Report confirms cover up but DSFRS still in denial

Cuts reduced but some will wait longer for help to arrive

I was going to comment on the National Fire Chiefs Council investigation of the Cathedral Yard fire in Exeter earlier, but decided not to distract from the fight to stop the damaging cuts proposed by the Chief Fire Officer. The Fire & Rescue Authority decision was disappointing, as it will still result in some people having to wait longer for help to arrive. That the cuts were not worse had much to do with the steadfast efforts of local campaigners who exposed the misinformation and inaccuracies from Devious & Secretive Fire & Rescue Service.

BBC News

Campaigners must continue to monitor developments to make sure cuts are not sneaked back in, and the Authority must ensure that the Chief Fire Officer honours his improvement assurances. Many of them seemed little more than wishful thinking, so it will be interesting to see if claims about more prevention cutting the number of incidents and deaths actually materialise. 

It will also be interesting to see if availability and response times actually improve, as the latest national data shows they are progressively getting worse. The Chief Fire Officer must not be allowed to falsely claim improvement by using figures for inadequately crewed stations and appliances. 

For statistical purposes, a fire station with less than

four firefighters available must not be counted as available

First appliance response times must not be shown as met

until at least four firefighters have arrived at an incident

Unfortunately, we can't rely on the Fire & Rescue Authority to hold the Chief Fire Officer to account, so everyone needs to stay alert. The failures at the Cathedral Yard fire in Exeter are yet another illustration of how we cannot trust claims from DSFRS’s senior management.

The failure to save the Royal Clarence Hotel 

Unprecedented failure to stop fire spreading

The National Fire Chiefs Council report suggests that it was DSFRS publishing their report on this incident that generated questions about their response. It was not, it was their unprecedented failure to stop the fire spreading, even though they had plenty of time and resources to do so. Serving and retired firefighters, including some who attended the fire, and members of the public were asking questions long before that report was published.

However, the DSFRS report itself is clear evidence that they were trying to shift the blame and hide their failings. There was no mention in the report of the 81 items we now know were identified at the internal debrief. The only recommendations in the report were for building owners and for government. The DSFRS spin machine continued to hide their own failings and present the loss of the Royal Clarence Hotel as unavoidable. 

A shabby attempt to blame others for the loss of the Royal Clarence Hotel

The spin machine even went on to arrogantly claim that the NFCC report clears them of covering up their failures at this incident. The reality is that the NFCC report shows failures of tactics, deployment, communication, co-ordination, command & control and resourcing. DSFRS’s desperate attempts to keep details of how they responded to this fire from the public is another indication of a disgraceful cover up. Refusing key details in responses to Freedom of Information Act requests, by falsely claiming it would threaten national security, is a serious abuse of the legal exemptions. It is 'crying wolf’ and will undermine cases where there is a genuine risk to national security.

Royal Clarence Hotel could have been saved

The NFCC report says they cannot state "whether or not the RCH could have been saved had different actions or decision making taken place". So it is perfectly possible that it could have been saved with better tactics and decisions. We will never know for certain, but given that the report identified significant failures to properly check for fire spread, there is every possibility that it could have been saved.

Not only was there a failure to provide a continual watching brief in all areas of the Royal Clarence Hotel, there was a failure to even properly check every part of the hotel. Unfortunately, the NFCC report fails to point out that at incidents in such properties you need more than a watching brief, you actively have to search for hidden voids and open them up. Yet, despite knowing about hidden voids at the Royal Clarence Hotel long before the fire, DSFRS failed to carry out this fundamental task. 

The risk of fire travelling through hidden voids was first documented in the 1800s

How to detect and prevent it used to be part of basic firefighter training
Is it still today?

DSFRS state that they won’t put firefighters at risk to save property. Yet the report shows that firefighters were withdrawn from the Royal Clarence Hotel when there was little or no risk in most of the hotel, but sent back in later when the risk had increased significantly. At best this indicates poor dynamic risk assessment and at worst it is a shabby attempt to excuse their failure to deploy the appropriate tactics.

The NFCC report says that there was an absence of a common recognised information picture at this incident but does not establish if this was the result of poor communication, poor command, poor training or all three. Anyone who has studied this fire, and also read Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton's book, 'the heat of the moment', will see hints in the NFCC report of the unhelpful behaviours she identified during her research into fire service decision making under pressure. 

Sadly, at this incident, poor decisions are also evident
when there was little or no pressure

BBC 'Inside Out South West'

Warnings ignored

It is disappointing that the NFCC report plays down the importance of the sector 4 commander’s "critical information", simply because the fire broke through the roof in a different area to the area he marked on the floor plan. The sector 4 commander properly reported concerns and a need to take action, but the command team did not act to halt the fire’s progress through the hotel. Where the fire broke through is irrelevant. Knowing that fire was already in the hotel and knowing about the risk of fire spreading through hidden voids, the command team should have already had detecting and dealing with that risk very high on their list of priorities, but they did not. 

