Tough Month for Houston Fire

It might be time for Houston Fire to have an honest, impartial, outside assessment of their operations. In the past month there has been a serious apparatus collision that seriously injured many firefighters and killed a pedestrian, and now two firefighters have died in a house fire. From early reports it sounds like the fire was large and was fed by high winds, and that the initial arriving units were advised that everyone was out of the house. In other words there was nothing to risk.

One chief was quoted as saying "Let me paint a picture for you. If that’s what that person said, there’s more than one neighbor, Another neighbor, knowing they’re elderly, may have thought he could go in and probably assist them if they were still inside. If that were the case, there’s somebody inside."

You can play "what ifs" all day long. The accepted practice is to take the actual facts on the line, and not to take unnecessary risks, especially when there is nothing to gain.

By the same argument, there could have been a bomb in the house, or a natural gas leak. Both situations that would have called for not going interior. So that argument doesn't really hold water.

I understand the difficulty in making on the spot command decisions. It's an extremely difficult thing to do. And I can appreciate being aggressive. But clearly the culture of each department carries through to each incident. If they had practiced safe techniques in training and smaller incidents, they may have realized this wasn't the time to go charging into a fully evolved structure with high winds and no known victims.

According to witnesses, the flames had already breached the structure and were 30 to 40 feet in the air. Even if there had been victims, they were not viable victims and therefore worth risking firefighters lives for.

These types of comments indicate to me that it's time to do an appraisal of the department's practices, similar to what was done in Charlston following their tragedy. It was a difficult transition for them to make, but they and their citizens are better off for it. These recent incidents, in conjunction with similar incidents over the past few years, indicate changes need to be made. They have encountered far more than their share of tragedies. Some situations are not entirely preventable. Firefighters dying in fires and fatal apparatus wrecks are preventable. I hope these deaths are not in vain, and the Houston Fire department and all fire departments everywhere learn from these mistakes and are better prepared for future incidents as a result.