Firefighters’ Deaths Add to Pressure for Drug Tests [Updated 2/22/08]

Firefighters’ Deaths Add to Pressure for Drug Tests
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL and KATIE ZEZIMA
NY Times

Long before he died in a restaurant blaze with another Boston firefighter in August, there were signs things were not going right for Paul J. Cahill.

Stopped in his car in July 2005, Firefighter Cahill refused to take a Breathalyzer test and was convicted of drunken driving. His license was suspended for 225 days.

Now, with accounts that an autopsy showed a high alcohol level in Firefighter Cahill’s blood and traces of cocaine in the blood of a fellow firefighter, Warren J. Payne, who also died in the fire, officials are looking for ways to break a long stalemate and start mandatory random drug testing throughout firefighters’ careers.

Among major cities, Boston has been a notable holdout in such programs, fire officials around the nation said.

In New York, 6,354 firefighters, more than half the department, have been randomly tested since 2004, with 24 testing positive. Under a zero-tolerance policy, all who test positive are immediately discharged, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said.

Firefighters have voiced anguish over the Boston reports.

“Let’s not forget these guys were heroes,” Chief Gary G. Cassanelli of Springfield, Mass., said. “My sense is, regardless of this, they would have been killed in that fire. Let’s hope management and labor unions can sit down and say, ‘What can be done to make sure we don’t see this again?’”

A spokesman for the Boston Fire Department, Scott Salman, said that a valid driver’s license was a job requirement and that firefighters were supposed to show supervisors valid licenses each month and report any arrests. It does not appear that Firefighter Cahill, 55, did so.

On the night of the fire, he called work to say he would be two hours late and then responded to the fire within an hour of arriving, Mr. Salman said.

A Fire Department commission has been investigating the blaze at the Tai Ho Chinese restaurant, on Aug. 29, including whether anyone saw Firefighter Cahill intoxicated and whether his condition and that of Firefighter Payne, 53, may have contributed to their deaths.

“That is something that I am sure they are looking into,” Mr. Salman said.

An independent report in 1999 recommended that the department expand drug testing, saying testing based on suspicion of use is “insufficient to prevent dangerous or deadly situations for members of the department and citizens of the city.”

Officials have been stymied in efforts to expand the testing, because changes require approval through collective bargaining and being made part of the union contract. Firefighters are negotiating with the city, and it appears almost certain that expanded drug testing will be on the table.

All Boston firefighters have to take pre-employment drug tests and are subject to random tests in their first year. After that, they are tested only if suspected of using drugs and alcohol.

The department said yesterday that 159 members, or 10 percent of the force, had been referred for drug and alcohol tests since 2004. Twelve have been fired or resigned. This year, 40 have been tested, and three have resigned because of positive tests, Mr. Salman said.

Bostonians have reacted sharply. Juli Hauck, owner of Comella’s restaurant in the West Roxbury neighborhood where the firefighters worked, said the station was a “living memorial.” She said the autopsy details should have remained private.

“People here are on the defense now,” Ms. Hauck said. “They want to remember these guys as heroes.”

Policies are tougher in other cities. In New York, Mr. Scoppetta started zero tolerance for drug abuse on Aug. 16, 2004. “The message is, ‘You can’t use drugs or drink on the job, while doing this very dangerous job,’“ he said.

Six days a week, officials use a computer to select firehouses randomly and, without notice, visit at least one of them to test all firefighters and officers at work there. All members are subject to urine tests.

“If someone tests positive, they will be terminated,” Mr. Scoppetta said.

Officials in Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh said they could not recall any instances in which a firefighter died on duty and was later found to have been impaired.

In Cincinnati, Assistant Chief Mike Kroeger said his department signed a contract a month ago that includes random drug and alcohol testing for its 820 firefighters. The department can test up to 200 employees, with a maximum of 80 tested for alcohol and a maximum of 120 for drugs.

Chief Kroeger said the random testing entered the contract after an off-duty firefighter who killed a person in a drunken-driving accident in December. The union did not fight the item, he said, because “both sides knew it was something that had to be done.”

