By Mark Wineka
mwineka@salisburypost.com
The Salisbury Fire Department issued its longest, most comprehensive post-incident report ever Tuesday to explain what happened in the March 7 Salisbury Millwork Co. fire that claimed the lives of two firefighters.
Meanwhile, Salisbury Fire Chief Bob Parnell also introduced a four-member Fire Review Panel which will take a close look at the department’s operations and provide city officials with a report.
The expert panel, led by Mooresville Fire Chief Wesley H. Greene, will be taking information already included in national, state and local investigations and add it to its own research to make recommendations on personnel, physical resources, procedures, operational assignments and fire/emergency scene organization.
Parnell stressed that the panel’s work is an effort to prevent any firefighter injuries or fatalities from happening in the future. It will look specifically at the fire department’s total operation, not necessarily the March 7 fire.
Salisbury firefighters Vic Isler Sr. and Justin Monroe died in the fire at the woodworking plant, located off Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.
Parnell said the loss of Isler and Monroe was still “tremendously fresh” for his department. Though firefighters in Salisbury are brave and strong, they’re still reeling from the deaths of their friends, he said.
Parnell said the report, which is 42 pages long (not counting five different appendices), didn’t necessarily have any new revelations, but it provides the most details of the incident to date. (See accompanying story.)
“It was our intent to learn everything we can,” Parnell said.
The report is based on audio traffic, interviews with firefighters and a study of the fire scene.
The Fire Department dealt with various problems that day, including malfunctioning portable radios, loss of water pressure, cuts in hose lines, extreme weather conditions and a highly combustible environment.
The post-incident report gives a narrative that describes many of those issues.
“The Salisbury Fire Department did a lot of things right the day of March 7,” but it still doesn’t make up for the loss of Isler and Monroe, Parnell said.
In August, the N.C. Occupational Safety and Health division found that the Fire Department broke state rules at least four times for not ensuring that firefighters remained in visual or voice contact while they were in conditions “immediately dangerous to life and health.”
The state also cited the city for violations related to testing face-piece respirators and ensuring that at least two firefighters remained outside the Salisbury Millwork building when units made the initial attack on the fire.
Salisbury was fined ó and has paid ó a total of $6,563.
City officials have said the workplace violations did not contribute to the deaths of Monroe and Isler.
Several of the problems cited by state labor investigators dealt with policy or paperwork issues, not practices the Fire Department followed that day or how it operates overall, City Manager David Treme and Parnell have said.
In September, Salisbury City Council approved $107,316 for the purchase of new frontline radios for the Fire Department.
The waterproof, more rugged Motorola models will replace existing portable radios that didn’t work in some cases during the March 7 fire.
In its 2008-2009 budget, the council also approved buying a $30,000 mobile repeater to improve on-site radio signals.
Though it wasn’t listed as a violation, a state investigator recommended the city “take action on the portable radio issues that hampered communication during the fire.”
As part of its formal presentation Tuesday of the post-incident report to Salisbury City Council, Parnell asked Capt. Rodney Misenheimer to demonstrate how the new Motorola models are water resistant.
Misenheimer immersed the radio in a pitcher of water while Terry Buff radioed a message to it. The council audience could hear the transmission.
The radios can work for up to two hours under 6 feet of water or less, Buff said.
He also ticked off some of their additional features, such as channel announcers, battery gauges and identification displays ó all designed for efficiency and safety.
Buff said the “rugged” description given to the radios means they meet all military specifications.
Parnell said the new radios cost $4,500 each, while the 2001 models being replaced cost from $2,600 to $2,800 each.
The 66 new radios, which are still being programmed before going into service, will be “a tremendous asset for us,” Parnell said.
Here are members of the Fire Review Panel:
– Greene has been the Mooresville chief since 2001. He previously was chief of the Mount Airy Fire Department and had been a Winston-Salem firefighter before that. He is a past president of the N.C. Association of Fire Chiefs and now serves on the certification board of the N.C. Fire and Rescue Commission.
– Tim Bradley is senior deputy commissioner in the Office of State Fire Marshal. He has been in fire and rescue for 34 years, holding many positions with the N.C. Fire and Rescue Commission and as a deputy insurance commissioner.
He currently serves as chairman of the Board of Governors of the International Fire Service Accreditation Congress, as the state fire training director and on the board of the National Association of State Fire Marshals.
– John Sullivan is district chief of the Worchester (Mass.) Fire Department, for which he has served for 21 years. He lectures nationally on firefighter safety and survivor issues, including lessons learned from the Worchester Cold Storage and Warehouse fire in December 1999, which claimed the lives of six firefighters.
He appears in the widely distributed DVD “Everyone Goes Home: Promoting Firefighter Safety through FESHE” and is on the editorial board of Fire Rescue magazine.
– Doug Cline is a training officer for the High Point Fire Department and has numerous affiliations and certifications as a fire service instructor. He was the 1999 International Fire Service Instructor of the Year and is a well known speaker on many fire disciplines.
The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health is conducting a separate investigation of the March 7 fire, and its report has not been issued yet.