dcfdjim
Member
I attended the funeral of one of the two guys who died in this NE Philadelphia row house fire. As a firefighter, what I need to read is an in-depth, third party report on how these two brave men died in that fire. An OSHA and or NIOSH investigation into a firefighter line of duty death (LODD) will expose many fire department deficiencies that contribute to firefighter deaths. If deficiencies in the radio system contributed to this tragedy, then it would be thoroughly investigated, documented, and printed. Additionally, if other contributing factors are discovered, they also will be printed for all of us to learn by. An example of some additional contributing factors may be: an inadequate deployment of fire resources to the fire, lack of fire fighter training (maybe on the radios), lack of a strong fire department incident command presence, or maybe departmental members engaged in the firefight who deviated from standard operating procedures/guidelines.
Either way, it's unfair to speculate that the radio system is the sole cause of these two Brothers' death until an official, unbiased report is published.
Unfortunately, though, it seems to me that the Philadelphia Fire Department maintains a history of not making such investigations public. In my almost nineteen years with the Washington, DC Fire Department, the Philadelphia Fire Department has suffered numerous LODDs; however, to my knowledge, OSHA or NIOSH reports outlining these deaths have not been made public for us all to learn.
In my community, we have lost three fire fighters in working fires in the last seven years...two of the Brothers died in the same fire. My point is, we opened our hearts and allowed the full investigations into these tragedies to be made widely available so that all other fire fighters may learn from our mistakes.
Regarding the discussions on this thread about tactical channel configurations, I am a proponent of keeping them trunked and definitely NOT encrypting them. As a captain, I act as a battalion fire chief fairly often. While en route to a fire, it is not uncommon for companies to begin interior operations before the battalion fire chief is close enough to receive conventional/direct, non-repeated channels. However, with our TRS, all interior portable radio transmissions are heard...and this is invaluable. Our fire department is fortunate enough to have added an additional six repeater towers since the inception of the system when we were only using four, thereby enhancing our coverage. Additionally, we incorporate vehicle repeater systems (VRS) that are activated when we arrive on scene. If members go out-of-range when they enter a building, they switch to a conventional channel which transmits back out to the apparatus which in turn will retransmit the signal on the original digital tactical channel. In fact, the emergency button still works when we're using the VRS.
Either way, it's unfair to speculate that the radio system is the sole cause of these two Brothers' death until an official, unbiased report is published.
Unfortunately, though, it seems to me that the Philadelphia Fire Department maintains a history of not making such investigations public. In my almost nineteen years with the Washington, DC Fire Department, the Philadelphia Fire Department has suffered numerous LODDs; however, to my knowledge, OSHA or NIOSH reports outlining these deaths have not been made public for us all to learn.
In my community, we have lost three fire fighters in working fires in the last seven years...two of the Brothers died in the same fire. My point is, we opened our hearts and allowed the full investigations into these tragedies to be made widely available so that all other fire fighters may learn from our mistakes.
Regarding the discussions on this thread about tactical channel configurations, I am a proponent of keeping them trunked and definitely NOT encrypting them. As a captain, I act as a battalion fire chief fairly often. While en route to a fire, it is not uncommon for companies to begin interior operations before the battalion fire chief is close enough to receive conventional/direct, non-repeated channels. However, with our TRS, all interior portable radio transmissions are heard...and this is invaluable. Our fire department is fortunate enough to have added an additional six repeater towers since the inception of the system when we were only using four, thereby enhancing our coverage. Additionally, we incorporate vehicle repeater systems (VRS) that are activated when we arrive on scene. If members go out-of-range when they enter a building, they switch to a conventional channel which transmits back out to the apparatus which in turn will retransmit the signal on the original digital tactical channel. In fact, the emergency button still works when we're using the VRS.
