By Keith Lacey
Since municipal amalgamation and a tragic Hanmer house fire 16 months ago, the City of Greater Sudbury has implemented a fire fighting strategy to get as many firefighters to a house fire as quickly as possible.
?What we try and achieve is 10 men in 10 minutes 90 per cent of the time? to any structural house fire,? said City of Greater Sudbury assistant fire chief Norm Buchy.
Sweeping changes to bring in new equipment and improve response times across the Greater City were already well under way when a house fire took the lives of two children and their great-grandmother on Apr. 22, 2001, said Buchy.
Buchy testified Thursday at a coroner?s inquest into the deaths of Asha-Jade McLean, 3, her brother Ellias McLean, 4, and their great-grandmother Pearl Shaw, 75.
The Ontario fire marshal?s office has provided a standard operating procedure for not only tackling structural fires, but implementing the ?10 in 10? policy across the province in the past few months.
?Sometimes because of distance it?s impossible, but overall we feel it is appropriate? to have 10 experienced firefighters at any structural house fire within 10 minutes of an emergency call being received, said Buchy.
Earlier this week, an OPP expert testified it took firefighters just under 10 minutes to get from the Val Therese fire station to the tragic fire at 4141 Roy St. in Hanmer. The same expert said it took just under 13 minutes for those same crews to arrive from the time a 911 call was placed by a frantic neighbour.
Since amalgamation at the beginning of 2001, Buchy said he is personally responsible for ensuring a provincial training module is implemented for all firefighters in the City of Greater Sudbury.
The curriculum was developed by the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs in conjunction with the Office of the Fire Marshal and Ontario Fire College, said Buchy.
?It?s a very large document and to complete all the programs within the Ontario curriculum would take about five years?some people will learn a little faster and some a little slower,? said Buchy.
The curriculum is exactly the same for full-time professional firefighters and part-time volunteers, he said.
Training is provided twice a month to all volunteers and there?s formal training and testing provided intermittently as part of the process, he said.
All volunteers accepted must also complete a 40-hour training module before being able to attend at any fire station and be sent to any fire scene, he said.
When asked if there?s anyway to ensure if the 10 men in 10-minute policy can be guaranteed under the current system, Buchy acknowledged there is no such guarantee.
However, the system is designed to have enough volunteers ready at any given time to achieve the goal, noting there are 36 volunteers for three different fire stations in Valley East, said Buchy.
The day of this fire, Buchy said he was at home in Chelmsford and immediately rushed into his emergency vehicle and arrived about 25 minutes later on scene.
As the top-ranking official, he took over official command and made an order for firefighters inside to come back out after several reported unsafe conditions inside, said Buchy.
?The floor was soft and was going to let go, it was unsafe,? he said. ?The firefighters got out and started an exterior attack.?
The floor area near the main bedroom and kitchen eventually gave out and the bodies of all three victims were found in the basement underneath the kitchen and bedroom area.
So much water was dumped to extinguish the fire there was more than three feet of water accumulated in the basement, said Buchy.
When asked by Robert McLean, the grandfather of the children who perished in the fire, why new equipment wasn?t available on the fire trucks at the scene, Buchy said it had been ordered as part of a huge upgrading of fire services across the greater city.?
From the time he arrived and by everything he discovered through debriefing and talking to professional and volunteer firefighters on the scene, everyone did their jobs properly that day, said Buchy.
?This was a non-survivable atmosphere.?
Most schools offer fire prevention training to students from Grade 1 to 8, but some don?t and the fire service has no authority to mandate what schools must teach to their children, said Buchy.
Any school board or parent that wants information can obtain literature at various fire halls and there are 11 fire prevention officers across the city able to hold classes and courses for groups or individuals who want help, he said.
