ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 5, 1996 TAG: 9604050100
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE
SOURCE: Associated Press
THEY PLEADED FOR HELP, but for some reason, no fellow firefighters came to the aid of Frank Young or John Hudgins Jr. before they died.
Two firefighters who died last month in a blaze at a shopping center made radio calls for help, but other firefighters either didn't hear or didn't understand the transmissions, investigators believe.
Although Fire Chief Michael Bolac publicly praised the ``heroic rescue efforts'' at the funeral services for Frank Young and John Hudgins Jr., a Fire Department audio tape shows no one acted when the men called for help.
They died March 18 when a roof collapsed. Officials said the fire at an auto parts store began when a utility truck boom snagged a power line.
A Fire Department inquiry into the deaths is ongoing. But Division Chief Thomas Cooke said investigators are examining several problems, including ineffective radio communications.
The number of firefighters and rescue workers at the scene overwhelmed the system, and that may have contributed to the failure of a backup engine crew to run a waterline to the two firefighters' engine.
Radio calls by Young and Hudgins for help were difficult to hear, The Virginian-Pilot reported Thursday. But the newspaper said a battalion chief repeated that men were trapped inside the building.
However, on-scene commanders and the third crewman on the doomed men's engine didn't notice they were missing until after they apparently were dead.
When the first engine arrived at 11:34 a.m., no flames were visible. But the fire was hidden between the building's ceiling and roof, chewing through aging trusses and spreading fast.
According to a tape of radio traffic, Hudgins called for help at 11:47.
``I got [unintelligible] and myself inside, and can't get out!''
``I can't understand you,'' a battalion chief responded.
``Please, get some water [unintelligible] inside and get us out of here!''
Hudgins and Young were never heard from again. And while the battalion chief twice said into his radio that he heard the trapped men, no one else acknowledged him.
Herbert Myers, the third crew member on the men's engine, didn't know his partners were in trouble and assumed they were still fighting the fire.
Myers, whose engine ran out of water at 11:50, called another engine for water ``as soon as you can get it to me.'' But the other engine's crew didn't answer.
At 11:54, seven minutes after Hudgins' last transmission, another battalion chief told headquarters that men were inside the building and their waterline had been burned. ``I do not know their status, and we don't have water to go in after them,'' he reported.
By that time, investigators believe, the two firefighters were dead.
The Chesapeake Fire Department uses a radio system with two channels - a strong main channel and a weaker line-of-sight channel. The person who keys the radio first takes over the frequency, and no one can interrupt until the frequency is free.
The tape of the transmissions does not record the second channel.
Cooke said the department's report on the fatalities won't conclude with finger-pointing, but it will lay out mistakes so firefighters can learn from them.
``It would dishonor the lives lost if we didn't do everything to prevent this in the future,'' he said.
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB