By Todd Karpovich
Baltimore Sun
BALTIMORE — Baltimore firefighters called to contain a large blaze in the 2200 block of North Fulton Avenue early Friday morning closely followed a policy for personnel entering unoccupied dwellings that was instituted after the fatal Stricker Street fire.
The raging fire devastated a mostly dilapidated block in West Baltimore on Friday, but no injuries were reported.
The procedures were adopted after a deadly fire on Stricker Street in East Baltimore in 2022. While trying to contain a rowhouse blaze, firefighters mounted an interior attack on a fire in a vacant after an emergency dispatcher had reported that a person might be trapped inside. The rowhouse collapsed five minutes after firefighters entered, killing three of them and badly injuring another.
At the time, the Baltimore City Fire Department did not have a formal policy about how to approach burning buildings that are not legally occupied, but where people might be trapped. Following the Stricker Street blaze, then Fire Chief Niles Ford assembled a “board of inquiry” with Baltimore and regional fire officers to develop a policy on vacant building fires and investigate what went wrong at the fire scene.
Established in 2022, the policy determines BCFD responses to fires in unstable structures.
The main differences include the additional steps of having a report on conditions from all sides of the building before entry, a report from the roof as soon as practical and no entry into a “Code X” building — vacant structures determined to be structurally unsafe for firefighting in any condition — unless there are people trapped inside, according to Josh Fannon, the president of the IAFF Local 964 Baltimore Fire Officers union.
“We do enter vacants, we do not enter Code X,” said John Marsh, a spokesman for the Baltimore Fire Department. “We are told into dispatch from our [ Computer Aided Dispatch ] system that this is a Code X building. Once they arrive, they know that the main fire building is a Code X that they are to do an exterior attack only unless when they arrive they hear it might be inhabited.”
The policy prohibits firefighters from entering condemned, vacant properties unless there is a “credible” report of someone trapped, such as a witness at the scene who saw a person enter. Firefighters can be disciplined if they break protocol.
“From the perspective of the Union, these procedures are a major step forward in coordination of fire suppression operations in vacant structures over our past operations,” Fannon told The Baltimore Sun in an email. “These changes represent a solid foundation to build further procedures based on future technologies, equipment, and capabilities to ensure firefighter safety in inherently unsafe situations.”
For vacant properties that aren’t condemned, firefighters must wait for a report about the conditions at the back of a building, which could reveal dangers unseen from the front.
In the past, the fire officer who arrived first and ranked the highest would act as an incident commander and decide whether to fight the fire from within. Now, fire officers who arrive on the scene first can determine the type of attack but must wait for a report from the back of the building when making a risk assessment.
On Friday, the department responded around 4:35 a.m. to the North Fulton Avenue fire, which impacted 15 structures, including a church, a Baltimore Fire Department spokesman confirmed. The four-alarm blaze started in a vacant building and high winds pushed the fire along the roof line, which is how “it got out of control pretty quickly,” the spokesperson said.
The fire, which displaced eight people, was contained around 6:30 a.m. The main fire started in a vacant building but then spread to a Code X next door, according to Marsh. Fire officials worked to contain the blaze from outside, not entering based on safety protocols as imposed by the fire inspector.
“We did an exterior attack only after it was determined all structures were clear of inhabitants,” Fannon said.
There were no reported injuries to fire officials or residents.
“There is no way to guarantee absolute firefighter safety, but we are committed to working with the Department to develop and refine procedures to allow operations to be as safe as possible,” Fannon said.
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