A Shawnee house fire that caused a stairway collapse and trapped four fighters has turned into a teachable moment.
While the fire led to no serious injuries or death, the Shawnee Fire Department created a committee to investigate what happened and develop recommendations for improving firefighter safety and training.
The Shawnee City Council on Monday received a presentation about the July 2022 stairway collapse and what can be done to hasten action during critical moments when minutes matter.
Olathe’s Deputy Fire Chief Dave Anderson led the presentation. Other committee members included representatives from Lenexa Fire, Consolidated Fire District No. 2, Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical, Johnson County Med-Act, and the Johnson County Emergency Communications Center, which provides dispatch services for fire departments and Med-Act.
The fire caused stairs to collapse within 15 minutes
The fire happened at about 9:10 p.m. on July 5, 2022, at 4610 Silverheel St. in western Shawnee.
Firefighters from Shawnee, Lenexa, and Olathe responded with Johnson County Med-Act and Shawnee Police to the initial fire call.
The fire was in the home’s basement. The stairway leading from the main level of the house into the basement burned through and collapsed about 15 minutes into the response, trapping four firefighters.
Deputy Chief Anderson said there were a total of 11 maydays and four of those required assistance.
A mayday is a distress call used in the fire service when firefighters go missing, become lost, trapped, or injured, and require immediate assistance.
Anderson said it took less than four minutes for the first two firefighters to be rescued from the basement. Crews then realized that two firefighters were still missing.
A third firefighter was rescued two minutes later. The fourth was rescued about three minutes after that. Nearly 11 minutes had passed from the initial mayday call until the last firefighter was rescued.
The morning after the fire, Shawnee Fire Chief Rick Potter told the Post that all four firefighters who had been rescued were transported by ambulances to an area hospital in stable condition. A fifth was treated for a possible heat-related condition.
Radio chatter delayed action during a critical time
Anderson said the mayday lasted for a total of 19 minutes and 21 seconds. During that time, there was radio chatter happening for a 16 minutes and 29 seconds, leaving only two minutes and 52 seconds of available airtime.
Olathe Deputy Fire Chief Anderson told the city council that the amount of radio chatter was too much for the incident commander to keep up with. Fire and rescue operations were happening on one channel, while medical operations were on another. That’s in addition to firefighters and other first responders talking to him face-to-face.
As part of their investigation, the committee conducted more than 30 interviews, and reviewed more than 400 photos along with 26 audio and video clips.
Part of the committee’s recommendations include:
- Providing an aide for the incident commander
- Assigning chief officers divisions or group leaders
- Improved communications to keep the incident commander aware of medical operations when those are happening on a separate radio channel
Shawnee was the first city to adopt one of the committee’s recommendations in November 2022.
The fire also led to new building standards and training
Municipal code in Shawnee now requires half-inch sheetrock under any combustible stairway surface. The amendment to Shawnee’s building code took effect Jan. 1, 2023, for all new residential construction.
The added layer of sheetrock can give stairs an extra 20 minutes of structural integrity during a fire.
Lenexa, Leawood and Olathe have also adopted similar building code changes.
Other recommendations call for enhanced training to include scenarios involving multiple maydays, and radios being assigned to specific personnel with programmed identifiers so that dispatchers and incident command can quickly recognize the source of the radio transmission.
Mike Frizzell is a freelance crime and fire reporter who runs Operation 100 News.
