WEST WARWICK -- The first fire engine arrived at the burning Station nightclub with two firefighters. Each grabbed a hose off the pumper, says their chief, and ran for the front entrance clogged with fallen patrons.
That left no one at the truck to immediately start the pump and fill the lines with water.
"Turn the hose on!" someone screamed across the parking lot.
About 35 seconds passed with one firefighter standing ready with a hose near the entrance before any water flowed, according to a videotape of the fire.
Arriving with West Warwick's Engine 4 was the town's Ladder Company 1 truck. It, too, had two firefighters aboard -- half the minimum complement of firefighters that a national fire-prevention group recommends for each fire truck.
In the weeks that have followed, Governor Carcieri has led the praises of the scores of firefighters who eventually responded to The Station to save lives.
But more quietly -- and with great deference to the efforts of West Warwick's first responders -- leaders of local and national firefighting organizations have also been asking questions:
Should more firefighters have been on those first two responding trucks?
Did West Warwick's response to the nation's fourth deadliest nightclub fire reflect the risk many communities accept in weighing the cost of fire protection?
Would additional firefighters have made a difference in the tragic toll of 99 dead and about 200 injured?
"Absolutely,"
says Frank Montanaro, president of the Rhode Island State Association of Firefighters.
"With more firefighters there early, more people would have been rescued quicker. And if you could have gotten them earlier, you could have saved more lives because many of them suffocated."
Speaking in general terms, Warwick Fire Chief Jack Chartier agreed.
"Obviously if you pull up with a fire truck with four people on it you can do more and you can do more safely than you can with a fire truck with two. That's only common sense.
"If you're stretching hose into a burning building or attempting to save people trying to get out of a building, you can do more with four guys than you can with two. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that one out."
George Burke, spokesman for the International Association of Fire Fighters, in Washington, D.C., says simply: "It's all about money. The most expensive part of any fire department is personnel and that's where city and town governments do their cutting. They're playing with public safety and it's an unsafe situation."
Not simply in West Warwick, says Burke, but across the country.
Two-thirds of the nation's fire departments, Burke says, are running short-staffed.
"The firefighters at that scene performed heroically," Burke says of West Warwick's first responders, "and we know they are still feeling the repercussions of that tragedy. But the fact of the matter is those rigs were understaffed. And this will become a national landmark fire, like the MGM Grand fire, like the Cocoanut Grove fire. Experts will look at this fire for years."
"No one can say with certainty that more firefighters, better staffing of the apparatus, would have saved more lives," Burke says, "but we certainly believe it could have."
THE ROCK BAND
Great White ripped into its first song that night, Feb. 20, just after 11 p.m., with a pyrotechnic explosion. The sparks burned into the foam soundproofing installed around the stage. Flames raced up the walls and across the ceiling with frightening speed.
A television cameraman, Brian Butler, was filming in the nightclub that night; Station co-owner Jeff Derderian, a Channel 12 reporter, was planning a story on nightclub safety.
Butler's camera captured the panic and horror of the crowd and the arrival of West Warwick's first responding fire truck.
Within 30 seconds of the fire starting behind the band, many in the crowd, originally estimated at 360, began pushing toward the main entrance to get out.
Butler kept his camera running as he escaped through the main entrance -- about 1 minute after the fire started. Butler ran around a side of the club and briefly filmed flames and smoke billowing out of every crevice.
He returned to the front entrance. About 1 minute and 30 seconds after the fire began, his videotape showed patrons already wedged in the front doorway, piling up on each other and choking on thick black smoke.
For the next 2 minutes and 50 seconds, Butler filmed the scene: fire engulfing the building, patrons escaping through windows, survivors walking dazed through the parking lot.
About 4 minutes and 20 seconds after the fire started, Butler's camera captured the sounds of approaching sirens and talk about making room for the fire trucks.
Engine 4 pulled into the parking lot -- Butler did not film its arrival. Moments later, about 4 minutes and 35 seconds after the fire started, Butler filmed a firefighter hustling toward the front entrance with a fire hose. It took the firefighter about 5 seconds on the videotape to reach his position.
