Chicago high rise fire case study

Probing a high-rise tragedy:[Chicago Final Edition]

Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Ill.: Apr 30, 2004.  pg. 24

Full Text (1514   words)

Copyright 2004 by the Chicago Tribune)

More than six months after an Oct. 17 fire killed six victims in a high-rise Loop office building owned by Cook County, three parallel investigations of the tragedy are nearing completion. Citizens have a right to expect that, taken together, those publicly financed probes will resolve several crucial questions.

The swirl of events that led to multiple inquiries began six days after the fire. That's when County Board President John Stroger named a five-member panel to investigate the blaze. Stroger's panel got a rocky welcome. No one questioned the integrity and independence of its chairman, former federal appellate judge Abner Mikva. But Gov. Rod Blagojevich declared that the panel lacked the expertise to do a thorough job. Blagojevich hired James Lee Witt, a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to conduct a separate fire probe.

Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy, who lost three employees to the fire, urged the Mikva commission, as it has come to be called, to determine why county government failed to install common safety features in the building after buying it in 1996. A Tribune editorial noted that Mikva and his fellow panelists would have to ask tough questions about the county's stewardship of its office building.

Succeeding months have brought a cascade of sometimes contradictory statements and findings about the fire--and about its implications for better protecting other high-rises. One constant, though, has been the Mikva commission's perseverance in seeking truths about the blaze. When Mikva has encountered obstacles, he hasn't buckled. At one point, City of Chicago lawyers canceled commission interviews of two key firefighters, and backed out of a promise to provide the author of a controversial Chicago Fire Department report about the blaze. The city, embarrassed by its appearance of not wanting to cooperate with Mikva, eventually blinked.

The Mikva commission's public questioning of witnesses at times has been intense, and the scope of its curiosity broad. But as Mikva's panel quietly works toward a report of its findings-- perhaps in June, he says--Mikva will need all the moxie he has displayed and then some.

To be fully credible, the reports Mikva and Witt generate will have to settle questions not just about the fire and the emergency response it provoked, but also about whether political cronyism in equipping, managing and staffing the structure left the building-- and its occupants--ill-prepared for disaster. Or, as one investigator, who asked not to be identified, told the Tribune: "Did the emergency response compromise an already compromised building?"

Only the naive think the ongoing investigations are exclusively about a killer conflagration. Questions about what caused the fire, and how well firefighters responded, only thinly disguise the treacherous political and monetary stakes here. No county or city officials want to be blamed for negligence that resulted in six deaths. Nor do they want even the impression of official negligence to invite huge damage awards to families of the victims.

Mikva in particular must negotiate a number of vested local interests, knowing that, in time, the courts may affix civil or criminal liability for six lives lost. Whatever the Mikva commission- -four retired judges and an engineer--ultimately concludes will help shape public opinion about who is to blame for those deaths.

If the notion that the fire was set intentionally becomes set in citizens' minds, public fury may focus on an alleged arsonist whose evil claimed six victims. But if citizens instead decide, after weighing the results of the investigations, that those victims died solely because of negligence, then attention will rivet on how Cook County chose to equip the building (example: no fire sprinklers), on whether building managers were hired on the basis of their political clout with county officials (as Murphy angrily alleges), on the adequacy of city safety standards for high-rises, and on how the city's Fire Department performed. That level of public and media scrutiny could create embarrassing political risks for several county and city officials.

While the Mikva commission has conducted much of its investigation in open sessions, less is known about the full scope of Witt's probe. In a statement Wednesday, Witt said elliptically: "We have found that there were many elements that in some way were contributory to the deaths of the individuals." A spokesman for his Washington-based public safety consulting firm says Witt won't be more specific until he delivers his report to Blagojevich's office during May or June--a time frame similar to Mikva's.

In their public comments to date, Mikva and Witt have signaled more interest in the fire and the emergency response to it than in the possibility that governmental decisions or actions made the building a firetrap. But if Mikva and Witt fail to address this central issue, their reports will be woefully incomplete.

For both Mikva and Witt, then, the essential questions delineated on this page nine days after the fire remain unchanged:

- Did Cook County cut corners and imperil safety when it renovated the building in the 1990s? And did the Stroger political donors who were under contract to manage the structure have the necessary safety precautions in place?

- Does Chicago's building code adequately protect people who work in, dwell in or visit high-rises? Or should building owners and managers be subject to tougher safety standards?

- Did Chicago firefighters properly balance the need to suppress the blaze with the safety of occupants attempting to flee via a stairwell?

- What protocol determines who asks building occupants to evacuate? And in this tragic case, did someone badly bungle that decision?

Citizens of Cook County and Chicago, and especially families of the six victims, deserve complete rather than hurried answers to those questions. One hope here is that the Mikva and Witt reports will bring clarity to the confusing mix of what's already been said by others.

In late November, the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications released a four-page summary of a lengthier internal report on the fire. The summary identified failures by firefighters, building managers and workers, and 911 dispatchers that resulted in an uncoordinated effort to get people to safety.

Then, on Dec. 31, the Tribune reported that Fire Department investigators had concluded that the fire was "incendiary"--that is, started by a person--and that traces of gasoline had been found. That assertion contradicted initial suspicions that a malfunctioning light fixture might have ignited the blaze.

In January, Dr. Edmund Donoghue, the county's medical examiner, relied on that Fire Department report to conclude that the fire deaths were homicides, meaning deaths caused--although not necessarily with criminal intent--by the actions of another person.

But the most important opinion on whether the blaze was a criminal arson rests not with the Fire Department or the medical examiner. It rests with Chicago police, who have been conspicuously silent as their elaborate investigation continues. A spokesman says the department hopes to finish its work in several weeks.

No single investigation--that of the Mikva commission, of Witt's team of investigators or the police--is in a position to answer every question this disturbing case has raised. But because Mikva's panel questions many witnesses in public, its priorities will be easiest to gauge.

To determine whether political clout contributed to any improper equipping or managing of the building, Mikva needs to be as forceful in confronting the same Cook County administration that appointed his panel as he has been in confronting the City of Chicago.

There's every reason to hope Mikva won't shy away from asking those questions. The moxie he has displayed in this investigation has only enhanced his stature and reputation in Chicago. "If we have reason to think that corners were cut or people were brought in [to manage the building] because of political favoritism, we'd comment on that if it related to the fire or the loss of life," Mikva recently told the Tribune. "We'd comment on the price that was paid for that."

What should the people of Chicago and Cook County expect from the three investigations?

Chicago police, through their probe of the fire's origin and cause, should declare whether they have found any evidence of a criminal act. Was this fire the work of an arsonist?

From the Mikva and Witt investigations, citizens deserve to know whether the building was properly equipped, and whether adequate safety precautions and protocols had been put in place. Evaluations of the Fire Department's performance, and of how the building was evacuated, should leave Chicago better prepared for a future sure to include more high-rise emergencies.

The ultimate goal of these investigations, then, is to explain all the forces--before or during the fire--that caused six deaths.

If Abner Mikva, James Lee Witt and the Chicago Police Department succeed, the fire of Oct. 17 will be no less a tragedy. But setting to rest the troubling issues that fire raised could help protect other tall buildings here and elsewhere--and spare other families losses like those suffered on a Friday evening in Chicago's Loop.

[Illustration]

PHOTO; Caption: PHOTO: Chicago firefighters battle the deadly Oct. 17 blaze at a Loop high-rise owned by Cook County. Tribune file photo by David Trotman-Wilkins.

Section:  

Editorial

ISSN/ISBN:  

10856706

Text Word Count  

1514