Follow-up To Controversial Audit by City Inspector General

CHICAGO FIRE DEPARTMENT COMMISSIONER Robert Hoff announced Thursday that four firefighters will be dismissed and placed on the city’s do-not-hire list for padding their mileage reports.  In addition, another 43 FF's, all assigned to the Fire Prevention Bureau, will be receiving suspensions without pay ranging from 30 to 60 days.

Chicago Fire Prention Bureau Headquarters
(Google Street View)

These actions are the result of an internal audit that showed nearly half of the Bureau's 115 inspectors and supervisors had been padding their mileage records to improperly increase their pay.  The inspectors all use their personal cars for transportation and file mileage records for reimbursement of expenses.  The discovery was first brought to public in early August when the city I.G. Joseph Ferguson not only leaked the report, but also very publicly attempted to seize the disciplinary process and pronounce his own punishment on the firefighters.  Firegeezer reported on this bizarre bit of grandstanding HERE.  The Chicago Tribune reports:

Six other firefighters who were investigated chose to retire. One person is on vacation through the end of the month, which is when their disciplinary action will be decided.

The city’s legal department will look at the cases to figure out whether the city can recoup the money.

The four firefighters who were let go previously were fired in 2008 for accepting or facilitating cash payments in exchange for making weekend pump inspections at high-rises. The inspectors got their jobs back after their cases went through arbitration, but were told if they had another infraction they would be terminated, according to Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford.

Along with the 43 firefighters, Commissioner Hoff also demoted Nicholas Russell, deputy commissioner of the fire prevention bureau, and Sal Marquez, Russell’s deputy chief, for exercising lax supervision.

The Chicago Tribune has the STORY.
The Sun-Times has MORE.

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Preplanning Venture Upgrades to Rolling Haz-Mat Incident

WATERBURY, CONNECTICUT, ENGINE 2 HAD just cleared a medical assist when they decided to check out an abandoned house for some preplanning.

Do NOT go back inside this house.  (WHDH-TV image)

After they had finished looking through the structure, the crew of four got back in the engine and started returning to their station when suddenly everybody began itching like crazy.  A quick self-inspection revealed that all of them were literally covered with fleas…."thousands of them," as one of them described it.  With the number of bites-per-person already mounting in the hundreds, they navigated directly to the nearest hospital for treatment.

Not wanting to take their new friends into the hospital with them, and thus cause a real problem, they went through a de-con in the parking lot, disrobing and putting all their clothes in the quarantine bags before going inside the emergency room where they were examined and treated.  They are also being checked for any diseases that are commonly carried by fleas such as bubonic plague.  Their clothes and running gear are getting the de-con wash jobs and the engine was towed to an exterminator's shop to be fumigated throughout.

NBC News has the story and a good video report HERE.
Hat tip:  Mark D.

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From Slate.com article

The running man is the ISO symbol used to designate an exit, as designed by Yukio Ota in the 1970′s in collaboration with a Japanese fire safety organization.

Wonder why it is not adopted by the NFPA?

Slate Deputy Editor Julia Turner wrote an interesting article about exit signs: The Big Red Word vs. the Little Green Man that was published on March 08 (here)

It describes the battle for a standardized exit pictogram and explores some of the issues.

It is part of a series of six articles about signs, pictographs and the impact of GPS.

What do you think about it? Would the running man be more effective?

Mike “FossilMedic” Ward

How about occupancy levels, how many? 

Are four exit doors enough?

A District Edict came down a few weeks ago, directing us to check for this (tax) certificate as we conduct our inspections. In the twenty five years that I have been employed by the Kinda Big F.P.D. I have never been used as a tax collector by proxy, I don’t intend to be used as one now.

The collection of this tax has nothing to do with the preservation of life or property. Us checking to insure compliance is an idea hatched by a bean counter in the county finance department and is solely a method to generate additional revenue.

I have no problem enforcing the Fire Code or the County Code as it applies to fire / life safety. I try to develop a rapport with the business owners in my district. I count on them to be prudent when it comes to fire safety. I try to educate them on the various hazards that we come across. A fire in their business is not good for them nor is it good for us.That isn’t what this is about. This is about money. link to original post.

Resulted in THIS senior staff meeting:

http://report-on-conditions.blogspot.com/2009/08/schmoe-gets-jammed-up.html

You need to see the video on Schmoe’s site: Report on Conditions.

Loved the insider references!

Mike “FossilMedic” Ward

Last week’s fire (reported in Firegeezer HERE) killed a man and his two children, and left his wife in critical condition.  They were occupying an illegal dwelling unit that had no working smoke detectors and no fire escape.  The city building inspectors had already planned to conduct a surprise inspection on the building on the day after the fire occurred.

