By Jane Prendergast
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Armstrong

Cincinnati's first firefighter killed in the line of duty in 22 years went into a Bond Hill blaze carrying a long hose too kinked to deliver water, an internal investigation shows.

Oscar Armstrong III was the first man carrying the hose line into the burning house the morning of March 21. The internal report, released Thursday, said he and two other firefighters went in the front door after they and a supervisor called at least three times for the water to be turned on.

They didn't realize that part of the 350-foot hose lay in the bushes outside, so severely kinked that the water couldn't move through.

Chief Robert Wright and other officials stressed no one involved in the fire was to blame for Armstrong's death. He acknowledged that "it appears that there may have been better decisions that could've been made," but said it's unfair to look back in hindsight and criticize.

No one will be disciplined, he said.

"There's no reason for discipline," said training chief Tom Lakamp, who led the committee that will continue to investigate the death for as long as a year.

Armstrong, 25, was critically burned when the fire, which started in the kitchen, then "flashed over," engulfing the house and everything in it. He'd been in the two-story Cape Cod 10 minutes, the report said, when colleagues finally found him and got him out a window. Other firefighters initially thought he already was out of the house.

He was pronounced dead at University Hospital.

The report points out the water issue and other problems at the fire scene on Laidlaw Avenue:

• Firefighters often carry hose lines "dry" - they're too heavy when full. But a "dry" hose line should never be taken into a high-heat or smoke-filled room.

• The first two "attack lines" pulled at the fire were severely kinked. Time must be spent smoothing out the hose while advancing to the fire.

• The one line was 350 feet long (seven connected sections of 13/4-inch hose), greatly reducing the gallons-per-minute released.

Some changes already have been made, including that Rapid Assistance Teams - they rescue other firefighters - are now dispatched immediately to every fire. Companies also have been ordered to carry pre-connected hoses no longer than 250 feet and to remove all 'Y' connectors from their hose lines. Those allow the connection of two smaller hoses to a bigger hose, but require opening a valve to turn on the water.

The latter was not an issue in the Laidlaw fire, Lakamp said, but officials decided there was no need for that extra step in getting water to a fire.

"We're trying to learn from a very difficult and tragic situation," said Joe Diebold, president of the firefighters union, "so another mother doesn't have the loss of her son."

The department takes delivery Wednesday of its new flashover simulator, bought with a federal grant. It allows trainers to repeatedly create enough heat to force a flashover so firefighters can see and feel the conditions that lead up to the fire phenomenon that killed Armstrong.

"Nobody," Wright said, "was actually the person who caused Armstrong's death."

As the investigation continues, Lakamp said, future changes likely will come in training, technology and equipment.

E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com