Warwickshire Warehouse fire

[BB]

Following the warehouse fire at Atherstone in Warwickshire where the 4 fire-fighters tragically lost their lives I have seen on the news that the police have arrested a number of suspects. Rumour has it that they are operational fire service personnel.

Has anybody any further information as the police, news and press have not released any statements.

[Meerkat]

BBC site describes them as "fire service staff".  FBU site as "three managers" (and FBU members) "involved in the incident command process".

It would presumably be wrong to comment on their potenial identities further while the police investigation is ongoing?

[Tom Sutton]

Check out http://www.kingfell.com/~forum/index.php?topic=4676.0

[Davo]

Has anybody got any info that they can pm me, please?

Our senior officers are wondering whether this will impact on Command Decison making


davo

[Tom Sutton]

Check out latest info http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-18039494

[Dinnertime Dave]

I have also come across this website -

http://www.supportwarwickshirefirefighters.co.uk/default.html

The trial diary make interesting reading.

[Dinnertime Dave]

A fire service officer has been found not guilty of the manslaughter of four colleagues who were killed in a blaze a t a warehouse in Warwickshire.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-18055615

[Dinnertime Dave]

Fire officers cleared over Atherstone warehouse deaths

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-18251348

[colin todd]

I have no expertise whatsoever in operational fire-fighting tactics, or the management thereof, (and when I read of cases like this and that of the mine shaft incident in Strathclyde, I am glad enough about that).

However, I am interested in expert witness evidence, particularly after the Cadburys v ADT case, in which the judge said he could not rely on the evidence of the key expert witnesses and then went on to name and criticise each one individually.

In this case, both the prosecution  and defence called expert witnesses, whose duty was to assist the Court and could not be advocates for either side's position. I am sure that they would have fulfilled their obligations in that respect.

Nevertheless, I have been unable to find much about the thrust of the evidence of each expert witness, other than snippets in the BBC reports.

Could anyone with no axe to grind give a simple, objective and uncontentious overview of the position of each of the experts, as presented to the Court (while obviously not commenting on the outcome of the case).  This is purely academic interest, and it will no doubt be discussed at many a conference, but I would have liked to understand more than I currently do.

Kurnal, is it alright for someone with the requistte knowledge to do this here?

[SamFIRT]

As I understand it the case revolves around the Dynamic Risk Assessment (DRA) that has to be carried out by operational crews and specifically the officers placed in positions of authority at the incident. The Incident Commander, Sector Commander and Safety Officers at an incident have a duty to ensure the heath safety and welfare of the crews and balance that against a risk benefit analysis. This is roughly based on the mantra to save saveable lives they will place crews at risk, to save property they may place crews at risk, but crews should not be put at risk for lives or property already lost.
 
In this case there appears to have been a difference of opinion between experts as to the understanding of risk as balanced against operational tactics by crews. I believe there are other issues around the understanding of:  building construction, fire development, tactical ventilation, along with issues regarding information gathering prior to the incident, communication of intelligence within the FRS, training and the recording of training. From what I can see not all of this has come to light in Court.

 Obviously the average fire fighter and fire supervisory manager, or even senior fire manager, is not going to have as much academic understanding of fire development as a scientist. They need to have sufficient knowledge and understanding appropriate to their role. They then use information to hand at the time, both gathered and observed at the time and having been pre gathered and disseminated prior to the incident, to make tactical and operational decisions based on recognition primed decision (RPD) making. This means the tactics used are normally the “best fit” to deal with a developing situation and are not always ideal or even correct. The operational tactics should be reviewed and changed as appropriate based on developing information.

The verdicts show the officers charged did this within their required skill base.

Commanding fire crews (or any emergency or military service) requires command staff with the ability to make quick value based judgment. This in itself is a skill. One which many academics do not possess.
 
Is there anyone on this forum who has followed the case closely that can shed more light on this?

[kurnal]

Colin I dont know if you have seen the daily diary on the support warwickshirefirefighters website and although it represents an outstanding account it may not have the clinical integrity to satisfy your level of interest.
http://www.supportwarwickshirefirefighters.co.uk/Trial-Diary.html

Congratulations to SamFIRT for an outstanding succinct analysis.

There have been  parallel H&S proceedings against the County Council and I expect that until the full outcome and details of both cases are amalgamated we shall not see the full picture.

[Midland Retty]

I'm not sure that one of the expert witnesses was that expert

[kurnal]

Expert. An ex is a has been. A spurt is a drip under pressure.

[colin todd]

Samuel, thanks for the overview, which is helpful. 

Big Al, I was totally fascinated by the diary, and it confirms that the fundamentals in the case are surely a difference of opinion between experts.

Samuel, there is a famous case involving the death of a baby at the stage of a tricky delivery. A junior houseman did something that was alleged to result in the baby's death.  One party produced an eminent professor of obstetrics, who said (with armchair hindsight) goodness me what a silly thing to do, no wonder the baby died, but the success of the defence arose from a few "average" housemen that demonstrated that they were not professors of obstetrics and the average houseman on top of the clapham omnibus would have done the same thing. Is that an analogy of the point you make?

[SamFIRT]

Colin

Yes that is a reasonable analogy.

I believe that in order to prove the fire officers were culpable the prosecution would have to prove they were not competent fire offers as appropriate to their position in the fire service, (what used to be called rank) and as appropriate to the role they performed at the incident.
 
You are also correct in that it is very easy to slowly armchair analyse in great detail the actions of staff at a fast moving dynamic situation and decide actions could have been better. That is the fundamental difference between a Dynamic Risk Assessment (DRA) and an Analytical Risk Assessment (ARA). Doing this it is easy to assume that all the information available retrospectively to the armchair analyst, would have been available to all the key players at the time in the same sequence. Fire-ground communications are never that good!

For training staff; carrying out an ARA and critical assessment of the DRA actually undertaken at the time of the incident, whilst undertaking a case study or debrief of a previous incident, is an excellent way of training managerial fire staff, and can improve future DRAs of both the staff involved and others. It does this by building on the memories, knowledge and understanding of the staff involved in both the original incident and those involved in the training that were not at the incident. However, it must be carried out as critique and not criticism in the spirit of the “no blame culture”. Otherwise both the staff concerned and others will not only, not learn from the experience, they will unlearn the confidence gained previously and diminish their ability to apply the RPD skill set.