Deputy Chief Joey Addie of the Montgomery, Ala., Fire Department, with 452 members, said firefighters were tested when hired, promoted and injured on duty. They are also randomly tested. A computer picks names, and “a chief sends a car to start picking them up,” Chief Addie said, adding, “They never know when it’s coming.”

San Francisco, with 1,800 firefighters, began random testing in 2005, hiring a contractor, said a spokeswoman, Lt. Mindy Talmadge. “There had been some incidence of substance abuse by members of the department prior to the policy,” Lieutenant Talmadge said. “They were handled on a case-by-case basis.”

“The union,” she said, “did not want disparate treatment of firefighters, and the administration did not want to be accused of that.”

Many smaller cities have not seen the need for random testing, officials said. In Springfield, Mass., officials can call for a drug test if they suspect a firefighter is abusing drugs or alcohol on the job. “We’ll stand behind a zero-tolerance policy,” Chief Cassanelli said. “Police and firefighters are held to a higher standard. As well they should be.”

In Chicago, officials draw 20 names a day for random tests. On average, all 5,000 department members are tested yearly, and “about 1 percent are hot,” a spokesman, Larry Langford, said. Last year, Mr. Langford said, five members were dismissed or resigned because of substance abuse.

“It’s working,” he said. “There was resistance in the beginning. But now, the union’s on board. It’s a fact of life and part of the job. Our goal is not to get rid of people. Our goal is to rehabilitate people who may have a problem.”

Link!

Bostonians have reacted sharply. Juli Hauck, owner of Comella’s restaurant in the West Roxbury neighborhood where the firefighters worked, said the station was a “living memorial.” She said the autopsy details should have remained private.

“People here are on the defense now,” Ms. Hauck said. “They want to remember these guys as heroes.”


Ahh, ignorance is bliss! Who cares if they were trusted with being firemen and were doing coke/drinking on the job, let's just remember them as heroes!! It'd be a whole different tune if there were a few kids dead in that fire, it wouldn't be 'we wanna remember them as heroes', it'd be a witch hunt to find something to blame for the kids' deaths.

sounds to me like they are pissing on a dead mans grave. Who cares if they were drunk and on coke I would have to be blasted to run into a fire. Any man who risks his life to save others has my respect them being drug users just means that they were human.

It does matter. I guess we won't see eye to eye if you think a (cop, firefighter, ambulance folk, ER staff, etc) drinking on the job is a big deal. It's one thing to go to your office high, or to go work landscaping, whatever. It's completely different being in a position where people's lives will literally be in your hands, and then getting drunk before work. I don't understand how you can find that acceptable. Do you also understand drunk drivers?

I agree. You shouldn't be high/drunk on the job. Especially a safety sensitive job like this.

I'm glad they actually reported that these were blood tests, which most likely means they were under the influence at that time.

no my aunt was killed by a drunk driver did anyone die in the fire besides them? what if you burned to death then the coroner realesed a report sayin g you had coke in your system? would that make your greiving family feel good? and coke can show in a blood test for 3 days I know because I failed a blood test at the doctors office 3 days after last use. He was not a cop he didnt have to mediate disputes or make judgment calls his job is to fight fire and possibly save people. He died in this act and is now being talked about for using drugs across the country pissing on a dead mans grave. It would be different if this had been handled internally by the department instead it is natonal news.

Using the 3 days of positive coke testing as an excuse to not dig into a case like this is ridiculous. Sure, they may not have been drinking/snorting during the incident, but they may have been. That's what matters, is *finding out* if they were or not, getting an idea of the situation, and taking action (more drug testing) if there's a problem.

How on earth can you tell me he doesn't need to make judgement calls to be a firefighter? I don't really understand how you can say that with a straight face. What if the building he entered was half engulfed, and there was 1 kid downstairs, 2 upstairs, and he had to make a .... judgement call on how to handle the situation?

As I said before, I could really care less if someone's blowing a line before going to the office. But an ambulance driver? A firefighter? C'mon!

I think all of us are so used to being persecuted that we tend to react vehemently in the opposite direction, but bingal here has the right idea. People's lives are on the line with these jobs and these people definitely need to be sober when they're doing their jobs.

