STATter 911

All images are from DCFD.com and were captured from the video shot by D.C. Fire & EMS photographer Vito Maggiolo.

Watch raw video of the fire shot by Vito Maggiolo, D.C. Fire & EMS Department photographer.

Brief excerpt of 911 call and fireground audio including call for crews to abandon roof.

The fire in the 2600 block of Adams Mill Road burned for hours Monday morning, but it is what happened in the early minutes of this call that provided for some very tense moments. Three fire companies were attacking the fire on the roof when their primary means of escape was cut off by the advancing fire.

According to D.C. Fire & EMS Assistant Chief Larry Schultz, the first crews to respond to the alarm at about 1:20 a.m. were notified of a fire on the roof. The crews from Engine 21, Engine 11 and Truck 6 made their way to the 4th floor of the 30 unit apartment building. There, according to Chief Schultz, they found only very light smoke conditions. The crews made their way to the roof top via a bulkhead door.

Chief Schultz reports there was a good deal of fire on the roof involving a deck area. Crews began attacking the fire and a short time later found fire coming up through the bulkhead door that they had just come through. Chief Schultz surmises that there was already a large amount of fire, well hidden, between the ceiling of the 4th floor and the roof. He thinks the water used by the crews on the roof could have helped break though the ceiling, giving oxygen to the fire, allowing the fire to spread further into the fourth floor.

Some of the crew members on the roof were able to battle their way back down through the bulk head door to safety. But apparently not everyone was immediately able to do so. The fire, at that point, was mostly toward side A, putting the heavy fire conditions between the crews on the roof and and the aerial ladder from the first arriving truck company.

A means of egress was quickly set up on side C. Before the arrival of the second due truck company, the crew from Engine 6 grabbed a 45 foot extension ladder from Truck 6 and carried it to the narrow alley in the rear of the building. They needed to extend it with a roof ladder to reach the top of the building.

On the video shot by D.C. Fire & EMS photographer Vito Maggiolo, you can see the ladders raised on side C and hear command officers trying to direct the trapped crews to the ladder. It is unclear if any firefighters made it down those ladders. Chief Schultz believed some of those trapped did use the ladders, but Vito Maggiolo in his account on DCFD.com says all of the firefighters eventually made it back through the bulkhead door to safety.

According to Chief Dennis Rubin, as the roof collapsed it broke the pipe feeding the automatic sprinklers on the fourth floor. That wasn't the only water problem. The water main on Adams Mill Road is only 6 inches in diameter. As firefighters were forced to go to master streams, the main was not able to supply the needed water. Three of the department's 6 water supply companies were used to lay 4-inch hose to two distant 20-inch mains.

Two, 2,000 foot lines were laid across the Duke Ellington Bridge to the west side of Connecticut Avenue and Calvert Street. Another 3,000 feet of hose was run south of the firegound to Columbia Road.

Two firefighters were slightly injured from debris that fell from a parapet wall that had been hit by one of the master streams. No civilians were injured.

Watch more raw video from the Adams Mill Road fire.

Watch Dave Statter's report on water supply issues.

# posted by Dave Statter @ 12:44 AM