Ebenezer tragedy scoured for whys of fire, fatalities

Share with others:

Tweet

The bell tower of Ebenezer Baptist Church gave way and crashed to the ground in seconds on March 13, killing two firefighters and injuring 24 others. The reconstruction of the events of the fire that led to the collapse will take months, as three teams of investigators gather and analyze data from the Hill District fire in which Battalion Chief Charles Brace and Master Firefighter Richard Stefanakis were killed.

None of the investigators will discuss the probe, but all will be trying to learn what firefighters faced that day in the century-old church -- the kind of building one expert said was "built to burn" -- and how the fire's attack on Ebenezer eventually led the tower to give way. National investigators and fire-safety instructors said that each fire, and each investigation, is different, but that there are patterns in both. The key is to understand how fire and firefighting affect a building, and what can be done to keep firefighters safe.

One local team will try to determine the cause of the fire, while a seven-member board of inquiry headed by Deputy Fire Chief John Gourley is charged with analyzing the operations of firefighters that day and making recommendations on how to prevent such fatalities.

In addition, federal investigators have started to work on the Ebenezer fire. Every time a firefighter dies in the line of duty, a team from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health that specializes in firefighter fatalities investigates.

Gourley said that he does not have an estimate of when his investigation will be complete. Steve Berardinelli is head of the federal team from West Virginia, and said his investigation might take nine months or more.

A fire in an old church "is a very difficult fire," said Vincent Dunn, a retired deputy chief from the New York City Fire Department who teaches fire safety and has written several texts on firefighting and fire safety. "A church is built to burn. The fire often starts in the cellar and there are lots of voids (empty spaces). The fire probably goes up in the concealed spaces to the attic. If you bring lines in to extinguish the fire, the hose stream reaches 30, 40 feet, but you can see these ceilings are often 50, 60 feet. The hose stream will not even get that high."

There is nothing in the large space of a sanctuary to slow down a fire. "It can become engulfed in superheated gas and flames, and often that fire is beyond extinguishing. The other thing is when you look at the inside of most churches, there is tons of wood -- wood wainscoting, wood pews, an altar made of wood. It's a tremendous amount of fuel."

There is also plenty of oxygen to feed the fire and drafts to push it along, said Capt. Francis Deleonibus of the city arson squad, who is leading the investigation into the cause of the Ebenezer fire. "The roofs are very high and it's difficult to perform ventilation," which is opening up roofs or walls to let hot smoke and gases out so fire attack crews can get to the fire and fight it.

In addition, Dunn said, old churches often have no fire alarm or sprinkler system. Buildings that old are typically grandfathered into the building code, and don't have to meet the fire safety requirements of modern buildings. That's the case in Pittsburgh. Unless a church builds or remodels, it's not subject to inspection by the city's Bureau of Building Inspection, said Ron Graziano, chief of the bureau. And the city doesn't inspect for fire safety, he said.

Churches also have strong value to the community, said Chief William Shouldis of the Philadelphia fire department, who was on duty when a bad fire started in an old gothic-style church in South Philadelphia 10 years ago. Ironically, that might hamper efforts. "There's often the reluctance of firefighters to break stained-glass windows," he said, or they might take risks to try to save the building or recover valued objects.

"As soon as you tell me house of worship, you get my attention," said Shouldis. "There are a lot of sentimental factors, it's the spiritual center of the community."

Trying to predict collapses
Between 1979 and 2002 there were over 180 firefighter fatalities due to structural collapse, not including those firefighters lost in 2001 in the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers, according to a report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. "Structural collapse is an insidious problem within the fire-fighting community," the report says. "It often occurs without warning and can easily cause multiple fatalities."

That danger has prompted a number of federal agencies to try to find better ways to predict collapse (a recent effort is under way to develop a device that would use fire-caused vibrations to predict collapse) and to avoid its consequences.

Firefighters know that a roof or floor can give way in a fire, and they are trained to look for signs of structural weakening. A roof might begin to get spongy underfoot, or stress cracks might break out along a wall, or small bits of debris begin to fall.

Commanders know that even if there aren't clear signs, there are conditions that can contribute to the risk of collapse -- an old structure, a fire that's been burning a long time, for example.

If anything points to structural instability, that's when collapse zones come in, said Bob Duval, a senior fire investigator with the National Fire Protection Association.

"You make a big area around the building, and say, 'Listen, if this wall falls, or the roof falls, we don't want any firefighter or fire apparatus there,' because once it starts to come down you don't have five minutes, you have two seconds -- you hear the roar and say, 'Oh God here it comes.'"