The hose was slack and was not carrying water. The hose snagged beneath the tires of parked cars and stretched across a fallen victim. As the firefighter waited in position, patrons tried to straighten the hose, pulling it from under the car tires.
Someone pleaded: "Turn the hose on."
About 35 seconds passed with the firefighter waiting by the entrance before water shot from his hose -- about 5 minutes and 15 seconds from the time the fire started, according to the videotape.
It's unclear who eventually turned on the water. West Warwick Fire Chief Charles Hall said the second firefighter on the engine also ran toward the entrance hauling another hose off the pumper truck.
Butler filmed two other firefighters running for the entrance after the initial hose was shooting water in that direction.
West Warwick officials have refused to release the Fire Department logs and incident reports that might further clarify the sequence of events.
TWO YEARS
ago this month, the National Fire Protection Association, a nonprofit group based in Quincy, Mass., with 75,000 fire experts around the world, adopted a deployment standard for fire trucks.
In addition to setting response times for when fire trucks should arrive at a fire, 1710, as the standard is known, says a responding engine company or ladder truck should have at least four firefighters aboard.
A technical committee made up largely of fire department representatives from around the country developed the recommendation. As part of its research, the committee reviewed 25 years of staffing studies from various fire departments.
A noted Seattle study analyzed the link between staffing and firefighter injuries. It said only engines with six-person crews operate at 100 percent efficiency, whereas the efficiency rate of a four-person crew hovered around 59 percent and a three-person crew at 45 percent.
A 1984 Dallas Fire Department study showed that a three-person crew had "little margin for error" in performing its duties "and any appreciable delay in arrival might place the control of the fire beyond their capability."
Apparently, few of the studies bothered to consider the efficiency rate of two-person trucks, the most common arrangement used among Rhode Island fire departments, says Montanaro.
In fact, Montanaro says, only the Providence Fire Department and a few scattered trucks in departments in Cranston, Warwick, Pawtucket and Newport routinely run with four firefighters.
THE NATIONAL
Fire Protection Association says it adopted the staffing standard to ease the perennial debate between fire departments and municipal leaders over the cost of firefighting.
But its work seems to have stirred up a hornet's nest.
Firefighter unions have wielded the standard as a new weapon in contract negotiations and government associations have assailed its credibility.
Municipal leaders "always think they can run with less staff," says Montanaro. "We consistently go into contract negotiations and there is always a proposal in there by most communities in terms of reducing staffing. It's a constant battle. They're willing to take a risk. There's no question about it. Communities are willing to take a risk because it's very, very expensive to staff."
West Warwick Town Manager Wolfgang Bauer doesn't give much credence to Montanaro's argument or to standard 1710.
"The firefighters made the standard without anybody participating in the process," Bauer said. "Almost every other organization has criticized it."
Indeed the National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Association of Counties, the National Public Employer Labor Relations Association and numerous other local government associations have railed against the standard as having the potential to bankrupt municipal budgets.
The Rhode Island League of Cities & Towns is no exception.
"You would have to search far and wide to find a mayor or town manager who wouldn't agree that [the four-crew standard] would have a detrimental effect on our local budgets," says the league's president, A. Ralph Mollis, mayor of North Providence, where most fire trucks run with three firefighters.
"In reality," says Mollis, "such a proposal could actually have a detrimental effect on a fire department and a community because it could force the closure of a firehouse to meet the minimum staffing level of four on an engine."
West Warwick's Bauer says the cost of a firefighter in his town is about $75,000 a year -- "that's 7 1/2 cents on the tax rate."
"That's not to say that if I had my druthers, would I put four men on a fire truck if there were no other related issues? Absolutely."
"You can make arguments for more people," Bauer says. "I mean, if I had three assistants, I'd love it, but is it affordable? The answer is no.
"We could use help with every department. I could tell you 50 things we're not doing with the DPW. Talk to any school superintendent. Do they have enough resources? The answer is no."
Is West Warwick's current fire staffing level safely adequate?
