A Cultural Transformation at the Worcester Fire Department

The grim reality of the Worcester Cold Storage Warehouse fire is well known within the fire service: On Dec. 3, 1999, six firefighters from the Worcester (Mass.) Fire Department (WFD) were killed. Four of the firefighters had gone in search for the first-in firefighters, who sounded an emergency call for help. The incident rattled the entire fire service, but the WFD was hit hardest of all. Suddenly, a department that hadn’t lost a firefighter during firefighting operations since the 1940s was dealing with the reality that six of its brothers were gone forever.

Little did they know it at the time, but the Cold Storage Warehouse fire started a unique and immense process of change for the members of the WFD, and for the fire service as a whole. John Sullivan, now WFD deputy fire chief, was a company officer at the time of the incident; he responded with his crew to the scene and was part of a core group of members who led the change in the years following.

Fast-forward to 2011, and another LODD: Firefighter Jon Davies was killed during a search of a three-decker residential structure. It was the first departmental LODD since December 1999. Although the loss is no less painful, the situation itself is drastically different from the Cold Storage Warehouse fire–due largely in part to the deliberate change the department pursued following the 1999 LODDs.

Comparing these two incidents, and demonstrating how much progress the WFD made in 11 short years, is the subject of Sullivan’s presentation today at Fire-Rescue International, “Worcester, MA–LODDs in 1999 and 2011.” I spoke with Sullivan before the show to capture his first-hand perspective.  

What role did culture play in the 1999 Cold Storage Warehouse LODDs?
Back in 1999, we were what I call parochial: very isolated and insulated, not unlike many departments around the country. We were nearly the only full-time career fire department in our area, and it had been like that for decades. As a result, we became very self-sufficient and self-reliant. Our box assignments were very heavy compared to many departments because of these factors.  

That prevailing culture insulated us from the rest of the fire service. We didn’t really get outside to see the latest and greatest techniques, equipment, protocols, etc. So when we were faced with the Cold Storage fire, there were a number of things that in hindsight, had we known about them, we would have done differently. If we’d gotten outside Worcester, we likely would have embraced the concept of rapid intervention, of using incident command for what it’s supposed to be (an accountability system that promotes safety and enhances communication). We would have utilized the technology available to us, like thermal imagers and computers in the command vehicles. But we didn’t have these things because we hadn’t needed them before. We were reactive and in many ways regressive.

Was it difficult to come to the realization that culture was partly to blame, or did that make it easier in a sense because it pointed to a way to improve?
It was a little bit of both. In one way, when we looked at ourselves, it was a collective wake-up call that we had to admit that we didn’t know everything. It was a shock to the ego: We weren’t the latest and greatest. Culturally, organizationally, generationally, there was no history of an LODD occurring in our city. And we’re a pretty active city, an old urban northeast community; we have a lot of fires and we do very well. Unfortunately, that led us into a false sense of security and bravado. When that was summarily cut down, it was a sobering event.

At the same time, it allowed us to be open to change. You don’t have a situation where six firefighters are killed and then not have many areas for improvement, if you’re being honest to yourself. There’s a shock value to it. Had it only been one or two people, we probably wouldn’t have changed. But it was so dramatic, there was no place to hide.

Describe how the department reacted following the Cold Storage incident.
Our training chief, Walter Giard, came forward very early on and took our senior staff aside and said that we would find out what happened, we would analyze and scrutinize ourselves, and we would change. That is the message that we committed to sending to the community and the families and to the fire service in general.

From that came an internal effort spearheaded by Lt.’s John Daly and Andy White to reach out to some well-known instructors outside the department, people like Butch Cobb and John Salka. We reached out to them and said, hey we need some help. Those guys stepped forward without compensation and said, we’ll show you what we know. That was the beginning of the process. It wasn’t earth-shattering stuff; it was things like TICs, air management, large-area search techniques, mayday protocols, self-survival tactics, bailouts, breaching walls–all of that stuff that had been going on out there but we never took advantage of it. There was a huge groundswell from within our ranks to want to learn, to make improvements.

