STATter 911

Lets see, whose 1st due area is it................. oh, that's right, Kentland. Now I'm sure none of us could ever imagine them disobeying commands, could we?
 

Actually it's Bowie 843 first due.
PGFD will always go in and get it, it's just the way we operate...always have, always will. Unfortunatly we get caught up in the battle and those pesky radio's dont work worth a*#^%!!!
 

you can't blame the radio if its not used. Amazing command staff we have - must be mind readers to understand what they want to do.Chief 8 probably saved a few lives that night, him and the dispatcher.
 

"Hey, let's all come over to side A so we can have a meeting, congregation or a tea party so we can figure out how to handle this conflagration of monumental proportions..." Are you kidding me? I knew that general order book was just so people could stand on it to make their soap box appear taller than others.
 

listening to the audio it sounded like chief 839A should have had command. he was asking questions of command that were not being answered. It sounded very chaotic and like the command officer did not have good control on what was going on.
 

Chief 39A didn't have command. If you listen he chose to take water supply and have 43A take command..then again, no one announced who had command until the Duty Chief had to say that the Deputy Chief had command. You'd think that something done more than once a day (establishing command) would be easy to do or come naturally
 

Chief 39A assumed water supply before command was established and then reasigned himself to side-c. He acts the same way when he is at work in Howard County.
 

Sad ... A once nationally-renowned system has decayed into this. No organization. No cooperation. No communication. No accountability. No responsibility.

I also note ... NO STATEMENT by the PG EMS(and fd) people about THEIR short-comings at this incident. (It WAS, after all, a PAID Batalion Officer and PAID Duty Chief who were wanting to "be in charge".)

Funny how they jump all over the VFDs when they make mistakes, but the silence here is deafening since there will be PLENTY of blame for the "professionals" as well as some of the Volunteers.

I'm sure that Sedgewick will have a pat explanation concerning the actions of his "officers". Those "officers" need to go back to school and re-take (or maybe take for the FIRST time Fire Officer I and Incident Command.)

Everyone was LUCKY on this. It had
"Charleston" written all over it!
 

Where are the company officers? You want FFs who are aggressive and want to go inside, and PG has always been that way. Line officers need to know when to hold the guys back. It should have been obvious to any officer that this was to be exterior-only. Yeah, command should have asked for the clearance tone sooner. But c'mon...
 

Pretty funny, this blog posting has nothing to do with Kentland and the idiot from the first post automatically starts running his mouth about "Kentland". Company 33 is actually 5th due on the run card there and is the crew on the exterior in the picture attached to this story. Hmm, you mean Kentland knew enough to not go interior because of the conditions present and remained outside.... all while the career crew from 43 (professionals!) were going inside this collapsing structure? I mean, they get a paycheck so that makes them better, right?

Lets talk about the CAREER Lt. Col. that takes command, say's "lets stop all operations and figure out what to do", then gives no kind of direction, nor any size-up or instructions for approx. 10 minutes. Then everytime a unit calls command there is no answer and communications has to call him. At one point "command" had no idea what units were on the alarm or that they had deployed them to accomplish a task. WTF!?

How many major incidents has the "Lt. Col." been in charge of? This might make 5 or 6.......
 

It's a good thing that this fire wasn't in an occupied building such as a high-rise office or apartment complex, or the loss of life would have been staggering due to the lack of action by the PG County FD colonels and chiefs that were running the show. Or not running is the case seems to be. Also how come the PG County FD fire inspectors are not aware of the conditions of some of these places used by the public? What would have happened if that building had people in it? I have no confidence in the FD that is supposed to be "protecting" me. I recently read in the local papers that the PG County fire chief is spending more of my tax dollars to build fire houses where there already are ones, but he doesn't seem to be spending my tax dollars to train the firemen that he has or send fire inspectors to check out places used by us, the taxpayers. I will be sending my feelings on to the County Council. Maybe you and others can do an investigative report on this.
 

I bet those free lancer aggressive interior guys will think twice now about running into a callapsing empty building before getting any backup. Those Vollie guys needed to get their act together because they were not getting any support from Larry's guys. You gotta luv it!
 

Mr.Statter;

Good job of reporting on this one! Well covered, good sources, good comments. Looks fair and balanced. Appears that there are many lessons to be learned from this incident. Like another person posted here said, it could have been Charleston all over again. This is the kind of article that the media SHOULD be paying attention to, instead of back-room silliness and other negative things.