3 days to detect coke(and metabolite) in your blood? I'm gonna have to call bs on that until you provide a reference to back you up.

http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/testing/testing_info1.shtml

Doesn't say. Still looking for info.

http://www.passadrugtestingforall.com/long-cocaine-stays-your-system-a-5.html
This one says three days, but there's also a lot of misinformation here.

I have no reason to lie man it was experience believe me or dont

I did a search too, couldn't find anything conclusive. Most of the search result sites were from concealment products sellers.

Let's just move on and get back on topic.

Yes back to the topic. Drugs are bad, you shouldn't do drugs. M'kay.

Fire deaths probe questioned


The Boston Fire Department's internal inquiry into the deaths of two firefighters in West Roxbury last year has been controlled exclusively by members of the powerful firefighters union, leading some outside specialists to question the thoroughness and objectivity of the probe.

more stories like thisWhether the investigation by the seven-member board of inquiry was sufficient has become another flashpoint in a political battle between the union and the administration of Mayor Thomas M. Menino. Details of the official inquiry's draft report, described for the first time by two officials who have read it, shed light on what some city officials have described as holes in the investigation.

The panel did not investigate the potential level of impairment of the firefighters who died in the Aug. 29 restaurant fire, the sources said, and excluded an analysis of autopsy reports showing that one, Paul J. Cahill, was legally drunk, and the other, Warren J. Payne, had traces of cocaine in his system.

The report also gives no indication that the panel examined whether supervisors or colleagues noticed that the firefighters were impaired, or whether they knew of any previous substance abuse by the pair, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they didn't have permission to speak publicly.

The issues relating to the firefighters' conditions were "deemed outside of the board of inquiry's level of expertise and in fact may never be ascertained with any degree of certainty," the report says, according to one of the sources, who was reading from the draft.

The panel also did not analyze whether Cahill, Payne, their supervisors, and colleagues - all members of the union - followed proper protocols or were properly trained to face the type of fire they fought at the Tai Ho Mandarin and Cantonese Restaurant, where the seemingly routine grease fire in the ceiling turned deadly.

The report was to have been released last month, but has been delayed by City Hall officials who have criticized it as incomplete.

Specialists who investigate firefighter deaths nationwide say the omissions described by the sources would violate international guidelines for investigating line-of-duty deaths in fires and defeat the main purpose of the inquiry: preventing similar tragedies.

"Was there evidence they were abusing drugs before responding to the fire? When did they come on shift? Was this occurring back at the firehouse? Those things, at a minimum, should have been included," said Hollis Stambaugh, director of the Center for Public Protection at the TriData Division of Systems Planning Corp., whose specializations include firefighter line-of-duty deaths.

The international guidelines, issued by the International Association of Fire Chiefs, are also part of the Boston Fire Department's standard operating procedures. They direct investigators to secure the help of outside experts if needed, and to determine whether firefighters followed proper procedures and were adequately trained. Stambaugh said the omissions raise questions about the objectivity of the investigation.

The panel was convened by Boston Fire Commissioner Roderick Fraser immediately after the fire. It is composed entirely of members of Boston firefighters Local 718, something Stambaugh and others said is unusual when there are multiple firefighter fatalities or complicating factors, such as alleged impairment.

more stories like this"I'm shocked that a city the size of Boston would permit a post-action investigation, even an internal one, to be conducted entirely by members of the union," Stambaugh said.

Dot Joyce, a spokeswoman for Menino, said the mayor has not seen the report and therefore could not comment. Menino's administration confirmed last week that it had asked the board of inquiry to investigate further because it wanted more information included, but it did not say what it believed was missing.

Fire Department spokesman Steve MacDonald said both the fire commissioner and the board of inquiry members declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation.

The board of inquiry is composed of three deputy fire chiefs, two district fire chiefs, and two lieutenants. The lieutenants are supposed to represent Local 718 in the investigation. One, Lieutenant Sean F. Kelly, is the brother of the union president. The other, Lieutenant Neal A. Mullane, is the brother of a district vice president of Local 718's parent organization, the International Association of Fire Fighters.

Union officials, through a spokesman, said Friday that union leaders had nothing to do with the investigation.

"In no way did they ever try to influence the outcome or try to put themselves in a position to influence the outcome of the investigation," Local 718 spokesman Austin Shafran said.

