Broken rigs

Clarence Tabb Jr. / The Detroit News The pumps on Engine 33, bought in April, failed at a fire June 24 in which two people died. The truck had problems within weeks of going into service, but fire officials failed to address them.

Flawed trucks jeopardize safety

Department’s shoddy maintenance, neglect limit ability to fight fires and save lives

By Melvin Claxton and Charles Hurt / The Detroit News

hen a fire broke out at 8130 Cahalan the morning of June 24, the Detroit Fire Department dispatched Engine 33, one of its new pumpers.     Within five minutes, the truck reached the burning house in southwest Detroit, dispatch records show. The driver hooked the engine to the nearest hydrant and turned on the truck’s pump. Nothing happened.
    The pump on the 3-month-old fire engine didn’t work. As the fire raged, the driver fought to get the pump going but couldn’t.
    Inside the house, Sherry Overby, 47, and her 19-year-old son Jason were trapped. They had been asleep when the fire broke out, fire investigators believe.
    Without water, there was little firefighters could do but wait for the next pumper. It took 10 minutes for that pumper to arrive according to Fire Department dispatch tickets.
    When the flames were extinguished, firefighters found the bodies of Overby and her son in the living room.
    Engine 33’s failure shouldn’t have caught firefighters or fire officials by surprise.
    A Detroit News examination of the trucks stationed at the city’s 72 fire companies, reviews of each rig’s daily maintenance journals and interviews with hundreds of firefighters show how neglect and shoddy maintenance put dangerously defective equipment on the road every day.
    Even 11 of Detroit’s 14 new pumpers bought in the spring for $202,000 apiece have been slowed by defects and made worse by poor maintenance.
    Engine 33 was among them.
    Eight days after the new engine went into service on April 5, its brakes were sticking, according to maintenance records. The repair shop tried to adjust the brakes May 2, but the problem persisted.
    On June 14, the truck’s crew sent the repair shop a list of things wrong with the vehicle. The brakes were still sticking, the oil gauge didn’t work, the air conditioning didn’t work, the truck shimmied, the intermittent wiper switch didn’t work and two pump panel lights were out.
    On June 18, the truck began leaking oil. That same day, a maintenance log entry noted that the truck had missed its first oil change, and there was no oil at the firehouse.
    On June 20, a repairman from the shop reported he couldn’t get the truck’s cab open to change the oil. The next day, the truck was sent to the shop with an oil leak and glitches with the computer that controls the fire engine’s transmission and pump.
    The problems were reportedly fixed. Three days later, the truck broke down at the Cahalan fire.
    Although Engine 33 is among the 14 new pumper engines Detroit owns, the rest of the fleet is on average 9 years old.
    The city’s ladder trucks are even older. Four ladders date back to 1977, with problems ranging from broken pumps to aerials that won’t rise.
    Here’s a look at some of Detroit’s problematic trucks:

A rusty, rickety ladder
Ladder 4
3396 Vinewood
Southwest Detroit
    For more than a year, firefighters have been unable to raise this truck’s aerial ladder. That’s because corrosion makes the aerial wobble and sway out of control as it goes up. Firefighters won’t fully extend the ladder, fearing its weight could cause the truck to tip over.
    In addition, the ladder truck, built in 1977, leaks three to four quarts of oil each week, which firefighters sop up from the station’s floor with rags they bring from home. The truck’s maintenance log shows that the repair shop was notified of the leak for months and did nothing.
    Firefighters at 3396 Vinewood got the broken aerial truck in a June swap with the ladder company at 1041 Lawndale on the city’s west side. Fire officials say they switched trucks because the neighborhoods covered by the Lawndale station — which are more densely populated and include Marathon Oil storage tanks — needed a working aerial.
    The crew that received Ladder 4 for use on Detroit’s east side has been so unhappy with the exchange that for several days in June it placed a sign in front of its station with this warning for local residents: “Danger, your fire company is closed.”
    Their actions raised the ire of top fire officials, but still didn’t get them a working ladder truck. The city continues to dispatch Ladder 4 to fires in the neighborhood. And since even its pump doesn’t work, the truck is only good for ferrying firefighters to fires.

Equipment condemned
Ladder 8
1465 Junction
Southwest Detroit
    The truck’s aerial ladder has not been raised since April when Underwriters Laboratories Inc., the independent product testing company quietly hired by the city under intense union pressure, condemned it.
    Years of poor maintenance have allowed deep buckles of rust to develop around the base of the lifts that raise the ladder and along the ladder itself. The rotating table to which the ladder is mounted is so loose, according to the UL report, it could actually tear free of the truck built 23 years ago if the ladder was raised.
    Although the Fire Department continues to dispatch Ladder 8 to fire scenes, its only use is to carry firefighters.