This incident is what affects the taxpaying public in your coverage area. This is what the public NEEDS to know about. VERY GOOD!

James Freeman
 

Wow!!! Some moron accusing Kentland right off the rip! To you, I spit in your general direction!

Second...was Rusty Thomas in charge of this thing? I know he is gone from Charleston, maybe him and scumwick are buddies!!! Made him a duty chief or something!!! LOL
 

How about the First 3 Engine Companies not dropping a Single Supply line?? And the First Due Engine having no maps of the park?? A Task Force company had to pick up the 4th due companies line in order to get water esablished, Sad very sad!!
 

It's time for the Fire Chief in Prince Georges County to step down and for someone with proper qualifications and common sense to step in and remove these improperly trained and obviously non-qualified command staff and replace them with people who can run an incident without having to come up with a plan in front of a building burning down. From what I could tell after listening to the radio feed none of the county command people had any idea how to go about this or even had any plan to deal with the situation.

This has happened before where county fire officers including the fire cief himself have atempted to run an incident. Total chaos and large scale property loss and even injuries to people.

What do our county emplyees do with the time they are paid to work? They obvously don't go out into their areas of resposibilities and look at the buildings roads, fire hydrants, population concentration or anything else. I see many county fire cars, SUVs and even fire trucks with county employees at stores, drive-ins and other places. I've seen county firemen washing and polishing their cars at the fire houses during hours that the rest of us would be working. How come they aren't training or inspecting?

Maybe they should be docked the pay for the time they are doing personal things (I don't get paid for MY lunch time). That would be a way to save budget money. Fire houses all have kitchens, TV rooms and other convenieces. If a person is expected to work extended hours, then they SHOULD come to work prepared. Like bring your groceries, newspapers, etc. with you. Not run around during work hours goofing of "shopping".

If these employees have to go out in oficial vehicles, they should be TRAINING, PRACTICING and PLANNING and INSPECTING. That would be proper use of budget money. That would be protecting the public and getting better at the job they are paid to do.

Then maybe there wouldn't be the mess like took place at 6 Flags.
 

With all of the people there and all of the expetise and equipment, how come nobody hit the sprinkler connection (easly found) and pumped to the system in place? That might have made quite a difference in the outcome. How come the incident commander didn't order this? Did he even know about it? What about the first arriving fire companies? They shuld have known.

How come there had to be 1400' of water supply line laid when there were hydrants within 200' of the building? Why was this not known but the incident commander? At least one arriving fire company knew it and used one.
 

The reader comments regarding everything from Kentland to what a county taxpayer should expect from the career personnel are actually mute points. No one can believe they are making a completely relevant comment strictly based on this subject, if they bring into it all of their past fire service problems and prejudices. What I've written about and what Dave is asking is to try and understand the communications during this fire and were they not a problem? This setting was for from the "routine" bread and butter fireground that we run day in and day out. Questions and answers about preplanning, assignments, operations, can only be asked and answered by those who were actually there then shared with those who weren't, we hope.

What can be asked by anyone of us in the county is, 'does our command structure and communcatons become overwhelmed?'. Early into the incident we hear a initial sizeup of heavy fire in the cockloft and no obvious rescues. Later we hear that according to the incident commander, this building is written off. We have to ask, did the first engine companies know this?

Further on we hear of a collapse on two of four sides. Are there still companies inside? Did they know of the collapse? Then a sector officer advises of exterior operations and a mindful dispatcher takes the initiative to alert all units operating of this revelation.

Finally, a chief officer finds companies still operating inside, after the notice of exterior operations.

I believe that even with the fact you had a fire in a occupied amusement park, should the immediate announcement of exterior only operations been made, you wouldn't have had the risk that was taken. It doesn't take us down a notch on the aggressive scale if we do that (really, for what? an abandoned building? the aggressiveness came with keeping from the exposures, the propane tanks and the transformers).

We've had fires before in this county where the incident commander had to rein back the companies because important early tasks weren't getting done or were simply ignored altogether. We've also had fires where being aggressive almost got us killed until a chief officer pulled us out. Communicating to each other is a recurring problem, not just in this county, but in the fire service nationwide. Take a look at the questions asked in the article.

