FRESNO (KMJ) — Fresno Fire Captain Pete Dern is back on his feet and recovering well and Fresno Fire say his injuries may prompt a change in how they fight fires of this kind.
An outside investigation into what happened began two days after the incident which severely injured Captain Dern.
“We wanted to address issues that could contribute to this and make sure we get in front of this”, says Fire Chief Kerri Donis.
The incident report should be complete in two month’s time, and it may contain recommendations on how crews attack future fires.
People all over the world have seen the video showing Captain Dern disappearing through that roof and into the inferno below, but there was nothing unusual about what he was doing.
“Captain Dern had been on very similar fires, over 500 of them in over ten years, doing very similar activity to what he was doing”, continues Chief Donis. “Ventilating the roof is one way to allow hot gas, smoke, and heat, to be released out of a room”.
She adds that something similar to this has actually happened before in Modesto about six years ago, which prompted officials there to change their own firefighting practices.
“They haven’t had a near miss since then that I’m aware of. You don’t want to have ‘one size fits all’, you want to make sure you evaluate all the facts before you make a change in a policy”.
Captain Dern is still in CRMC recovering from the burns and doctors there say he’s still got a long way to go on the road to recovery.
