2007 firefighter disaster in South Carolina, US
The Charleston Sofa Super Store fire was a devastating blaze that occurred on the evening of June 18, 2007, in Charleston, South Carolina, resulting in the deaths of nine firefighters. It was the deadliest firefighter disaster in the US since the September 11 attacks. The fire, which started in the loading dock of the furniture store, rapidly spread to the main showroom and warehouse, leading to a catastrophic structural collapse. Despite initial firefighting efforts and rescue attempts, the poor water supply and lack of fire sprinkler systems contributed to the tragedy. The site was cleared after the fire, and a new fire station was constructed nearby.
Fire and collapse.
The fire occurred at the Sofa Super Store, composed of a single-story steel trussed showroom building with a warehouse building located behind the retail space, located at 1807 Savannah Highway in Charleston. The building had no fire sprinkler system. Sofa Super Store had set up shop there in 1992. The fire started at approximately 7:00 p.m. in a covered loading dock area built between the showroom and warehouse buildings which was attached to both buildings. At the time, the business was open and employees were present. Charleston firefighters arrived on the scene within three minutes of the alarm, followed soon after by firefighters from the St. Andrews Public Service District.
The initial attack focused on extinguishing the fire in the loading dock area, with a secondary effort to search for and evacuate people inside, and prevent the fire from spreading to the showroom and warehouse. Crews entering the showroom reportedly initially encountered clear visibility with only very light puffs of smoke visible near the ceiling at the back of the showroom. Shortly thereafter, an exterior door was opened near where the fire was raging. Efforts to close the door failed, allowing the fire to enter the showroom. Firefighters were ordered to stretch two hose lines into the showroom to attack the spreading fire; however, the pre-connected hose line from one of the units was too short. This required some firefighters to again exit the building to add additional sections of hose, and left only one small handline to hold back the growing fire. At about this time, fire dispatchers advised the crews on-scene that they had received a 9-1-1 call from an employee who was trapped in the warehouse, which required some firefighters to direct their attention to the rescue. The trapped employee was eventually rescued by firefighters who breached an exterior wall to reach him.
Despite efforts to confine and extinguish the fire, it continued to spread into the structure and ignited furniture in the showroom, growing more quickly than the few operating hose lines could control. Meanwhile, efforts to stretch and begin operating additional hose lines continued. At 7:41 p.m. the showroom area of the store experienced a flashover while at least sixteen firefighters were working inside. The flashover contributed to the rapid deterioration of the structural integrity of the building, leading to a near-complete collapse of the roof minutes later. Many of the firefighters caught in the flashover were unable to escape and were trapped under the collapsed roof and shelving weakened by the fast-spreading fire. Several calls for help were made by trapped firefighters and efforts to rescue them were commenced. These efforts proved unsuccessful. By the time the fire was brought under control, nine Charleston firefighters had been killed.
The Sofa Super Store site was on a major business and commuter artery feeding the suburbs and shopping centers of Charleston. Car traffic continued unabated for many critical minutes in the initial stages of the fire, driving over water supply lines and contributing to severe water supply problems, as the supply lines snaked from hydrants in surrounding blocks up to away from the center of the fire. Eventually automobile traffic on Savannah Highway was stopped so water pressure would be more consistent, the traffic diversion causing surrounding neighborhoods to fill with stranded commuters and onlookers. As the fire diminished and appeared contained, nearing 11:00 p.m., surrounding neighborhoods began to clear and onlookers departed, most unaware of the loss of life during the blaze.
According to Charleston County Coroner Rae Wooten, the firefighters died of a combination of smoke inhalation and burns, but not from injuries sustained from the collapse itself. It was the greatest single loss of firefighters in the United States since 343 firefighters were killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center in the September 11, 2001 attacks. It was also the deadliest fire in South Carolina since a fire that killed eleven people at the Lancaster County jail in 1979.
Investigations.
About fifty investigators in all were assigned to the investigation, including the City of Charleston Police Department, the Charleston County Sheriff's Office, the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division, and the ATF national response team. The ATF confirmed on June 23 that the fire originated in the covered loading dock area situated between the showroom and warehouse buildings, in a pile of trash near an area where employees were known to take smoking breaks. Neither of the destroyed buildings had sprinklers, nor were they required by local codes to have them.
The South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation will investigate the Charleston Fire Department's procedures and training in light of the deaths. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), as always when a firefighter line-of-duty-death occurs, is expected to conduct an independent investigation of the incident. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) assisted NIOSH by reconstructing the fire with a computer simulation.
On Monday, July 2, 2007, Chief Rusty Thomas told the CDC (which oversees NIOSH, the federal department that investigates firefighter fatalities) that his department would not allow federal investigators to interview firefighters about the Sofa Super Store fire. On Tuesday, July 3, 2007, the head of NIOSH wrote to Chief Thomas, asking him to reconsider. On Thursday, July 5, 2007, the city relented when Mayor Joe Riley called the CDC to say that interviews would be allowed. CDC spokesman Fred Blosser, in an interview with MSNBC, said, "This is a developing situation. This morning we were notified that the chief has said that he will grant access to the firefighters. Earlier this week, he had indicated that he was denying access to the firefighters for interviews." Mayor Riley replied that it was all a misunderstanding. He said that Chief Thomas was merely trying to minimize the number of interviews of his weary and grieving firefighters, not to block any investigation.