Finally, if there are questions about the specific fireground operations and tactics, then they need to be asked of the companies involved. Rant or vent all you want, but if you seriously want to learn then you need to ask those who were there. There are too many company and chief officers involved to simply blame one individual. Don't mistake this as a defense. Just if you are serious about the questions, then ask the people who should know. When I wrote the commentary, it was emailed to various friends in the fire service in other departments. One individual stated that the focus should not be on the "patch" (career/volunteer issues) but on whether or not we are good at simply getting by, settling for a status quo of "the fire went out and no one got killed, so we did good." It's worth considering.
 

"With all of the people there and all of the expetise and equipment, how come nobody hit the sprinkler connection (easly found) and pumped to the system in place?"

"Early into the incident we hear a initial sizeup of heavy fire in the cockloft and no obvious rescues."

I am guessing the reason that no one hit the sprinkler connection is probably due to the amount of fire found upon arrival, and due to where the fire was. Sprinklers are effective against incipient stage fires, but once the fire gets rolling it overwhelms the sprinkler system.

Also, cockloft areas are not sprinklered, so charging the sprinkler system for a cockloft fire is useless.
 

Better get the Class A uniform cleaned. With attitudes like(quote) PGFD will always go in and get it, it's just the way we operate...always have, always will.
its just a matter of time befor we need them. I am all for risking a lot to save a lot but come on now what are you trying to save here an amusment ride? Theses thing are mazes when there not on fire. Protect the exposure's call the insurance company and make sure every one goes home. How would you explain to a mother,wife or child that there loved one died trying to save storage building ( this is what the building was used for right) oh wait I know PGFD will always go in and get it, it's just the way we operate...always have, always will.
 

Just because you are a Chief or in this case a LT. COLONEL, it doesn't mean you should be a command offier of a fire. He had no control of the situation. Just listen to the audio.
 

The connection was picked up, that is what stopped the fire at the half way point of the building.

Rusty Thomas was not in charge, it was Rudy Thomas untill One of thew Tyrones got there.

Boy I miss the Bashoors', McCoys and Eabys'. No more calm and cool firegrounds around here
 

CHAOS = Chiefs Have Arrived On Scene!
 

Dave,

Just curious to hear your take on the silence from PGFD, normally they have something for you don't they. Does that make two times with the silent treatment???
 

Prince Georges County Fire/EMS Department what a laughing stock, it only gets worse. Must be the leadership, and the Public Safety Director is "Helen Keller". Things were much better years ago, bring back the past.
 

Good question on what to make of no response from PGFD. As for a good answer, not sure I have one.

I wouldn't call it the "silent treatment". Spokesman Mark Brady and I talk quite often. We chatted for quite a while at the scene of the storm damage in Brentwood on Thursday.

As a one-man shop, Mark does more work and makes himself available to reporters and assignment desks much more than some public safety PIO offices with a half-dozen or more employees.

Everyone makes their own decision on what they want to respond to when the news media comes a
calling. I prefer that everyone answer all of my questions all of the time. But it doesn't work that way.

Statter
 

If what I am told is correct, and I believe it is, the PIO is not the one providing you withoust a comment. He passed on the request for a response to the Lt Col in question who is the one not providing a response.
 

That is also my understandin.

Statter
 

In reading all of the comments about this Incident, I must say it sounded as if there were opinions blasting both Career & Volunteer Personnel. Yes I'm quite sure there were ineffective fire ground operations. It would seem more Professional for everyone to conduct an after action critque, on what occurred what went wrong. Some of the comments really sounded
like a case of we and they/us and them. I really believe the Leadership of both Career & Volunteer Fire Service can/will bring about any change and/or updates to SOP's to ensure ACCOUNTABILITY. I believe the downright negative criticism of County Fire Chief and his Command Staff is inap
ropriate and uncalled for. Also naming and identifying verious Volunteer Chief Officer designations is wrong and out of line. One of my mentors and I highly Respected him was Late Chief David B. Gratz. He told me
there are some good well Trained Career Firefighters and some good well Trained Volunteer Firefighters. When a comment of Negative speaks against Volunteers
it should be remembered one of those volunteers being disrespected
just might pull a Career Firefighter out of a Burning Building. The same applies to negative outburst by Volunteers against Career Firefighters. It should be kept mindful past Chiefs of PGFD such as Late Larry Woltz, Frank Briguglio, and Chief Jim Estepp, Chief Steven Edwards all worked to bring about what should be considered a good Fire & EMS Department. Just for the record they all started as Volunteers.

anonymous