The union has fought to keep information about the firefighters' potential impairment out of the public eye, and sought a civil injunction against disclosure in the media of their autopsy information last October. At the time, the union called the disclosure a "heinous and vile public attack."

Last week in a press conference and again on Friday, the union alleged that city lawyers were trying to manipulate the results of the panel's investigation.

"If anyone was trying to exert influence it was the city, who demanded to see the report before it was completed and then offered recommendations before it was completed and released to the public," Shafran said Friday. "The fact that the city made its recommendations in an unsigned, undocumented letter shows their underhanded tactics."

The city's lawyer, William F. Sinnott, said last week that he advised the panel in an informal memorandum to provide "more complete fact-finding, more substantive analysis, and more defensible conclusions" but he did not elaborate, saying the communications were confidential.

The draft report's findings, according to the sources, confirmed the results of a preliminary review by fire officials immediately after the blaze, concluding that cooking grease from a kitchen exhaust system oozed into the ceiling and ignited.

During the fire, Cahill and Payne became disoriented and were "unable to evacuate" the restaurant, the report says.

more stories like thisAfter stating that impairment affecting fitness for duty was beyond the panel's expertise, the report nonetheless concluded that impairment did not cause the firefighters' deaths.

"The board of inquiry could find no factual indications supporting that alcohol/drug impairment contributed to or caused these two firefighters to become disoriented, or inhibited the ability of them to perform the firefighting duties assigned to them at the fatal fire incident," according to one of the sources, who was reading from the report.

It is not the first time Boston Fire Department line-of-duty death investigations have been conducted solely by members of the union. Nor is it the first time questions have been raised about thoroughness.

After firefighter James A. Ellis apparently fell to his death inside a Roxbury firehouse in December 1996, a board of inquiry composed entirely of union members issued a report saying Ellis fell down a fire pole, but did not say why. The report did not address possible negligence on the part of Ellis or others at the firehouse, even though fire officials who had inspected the scene indicated there was a puddle of water near the pole that could have caused Ellis to slip.

After Lieutenant Stephen F. Minehan died after he was sent into a burning Charlestown warehouse to look for colleagues in 1994, a board of inquiry composed entirely of union members issued a report that did not analyze whether his supervisors made the correct call in sending him into the building. Some national specialists said that the line of acceptable risk may have been crossed when Minehan and his fellow firefighters were sent inside the warehouse, which was empty.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a federal agency, often investigates firefighter line-of-duty deaths and is currently probing the deaths of Cahill and Payne. But the federal reviews do not analyze whether firefighters followed proper procedures, and the resulting reports do not include the names of those involved or even the cities where the deaths happened.

In recent years, cities across the nation have been tapping the expertise of outsiders to investigate firefighter deaths.

After nine firefighters died last year in a South Carolina furniture store, Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. convened a team of national experts to conduct an independent investigation. Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon also commissioned an outside investigator after a firefighter recruit died last year during a training exercise.

"All over the country, when you have a firefighter death, the fire department has to do an investigation, but . . . there has to be an outside investigation if there's anything that is in any way extraordinary," said Hal Bruno, chairman of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, which offers chief-to-chief technical support nationwide following firefighter deaths.

Bruno said outside investigations protect everyone involved from allegations of bias or attempts to cover up mistakes that may have been made.

"It isn't just for the union," he said. "It's for the city."

link​

what a joke

bingalpaws said:

It does matter. I guess we won't see eye to eye if you think a (cop, firefighter, ambulance folk, ER staff, etc) drinking on the job is a big deal. It's one thing to go to your office high, or to go work landscaping, whatever. It's completely different being in a position where people's lives will literally be in your hands, and then getting drunk before work. I don't understand how you can find that acceptable. Do you also understand drunk drivers?

Click to expand...

we dont know if they were drunk or high

they might have had alcohol/cocaine in their system because they were tolerant and dependent and required a maintenance dose to be normal

furthermore, if about 25 out of about 7000 tested positive, i dont think the drug testing is doing much of anything besides wasting money. they're obviously beating the tests

and lastly, drug testing doesn't test whether you're high at work. it will also come up positive if you get high in your own home...

