Report chronicles last moments of fallen firefighter
By Tara Donaldson
On April 16, 2007, a house fire broke out in the Marsh Overlook community in Woodbridge. At 6:09 a.m., a firefighter named Kyle Wilson arrived on the scene with the rest of his crew. Approximately 10 minutes later, Wilson was dead, trapped in the crumbling house as the fire suddenly exploded into an inferno.
On Tuesday, firefighters, citizens and supervisors looked on in horror as an investigative team played videos of the burning building, overlaid with desperate mayday calls from Wilson and his colleagues radioing for help from inside the house.
The video was part of a report issued by the fire department after a nine-month investigation into what Chief Kevin McGee called “the greatest tragedy that has occurred in our 41-year history.”
The team, led by Battalion Chief Jennie Collins, essentially found that Wilson had followed procedures and that his crew had made “heroic attempts” to rescue him.
“There is no doubt in my mind that our firefighters would have given their lives to rescue Kyle,” McGee said. However, as the building began to collapse on top of them, the safety officer on the scene ordered everyone out to ensure that more lives weren't lost.
Collins said later that Wilson may have already been dead by that time, although the exact moment of death is impossible to pinpoint.
Timeline
The fire, which occurred on the same day as the Virginia Tech massacre, was first reported to 9-1-1 at 6:01 a.m. in the middle of a severe nor'eastern storm prompting sustained winds of 25 mph with gusts up to 48.
Nineteen callers phoned 9-1-1 but none of them knew whether anyone was in the house or not. It turned out that all of the residents had gotten out safely but because they were not dressed for the chilly weather, they took shelter in a neighboring home.
When Wilson's crew, Tower 512 out of the OWL Station, arrived on the scene at 6:09 a.m., firefighters didn't know whether anyone was inside or not. Two minutes later, the family was located next door but by that time, Tower 512's crew was already inside the house.
That's when everything went wrong.
“A rapid and catastrophic change of fire conditions” occurred within a few minutes of the time Tower 12 entered the building, Collins said. At 6:13 a.m., Wilson and his officer were in the master bedroom when the conditions began to deteriorate.
Essentially, the fire spread to the attic and then down into the bedroom. As it did, the temperature in the bedroom jumped from 100 degrees to 800 degrees in about 10 seconds.
The officer ordered Wilson out but as the two crawled toward the staircase, the officer got caught in a table and fell down the stairs. He called up to Wilson who replied that, because of the heavy smoke, he couldn't find the stairway. While the officer used his flashlight and voice to guide Wilson toward the stairs, members of another crew inside the house called for help and reported that firefighters were trapped upstairs. As commanders outside the building called for evacuation signals to be sent, crew members saw Wilson's officer engulfed in flames on the stairs and dragged him from the building.
All that took less than a minute. As they pulled him out, the officer told his rescuers that Wilson was still inside and more rescuers tried to get into the house. Wilson's officer tried to get back in as well but an evacuation call was sounded and other crews stopped him from going in.
At 6:15 a.m., Wilson issued a mayday call: ““Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Tower 512 bucket, I’m trapped inside, I don’t know where I am, I’m somewhere in the stairwell, I need someone to come get me out.”
For the next few minutes, crews tried repeatedly to get to Wilson. At one point, rescuers made it to the second floor but couldn't find their lost comrade before they were forced back by the intense heat and fire.
At 6:19 a.m., Wilson's last call came through: “I need water, I’m burning up in here. I need water fast!”
Wilson's voice wasn't heard again.
At 6:21 a.m., with the building collapsing, the evacuation call went out from command: “Attention all units, get out of the house now. Evacuate the building now.”
Crews kept battling the fire, though, trying to knock it back enough to get back inside. At 6:29 a.m. someone called for a chaplain to be sent to the scene. At 6:30 a.m. crews reentered the house and resumed the search. It took almost a half-hour; at 6:57 a.m., the call went out that Wilson's body had been found. He had apparently died in the master bedroom, where he had been when the situation began to spiral out of control.
Findings
Collins' team, which included fire officials from other counties, found that Wilson had done everything right but that a combination of weather conditions, construction materials, training shortfalls and operational problems combined to cause a catastrophe.
The high winds contributed to the spread of the fire, as did the fact that the home was built from lightweight materials that are commonly used throughout the county.
In addition, Collins said there were training and equipment problems. Audio tapes of radio calls from firefighters many periods of silence. The silence isn't because no one was trying to call, she said, but because when too many people are trying to call at once, the system overloads and no one gets through. That's not uncommon at major incidents, she said. It also wasn't the only equipment problem. When firefighters from one station are called in to assist firefighters from another station, they may find themselves using equipment they're unfamiliar with, Collins said. That's because there's no standard equipment and firefighters aren't necessarily trained on equipment that their home stations don't have. That caused problems at the Marsh Overlook fire, slowing down operations as crews struggled with equipment they were unfamiliar with.
In addition, the incident commander at the fire had to manage 15 crews and a myriad of calls and conflicting information to make life-or-death decisions within minutes of arriving on the scene.
“It is humanly impossible” for one person to take in that much information in that short a time frame, Collins said, noting that an incident commander generally handles only five to seven crews.
Staffing is also a problem and the report suggests increasing the minimum number of firefighters on each unit; engine crews should be increased from three to four and specialty crews should be increased from four to five or six. The report also recommends that the fire department reconsider its practice of splitting up crews at the scene.
Also included in the 35 pages of recommendations, is a suggestion that the fire department look at ways of alerting residents to a fire before just rushing in to see if anyone is home. Fire crews use air horns to signal an evacuation order and a similar practice could be used by the first engine on the scene to alert anyone in the house that the building is on fire.
The breakdown of what went wrong and why goes on for hundreds of pages and it is clear that many things went wrong. But through it all, an underlying message is also clear:
“During the chain of events that occurred and under severe circumstances, fire and rescue personnel performed at exceptional levels,” the report states. “During the repeated attempts to reach and rescue Technician I Wilson, personnel displayed heroic efforts and jeopardized their own safety. The Department will never forget the sacrifice that Technician Wilson made in an attempt to ensure others were safe.”
Technician I Kyle Wilson was 24 years old.