TURNOUT GEAR SAVED MY LIFE
PROTECTION OF PERSONNEL
Editor’s note: Steven Sullivan is not the first firefighter to have suffered serious injuries during a training fire. Sadly, injuries and fatalities have occurred in “controlled” situations. How many of those could be attributed to less than safe practices or a disregard for safety standards— however “innocent” that disregard may be—is impossible to say. Our hope is that by telling bis story Sullivan will get you to at least think more critically about how you conduct your live-fire drills, and that by doing so we can increase personnel safety in what is a necessary yet dangerous activity. This story is not meant to indict a specific department—it could have happened to any firefighter almost anywhere.
The Bolingbrook, Illinois Fire Department was participating in a live-fire training drill on a Sunday morning in spring; the weather was cool and windy. Our task was to burn down an old farmhouse and tool shed for a developer.
A small community like ours didn’t see many structural fires, so periodic live-fire training evolutions provided an excellent opportunity for us to brush up on our skills and train new firefighters. There’s no substitute for the experience of the heat, smoke, limited vision, and claustrophobia associated with a real structure fire.
This particular morning our battalion chief/training officer commanded the exercise, but there was no safety officer to oversee the drill. While an ambulance was on the training scene at the start of the drill, it w^as called away with its two full-time paramedic firefighters to a medical emergency. This left us with three officers, nine firefighters, and six cadets for the drill. The cadets were teenagers at least 16 years old w ho were members of the Scout Explorer post sponsored by the fire department. They had the same basic training as a recruit firefighter but no experience in live fires.
The three officers and a senior firefighter split the crew into teams and served as instructors. My team consisted of one paid-on-call firefighter and two cadets.
THE DRILL BEGINS
First the teams burned the shed. Because of the brisk wind and the residue of hydrocarbon fuels once stored in the shed, this was easy. We protected the exposures, and the shed went down in just half an hour.
Then we turned our attention to the main building—a 1920s one-story frame house w ith a basement. Remodeling through the years had changed its lines. We set the first fire in the northwest bedroom. Team 1 promptly advanced the attack line through the kitchen at the south of the house. They performed no vertical ventilation. Instead, they vented by breaking a window in the fire room. The attack succeeded quickly.
Now it was our team’s turn. The battalion chief and a senior firefighter set the fire in the northeast corner bedroom, using a mixture of gasoline and diesel fuel. Che room contained old furniture, assorted Class A combustibles, and some styrene from packing boxes.
My team stood by, all geared up and ready. The firefighter manned the nozzle. The two cadets backed him. I didn’t feel right about this situation. My gut feeling told me it was wrong to take a 16-year-old kid into a burning building.
The battalion chief instructed me to wait a few minutes to let the fire grow. I asked him whether my team had been trained to use SCBA. He assured me they had.
By the time we entered the structure two or three minutes later, smoke poured out the door at waist level. I could hardly see because the smoke was so thick and black. Crawling next to the nozzleman, I felt the intense heat of the fire two rooms away but couldn’t see any flames. We began to cross the kitchen toward the living room and the fire room beyond, but we never made it out of the kitchen.
A BURN VICTIM AND PANIC
Suddenly flames began to lick through the doorway and across the ceiling. The nozzleman yelled about the heat. I told him to hit the flames that now rolled over our heads. As he opened up, the heat intensified. He must have had the nozzle on full fog, because steam fell down on us. Then I heard someone scream, “I’m on fire, get me out! How do I get out? Help me get out! I’m on fire, please help me!”
I immediately ordered the nozzleman to back the line out. I followed the crew’s retreat. Then I found the source of the screaming: the young cadet last on the line as we entered the building. I learned later that he didn’t drop to the crawl position with the rest of us when we entered. However, I couldn’t see throught the smoke to help him.
The screaming cadet ran wildly around the 10′ x 10′ room. He bumped into us as we tried to escape. I grabbed for him as he lurched past me, but he was moving too fast. I yelled at him to get down on his knees. The other two crew members continued to retreat, backing the hoseline out with them. I crawled toward the sound of the panicky cadet, who was pleading for help and thrashing around in terror. I blindly reached up for him while trying to remain as close to the floor as possible. Finally, I wrenched him to the floor and subdued him.
The cadet curled into a fetal position. He didn’t respond when I shouted and shook him. I thought he might be dead. Although exhausted, I pushed his dead weight to where I thought the exit was. The hoseline was gone, so I had to guess at the location of the door. I felt the surface of the wall and started to follow it. After chasing the hysterical cadet around, I had lost my bearings. I was sure I was near the door, but I couldn’t find it!
The heat became unbearable. I feared the room would flash over at any moment. I frantically searched for an escape route while trying to hang onto the cadet. I was terrified and began to panic. I’d been searching for the exit forever! My mind played tricks on me and placed me in another part of the house.
Suddenly I saw a faint light filtering through the thick black haze. My face must have been inches from a window, yet I didn’t see it until it was right in front of me. I picked up the cadet and, with all my strength, heaved him through the glass. The door was only inches from the window, but I still didn’t see it. Besides, I was so disoriented, I didn’t realize I was still in the kitchen. I thought I was in another room. Instinctively, I dove through the broken glass after the cadet.
