D.C. firefighter breaks leg in training exercise

A D.C. firefighter broke his leg during a training exercise Thursday, when he was thrown 30 feet off a truck ladder that suddenly moved due to a broken securing mechanism.

The incident at the D.C. Fire and EMS Department Training Academy in Southwest highlights the dangers firefighters face due to faulty vehicles. The Washington Times first reported last Monday that fire officials have fallen behind in buying new vehicles and have allowed repair orders to pile up.

In Thursday’s accident, firefighters were using Truck 17 in an exercise when a hose bumped the levers that control the truck’s ladder, causing the ladder to move and throwing a firefighter to the ground, according to three fire department sources. Firefighters discovered that the mechanism holding the ladder in place was broken.

The fire department declined to release the name of the injured firefighter but said he suffered no other injuries.

On Sunday, Truck 17 remained out of service, said FEMS spokesman Vito Maggiolo.

Mr. Maggiolo said that other stations were loaning their trucks in shifts to cover for Truck 17’s absence at the Benning Road station in Southeast.

“Any time there’s a gap, we work to fill it to make sure the coverage is as equalized as possible,” he said.

Under FEMS Special Order 2007-66, the fire department is required to keep nine ladder trucks in reserve to replace vehicles in need of repair or to provide support.

But a Times review of a random sample of vehicle condition reports from 20 days in September and October found that FEMS had no ladder trucks in reserve for any of those days.

Dabney Hudson, president of the D.C. Firefighters Association IAFF Local No. 36, told the Times that a lack of reserve vehicles “creates a hole in the service map” and forces stations to cover for one another, leaving some neighborhoods without adequate protection and with longer response times.

Such was the case last week, when Eastern Market was left without the services of Truck 7 for 2 days. The truck, whose ladder became stuck during a three-alarm fire in September, underwent repairs on the ladder’s hydraulic system that should have taken 24 hours but stretched to 72 hours.

In Thursday’s training accident, one of the buttons on the levers that control the truck’s ladder had been “stuck down,” said FEMS spokesman Doug Buchanan. “For reasons we don’t know it wasn’t reported.”

Mr. Buchanan said that modern fire trucks have two safeguards to prevent the ladders from moving — a “dead switch” that operators stand on and a cover that must be lifted before the levers can be manipulated. Truck 17, which is 20 years old, does not have a dead switch or a cover, he said.

One firefighter who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation said his station had long used Truck 17, describing it as a “1998 piece of junk.” He told The Times that two of its lever buttons had been stuck “for years,” with “no fix in sight.”

The firefighter said it was “extremely lucky” the truck’s ladder was jostled during a training exercise and not during an actual fire.

“They were using that truck for a working fire not four hours prior to [the accident],” the firefighter said.

Around 7:30 a.m. Thursday, Truck 17 responded to a row house fire on the 700 block of 51st Street near Benning Park, according to FEMS’ official social media posts at the scene.

In photos provided by FEMS media personnel, the truck’s number 17 appears in masking tape over the number 44 painted underneath.

The numbers on FEMS vehicles are changed as they are rotated from high-call areas to low-call areas then to the department’s reserve fleet. Truck 17 is a reserve vehicle that has been assigned to the Benning Road station since July 2016 after it was outfitted with a new ladder, Mr. Buchanan said. Its ladder passed an inspection by Underwriters’ Laboratories in June, according to a copy of the report Mr. Buchanan shared with the Times.

Copies of the Underwriters Laboratories’ inspection reports showed that only 65 percent of FEMS’ engine-pump systems and 77 percent of its trucks ladders have been tested and quality certified this year.

D.C. Council member Vincent Gray, Ward 7 Democrat and a Safety Committee member who represents where Truck 17 is stationed, did not respond to requests for comment.