<first off, thanks for making me re-read all my old posts in this thread lol>

We don't know if they were high/drunk or not, and that's what that new article I posted showed. But, regardless, I support testing in specific areas, and firefighters are one of them. I see what you mean about needing a maintenance dose to be normal - I don't see a problem with that being enough, in itself, to bar you from being a firefighter. I really just don't see any issue with determining if a firefighter/policeman/pilot/etc has active drugs in their system while on the job, and if that means they cannot be complete alcoholics/cokeheads to the point where they'd need a maintenance dose to be normal during work, I'm okay with that.

Fire Commish to panel: Do it right this time
By Dave Wedge, O’Ryan Johnson, Jessica Fargen, Boston Herald
February 22, 2008

The city’s top fire official is reconvening the internal fire department panel that just this morning released a report concluding that drug and alcohol impairment did not play a role in the deaths of two firefighters in a West Roxbury blaze last year.

Fire Commissioner Roderick J. Fraser Jr. in a news conference this afternoon called the findings incomplete because the panel, made up of firefighters, did not review toxicology results and autopsy reports from the fallen jakes.

“I don’t believe you can report out completely what happened without the toxicology and autopsy reports,” Fraser said.

Fraser said today he would reconvene the panel, obtain the autopsy results and toxicology results and bring in an outside expert to help the board review those results.

The 134-page Fire Department Board of Inquiry report released this morning probed the Aug. 29, 2007, deaths of firefighters Paul Cahill and Warren Payne at the Tai Ho Restaurant.

Investigators did not review autopsy and toxicology reports, which sources have told the Herald show Cahill was legally drunk and Payne had traces of cocaine in his system.

Instead, the report is based on interviews with dozens of firefighters, police officers, EMTs and civilians.

Deputy Fire Chief Stephen Dunbar, a panel member, said this morning that in October he sent an e-mail to Boston police requesting the autopsy reports and toxicology results for Payne and Cahill, but he claims he never received a response. He said he never followed up with e-mails or calls when he didn’t receive a response.

The Suffolk County District Attorney’s office, which is forwarded requests for autopsy results from the medical examiner’s office, has not received a request for Payne or Cahill’s autopsy reports. Autopsy reports and toxicology results can legally be provided to next-of-kin, an investigative body or parties to a civil lawsuit.

“To date we have received no such request from an authorized party,” Suffolk DA spokesman Jake Wark said this morning.

The Board of Inquiry probe revealed that Cahill went into a kitchen area in the restaurant without his department-issued face piece and left his radio at the station. Also, Cahill was wearing older-model bunker gear because he never picked up his new-issue gear, the report says.

Dunbar said this morning that Cahill ran out of air and removed his face piece so he could breathe.

The authors concluded that “no factual indications supporting that alcohol/drug impairment contributed to or caused these two firefighters to become disoriented or inhibited in their ability to perform the firefighting duties assigned to them.”

The controversial report, which also makes recommendations, was written by a panel of Boston firefighters. The Board of Inquiry recommends that the department and union “take the necessary steps to immediately implement a drug testing program,” as well as “substance abuse training.”

The report stops short of recommending mandatory alcohol testing.

Fraser has questioned how the board determined Cahill was not impaired in light of evidence that two other officers with Cahill were able to safely escape the burning restaurant’s kitchen. Fraser went on to ask why Cahill wasn’t wearing the department-required mask.

“Could being under the influence of alcohol have contributed to FF Cahill’s disorientation and decision not to wear his facepiece?” Fraser wrote in a letter yesterday to Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Deputy Fire Chief Steven Dunbar, who headed the Board of Inquiry probe. “If FF Cahill had been wearing his facepiece, would he have survived?”

Fraser also noted that report is unclear as to whether Cahill was “inspected” by his company officer prior to the blaze to “discern any behavior that may have indicated impairment.”

Filled with color photos and analysis, the report describes the building and includes a timeline of the fire, as well as a summary of the facts. The department has determined that the blaze started when caked-up grease ignited in an overhead vent.

Link

The authors concluded that “no factual indications supporting that alcohol/drug impairment contributed to or caused these two firefighters to become disoriented or inhibited in their ability to perform the firefighting duties assigned to them.”

LOL
Yeah, we, his buddies, determined that just fine on our own, and no, we do not need to see those pesky toxicology reports, our job is done