A PAINFUL LESSON
Outside I watched other firefighters pull off the cadet’s turnout coat. He was stunned. He appeared to have burns on his shoulders and upper arms.
Somebody helped me strip off my gear. When I pulled off my leather gloves, my skin peeled off with them. I had been badly burned, yet I wasn’t aware of it until now. As I removed my turnout coat, I saw that my forearms also were burned. Steam and smoke rose off my coat as it lay on the ground. I still wasn’t fully aware of the extent of my injuries.
As I went over to see whether the cadet was all right, the pain from my own burns began to surface. I hunted for some water to cool them down. The engineer sprayed the booster line over my hands and arms. He tried to get me to lie down, as I looked extremely pale.
Someone called the only other advanced life support ambulance in town. When the paramedics arrived, I told them to check on the kid first, that I was all right.
I was so wrong. I was not all right! A minute later I couldn’t even explain to the paramedic what had happened, because the pain was so intense. He tried several times to cut my wedding band off, but it was taking forever. I was desperate to stick my hands back in the tub of cool water, they hurt so much. So before he could protest, I grabbed hold of the ring, yanked it off my severely burned finger, and plunged my hands back in the water. I wasn’t sure I’d ever wear a ring again.
My hands and forearms were steamburned. The skin was literally cooked. You could smell the burned flesh. Although I had no direct flame contact, those steam burns were even more severe. The treatment I received and the psychological as well as physical effects of the incident were extensive. I spent an excruciating 16 days in the burn unit of Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago, where surgeons removed skin from my thigh and grafted it onto my arms and hands.
The cadet, who was not as badly burned as I was, visited me at the hospital. He didn’t remember everything that had happened in the fire, but when he found out, he was grateful to be alive. He was going to another hospital for outpatient treatment. He sustained second-degree or partial-thickness burns on both arms and first-degree burns on his shoulders. He hadn’t worn a hood like the rest of us, so he also suffered burns on his ears. These were all steam burns— none were from flame contact. Considering that he wasn’t wearing bunker pants and his turnout coat was an old hand-me-down, it’s surprising he wasn’t more seriously burned. I’m convinced that his turnout coat saved his life. I know my coat saved me!
I spent about a month recuperating at home. I sat in my recliner with my arms and leg propped on pillows. I wore knit pressure garments over my arms to protect and mold my skin as it healed. I visited the hospital periodically for outpatient physical therapy. Two months after the incident I was allowed to return to the station, but only for desk work. Five and a half months later I was able to return to the engine.
WHAT SAVED MY LIFE
I found my gear from the training fire in dire condition. My helmet literally had melted. Everyone who has seen it since has asked, “Did the person who wore that live?” My turnout coat and pants saved my upper arms and shoulders and the rest of my body from being burned. My forearms were burned during my repeated attempts to reach up through the thermal layers of the fire and grab the hysterical cadet. My sleeves rode up my forearms and exposed them to the superheated air. From now on, my turnout coats will have flame-resistant, over-the-thumb wrist gauntlets sewn in the sleeves to prevent arm and hand exposure. However, the thermal liner and moisture barrier in the coat did their job.
My hood was still intact, just dirty. Some people say that if 1 hadn’t worn the hood, I might have felt the heat earlier and I could have backed the crew out sooner. The old fire service saying “When your ears start to burn, it’s time to return” is nonsense. That saying was good in the days before hoods. 1 believe in any material or tool that allows me more time to save lives and property. I thank God that I was wearing a hood. Judging by the condition of my melted helmet, without the hood my face and head would have been scarred for life.
Since then I have shown my bunker gear and helmet in presentations to emphasize the importance of properly wearing turnouts at all times, including training, and the proper method of conducting live-fire training drills. Those charred exhibits do get the point across.
Under the conditions I experienced, 1 could have been injured even worse if it wasn’t for that extra measure of protection built into my turnouts. If my coat had over-the-thumb wrist gauntlets, my arms may not have been burned at all.
My nightmares have subsided now, with the help of critical incident stress counseling. But I’m still concerned about being trapped in a burning structure. I am super careful about holding on to the hoseline even if I can see the exit, and I drill this into the firefighters in my current department. It won’t happen again —not to me, or anyone in my department, or anywhere else if I can help it!
NFPA 1403, Standard on Live Fire Training Evolutions in Structures, describes some basic rules designed to avoid what happened to me. One is that vertical ventilation is a must for releasing heat and preventing flashover conditions. Another is that nobody should enter a burning building without full turnout protection. I strongly recommend that this standard be followed at any live-fire training drill. I’m sure it was not followed at the incident I have described.
Since the incident, three firefighters died during a training exercise in Milford, Michigan. The circumstances were similar—again involving an old farmhouse, flammable liquids, and cadets.
There’s a video training tape called To Hell and Back about a firefighter who also was severely burned during a training session. He didn’t wear his complete set of turnout gear. The point is that you should always wear all of your turnout gear, even during a training fire.
I wrote this story to reinforce one extremely important point: Turnout gear is provided to protect you from serious injury, but it does no good hanging on a hook at the station or laying on the ground at a fire scene. It only works if you wear it and wear it right!
I’m a walking example of the good it can do, but others have been less fortunate for not wearing it. If we don’t share our mistakes so that others can learn from them, we will repeat the same mistakes.
