Faulty trucks, mismanagement lead to deaths in Detroit fires

Bad equipment, closed stations played a role in 21 deaths since 1996

By Melvin Claxton and Charles Hurt / The Detroit News

    At least 21 people have died in Detroit fires over the past four years when fire trucks sent to their rescue didn’t work or the closest stations were temporarily closed, a nine-month Detroit News investigation revealed.

    The News found that policies followed by Detroit Fire Department officials hampered rescue efforts at these and other fires, contributing to deaths. In each case, fire officials knew of the danger beforehand but did nothing.

    What’s more, the Fire Department continues to place the lives of residents and firefighters in peril every day because it has too few men, uses trucks that don’t work and relies on broken equipment to put out fires.

    Thirteen of the 21 victims were children unable to reach safety on their own.

    In one case, two children ages 2 and 3 died in a house fire when the nearest ladder truck was broken.

    In another fire, a 9-year-old boy died when the closest ladder company was out of service. Its truck had been in the repair shop for three weeks. Even after his death, fire officials kept the company closed for five more weeks.

    The News’ investigation, in which more than 300 firefighters and fire officials were interviewed and thousands of pages of fire reports, maintenance logs and other Fire Department documents were reviewed, found a department riddled with problems:

* Frequently, Detroit fire trucks responding to blazes pull up to hydrants and can’t draw water. More than 2,000 of the city’s fire hydrants were reported as out of service last year, some for more than four years. Because the city’s hydrant inspections are so cursory, city officials have no idea how many of Detroit’s 30,400 fireplugs are really broken.

* On 220 days this year, the city had at least one of its 71 fire companies closed because of mechanical problems with trucks. Detroit fire companies were closed 286 days last year.

* Fire trucks dispatched to fires didn’t get there 75 times this year because of mechanical problems or accidents. On 25 emergency calls, a truck failed to even start.

* Detroit is the only cold-weather city in the United States that routinely dispatches fire trucks with three firefighters on board. Other big-city departments deploy trucks with at least four per rig, and many, including Boston, Washington, D.C., Milwaukee and Philadelphia, dispatch trucks carrying five firefighters.

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