Jan. 6, 1985, had already been a busy night for Fort Worth firefighters. They’d just finished a hard-fought, three-alarm apartment fire and were just getting back into quarters and starting to clean up and get their first cups of coffee.
Engine 8 Lt. Jay Peacock was in the watch room of Station 8 finishing the night’s paperwork when over the radio he heard Engine 5 Acting Officer Robert (Bobby) Keen advising the Fort Worth Fire Department (FWFD) alarm office that Engine 5 was responding to a structure fire reported by a walk-up citizen at a property south of Station 5. This would turn out to be Bobby Keen’s last response.
About 45 seconds later, Engine 5 got on the scene at 1305 Evans Ave., only three blocks from Station 5, to find a working fire in a commercial building with heavy smoke conditions.
Tommy’s Recreation had been a pool hall and was an old-style commercial building–today we would call it a strip shopping center–that included a laundry mat. It had been vacant for some time and was one of those buildings that fire companies would drive by and say, “That thing is going to burn one day.” It was of mixed construction using both wood-frame and masonry with parallel cord metal bar joists.
Engine 5 arrived on scene quickly and stretched the first handline to the rear of the pool hall, which was the last occupancy on the south end of the building. The pool hall was attached to the building but was of wood-frame construction while the rest of the structure was concrete block.
Engine 8 arrived quickly. Lt. Peacock and Acting Lt. Keen decided that Engine 8’s crew would advance through the front door of the pool hall in an attempt to knock down the main body of the fire. Peacock noted that, at the time, the fire didn’t appear to be “too bad.”
Once inside the pool hall, Engine 8 encountered high heat and zero visibility as they advanced their line to the rear of the building. They were about 40 feet inside when another firefighter came up the line to advise that fire had broken through the roof. About the same time, Peacock said he began hearing what sounded like someone hitting a metal drum with a baseball bat, and loud popping noises.
Lt. Peacock ordered the crew to back out of the building as conditions continued to deteriorate. As the crew of Engine 8 moved back to the front door following their hoseline, Lt. Peacock’s helmet came off, pulling his SCBA facepiece off his face. As he struggled to get his mask back on, he lost contact with the hoseline under heavy smoke and rapidly changing conditions. Having lost the handline and his direction out, he moved forward until he hit what he thought was a wall. It turned out to be a freestanding cigarette machine. However, it changed his direction of travel and he could suddenly hear voices outside the building.
By the time Lt. Peacock reached the door, the area was beginning to flash over; there was less than three feet of space at the bottom of the doorway that didn’t have fire blowing out into the street. He rolled out of the opening, hitting his crew on the sidewalk.
Just moments later, there was a catastrophic failure of the metal bar joist, pushing the entire south wall (D side) on top of Bobby Keen and trapping him.
A rescue operation quickly began, with firefighters using a set of hydraulic rescue tools to help lift the wall. Peacock and others crawled under the wall and removed Keen, who had been trapped for five minutes.
Fort Worth Firefighter/Engineer Robert L. Keen would live another week, passing away after being removed from life support. He was a 19-year veteran of the department, spending most of his career at Station 5, the busiest fire company in the city.
The Lessons
So what can we take away from the death of Bobby Keen some 28 years later? Without a doubt, we have made countless improvements in the way we do business, but we also must reinforce the lessons learned from the sacrifices of those who’ve gone before us, such as Bobby Keen. Some of those lessons include:
- Risk vs. benefit. We must employ a mental checklist before we commit to an offensive operation where the risks are high and the benefits are few. And we must consciously repeat that risk assessment as the operation proceeds.
- 360-degree look. Always take the time to get a good 360-degree look at the building. Conditions in the rear may be much different than those you encounter in the front. The more information you have will help you make a better risk assessment and add to the safety of the operation.
- Collapse zones. Establishing good collapse zones around the building and enforcing them will improve fireground safety. It can be just as dangerous outside the building as it is on the inside–as we saw in the Bobby Keen incident.
- Know and plan. Every fire department has this type of vacant, dangerous building in their first-due. You know the day will come when you’re called to respond to a fire in this building; it may be 10 years from now or tomorrow. Know the building and have a plan ready for the event. With any involvement at all, it may be a “no go” operation.
- Know building construction. No firefighter knows too much about building construction. We have all heard that trusses are our enemy. Where most trusses run the short span of the building, the ones at this incident ran the long span, from the B side to the D side. When they were heated up and failed, they pushed the south wall D side down, trapping Bobby Keen.
- Stay on the line. While we have all left the safety of the hoseline at a residential house fire because we felt comfortable knowing that an exit was just a few feet away, making that mistake at a commercial building can prove to be deadly. Lt. Peacock was almost killed as a result of losing the line, but was able to recover using his training and experience.
- Fatigue factor. The same companies that were first-due at 1305 Evans Ave. were also first-in at the earlier three-alarm fire on College Avenue. Always monitor the physical and mental conditions of your crewmembers and ask yourself whether they should be relieved.
As we look forward and attempt to train and plan for the future, it’s just as important to reflect on the past and the sacrifices that have been made by those who came before us. I would like to thank Deputy Chief of Operations Jay Peacock (ret.), Division Chief Tim Hatch and Lt. Bob Frazier (ret.) for their help in writing this article. We dedicate it to Engineer Robert L. Keen, and to the hope that we will all continue to learn from his death.
