For the first time, a Chicago firefighter said publicly Friday that he encountered people fleeing a burning Loop high-rise in the same stairwell where six victims were later found dead.
The Fire Department has been criticized for not searching the southeast stairwell until 90 minutes after they extinguished the Oct. 17 blaze on the 12th floor, with officials saying they were unaware people were trapped behind locked doors above.
The declaration before a commission investigating the blaze was the first public acknowledgment by a representative of the Fire Department that firefighters encountered any workers in the southeast stairwell of the Cook County-owned building at 69 W. Washington St.
Also Friday, a battalion chief revealed that he was ordered by his superior not to conduct a routine post-fire evaluation of how well the blaze was fought “because of the legalities involved.”
In testimony before the commission investigating, Billy Latham said that he and other firefighters were headed up the southeast stairwell when they passed two or three people on their way down. The encounter occurred as the firefighters were going from the 11th to the 12th floors, Latham said.
Latham, a 13-year veteran, also said that moments later the firefighters paused briefly before attacking the blaze with water to give other workers trying to evacuate the building a chance to pass.
The Fire Department has come under scrutiny because some survivors have said firefighters ordered them to turn around and go back up the stairs when they reached the 12th floor. However, the stairwell doors locked from the inside, and when smoke flooded into the stairwell, not everyone made it out.
Fire officials have said that no firefighter recalled sending fleeing workers back up the 37-story County Administration Building. And Latham said no Chicago firefighter would ever send someone back up a stairwell.
Earlier in the day, two ranking firefighters who, with Latham, were among the first to reach the fire floor testified they never saw or heard workers in the southeast stairwell.
Latham said he never told fire officials, either during the fire or afterward, about seeing people in the stairwell. However, Jennifer Hoyle, a spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department, said Latham and the other firefighters involved were interviewed in groups by city lawyers.
Also Friday, Battalion Chief Raymond Weiher testified that his superior, District Chief Thomas Donellan, told him to forgo the standard procedure of conducting a post-fire critique.
“We were told not to have a critique because of the legalities involved,” Weiher said.
Weiher said normally after a fire they “try to gather everybody that was at the incident and we talk about it: what was good, what was bad, what we could do better next time.”
Hoyle said critiques typically involve walking through the fire scene, and in this case the building was closed.
Fire Department spokeswoman Molly Sullivan declined to comment on any of the firefighters’ testimony Friday.
“We need to let the commission do [its] work,” she said.
It was a day of tough questioning for the Fire Department.
Decision questioned
Commission members and their lawyers also focused sharply on a decision by fire Capt. Michael Gubricky to attack the fire from the southeast stairwell, even though it contained a structure called a “smoke tower” designed to protect people who are fleeing. The building had another stairwell that firefighters also could have used.
The building’s disaster plan warns that fighting a fire from the smoke tower can intensify the blaze and draw the fire toward firefighters. The Fire Department’s command manual says the smoke tower position may be used if it is “the only logical means for firefighting.”
Gubricky testified that firefighters fought the fire from the smoke-tower stairwell because it was closer to the fire and, given another opportunity, he’d do it again.
“Hindsight is 20-20,” Gubricky said. “I’d have to go right to the southeast stairwell again.”
Gubricky led the four-man “fire investigative team” whose charge was to put the first water on the fire. Latham was with a six-man group in charge of forcing open doors and searching the floors around the fire.
Latham said his group rode the freight elevator to the 11th floor. Once in the stairwell, he said, he was between the 11th floor and the landing halfway to 12 when he saw the descending workers and stepped aside to let them pass.
“I don’t know where they came from,” Latham said.
“When you stepped aside, I take it they continued down the stairs?” asked Craig Antas, a lawyer for the commission.
“That is correct,” Latham responded.
“And you didn’t talk to them?” Antas asked.
“No I didn’t,” Latham replied.
At that time, the air quality and visibility in the stairwell were still good, Latham said.
Heard order to wait
Soon after, Latham said, he was crouching on his hands and knees outside the 12th floor door preparing to fight the fire when he heard a colleague tell fellow firefighters to wait.
“We were getting ready to go in, getting ready to open the door when somebody says, `Hold it, let these people by,'” Latham testified. Ten to 15 seconds passed, and the voice said, “OK, let’s go,” said Latham, adding that he did not see or hear a second group of workers pass.
Latham said the voice sounded like that of his lieutenant, William Duffy.
However, Duffy testified earlier in the day that he never saw or heard people in the southeast stairwell. He said he later encountered fleeing workers in the northwest stairwell, where he went to open a locked door on the 12th floor.
A lawyer for two fire survivors, who contend they were ordered back up the southeast stairwell by a firefighter, said he was not surprised by Latham’s testimony.
“What we’re waiting for is a firefighter to admit that he stopped people in the stairwell as they approached and sent them back upstairs,” lawyer Daniel Kotin said. “I think [Fire] Commissioner [James] Joyce acknowledges that it’s possible, but to this day he has not been able to find the firefighter who will admit to it.”
Latham’s testimony was at odds with his colleagues’ on more than one occasion.
There were two doors on either side of a small vestibule that separated the main part of the 12th floor from the stairwell. Gubricky said the moment the first locked door was opened, firefighters were hit with black smoke and heat and “hit the ground. They kissed the concrete.”
Latham, on the other hand, said the fire’s ferociousness didn’t strike until the second door was popped open.
Even so, all firefighters agreed that the heat, smoke and fire were intense.
“I don’t think Chicago’s ever had a high-rise fire this big,” Weiher said.