Only good for two-story fires
Ladder 19
10700 Shoemaker, East Side
    This ladder truck, built in 1989, hasn’t worked in more than a year, according to the maintenance records kept at the fire station. The ladder is bent, leaning sideways so badly that the rig could tip over if it were raised.
    Without its aerial, Ladder 19’s firefighters must use ground ladders to rescue fire victims.
    But the 35-foot and 50-foot ladders, the longest on the truck, are broken, too, log books show. That means firefighters on the truck must use a 20-foot ladder, which only reaches a second-story window.
    Ladder 19, however, is one of the few aerials in the city with a pump that still works and is often used as a pumper truck.
    But even that presents a problem. The truck leaks so badly that the 300 gallons of water in its tank drains out in less than three hours, forcing firefighters to keep refilling the tank after it empties while sitting in the station.

26-ton taxi cab
Ladder 30
17475 Mt. Elliott, East Side
    It’s been two years since this company’s regular aerial ladder has worked and even longer since its pump has worked, according to maintenance records.
    Yet the Fire Department kept the 1983 truck in daily use on the city’s east side.
    For a while this summer, the crew on board had no way of communicating with dispatchers when they were out of the station because the rig had no radio in the cab. It was also missing a standard on-board computer that alerts firefighters that they’re needed at a fire.
    The crew was recently given a loaner truck.

Spilling hazardous fluids
Ladder 10
3812 Mt. Elliott, East Side
    This ladder truck is actually a pumper with a 20-foot ground ladder strapped to its side. Before that, the crew used a truck with an aerial that has worked on and off for the past few years. For much of this year, it hasn’t.
    The persistent problems with Ladder 10’s aerial were serious enough to trigger a hazardous materials alert 21/2 years ago.
    On Feb. 12, 1998, Ladder 10 was battling a heavy blaze with its ladder extended. The arms that hold the ladder aloft began leaking hydraulic fluid.
    After operating for more than an hour, the hydraulic lifts lost so much fluid that the aerial could no longer remain extended.
    The early-1980s vintage truck had spewed so much hydraulic fluid that part of the fire scene had to be cordoned off as hazardous until a private company that specializes in cleaning up hazardous waste could be summoned.

Half-empty tank
Engine 32
11740 E. Jefferson, East Side
    A piece of paper taped to the dashboard of Engine 32 warns drivers never to fill the fuel tank more than halfway.
    That’s because the tank is cracked and leaks diesel fuel if filled higher. The tank has leaked for more than six months. Fire officials and the repair shop were notified several times about the problem but did nothing, according to the truck’s log books.
    But keeping only a half tank of diesel fuel in the fire truck violates the department’s own policy requiring all rigs to be refilled immediately whenever they have less than three-quarters of a tank.
    The policy is especially important for pumper trucks, which must be able to idle while supplying water for hours without interruption during major fires.
    Engine 32, built in 1991, is stationed across the street from the DaimlerChrysler plant on Jefferson and would be the first pumper on the scene of any fire at the sprawling Jeep assembly factory.

The 45-mph
pumper truck
Engine 39
8700 14th Street,
Near West Side
    Built in 1985, Engine 39 is rickety, rusted and won’t go faster than 45 mph.
    Even more alarming, its pump, the single most critical piece of equipment on a pumper truck, doesn’t always work, maintenance records show.
    Engine 39 is one of the first pumpers dispatched to Henry Ford Hospital and the hundreds of multistory apartment buildings in that neighborhood.
    Firefighters at the 14th Street station have had to use Engine 39 since Aug. 28 when their rig, bought in 1995, was taken to the shop to have its engine replaced.

A flying drive shaft
Squad 1
16543 Meyers, West Side
    On Oct. 19, the firefighters of Squad 1 responded to an alarm on the city’s west side.
    They were driving an old replacement rig because their regular truck was still in the shop after an accident in September.
    Speeding to the fire call shortly after midnight, the truck’s drive shaft snapped in two, sending metal debris flying through the living room window of the home at 15168 Evergreen.
    No one was injured. But the disabled squad truck, built in 1996, had to be towed and the crew missed its run. The firefighters were without a truck for nearly 12 hours until they were given an old pumper engine as a replacement.

‘Your lights are on!’
Squad 3
1818 E. Grand Blvd.,
East Side
    For months, the 3-year-old truck couldn’t be driven faster than 40 mph, the rig’s maintenance records show. At higher speeds, the rig slips out of gear and coasts until it slows to about 5 mph, when the transmission will re-engage.
    Although Squad 3 is stationed a block from Interstate 94, the crew members avoid the freeway, fearing that their slow speed would cause an accident.
    “We’ll be going along and people are just passing us,” said one of the firefighters, who asked that his name not be used because of a Fire Department gag order on speaking to the media.
    “They’ll point to our (emergency) lights and say, ‘Your lights are on! Your lights are on!’ And then we say, ‘I know. I know. We’re on our way to a fire!’”
    Squad 3’s transmission problem was first reported to the Fire Department repair shop April 6, according to the rig’s journal. The shop was reminded weekly of the rig’s condition, but no repairs were made until September.

Clarence Tabb Jr. / The Detroit News When Detroit replaces a broken fire truck with an old one from the garage, it identifies the vehicle as an “X” rig. The three X’s on this truck indicate it’s the third replacement for this fire company.

Contact the reporters at churt@detnews.com and mclaxton@detnews.com.