By Jane Prendergast
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Cincinnati city and fire officials promised Tuesday they'll do what they can - within budget constraints - to make the changes to fire operations recommended in a 200-page internal investigation into a firefighter's death last year.

But everyone involved says it likely will take years. And the $2 million in recommended additional personnel - particularly a dozen chiefs' aides - drew immediate doubts from officials who said the city just doesn't have the money.

"It's not something we expect to be done four days from now,'' said Doug Stern, spokesman for firefighters' union Local 48. "We know it's going to take a long time. But we're going to stick with it and see that it's done.''

Fire officials spent a year investigating the March 2003 death of Oscar Armstrong III, the first Cincinnati firefighter to die on-duty in a fire in 22 years. Armstrong and two others went into the Bond Hill house fire that morning without water in their hose line, the report found. He died when the fire got so hot it flashed over, engulfing everything in the room.

The report, discussed for two hours Tuesday at City Council's Law and Public Safety committee, lists mistakes from an inexperienced firefighter controlling the water to a lack of regular cleaning and inspections of firefighters' clothes and equipment.

The report did not place blame. In fact, it does not name any of the firefighters who made mistakes that day. The city's objective was to focus on systemic problems, City Manager Valerie Lemmie said, not on people.

"They're good people in bad systems,'' she said.

Regardless of the mistakes, Armstrong was in an "unsurvivable environment, no matter what equipment he had on,'' said training District Chief Tom Lakamp.

Still, Mayor Charlie Luken called it "amazing'' that some of these basic problems could still happen in a professional fire department in 2004.

Armstrong's mother and other family members sat in the audience but did not speak. Each council member, before asking questions, expressed sympathy.

Some improvements already have been made. Among them:

• Firefighters use shorter hoses now to avoid the serious kinks that left Armstrong without water.

• Rapid assistance teams, which help rescue firefighters, are now dispatched sooner.

• New fire clothes, being purchased now, will have firefighters' names on them so it will be more obvious who's in the fire. Armstrong was unaccounted-for for 20 minutes.

E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com