The 94-page report, to be released Wednesday, levels harsh criticism at the Fire Department as well as at the management and security companies of the Cook County Administration Building for how they reacted to the Oct. 17 fire that killed six people.
The report says the “actions and inactions” of the Fire Department, building management and security “contributed to the loss of life.”
The panel found that if the building at 69 W. Washington St. had been equipped with sprinklers or had stairwell doors that automatically unlocked in a fire, none of the deaths or injuries would have occurred. The report recommends building code changes that require sprinklers in all commercial high-rises.
Though it spreads blame around, the report is particularly critical of the Fire Department. The panel found the department fought the blaze from the wrong stairwell, placed more emphasis on battling the blaze than saving lives, and failed to direct workers away from trouble.
The report includes 20 recommended changes for the department, including better coordination with the city’s Office of Emergency Management to ensure firefighters at the scene get information quickly from 911 calls, and the implementation of a better communications system while battling high-rise fires.
The report also recommends that the Fire Department develop a physical-fitness training program, increase the capacity of its air tanks, conduct full top-to-bottom searches of high-rise stairwells while fires are raging and take responsibility for directing building occupants to safe stairwells during evacuations.
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“This commission took its responsibility to heart to try to prevent this type of tragedy from ever happening again,” said Craig Antas, an attorney for the commission. Antas said the investigation of the Fire Department was just one aspect of the overall probe.
`Not meant to condemn’
“This report is not meant to condemn the actions of the Chicago Fire Department,” he said. “What this report hopefully will do is assist the Fire Department in spotting issues that they need to improve upon themselves.”
City officials are expected to hold a news conference Wednesday morning, shortly after the report is released, to talk about changes the Fire Department has made and what future changes may be appropriate.
A lawyer for the city has said the department is open to suggestions, and will review both the recommendations from the county panel and those included in a state report that has not yet been released.
All six victims of the fire died in the building’s smoke-filled southeast stairwell. Although there has been little agreement among investigating agencies about what caused the fire, all agree it started in the 12th-floor storage room of the secretary of state’s business office.
The county report calls the cause of the fire “undetermined,” while the Fire Department has ruled it “incendiary,” or started by a person. The Fire Department’s ruling was based, in part, on the discovery of gasoline on a sample taken from the storage room.
A chemist hired by the county panel, Arthur Krawetz, said he reviewed the testing done at a state lab and found it inconclusive. Krawetz’s findings, included in the county’s report, say the data is “strongly suggestive” that the material found on the samples was not gasoline, but the byproduct of charred paper and debris from the area.
Police ruling on hold
Police have yet to rule on whether they believe the fire was arson, a determination that will not be announced until they complete their investigation of a second, much smaller fire in the secretary of state’s new office.
The second fire, on June 25 at 17 N. State St., has raised suspicions among some investigators because it occurred just before 5 p.m. on a Friday–circumstances similar to the Oct. 17 blaze.
The county panel’s report does not mention the June 25 fire, and instead focuses entirely on the Oct. 17 blaze.
The panel’s most pointed criticism of the Fire Department is that firefighters reported seeing civilians on the southeast stairwell but did not search for others.
“Even with evidence of civilians in the stairwell, the firemen’s actions exhibited a primary concern for fighting the fire rather than evacuating civilians that might still be in the southeast stairwell,” the report said. “The behavior and decision-making is an example of poor training and a lack of appropriate prioritization.”
The report goes on to say that the Fire Department “did not use multiple hose lines early enough to fight this fire,” and complicated the problem by setting up its attack in the same stairwell as the building’s smoke tower, a shaft designed to vent smoke out of the structure.
That move, the report says, “caused smoke from the tenants’ space on the 12th floor to inundate the southeast stairwell where civilians were trapped.”
Management firm criticized
The report also criticizes the building’s management company, 69 West Washington Management. The report says the company failed to train its staff on building evacuation procedures, and says the building’s engineer, Dave Rabka, should not have ordered a full evacuation.
“A limited evacuation would likely have kept a number of people out of the stairwells, including some of the victims,” the report states.
Dan Boho, a lawyer for the management company, defended Rabka’s decision as a judgment call and said building staff were trained for evacuations.
The report also says the management company failed to properly prepare tenants for an evacuation, failed to conduct fire drills for custodians and failed to ensure the building’s smoke tower was working.
Boho said that the company conducted four fire drills in the 15 months before the blaze and that news footage shows smoke emanating from the smoke tower’s opening on the roof 10 minutes into the firefighting effort, proof the device worked.
The report faults both the Fire Department for not requesting the building’s pre-fire plan when it arrived on the scene, and the building’s management for not offering firefighters a copy.
The five-member commission that wrote the report was headed by retired federal judge Abner Mikva. The panel was appointed six days after the fire by County Board President John Stroger.
Starting Dec. 1, the commission took the public testimony of 47 witnesses, including firefighters, survivors and outside experts. The commission’s final budget is expected to be less than $900,000, Antas said.
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A second outside investigation by James Lee Witt, former leader of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is under way. Appointed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Witt has said his investigation would cost $1.9 million.