Eventually, the instructors who were helping us encouraged us to share what we’d learned with the rest of the fire service. And we did. We started the Worcester Safety and Survival Seminars. People knew what we had gone through, so they listened. And the story still resonates today. And I think it resonates because the mission under which those guys lost their lives was the right mission. The tactics and the techniques that we employed were the downfall. We had reports of two homeless people in that building–going and searching for them was a no-brainer. That’s why it’s got such staying power, 14 years later.

In the 2011 LODD, the mission was “right” as well, correct?
Yes. We learned a lot over those 12 years. The point of this seminar is that despite the fact that you evolve, it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to run up against things that tax your organization. Just because it’s a residential fire and not a commercial fire, doesn’t mean you can’t have unexpected conditions. A lot of those things that we learned from 1999 were brought to bear that night in 2011. But it’s a dangerous business; you can seemingly make all the right decisions and still go wrong.

During the NIOSH investigation following Davies’ death, one of the lead investigators told me that in hundreds of firefighter deaths, he’d never seen an LODD at a three-decker fire collapse. This just isn’t supposed to happen. But the fact of the matter is, these dwellings that we have here are 120, 130 years old; they’ve gone past their normal lifespan. They’re not owner-occupied anymore, they’re often rented by absentee landlords who aren’t doing proper maintenance. So the problem wasn’t the fire, but the foundation of the building.

As a result, we’re in the process of aggressively connecting with the buildings department in a way we never have done before, to get their information on these buildings. In many ways, just like after the Cold Storage fire, we’re looking at systems, at the circumstances, and developing an idea of what we might have done better had we known. But it’s hard to question what happened tactically, strategically–whereas in 1999, we just weren’t prepared. In this case, we were very well prepared.

Was the 2011 incident any easier to get through?
Organizationally, yes. Personally, no. Jon didn’t deserve the fate that he got. Hindsight being 20/20, we would not make the decision to go back inside, because in fact there was no one there, just like in 1999 there was no one there. That’s a difficult pill to swallow. Here you are standing over a rubble pile and they bring in a wrecker and a claw to lift up the pieces, and you’re actually hoping in a way that there’s a civilian dead in the debris–just so Jon’s death would mean something more . Then there’s nothing there, and you know that we lost a good guy because we were chasing ghosts. We’ll never be satisfied with that.

But organizationally, the way we responded, the way we handled the situation was different. We were able to rescue Firefighter Brian Carroll because of the RIT and technical rescue training we’d had in the years since 1999, and he employed self-rescue techniques that we’d all trained on. So it gave us a little more boost to say we did something good because we saved one of our firefighters. We don’t want to pat ourselves on the back, but at the same time, with some objectivity, there’s a difference between 1999 and 2011.

Based on your personal and departmental experiences in these two incidents, what do you think of as the “cultural keys” to preventing LODDs?
Honesty, open-mindedness and willingness. You need to be always looking at your organization with an honest approach–and you never want to be standing still. If you’re standing still, you’re going backward because the whole rest of the world is moving forward. Be organizationally honest, constantly look for improvement.

Second, be open-minded–really search for what is out there for you to use in your organization–management strategies, tools, tactics, whatever the case may be. Things such as thermal imagers, large-area search, mayday, guided search ropes–there were a ton of things that could have helped in 1999 that we just had not embraced. It’s not because we didn’t know they existed, it’s because we didn’t see the value in them until it was too late.

Finally, willingness to get outside your comfort zone, admit that you need help and need to change. Be willing to embrace the fact that the world evolves and so does the fire service and, as much as we love tradition and to keep doing the things we do well, that’s not enough. We’ve probably fought 40,000 three-deckers fires during the history of this department, and this one collapsed. So now we need to be willing to consider that it wasn’t just a fluke. We need to consider that these buildings are old, things have changed, and we have to be willing to change the way we do business.

It’s difficult to stay positive and ahead of the curve, but it’s a life or death thing, not just for civilians but for our firefighters. We owe it to all of them to be at the edge of change–not just have change imposed on us. Every firefighter who loses their life in the in the line of duty is an opportunity for the rest of us to learn from. If we don’t, we’re fools.