The sector 4 commander’s critical information should have been a wake up call,

but it became just another missed opportunity

The report fails to get at the root cause of this fundamental failing. Was it poor information sharing, was it poor training, or simply inept decision making? It certainly seems that the command team had taken their eye off the ball. They had failed to carry out basic checks, wrongly assumed they had control of the situation and were focused on things such as command structures and relief crew rotation. Important stuff, but all secondary to the primary task of stopping the fire spreading.

Why did the most senior officers not take responsibility?

The top 3 management levels

Despite this fire being the largest fire in Exeter since the Second World War, a Brigade Manager did not take charge and the NFCC report surprisingly fails to address this issue. The report also fails to address why an Area Manager did not take charge until more than three hours after the ‘make pumps 15’ message (indicating that 15 fire engines are required). 

Although a Brigade Manager did attend the scene, some two and a half hours after the fire started, he did not take charge and an unnamed Group Manager was left in charge of over 100 firefighters at a complex incident. It seems the Brigade Manager opted to move to the comfort of Gold Command at Police HQ, instead of taking responsibility for firefighting operations at the scene.

Now there are major incidents, such as those affecting a wide area, where the most senior fire & rescue service officer available should attend Gold Command, but a major fire in a city centre is not one of them. The most critical role for this incident was that of Incident Commander, so the most senior officer available should have taken on that role. At the scene he may have identified the need to properly check for hidden fire spread, but he can’t do that sitting at Police HQ.

I also don’t understand the preoccupation in the report with the major incident declaration, aside from it being another illustration of ineffective communication. The declaration of a major incident should have no effect on how the fire is being tackled. At a major fire it only has significant implications for other services and for inter-agency co-ordination away from the scene.

BBC 'Inside Out South West' questions still unanswered

Other deficiencies in the NFCC Report

The report refers to the increased requirement for water overwhelming the water supply at times, but then fails to point out that ensuring adequate water supplies is a fundamental part of managing a fire. This should have been foreseen and planned for. You don't wait for the problem to arise before acting, as that delays effective firefighting and allows the fire to spread.

The NFCC report says that the escalation of the fire at around 10:18 translated in to “a make up for further resources including specialist appliances (ALPs)", but then claims they "arrived shortly afterwards”. According to details finally released under freedom of information legislation, no further appliances were ordered to the incident until 11:04, with the first arriving more than an hour after the escalation and the last two arriving 2 hours and 20 minutes after. The reinforcing ALPs arrived 90 minutes and nearly four hours after the escalation. Hardly “shortly afterwards”, and a significant delay to effective operations. Aerial appliances should have been requested much earlier and deployed much more effectively.

The NFCC report fails to detail the 81 learning points that DSFRS claim to have addressed. If firefighters and the public are to be reassured that DSFRS really has learnt lessons from the failures at the Cathedral Yard fire, the learning points and actions must be published.

The NFCC report has raised as many questions as it has answered

The Fire & Rescue Authority must get to the
bottom of the cover up and the failures

Where are the vital papers for the Fire & Rescue Authority meeting?

One week tomorrow the Devon & Somerset Fire & Rescue Authority meets to consider cuts to the service that will have serious implications for the safety of the public and firefighters. Despite this, the all important final proposals are still not publicly available. Even the results of the public consultation are still under wraps, although we know there is widespread opposition to the original proposals.

Noises have been made that views have been listened to by DSFRS and that Government is increasing funding for the service next year, but at the moment the threat of cuts remains. It is unacceptable that the public are being denied sufficient time to consider the final proposals and to make their views known to Fire & Rescue Authority Members. It is also questionable if FRA Members will have adequate time to properly consider the proposals before the meeting.

On the subject of the report on the public consultation there are some key points that FRA Members need to consider. The report will not, and cannot, say if the proposals are good or bad, it will simply collate views voiced by the public. As Opinion Research Services is being paid by DSFRS they cannot be considered completely impartial. ORS relies on fire services being happy with their reports to get further business, so it is not in their interest to publish a report the service is unhappy with.

I have yet to read one of their reports that is critical of the way the consultation was carried out. There have been clear breaches of good practice in the way DSFRS carried out the consultation, so it will be interesting to see if the report addresses those breaches or simply fails to mention them. The reports also try to steer FRAs away from giving due consideration to petitions. It may be the opinion of ORS that they are of less importance, but in my experience they accurately reflect the public's view. It is worth remembering that the percentage of the population in Devon & Somerset who have signed the petitions is much greater than the percentage required to have a petition debated in Parliament.

The report of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services on the running of DSFRS, and the National Fire Chiefs Council's report on DSFRS's failures at the Cathedral Yard fire in Exeter raise serious questions about senior management decision making. 

Whatever is now proposed by the Chief Fire Officer, FRA Members now have even more reason to challenge the proposals and question the claims used to justify them.

It is time to stop listening to spin and to start listening to public concern.