By Cindy Devone-Pacheco
Published Sunday, June 17, 2012
It’s been five years since nine Charleston firefighters perished in the Sofa Super Store Fire. To this day, the tragedy remains the largest single loss of firefighter lives since 9/11. But that fact is probably one of the few truths about the Charleston Fire Department (CFD) that remains from the night of June 18, 2007. Over the past five years, the CFD has virtually transformed itself into “a West Coast fire department on the East Coast,” as Battalion Chief Mark Davis describes it.
At the time of the fatal fire, Davis was a company officer, and the last officer out of the building that night. FireRescue spoke with Davis in 2010, three years after the fire, and it was apparent that the incident was still fresh in his mind, and still deeply affecting the department. “I’m not proud of it. I don’t wear a T-shirt that says I was there,” Davis said at the time. “I hope no one ever has to go through that. If people could see what I see when I close my eyes, they would have a whole different perspective on firefighting.”
A New Normal
Fast-forward to 2012, when Davis’ outlook has brightened, and his pride in his department’s hard-won progress is palpable. Although the department is mourning the recent loss of one of their battalion chiefs to cancer, today Davis describes himself and the CFD as dramatically changed for the better. “Since we last spoke, I feel like I’m doing well. I’ve gotten into a groove, a ‘new normal’ that’s now my everyday routine,” he says.
The CFD as a whole has a “new normal” and it’s anything but routine. According to Davis, the department’s herculean effort to learn from the Sofa Super Store tragedy has resulted in improvements in everything from operations to training to officer development to rapid intervention. “I like to tell people that the only things that are still the same here are the color of the fire trucks and the name on the door,” Davis says. “Other than that, I can’t find one aspect of our department that hasn’t changed. The majority of it is overwhelmingly for the betterment of the community. Everything from operations to training to how we interact with the community is completely different.
“We still like to think of ourselves as an aggressive, traditional department,” Davis adds, “but now we train our people to make informed decisions, such as when to be aggressive and when to go defensive.”
A B-12 Shot & More
The CFD’s transformation has been a steady work in progress for the past five years. Since 2010, Davis has been promoted to battalion chief and transferred to the training division, a quick move that for him was quite an adjustment. “Within a couple days of finding out, I was moved to the training division,” he recalls. “It’s been 18 months now, and that’s been the most challenging aspect for me personally.”
Davis was charged with spearheading the overhaul of training, education and recruitment for the CFD. But he’s quick to point out that he didn’t do any of it alone. “I can’t say that I’ve done any of it by myself,” he says. “I have an excellent staff—the department makes sure that we have enough manpower in our division.”
One of the division’s most impressive accomplishments: their remarkably increased hire rate. “We’ve put 56 recruits through a 26-week-long recruit school program,” Davis reports. “We made sure they were trained to the highest standard possible so that it would be like a vitamin B-12 shot for the department.”
Other notable accomplishments include:
- The department’s 100-percent increase in its participation in state fire academies;
- Participation in an 80-hour fire officer development camp where officers are trained on issues such as how to handle personnel matters; and
- Training the entire department to the Firefighter II level, per OSHA mandate. “We got 140 people up to that level; we now have only about five people who aren’t at that level, and they are all in various stages of testing or retirement,” Davis says. “And when we cleared that OSHA mandate, it was like a huge weight being lifted off our shoulders.”
Yet while these admirable achievements have been a huge source of pride for the CFD—some of which Davis describes as the greatest of his career—they’ve also, at times, served as a source of stress. “We changed our entire response package, and the way we conduct business has changed 180 degrees,” Davis notes, “so the constant change has been very challenging.”
Dealing with the Past
Of course, the impetus for this ongoing change was a tragedy that no one at the CFD saw coming, or will ever forget. On the day of the five-year anniversary, family and department members will gather at the site of the Sofa Super Store, where they will do a reading of the names at the exact time of dispatch. Several other, smaller events will take place throughout the day.
But for some, remembering remains a painful, arduous task; for them, the memories of the Sofa Super Store Fire have not softened with time. In the aftermath of the incident, counselors were deployed to the CFD, all of whom tried in earnest to understand what the department was going through, but none succeeded initially. “People were reaching out and we really didn’t know how to do it,” Davis recalls. “The state counselors came in, and even though there was nothing but good intentions, it was hard for us to open up to them.”
The main ingredient missing from these encounters with counselors: street cred. “Not long after the Super Store Fire, guys from New York and Worcester came down and talked to us,” Davis recalls. “I can’t thank those guys enough. If you don’t have street cred, like the Worcester guys—we knew they knew what we were going through—it’s difficult.”
Unfortunately during this time, some members left the department, because, as Davis describes it, they were “beyond the point of us being able to bring them back.”
