David Sepulveda Photo
Egan at the scene.
The fire that destroyed an historic commercial building in the heart of Westville has sparked a second conflagration — a dispute among department brass over whether some firefighters’ lives were improperly placed in jeopardy.
The dispute led ten members of the department’s command staff, following a Wednesday night meeting, to write a letter to Fire Chief Allyn Wright asking him to address “serious issues” raised by the handling of the Aug. 25 blaze at Delaney’s Restaurant and Tap Room at the corner of Whalley and Central Avenues. They asked him to turn control at fire scenes to senior command staff.
Based on the handling of the fire, “Chief [Allyn] Wright and Chief Egan should not take command of a Fire scene because neither has any experience or education to direct the work force at a fire. The public and Firefighters lives are at risk,” New Haven Firefighters Local 825 President Jimmy Kottage wrote Thursday in an email to the city’s chief administrative officer and labor relations director. “… I’m asking for your help before someone gets seriously hurt or killed.”
The episode was also the subject of a City Hall meeting Wednesday with Mayor Toni Harp and leaders of the black and firefighters associations, as well as Kottage. Based on that meeting, Harp said Thursday, she has asked her staff to investigate the handling of the fire.
“I’m looking into it,” Harp said. “It’s kind of serious from their perspective.”
The dispute centers on a moment during the fire when Assistant Chief Pat Egan ordered firefighters to walk up to part of the building after the roof had collapsed, and to reach through windows with poles to clear debris.
At the time, Battalion Chief William Gould was on the roof of the next-door Webster Bank directing some of the firefighters. He said that a call had already come over the department radio announcing that parts of the building had begun to collapse and thus declaring “collapse zones” along Whalley and Central Avenues.
Such zones are declared when a building has begun to collapse or appears about to collapse. It means firefighters are to come no closer than a distance equal to one and a half times the building’s height — in this case about 60 feet.
Gould said that he saw firefighters next to the building in violation of the zone.
“There were individuals operating right in the front wall — there was a total collapse of the roof structure,” Gould told the Independent Thursday. “I yelled down to whoever’s attention I could get, ‘Move away from the wall! Get away from the area!’ That’s where the tap room was.”
He said a firefighter looked up and pointed to Egan to signal that Egan had given the order. The firefighters did not comply with Gould’s order to get away.
Gould then walked to the other side of the roof to catch the attention of Battalion Chief Mark Marcarelli, who was the safety officer on scene. He described what was happening. Marcarelli walked over to where Egan and the firefighters were at the windows. He ordered them to leave, which they did.
Egan offered a different version Thursday. He told the Independent he didn’t realize that Gould was yelling at firefighters to back away from the spot.
“There’s a lot of yelling and things going on at a fire,” he said.
Egan also said he had not been informed of the declaration of a collapse zone on the Whalley Avenue side of the building.
“There was nothing I was made aware of,” he said, “except for the Webster [Bank] alley.”
He said he joined the firefighters in using 12-foot poles to try to poke through the windows to clear debris that had fallen inside the building and was blocking water streams from reaching flames.
“They were a few feet outside and using a pole,” he said.
Gould said that even if Egan hadn’t heard the order on the radio, “basic firefighting” training instructs members that once a collapse begins, firefighters need to back away. At the time Egan ordered the man up to the windows, Gould said, “there were obvious and evident signs — - sagging walls, cracked brick walls, out-of-whack windows, a full collapse of the roof.”
Kottage agreed: “The building already partially collapsed. Chief Egan put multiple fire crews in harm’s way, endangering the firefighters’ lives … It [had become] a defensive fire. The building was going to be a total loss.”
“He showed up on the scene when master streams were being used. Any time you’re using major master streams, you automatically have to consider setting up a collapse zone. That’s 101,” said Darrell Brooks, vice-president of the Firebirds, the organization of black firefighters.
Brooks said some members told the organization “they thought they were going to die that night. There was no sense of command at that fire. You felt like your superiors who were giving you directives did not have a handle on it.”
The letter to Chief Wright was signed by Battalion Chiefs Ben Vargas, Gould, Luis Rivera, Thomas Neville, Gary Carbone, Marcarelli, Thomas Quinn, and Brian Jooss; as well as Kottage and Drillmaster Frank Ricci.
Chief Wright Thursday afternoon said he can’t comment yet on the controversy.
“I haven’t seen the letter,” he said. “I had a meeting with the mayor. I’m still in the process of looking into it.
“I’m not going into it until I conclude my investigation. The only one I’ve talked to is one chief, and I talked to Egan about an hour and a half ago. I haven’t had a chance to talk to everybody and read everybody’s reports.”
Here we go. As a member of the NHFD the continued attacks by the union on the Chiefs is nauseating. I was at the fire. It was run no differently than the way they have always been run in my 16 years on the job. I didn't hear of any collapse zone designated until chief marcarelli announced it properly over the radio apparently after this incident not before it. What's even more amazing is the balls of chief gould to call a shot on anybody. Instead of saying what should be known why didn't he just put it over the radio. Is he trying to set the Chief up? His failure to alert the chief or anyone else properly through a radio transmission is more dangerous than anything. Of course it was chief gould who not to long ago was written up by the departments safety officer, chief marcarelli, for his failing to call a second alarm until ordered to do so and endangering the lives of all involved at a fire in newhallville because he was having one of his well known temper tantrums. Remember Bill people in glass house shouldn't throw stones. NHI maybe you should investigate that and ask for that letter.