[Scan-DC] [old news] Feds fault department in deaths of two Chicago firefighters

[Blair Thompson]

I was clearing out my inbox. This is a year old. It is from 2011, not 2012.

Feds fault department in deaths of two Chicago firefighters
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-firefighter-deaths-report-20110923,0,1791463.story

By Ryan Haggerty, Liam Ford and William Lee, Tribune reporters
 
6:00 a.m. CDT, September 23, 2011

Poor communications and an insufficient number of radios were among shortcomings within the Chicago Fire Department that contributed to the deaths of two firefighters in a fire at an abandoned South Side laundry last December, according to a federal report.

The report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health also pointed to the lack of a system to alert the Fire Department to hazardous buildings as among the "contributing factors" that cumulatively put firefighters at risk.

The report said few of the firefighters who were sent into the vacant, dilapidated building in the 1700 block of East 75th Street on Dec. 22 had radios and that supervisors outside the building had no idea what the firefighters inside were seeing: flames crawling up wooden beams to the ceiling.
....

But one major recommendation — putting radios in the hands of every firefighter — won't be implemented until sometime in 2012, when the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communication says a much-delayed digital radio system will be operational.

The department currently provides a radio to one member of each team of two or three firefighters, Langford said.

Only five of the 13 firefighters who were in the building when the roof collapsed had radios, and none of those firefighters provided supervisors outside the building with a description of the conditions inside, the report said.

All firefighters in New York City and Los Angeles are equipped with hand-held radios, according to those departments. In Los Angeles, that's been the policy for more than a decade, a department spokeswoman said.
....

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