New Jack City
October 4th, 2004, 12:44 AM
Sun Times
Panel says sprinklers needed for old high-rises
October 2, 2004
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter
A "typical office fire" that was confined to a single suite and never threatened the structural integrity of a Loop high-rise killed six people because of a "perfect storm" of mistakes by the city, county and clout-heavy building management, a $1.8 million state consulting team said Friday.
After examining the Oct. 17 fire at 69 W. Washington in excruciating detail and spreading the blame around, former FEMA director James Lee Witt joined the victims' families in demanding sprinklers in all older high-rises -- both commercial and residential.
That's something Mayor Daley and City Council Buildings Committee Chairman Bernard Stone (50th) have categorically rejected on grounds that condominium owners and renters simply cannot afford the "enormous" cost of installing sprinklers.
With the freedom to ignore those political realities, Witt's panel of experts is recommending otherwise. They point to cities across the country that have given residential and commercial high-rises 15 years to install sprinklers.
"The greatest loss of life in this country occurs in residences. That is where people are at their greatest risk," said Ed Comeau, a key member of Witt's fire review team.
"To install sprinklers systems in [all high-rises] is a giant leap forward for fire safety. If that happened in Chicago, it would position it as a leader."
Six people died and several others were injured at the Cook County Administration Building, a 35-story building that houses 2,500 government workers. The victims were ordered to evacuate the building, but they were trapped in smoke-filled stairwells when doors locked behind them. There was a 90-minute gap between the time firefighters arrived on the scene and the time the victims' bodies were found.
The county's failure to install sprinklers was cited by James Lee Witt Associates as one of four "key factors" that "directly contributed" to the six fatalities.
The others were the failure by Chicago firefighters to adequately "search and account for occupants in the stairways prior to and during fire-fighting operations"; their decision to open the door leading to the southeast stairwell on the 12th floor where the fire started; and stairway doors that locked behind fleeing employees, 48 percent of whom were unaware they would be trapped when the doors closed.
"A perfect storm where all of these things did come together. ... The loss of life probably would not have occurred if [even] one of those four steps had been followed," Comeau said.
At a cost of $1.8 million to Illinois taxpayers, Witt's price tag more than doubled that of the Mikva Commission, which raised nearly all of the same points in public testimony that put the Chicago Fire Department on trial. Fire Commissioner Cortez Trotter has already made sweeping changes in response to the Mikva report.
In an apparent attempt to justify the extraordinary cost of his "more scientific" report, Witt staged a more than 90-minute news conference to unveil his findings.
It featured a computer simulation of how the smoke and fire spread out of the 12th-floor storage room in four minutes and would have been contained if the building had sprinklers. It also had a "human behavior" survey of employees inadequately trained by a building management team linked to former Illinois Gaming Board Chairman Elzie Higginbottom.
Consultants concluded that: "information overload" and a shortage of support for the Fire Department's incident commander caused frantic 911 calls from trapped employees to get lost in the shuffle; whether the smoke towers were open or closed had "minimal effect"; that a "lack of compartmentalization" above the ceiling allowed the smoke to spread, and that the fire safety director was on a train 40 minutes away when the fire started.
They also found that the structural integrity of the "robust" building was never threatened, making it difficult to explain why firefighters concentrated on fire suppression and ignored search and rescue. They further argued that the Fire Department's decision to use tower ladders to attack the raging fire from the outside is "generally not a viable solution" and should be "the exception, not the rule."
Although no one has come forward to admit it, a "number of credible witnesses" also reported that a firefighter told them to go back up the stairs, using the same language to report the conversation, Comeau said. That leads consultants to believe that it happened, the same conclusion reached by Abner Mikva.
Dan Boho, an attorney representing the building's management company, categorically rejected the claim that building employees were inadequately trained or that stairway signs were inadequate. He said signs posted on stairway doors clearly read, "Next exit, First Floor."
Panel says sprinklers needed for old high-rises
October 2, 2004
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter
A "typical office fire" that was confined to a single suite and never threatened the structural integrity of a Loop high-rise killed six people because of a "perfect storm" of mistakes by the city, county and clout-heavy building management, a $1.8 million state consulting team said Friday.
After examining the Oct. 17 fire at 69 W. Washington in excruciating detail and spreading the blame around, former FEMA director James Lee Witt joined the victims' families in demanding sprinklers in all older high-rises -- both commercial and residential.
That's something Mayor Daley and City Council Buildings Committee Chairman Bernard Stone (50th) have categorically rejected on grounds that condominium owners and renters simply cannot afford the "enormous" cost of installing sprinklers.
With the freedom to ignore those political realities, Witt's panel of experts is recommending otherwise. They point to cities across the country that have given residential and commercial high-rises 15 years to install sprinklers.
"The greatest loss of life in this country occurs in residences. That is where people are at their greatest risk," said Ed Comeau, a key member of Witt's fire review team.
"To install sprinklers systems in [all high-rises] is a giant leap forward for fire safety. If that happened in Chicago, it would position it as a leader."
Six people died and several others were injured at the Cook County Administration Building, a 35-story building that houses 2,500 government workers. The victims were ordered to evacuate the building, but they were trapped in smoke-filled stairwells when doors locked behind them. There was a 90-minute gap between the time firefighters arrived on the scene and the time the victims' bodies were found.
The county's failure to install sprinklers was cited by James Lee Witt Associates as one of four "key factors" that "directly contributed" to the six fatalities.
The others were the failure by Chicago firefighters to adequately "search and account for occupants in the stairways prior to and during fire-fighting operations"; their decision to open the door leading to the southeast stairwell on the 12th floor where the fire started; and stairway doors that locked behind fleeing employees, 48 percent of whom were unaware they would be trapped when the doors closed.
"A perfect storm where all of these things did come together. ... The loss of life probably would not have occurred if [even] one of those four steps had been followed," Comeau said.
At a cost of $1.8 million to Illinois taxpayers, Witt's price tag more than doubled that of the Mikva Commission, which raised nearly all of the same points in public testimony that put the Chicago Fire Department on trial. Fire Commissioner Cortez Trotter has already made sweeping changes in response to the Mikva report.
In an apparent attempt to justify the extraordinary cost of his "more scientific" report, Witt staged a more than 90-minute news conference to unveil his findings.
It featured a computer simulation of how the smoke and fire spread out of the 12th-floor storage room in four minutes and would have been contained if the building had sprinklers. It also had a "human behavior" survey of employees inadequately trained by a building management team linked to former Illinois Gaming Board Chairman Elzie Higginbottom.
Consultants concluded that: "information overload" and a shortage of support for the Fire Department's incident commander caused frantic 911 calls from trapped employees to get lost in the shuffle; whether the smoke towers were open or closed had "minimal effect"; that a "lack of compartmentalization" above the ceiling allowed the smoke to spread, and that the fire safety director was on a train 40 minutes away when the fire started.
They also found that the structural integrity of the "robust" building was never threatened, making it difficult to explain why firefighters concentrated on fire suppression and ignored search and rescue. They further argued that the Fire Department's decision to use tower ladders to attack the raging fire from the outside is "generally not a viable solution" and should be "the exception, not the rule."
Although no one has come forward to admit it, a "number of credible witnesses" also reported that a firefighter told them to go back up the stairs, using the same language to report the conversation, Comeau said. That leads consultants to believe that it happened, the same conclusion reached by Abner Mikva.
Dan Boho, an attorney representing the building's management company, categorically rejected the claim that building employees were inadequately trained or that stairway signs were inadequate. He said signs posted on stairway doors clearly read, "Next exit, First Floor."