“We’ve had some good conversations,” Mann said about changes.

Changes Following LODDs

1984 – The back step of fire apparatus was no longer a riding position following a death from a fall off a back step.
2000 – Every Houston firefighter was equipped with a radio after two firefighters, who did not have radios, were killed in a fire at a McDonald’s restaurant.
2001 – Four person staffing on all fire units was established after a firefighter was killed in a wind-driven high-rise fire.
2009 – Tactics were reassessed following a firefighter’s death at a wind-driven house fire.
2013 – The department established a formal Organizational Recovery Process following the Southwest Inn Fire.
2014 – The department established a fireground survival program following the death of a firefighter who collapsed and was missing in a house fire.
2015 – Each member of the department received the IAFF’s Health and Wellness training following a firefighter’s death after going into cardiac arrest at a fire.

Houston’s Darkest Day

Mann noted that Houston does not have zoning policies, saying that every neighborhood can have such a wide variety of structures that it’s hard to keep up.

The Southwest Inn was a budget motel alongside the Southwest Freeway. Eventually, a restaurant and banquet facility of wood-frame construction were added on the side closet to the freeway. There were two roofs; a flat-roof section over the kitchen on the left side and a lightweight truss roof with clay tiles on the remainder of the building. The overall building maintenance was lax, so deterioration from termites and water also weakened the structure.

The first call came in at 12:05 p.m. and before crews arrived, 17 9-1-1 calls were received. One caller reported that everyone had escaped.

Arriving three minutes later, Engine 51 Captain Renuad reported a one-story structure with smoke showing from the restaurant. They pulled a 2 ½-inch attack line and made entry through the front door. Mann said they followed policy by deploying a thermal imager to check the conditions at the entryway before moving into the structure.

“We had a report that Capt. Renaud used the thermal imager and found fire above them, so they began pulling the ceilings as they went toward the kitchen,” Mann said.

The smoke from the fire was so bad that it actually stopped drivers on the freeway, which delayed many of the incoming units.

At 12:18, District 68 called for a second alarm and called for Engine 51 to exit the structure until a water supply was established. Less than a minute later, when the supply line was charged, Engine 51 returned to the interior.

Engine 82 called a frantic Mayday at 12:23 saying there was a roof collapse.

Additional resources were called once the Mayday was sounded, and shoring equipment was also requested due to a large crack in an exterior wall.

A non load-bearing wall stopped part of the collapse, which allowed Beebee and Renaud to crawl out of the initial collapse, but they were caught by a fire that quickly grew after the collapse.

“We could have easily lost another member from Engine 51 and the crew of Engine 82 if things went different,” Mann said of the catastrophic collapse of the I-beams with a 30-foot span.

Captain Bill Dowling was rescued by firefighters at 12:52 p.m., but not before a secondary collapsed occurred. He lost both legs and suffered brain damage.

“Dowling’s rescue was the first recorded successful rescue to use a RIT pack to switch over a down firefighter’s air supply. “

Recovery Mode

At 1:02 p.m., chief officers made decision to switch from rescue to recovery.

Even with a full SCBA tank, the missing firefighters would have run out of air by that time.

“That’s not a discussion that anyone wants to have. We knew a secondary collapse was about to occur due to a large crack in the exterior wall.”

There was a brief glimmer of hope when Bebe’s radio kept transmitting, but it was later determined to be degradation of the radio due to heat.

Lessons Learned

“There’s the offensive vs. defensive decision and you have to put yourself in the officer’s position to make that decision,” Mann said. “I would absolutely say he made the right decision to go in and get that fire….everything tat that point was focused on life safety.”

Mann pointed to accountability and communications issues that were found on the fire scene that tragic day.

The accountability board was overwhelmed following the collapse as firefighters were removing their SCBA and not turning off the accountability system. For a few minutes, it was hard to determine who was missing and they did not realize two companies were still inside the collapse structure.

They had recently switched to an 800 megahertz radio system a month before, but it wasn’t tested under major emergency conditions. One key change was the implementation of a radio prioritization system that allowed officers priority to use the radio and, if a microphone is keyed and there is no audio after five seconds, that radio times out.

Following the Southwest Inn Fire, the department looked at establishing a formal Organizational Recovery Process.

The primary goals include:

Establishing the facts pertaining to fire.
Identify contributing factors to fire and apps for improvements.
Develop opportunities for improvement based on all LODD, near-misses and department experiences.
Identifying and developing guidelines for policy changes.
Identifying new tactics and strategies based on lessons from the incident.

This process began in June and it was called the recovery process.

In July, the department established committee meetings to formally look at the lessons from the fire and they met twice. Through September and October, the group developed recommendations from the findings and they distributed a bulletin with the department to keep them up to speed.

A year later, the report was ready and it was going to be reviewed with the families before it was released. A week later, Firefighter Daniel Grover was killed in a house fire and that put the findings on hold.

The report was released in August and by September, all fire companies were reviewing the report at the district level.

Mann shared the following take-home messages with Firehouse World attendees.

Always focus on the priority to honor the fallen
Support families of the fallen
Support crews of fallen
Support the fire department
Keep the lines of communications open with fallen firefighter’s family
Communicate the follow-up plan of action within the organization
Update the community on the progress of the report
Support joint labor-management issues
Understand how to deal with public support, including donations

“Don’t do anything that’s a knee jerk reaction,” Mann offered, saying that you need to act on the teachable moment while it is fresh in everyone’s mind. “They are very vulnerable at the time and this is the time to make the fire department culture change, if you need to change the culture."

The last slide in the presentation showed the Houston firefighters' memorial. Above the photo, it read “If we’re not going to use experience, experience has no value.”

"I hope I have done my job in honoring those four fallen firefighters in sharing the lessons."