However, the department did eventually find a group of counselors that fit their needs and could respond to their specific issues. The Charleston Firefighter Support Team (www.charlestonffsupport.blogspot.com) is a department-based program run by a retired fire chief. All counselors have an innate understanding of what firefighters do and encounter on a daily basis. “They are licensed counselors that have been acclimated to the fire service through their tenure with the program,” Davis explains. He also credits the counselor’s ongoing help with saving members’ lives, marriages and families. “I can’t say enough about our support team,” he says. “We would not be as far along in our recovery if it weren’t for our counseling services. We lean on them on a daily basis, and not just for the Sofa Super Store Fire. There are family events that come along, like the recent passing of our battalion chief. The members of the support team were at the hospital with the family; they take care of our families.”
Over the past five years, the CFD has developed a uniquely intimate relationship with the counselors that’s become so successful that the counselors are considered brother/sister firefighters. “Our counselors are so embedded in what we do, there’s no stigma to going to see a counselor,” Davis explains. “They can walk into the department and they’re treated like firefighters.”
The services provided by the program range from one-on-one counseling sessions to visits to the firehouse to helping out during training ops. “[We may need counselors present during] mayday training operations, to help people who may have a flashback or PTSD,” Davis explains. “[If needed], the counselors can also come to me and say, ‘Mark, the training program that you’re using is affecting guys in this way, and we’re seeing a reoccurring theme, so you may want to address this.’
“We also have guys who work in the department who are trained to recognize a problem early on and stabilize the situation; they are the early warning system for our department,” Davis continues. “So it’s a two-tiered approach.”
Interestingly, Davis credits the program with saving firefighter lives, but admits he doesn’t take advantage of the counseling services as much as he should, and he doesn’t find fault with anyone who chooses not to go. “If that’s their point of view, that’s all right,” he says. “I personally do not partake of the counseling services like I probably should. But there’s nothing wrong with getting help. I’ve seen people who I never thought would need a counselor go to one. I went once for a mental check-up, so to speak, to make sure I was OK, with as much as I’d seen, and when you have people who are falling all around you. I’ve also referred many a person and I have taken many a person. I have seen counseling services make a department member or a family member better off.”
An Important Message
In short, Davis’ experience—and the CFD’s experience overall—with the program has been life-changing. The department has been greatly affected by the program’s ongoing, intense involvement with their day-to-day lives. But Davis warns that the trusting relationship the CFD has built with their counselors didn’t happen overnight; therefore, departments must find counseling services before an incident occurs. “If you have to develop a program to respond to an event, it’s way too late,” Davis says. “You need to have a program in place already. We’re still building a relationship with our counselors. And we have had people who we thought were going to harm themselves, and had dependence issues, and marriage issues. So any department that thinks they may need a support team, you should have already had one that knows what our job entails.”
Looking Ahead
Today, the after-effects of the Sofa Super Store Fire are still felt by firefighters and departments around the country, but for many, those effects have been the catalyst for improvement. “Anyone who wants to be a firefighter and isn’t doing it just to earn a paycheck has been touched by that fire,” Davis says. “Two weeks ago, I was in another city with nine other battalion chiefs from major cities, and the training officer there asked to speak to me privately, because they had done a paper on the Sofa Super Store. Almost anywhere I go, people know about the Sofa Super Store, and many of the places I go, they’ve enacted some sort of new policy due to that fire.”
The CFD is also still undergoing its transformation, with additional changes on the horizon. “For me personally, I’m leaving training,” Davis says. “I’ve done 18 months with the training division, and June 9 is my last day, then I transfer to the line. For the department, we got approval today for our BLS program, a service we can provide to our community that was never thought of before.”
But of all the accomplishments, changes, updates and upgrades the CFD has gone through in the past five years, Davis singles out one as his personal favorite. “I have to say, one of the proudest things I’ve ever been a part of is our receipt of a grant to bring the IAFF Fire Ground Survival Training Program to Charleston,” he says. “That, for us, will show that we’re going to train to the national standard. We want to teach our own people the newest techniques, but we also want to make it so that our people can go out and teach others.”
And although his hard work and dedication to improving the department have paid off, and his pride and anticipation of good things still to come are apparent, Davis admits the rigors of the job, and possibly the memories of the Sofa Super Store Fire, weigh heavily on his mind at times. “I actually still have reservations about staying on. It’s always in the back of my mind,” he says. “You wonder whether you want to carry on with it, but we’re firefighters, which means we made a commitment, and we take our job seriously. But some of us have seen too much and done too much. And with as many people as we’ve had leave, it makes you realize that you’re just human, and you may not get to see your 35, 30 or even 25 years on. It really brings it into focus that we won’t carry on forever.”
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Cindy Devone-Pacheco
Cindy Devone-Pacheco is senior editor for FireRescue magazine. Read Full Bio