In 1999 the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health issued an alert titled "Preventing Injuries and Deaths of Fire Fighters Due to Structural Collapse." The institute, which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is not a regulatory agency and cannot mandate policy for fire departments, but it was created by Congress to try to improve firefighter safety and sends its alerts and reports to all fire departments in the United States.

A collapse zone is usually described as a distance equal to the height of the building plus an additional allowance for debris scatter -- often 11*2 times the height of the building.

"Firefighters should not be allowed to operate inside a collapse zone," according to a recommendation in the alert."

"A building can collapse on you any time, without any warning," emphasized Dunn. He teaches courses and has written textbooks on the topic.

"There are three big things that cause them to collapse. One is the fire actually destroying the structure, the structural elements such as trusses, columns and girders. Two is the impact of master streams" -- water from the huge lines used to fight fires. "These are 4 to 6 tons of water a minute -- 100 feet per second coming from nozzles. It hits the walls, it hits windows, it can weaken the building. The third is the weight of the water -- that's 10,000 pounds you're throwing per minute, with two master streams that's 20,000 pounds a minute."

Though water doesn't always build up and weigh down a roof or floor, even when it just is absorbed by the old plaster and old wood of a church, it can add a great deal of weight, he said.

"Another factor always considered when a building is burning is the age of building," said Dunn. The wood can shrink so that beams are no longer resting on the bearing wall; mortar can deteriorate so that the bricks no longer adhere to one another.

Some parts of buildings are typically more unstable than others, he said. "Engineers who test for earthquakes have this device in which they build small towns on platforms and shake them. The first thing that comes off [a church] is the steeple -- it's beautiful but unstable, very unstable. You shake it further and the chimneys come down. Then the parapet walls come down. Then after that, the non-bearing walls. The last thing that comes down are bearing walls, then the entire building fails."

Towers and steeples "in most cases are not designed to stand alone," said Dave Dodson, a firefighter for 24 years who now heads a fire-safety training company called Response Solutions. "They require the stiffness of the rest of the building, they require some of its components to carry load." If one of the other parts of the building falls, often "that just pulls it down."

A safety Catch 22
"In the fire service, there's a rule, that you got to honor what they call the collapse zone," said Shouldis. "But if you're looking at a church bell tower that's several stories high, and you say 150 percent of the height of building, you'll be fighting the fire from over here in Philadelphia. And how do you get a collapse zone for a 110-story building? It's one of those textbook rules that's very difficult to comply with. It's easy to put in a textbook or newspaper, but in the street it's difficult."

Similarly, even if fire officials know there is risk of collapse, a burning fire also carries risks.

"You can't leave a smoldering building, so you have to send firefighters to put out those hot spots," said Dunn. "I realize, and any fire chief realizes, that this is a critically dangerous period."

But often the danger inside a building can only be seen from inside a building. "It's a Catch 22 -- you have to go inside to see what's going on before you see it's not safe to be inside," said Duval.

The safety chief typically is sent in to assess the interior, Dunn said. "If he says, 'Chief, don't send men in here,' I won't. If he says, 'Yeah, looks good, I will limit the number of firefighters. I know any building can collapse."

Experience and training
Gourley, the head of the board of inquiry, has said the members will not discuss their work while the investigation is taking place.

City Fire Chief Peter Micheli also won't comment on any details of the Ebenezer fire while the probe is ongoing, but discussed general safety procedures.

The fire department has a safety officer -- who is one of the battalion chiefs -- on duty at every fire. That person's responsibility is to help the incident commander do an initial "sizeup," in which the fire and the building are assessed to decide how to fight the fire.

The battalion chiefs are trained in fire safety at the department's training academy, Micheli said. There are no written procedures that are to be followed at every fire, he said.

In assessing the risk of collapse, he said, "it's mostly experience and training. Buildings are different. There is no one set of things that will tell you" whether a building is going to collapse, he said. Safety officers have no "check-off list" of things to look for, he said.

In the Ebenezer fire, the safety officer on duty was Charles Brace. After the collapse, Battalion Chief Colleen Walls took over as safety officer.

In deciding whether to establish a collapse zone, Micheli said, "if you have something you thought was compromised, you stay out of the way." He would not say whether a collapse zone was considered or established at Ebenezer.

Steve Berardinelli, who is heading the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety investigation, also would not discuss the case, but he did explain how he will proceed. The investigations entail exhaustive review of documents related to building, records of the firefighting, department regulations and practices and interviews with firefighters and participants.

"Ours is an impartial investigation with input from both union and management," he said. "The purpose of our investigation is not to assess blame on part of fire department or individuals involved, but to find how can we prevent this from happening again?"