The U.S. Fire Administration also investigated the fire, to incorporate lessons into the curriculum at the National Fire Academy.
Charleston panel.
A panel of outside experts was convened by the City of Charleston to examine the city's fire department and its handling of the fire. The panel included Gordon Routley, Kevin Roche, Tim Sendelbach, Brian Crawford, Mike Chiramonte, and Pete Piringer. Mayor Joe Riley stated that the panel's work was divided into three parts. The team's first step was to conduct an "intense diagnostic analysis" of the fire department and its practices and procedures. The mayor indicated this phase would only take about a month, and any recommendations will be acted on immediately. The second step would compile reports from local, state, and federal investigators into one report the city could work from, to last approximately four months. The last step was to create a long-term strategic plan to chart a future course for the city's fire department.
Brian Crawford, in an interview with KTBS-TV News, said, "That report is going to lend so much information to other fire departments across the country who may be operating the same way that Charleston was. It may have them step back and look at their own organizations."
The six-person panel came out with a list of initial recommendations in less than a week. Speaking of the recommended changes, Gordon Routley said, "I think there are areas that are significant firefighter safety issues that, to us, need to be implemented as soon as possible."
The initial changes recommended by the panel include:
The full report of the investigation, published in 2008, identified many factors that contributed to the tragedy and provided recommendations, including those listed above. The most prominent factor identified in the analysis was the "failure to manage the incident according to accepted practices." This included the lack of a structured incident command system, which led to chaotic communication, the use of smaller hose lines, which did not adequately protect the firefighters or stop the fire, and the heavy use of aggressive offensive attack strategies, which may not have been appropriate in this case. Essentially, they found the Charleston Fire Department "was inadequately staffed, inadequately trained, insufficiently equipped, and organizationally unprepared to conduct an operation of this complexity in a large commercial occupancy," and concluded that the strategies the department had used in the past were ineffective in the Sofa Super Store fire and exposed firefighters to unnecessary risk. Ultimately, "The final analysis of this incident does not suggest that any of the firefighters who lost their lives, or any of the surviving members of the Charleston Fire Department, failed to perform their duties as they had been trained or as expected by their organization. The analysis indicates that the Charleston Fire Department failed to adequately prepare its members for the situation they encountered at the Sofa Super Store Fire."
SLED inquiry.
In early 2010, Charleston area solicitor Scarlett Wilson requested a South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) inquiry into the fire to determine if criminal charges should be pursued. After an initial inquiry, SLED returned a statement that the fire "does not meet the criteria for a SLED criminal investigation."
Criticism.
The City of Charleston refused help from the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) and International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) in planning the memorial, which exacerbated tensions between the IAFF and South Carolina Firefighters' Association (SCFA). The IAFF's General President Harold A. Schaitberger has charged that Mayor Joseph Riley and Fire Chief Rusty Thomas are not "labor friendly" and that Charleston is an "openly anti-union city".
The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) and other fire safety experts, including Roger L. Yow, president of the Charleston Firefighters Association and a former captain with 25 years of service in the department, have been critical of the manner in which the fire was handled. Union officials and other fire safety experts claim the City of Charleston Fire Department did not follow procedures consistent with the National Incident Management System. South Carolina governor Mark Sanford directed all state and local emergency response agencies to adopt the system in 2005. Acting state fire marshal John Reich said the state does not inspect the operating procedures of fire departments, but they assume that departments are following guidelines prescribed in the National Incident Management System. Some fire safety experts have also questioned why so many firefighters were in a burning building with a steel truss roof, which is known to be a serious safety hazard for firefighters. A routine fire preplan of the structure in June 2006 made no mention of its roof construction, and it has been suggested that CFD firefighters did not pull the ceiling to check for extension into the roof structure.
In a telephone interview with "The Charlotte Observer", Charleston Mayor Joe Riley responded to critics by saying, "I have absolute confidence in our procedures and in the leadership."
Chief Thomas and some firefighters with the City of Charleston dismiss critics as outsiders who don't understand the realities of fighting fires in a dense city full of historic buildings. However, the fire occurred in a suburban district miles from the historic downtown, where the main exposures were one story ranch houses. The "Post and Courier" has quoted Chief Thomas as saying "Our firefighting techniques are not going to change in the City of Charleston Fire Department [...] We're safe, we've got the best equipment, we've got the best people and that's the way we fight fires." Chief Thomas has indicated that his men performed just as they were trained, and he wouldn't do anything differently if the same fire happened again. Greg Hambrick, reporting for the "Charleston City Paper" questioned the chief's reply. "It was an odd response considering a very hush-hush investigation is ongoing and Riley had said several times since the fire that lessons would be learned. Considering nine guys walked