One person has been terminated and a second one chose to resign following an internal investigation in to the response to the Belleza condo fire in St Johns County.
The initial 911 call on July 13th was about a smoke odor at the Ponte Vedra Beach complex, and the internal investigation has found the responding crew was only on the scene about 26 seconds. The report says they didn't even go in to the complex to fully investigate, but rather drove past it with the windows down. From the time they notified the communications center that they were responding to the time they reported being back in the station was just about 7 minutes, according to an internal memo on the investigation.
The responsibility for leaving the scene rests on the Company Officer, Engineer Alton Robey, according to the investigation. Upon being notified of a hearing to present evidence pending termination, Robey resigned, and that was accepted.
About 15 minutes after the first call, the initial 911 caller reached back out to SJCFR, saying she hadn’t seen the crew respond and she could still smell the smoke. The Communications Officer, Lona Williams, did not send a crew back out to investigate once again. The investigation says, given the level of distress expressed by the caller, a unit should have been dispatched once again. The memo we obtained says the caller stated “I will just conclude they did what they were supposed to do; if there is a fire I am sure there will be a problem; thank you,” after the operator insisted the team had been dispatched.
Williams was terminated. The memo does note that Williams “unfortunately assumed that the call had been fully handled by Engine 10 on the first call”, but adds that enough information was supplied in the second call to warrant more of a response.
Only after a third 911 call from the same woman- with the fire alarms audibly sounding in the background- and an alert from the company monitoring the condo complex, did a full response get triggered. Crews contained the fire in about two hours, but 20 units were either badly damaged or destroyed.
While releasing the results, Fire Rescue Chief Carl Shank also issued a statement defending the department overall.
“SJCFR remains a professional fire rescue response agency dedicated to the protection of our public with the highest level of service and case; we will continue this pursuit of excellence demonstrating positive character, attitude, competency, and conduct. We place great value in the high standards of trust placed on us by the public and our profession. We will continue to build upon this trust through continued training and professional development for all of our personnel.”
An official cause of the fire has still not been released.
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