Bauer answers by saying no community could have ever planned for a tragedy like The Station fire.
That is why communities must rely heavily on mutual aid from surrounding cities and towns in such emergencies.
On the day-to-day basis, says Bauer, "I don't know of any . . . issue that we can't adequately address. And we've had more experiences than most other communities with fires."
One of those fires raised serious concerns about staffing at the town's three substations.
In 1990, a 13-year-old boy, Roy Gosselin, died in a Providence Street fire despite repeated attempts to save him by firefighter Louis Traficante.
Traficante had arrived alone and was the only firefighter at the scene for the first few critical minutes of the fire.
At the time, two of the town's three substations had only one firefighter on duty at a time.
The morning after that fire, representatives of the firefighters' union said that although there was no guarantee that the boy could have been saved if other firefighters had arrived with Traficante, the fatality was a frustrating reminder of the union's longtime efforts to increase staffing at the town's three substations.
Additional firefighters were eventually hired.
ASK WEST WARWICK
Fire Chief Hall today if his fire department is adequately staffed, and he replies guardedly.
"Any fire chief will tell you he'd love to have more staff."
Would two additional firefighters on each of the first two trucks at The Station fire have made a difference?
"I think if we had 10 men on each truck, it would not have made an appreciable difference given that situation," Hall said.
Montanaro says Hall "is protecting the integrity of his guys," which he can understand; "they should give them all medals for the work they did."
However, more men on that first engine would have definitely made a difference, he says.
Engine and ladder truck crews have different responsibilities, Montanaro says. An engine company is considered a "fast attack" weapon, responsible for getting the first water on a fire. The trucks carry about 1,000 gallons of water, which usually lasts about three minutes.
Ladder crews focus on rescue and venting the smoke and gases out of a building.
Had that first West Warwick engine truck carried four firefighters, Montanaro says, "on their way in they would have dropped a line at the hydrant and a guy would have hooked up to the hydrant. The truck would have kept going to the fire. The pump operator would have jumped up and got the pump started. The other two guys would have advanced with the lines and the guy who hooked up at the hydrant would have come in and assisted them."
Coventry Fire Chief Brian Hosie, who was at the fire, says Montanaro's scenario is fine for "the ideal world."
"But I think anybody arriving on that emergency scene, probably even New York firefighters, would have been overwhelmed.
"Unfortunately," says Hosie, "when people are walking up to you while you are trying to accomplish your task -- 20 or 30 of the walking wounded who were very seriously injured -- you can't just say, 'Yeah, we'll get back to you.' "
Hosie says, "As much as I think more firefighters are always important, I don't know if it would have made much more difference in that fire."
BAUER SAYS
the 1710 standard is being misinterpreted by some. It isn't the mode of transportation a firefighter takes to get to a fire but how many show up that's important.
Technically, Bauer says, West Warwick meets the standard of having four firefighters respond to a fire by sending two trucks at a time.
The department dispatches in that way, Bauer says, to meet a federal standard, known as "two in, two out," set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The OSHA standard requires that for every two firefighters who enter a burning building two others are available to rescue them if needed.
Montanaro and Burke, of the International Association of Fire Fighters, disagree with Bauer's interpretation of 1710. They say even if an engine and a ladder truck arrive together, they operate separately and each should have four firefighters aboard.
The rule itself refers to each "company" having at least four fighters. And Gary Tockle of the National Fire Protection Association, which drafted the staffing standard, says companies are usually identified by separate trucks and responsibilities.
No matter how you count the number of West Warwick first responders, says Burke, there were too few of them in the first critical moments of the Station fire.
"Given the short staffing of their rigs, it's impossible to suggest that they weren't hamstrung in their efforts to get water on that fire, that they weren't hamstrung to clear the main doorway of that structure," Burke says. "The fact remains they did not have enough firefighters to do the job."
Even West Warwick Chief Hall acknowledges "it's very difficult" to operate a ladder truck with two men.
With staff reports by Zachary Mider.
Tom Mooney can be reached at TMooney@projo.com
