Federal agency faults SAFD tactics in fire that killed...

A San Antonio firefighter died while battling a blaze in the Spartan Gym last year after the Fire Department failed to safely search the building, keep track of fellow rescuers and adequately ventilate the smoke-filled structure, a federal report released Thursday states.

The review by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, an agency that seeks to improve workplace safety, concluded that some of the San Antonio Fire Department’s tactics actually made conditions worse inside the gym where firefighter Scott Deem, 31, died after he became lost.

Two other firefighters were injured, one severely.

The agency made 19 recommendations about the department’s procedures and practices to attack fires and prevent another on-duty death.

Chief Charles Hood, in a statement to firefighters last month before the release of the 74-page report, said the department “concurs with the recommendations in their entirety.”

“The NIOSH firefighter fatality report was difficult to read, and even more difficult to accept, but their recommendations were accurate and fair,” wrote Hood, who said the department was taking steps to comply with the report’s findings.

SAFD voluntarily sought the review and had a chance to examine and revise the report prior to its release.

Authorities believe the May 18, 2017, blaze at the Ingram Square shopping center on the Northwest Side was intentionally set. Police arrested gym owner Emond Javor Johnson on charges of murder and arson. At 9:12 p.m. May 18, 2017, the San Antonio Fire Department responded to a fire at the Spartan Box gym. While searching the burning structure, firefighter Scott Deem lost contact with his crew. He was later found dead inside the gym. Another firefighter, Brad Phipps, was injured.
Photo: Mike Fisher/San Antonio Express-News

The federal review mirrored conclusions of the State Fire Marshal’s Office, which also investigated Deem’s death and concluded the tragedy was preventable.

Among the concerns raised in the NIOSH report:

Ventilation: On a night with winds clocked at 17 mph, firefighters opened the gym’s back door to clear out the smoke, but the flow of fresh oxygen fueled the fire and it rapidly intensified.

“Uncontrolled ventilation introduces large volumes of oxygen into the structure, resulting in a rapid increase in fire development,” the report stated.

Tactics: Deem was part of a search-and-rescue team with fellow firefighter Brad Phipps to look for anyone possibly trapped inside. But they didn’t go in with guide ropes or water hoses in the cluttered, pitch-black building.

No one was inside. Then the firefighters began tearing down ceiling tiles looking for the fire, which wasn’t their assigned task. That created a new path for the fire to spread, causing conditions to “deteriorate rapidly.”

“Do not freelance,” the report stated, referring to a term used to describe situations where firefighters don’t heed orders.

Communication: For several minutes, there wasn’t a clear chain of command at the scene of the fire. A battalion chief who arrived, Wally Yates, stated over the radio that he was taking over command, but the captain who had been giving orders didn’t hear the transmission.

For several minutes, both men were issuing commands over the radio to other firefighters, causing confusion.

Minutes later, Deem became lost and sent out a frantic “mayday” call over the radio, but it was unclear which firefighter was in distress or where he was.

No radio call went out from Phipps, who was severely burned and later was rescued from the blaze.

It’s unclear if Phipps tried to use his radio, but federal officials concluded the radios were working properly.

“Issuing a radio to every firefighter is not enough,” the NIOSH report concluded. “Training must accompany any effort to improve fire ground communication.”

Some firefighters have complained of long-standing problems with their radios malfunctioning in harsh conditions, but the city renewed its contract this year with its current vendor, Dailey-Wells. Hood said earlier there were no technical problems with the department’s radio system.

“There were no deficiencies with any of our protective personal equipment or our radios,” Hood told the San Antonio Express-News in a past interview. “So we had no equipment malfunction in that fire.”

Deem’s distress call went out minutes after Yates arrived at the shopping center and tried to take command. The Fire Department did not respond to an interview request with Yates on Thursday.

Among the far-reaching recommendations in the report: San Antonio should consider requiring sprinkler systems in all commercial structures to help suppress fires.

While city codes mandate such systems in new commercial construction, older structures such as the Spartan Gym aren’t required to be retrofitted unless the building is a night club with an occupant load greater than 300 people.

San Antonio did raise its fire-safety standards for older high-rise residential buildings. Those have to be retrofitted with sprinklers by 2027, a change that grew out of a deadly fire at the Wedgwood Senior Living apartments in Castle Hills in 2014.

In the case of the fire at the gym, if the strip center had a sprinkler system, it would have “significantly reduced” the risk of the fire spreading and may have led to a much different outcome for the firefighters, the federal report noted.

Officials refused to release Deem’s autopsy report to the public, but the Bexar County medical examiner concluded that Deem died from “conflagration injuries,” according to the NIOSH review.

Last month, the department officially opened the Scott Deem Training Facility to better prepare firefighters for whatever situation they may encounter.
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