Loudoun County fire chief says his firefighters were saving lives and should not have done anything differently.
Loudoun County Fire & Rescue Chief Keith Johnson told the I-Team as he looked back on the response from Feb. 16.
At the time of the explosion that killed Sterling Firefighter Trevor Brown and injured nearly a dozen others, radio calls indicate they found a leaking 500-gallon underground propane tank in the backyard.
“Most people will ask, you know, why were you in the house? The answer is simply, well, we have occupants to remove in the house. They were inside. Our first job is life safety. We will risk a lot to save a lot."
Prelminary investigations shows the gas seeped from the leaking tank into the home before it exploded with firefighters inside.
Loudoun County firefighters carry a gas meter equipped to measure pentane, which they explain as an effective way to detect either propane (normally stored in tanks) or methane (piped natural gas).
“Our meters obviously are calibrated to read gas, and we have action levels. When it gets to a certain actionable action level, we will remove ourselves from the environment. We can't operate in an environment that's not safe."
“(It is) still yet to be determined what the crew saw when they got there, what they had on their meters. That's all in the review,” the chief added.
It is far from the only underground tank in the county. Loudoun County does not maintain records on the number of underground storage tanks in the county, but building records show at least 2,000 permitted tanks countywide.
As details emerged after the deadly blast, the county fire marshal halted Southern States from delivering gas until its safety codes are into compliance. Investigators determined the company had been at the house that blew up.
Fire officials say as development spreads across the county, not all neighborhoods are served with underground gas lines.
When responding to reported gas leaks, firefighters don't pull right up to the location.
“We start at 200 feet away. That's what our policy is. And then we slowly and kind of actually make our way closer," D.C. Fire Marshal Mitchell Kannry explained.
In January, D.C. firefighters used that safe distance near the site of a gas leak in Southeast. A delivery truck hit the gas line next door to Baby Einstein Child Development Center on Marion Barry Avenue.
“We actually smelled gas (inside and on the second floor)," Baby Einstein owner Regina Snead said.
She jumped into action, getting 16 kids, some just months old, into their coats and out the door.
Minutes after they got to the corner, the windows exploded out of the day care’s building, and the convenience store next door collapsed.
“If we didn't think quickly, we could have been in the middle of all this," Snead said.
Not one of the kids she cared for was hurt.
In the midst of it, the dozens of responding D.C. firefighters escaped injury, and not a single truck was damaged.