Yesterday fire inspectors, acting on a tip, went to two converted houses that are next door to each other and found similar illicit apartments in the basements of both buildings.  WCVB-TV reports:

Fire officials said that the buildings were set up as boarding houses and they found code violations, some which they called the worst they’ve ever seen.  A total of six illegal basement apartments were uncovered between the two buildings.

 ”Disconnected smoke detection. Locked doors, hot plates, excessive bedding,” Quincy Deputy Fire Chief Gary Smythe said.

 Everyone living in the illegal basement apartments was evicted and the landlord was ordered to remove the bedding and other fire hazards.  With signs that more illegal units may have been in the works, a fire watch will be posted outside the building until the units smoke alarms can be reconnected.

The house on the right had four illegal apartments carved out
of the basement.  The house on the left had two more.  Both
buildings are owned by the same person. 
(Patriot-Ledger photo)

The problem of cramming excessive numbers of tenants, mostly immigrants, into coverted houses is apparently widespread in Quincy and has gone uncontrolled until recently.  The city’s building inspector said in the week since the fatal fire, complaints of illegal rooming houses have flooded city offices as awareness of the issue has grown.

The Quincy Patriot-Ledger reports:

In the makeshift units in both basements, there was no heat.  In one apartment, there were hot plates, space heaters and unhinged smoke detectors. Officials described it as a firetrap where narrow windows and a rickety outdoor staircase provided the only means of escape.

Read the full story in the Patriot-Ledger HERE.

WFXT Ch. 25 has this video report:

Investigators were unable to get inside until supporting
timbers and shoring were placed in the destroyed building.
(Seattle Post-Intelligencer / Rogers photo)

When they began searching through the rubble of the 48-unit building yesterday, they found two unidentified bodies inside the destruction.  The Seattle Times reports:

The search for the fire’s cause and origin “ground to a halt when the bodies were found,” (Sheriff’s Dep. Sgt.) Urquhart said. Fire investigators retreated from the scene as sheriff’s officials waited for a search warrant to be issued.

“It could be a crime scene for all we know, so we back out and get a search warrant to cover all our bases,” Urquhart said from the parking lot of the Silver Dollar Casino, which faces the rear of the apartment complex just east of International Boulevard. “Nothing’s been ruled out but there’s no obvious indication it was anything other than an accident.”

Still, “it was a surprise” to find the two victims because “the first reports we had were that nobody was missing and everybody was accounted for,” Urquhart said. “But as the holiday weekend went on, we did receive a report that someone hadn’t been seen since the fire.”

He couldn’t immediately provide details about who filed the report or say whether one or two people had been reported missing.

They found the bodies around 10:30 am in the area where they believe the fire to have started.  Both were burned beyond recognition.

KING-TV posted this video report from the fire on Saturday night:

These nuggets of wisdom were spoken just six weeks before the subject of his comments, the Shelton High School, had a 3-alarm fire that has the school shut down for two weeks.  (See Firegeezer report HERE.)  This was part of a continuing report from tv station WTNH that uncovered a plethora of fire code violations that were incorporated into a $25 million addition that had just opened up.  (Firegeezer posting HERE.)

The tv reporter also recorded the city fire marshal first claiming that they had received a waiver exempting them from any sprinkler requirements, and later after failing to produce any waiver, claiming that sprinklers are not required in school buildings.  Watch the videos on both of the above links.

Last night (Wednesday) school officials took news reporters on a tour of the area damaged by the fire and pointed out where work is going on.  But what they weren’t prepared for were questions from the media arising from a fire marshal’s report that also came out this week that lists 8 pages of fire code violations that are still unresolved.

Watch this report from WTNH/WCTX on this latest revelation:

The Connecticut Post has more on last night’s tour HERE.

The fire in Roxbury this past August 29 (Firegeezer report HERE) was caused by excessive buildup of cooking grease in the exhaust ductwork.  The ducts had been regularly serviced by a cleaning firm that failed to do their job properly.

The new proposals call for state certification of the firms and mandatory training of all workers.

NECN has a video report:

FireNews.net is carrying the story that leads off with:

A routine inspection in an industrial park last month found a chemical supply that could have killed hundreds of people and harmed thousands more.On Feb. 14, a Burlington fire inspector found 856,000 pounds of sodium hydrosulfite, a highly combustible powder that can ignite a fire if exposed to moisture in the air. The plume of sulfur dioxide gas produced in such a fire would likely kill those close by.

A recent report from Burlington Chemical Co. to state and local agencies showed the amount of sodium hydrosulfite reached at least 957,000 pounds at one point, but officials say some has since been removed.

On Friday, Alamance County officials said that the combustion of nearly 1 million pounds of sodium hydrosulfite — the “worst-case scenario” — could kill or permanently injure those within 1.5 miles, assuming wind did not carry the plume farther in one direction.

This “dead zone” would encompass Alamance Regional Medical Center, E.M. Holt Elementary School and hundreds of homes.

Read the entire article HERE to learn how the situation was mitigated.