By Donovan Slack
The Boston Globe
BOSTON — Firefighters behind the wheels of the firetrucks that barrel down Boston’s narrow, twisting streets have far less training than firetruck operators in other US cities of comparable size, according to a review of training procedures.
The Boston Fire Department provides about 12 hours of driver training over two days, compared with courses of one to two weeks in cities such as Baltimore and Detroit and a far more intensive, three-week certification program in New York.
Boston’s firefighter driver training also falls short in another area: It does not meet national guidelines that call for periodic refresher courses on how to maneuver the massive, complex vehicles, particularly in an emergency.
Boston says it is responding to weaknesses in its driver training for firetrucks, but the new procedures will not be in place until July 1.
“We want to make sure our people have the best training possible,” Boston Fire Commissioner Roderick Fraser said. “Driver training is an important part of that goal.”
Because of an exemption in federal law, firefighters across the country are not required to secure commercial driver’s licenses, which are required of civilian drivers of tractor-trailers and other vehicles weighing more than 13 tons. Fire departments, which typically have vehicles weighing 20 and 40 tons, are left to deal with training and certification on their own.
National standards issued by the National Fire Protection Association do not address the length of driver training courses, but they do recommend frequency, saying municipalities should provide firefighters with refresher courses every six months. They recommend that firefighters be recertified on emergency-driving skills each year.
Detroit and New York conduct refresher courses annually, and Cleveland provides additional driver training every other year and recertification every four years.
Boston is not the only Massachusetts community to fall short of the NFPA-recommended standards. At the Massachusetts Firefighting Academy in Stow, which trains firefighters for most communities in the state other than Boston, driver training is not even part of the regular recruit curriculum. It is offered as a separate course to cities and towns who request it, but most towns do not, including communities such as Newton and Springfield, which rely instead on informal, on-the-job training.
“Driver training historically has been: When it’s your turn to drive, the lieutenant or captain puts you in the driver’s seat,” State Fire Marshal Stephen Coan said.
Coan said interest in the driver training courses has tripled since a Boston firetruck crash two months ago killed Lieutenant Kevin M. Kelley, with about a dozen departments signing on this year, compared with three or four in 2008.
“Since the January tragedy in Boston, there is a heightened awareness of the need for more formal training,” Coan said.
A preliminary investigation of the crash found catastrophic brake failure was to blame, and it is unclear if more training would have provided the 24-year-old driver, Firefighter Robert Bernard O’Neill, with maneuvers that could have changed the outcome, fire officials said.
O’Neill had been on the job 20 months when Ladder 26 careered down a steep hill and crashed into an apartment building in Mission Hill on Jan. 9. Kelley, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, died instantly.
Fraser said he decided after the crash to beef up the department’s driver training program. He has assigned four firefighters to develop a new course and certification test for all the city’s firefighters, who number about 1,500. An outside consultant hired by Fraser to review fire truck maintenance after the crash cited the inadequacy of the department’s driver training program in a report issued last week.
The new program would be one to two weeks long and include comprehensive written and practical examinations before certification, said Deputy Fire Chief James R. Evans, who is in charge of training.
Nationwide, traffic accidents account for the second-largest share of firefighter deaths. The NFPA said that, for on-duty firefighters, 133 crashes took 148 lives between 1997 and 2007. The number one cause was sudden cardiac death.
But driver training for firefighters varies widely across the country, in part because testing and licensing requirements have never been standardized as they have been for drivers of big rigs and other commercial trucks.
Firefighters were exempted from the federal Commercial Vehicle Motor Safety Act, which required states to adopt uniform minimum licensing and testing standards for drivers of commercial vehicles.
But firetrucks require even more specialized training for safe operation than is needed for commercial trucks, because of the emergency driving techniques involved, said Evans, who has studied a number of training programs in recent weeks.
Specialists said the typical on-the-job training takes place when recruits are allowed to drive back from emergency calls and in other nonemergency situations, under supervision of a ranking firefighter.
“We offer driver training, but I don’t think there’s a lot to that,” said Springfield Fire Department spokesman Dennis Ledger. “They get a quick ride around at the academy. The driver training happens once they get to the job.”
In some cases, it has taken a crisis to trigger a transition to more comprehensive training.
In Detroit, which now has one of the most rigorous driver training programs in the country, the Fire Department did not provide refresher courses until 2007, when a firefighter driving a massive engine blew through a blind intersection while responding to a call and was struck by a sport utility vehicle. The driver, a 47-year-old career firefighter, was ejected and killed in the collision.
“Now we’re doing refreshers for everybody,” Detroit Fire Chief Jeffrey M. McCall said.
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