A-Infos (en) US, Boston, Anarchist journal - BAAM #17 - A Preventable Accident: Brake Failure Kills Boston Firefighter by Jake Carman

On January 9, 2009, the Boston Fire Department's Ladder 26 experienced brake failure, causing it to 
race down Parker Hill Ave. on Mission Hill. The crew, unable to stop their truck, threw on the 
sirens as they sped into the intersection of Huntington Avenue, plowed over a brick wall and then 
crashed into a high-rise apartment building. Lt. Kevin M. Kelley, 52, who was riding in the 
passenger's seat, was killed on impact. ---- Another firefighter suffered a broken leg, two more 
were slightly injured, and 6 children inside the building were hurt by shattered glass. Lt. Kelley 
had been in the department for 30 years, and leaves behind a wife and three kids. ---- As Clara 
Hendricks, who witnessed the accident on her way home from work, told the BAAM Newsletter: "It 
happened in seconds. I heard a loud siren coming. I thought the truck must have some really great 
turning mechanism if it's coming down the hill so fast. Then it dawned on me that it wasn't going 
to turn."

Hendricks, who herself nar-
rowly avoided being hit by
the Ladder truck, was one of
the few witnesses to the de-
struction. "It crashed through
two cars parked on the other
side of Huntington, smashed
through a brick wall and then
into an apartment building,"
she said. "Only a third of the
truck was sticking out of the
building. Water was billowing out of the top.
People were screaming. It was horrifying. If
any car, pedestrian or train had been hit, the
impact would have been devastating."
    Thousands of Firefighters from as far as
New York and Maine attended Kelley's fu-
neral on January 14th. Speakers recalled Kel-
ley's bravery and dedication. As District Fire
Chief Charles Mitchell said in his friend's
eulogy, "I knew that Kevin had his thumb on
that horn, trying to send out whatever warn-
ing he could to those down below." Others,
like Edward A. Kelly, International Associa-
tion of Fire Fighters Local 718 president, re-
membered his humor and jokes around the
firehouse, claiming Lt. Kevin Kelley had "a
master's degree in busting chops."

    A review board that the Fire Department
put together, along with police investigators,
determined that brake failure caused the acci-
dent. The board, which will make suggestions
on how to prevent future incidents, includes
"fewer than 10," Fire Department spokesman
Steve MacDonald told the Boston Herald.
Just two board members were named public-
ly, Deputy Fire Chief Robert J. Calobrisi, and
the only non-Firefighters' union member of
the board, Deputy Chief of Labor and Man-
agement Karen Glasgow. No other names
have been released, according to MacDonald,
because the Department is "worried if who's
on the board is in the paper, they're going to
be getting calls from the media."
    Kelley's death has brought two debates
back into the public realm: whether or not
firefighters should respond to medical (non-
fire) emergencies, and how to solve the short-
age of mechanics in the Department.
    City Councilor at Large Sam Yoon, chair-
man of the Postaudit and Oversight Commit-
tee, told the Boston Globe, "Sending a ladder
truck, as well as two sets of first respond-
ers, to answer routine medical calls seems
like an inefficiency we can't afford." Local
718 representatives, however, pointed out
that most firefighters are certified EMTs and
that fire trucks, due to the fact that there are
generally more than twice as many of them
on duty than ambulances and that there are
more fire stations than EMS stations, often
arrive before the EMS ambulances. In fact,
Lt. Kevin Kelley and Ladder 26 arrived at the
scene four minutes before ambulances did on
the January 9, during the Mission Hill medi-
cal call that would be Kelley's last. In emer-
gency situations, minutes, and even seconds,
count, said the union. Furthermore, as Keith
O'Brien wrote in his January 23rd article for
the Globe, "Fire Department and EMS offi-
cials say that you never know what you might
find at a scene, justifying the need for both
agencies to race out on calls."
    The bigger issue is the condition of Bos-
ton's fire trucks. Currently, according to John
C. Drake and Donovan Slack's January 21
article for the Boston Globe, the Boston Fire
Department's maintenance crew includes just
"12 uniformed firefight-
ers who rotate tires and
fix broken lights, among
other duties, but they are
not licensed mechanics."
After Kelley's death,
Mayor Menino agreed
to hire licensed mechan-
ics, but instead of hiring
from the union or allow-
ing the new mechanics to
join the union, he's tried
to shift the responsibil-
ity to non-union workers
and even rejected Local
718's proposal to couple
the move with the hiring
of 24 additional union
firefighters.   Menino's
insistence on non-union
help is most likely be-
cause the city would
have to give union work-
ers better wages and
benefits than non-union
workers.
    Regardless of the cost
of union mechanics,
trucks like Ladder 26--which hadn't been
serviced for 10 months, though the manufac-
tures recommend servicing the vehicles every
3 months--are sorely under maintained, put-
ting firefighters, who already risk life and limb
to rush to the rescue of Boston's residents, in
unnecessary and unjust danger. "Mechanics
were done away with on this job a long time
ago and were never replaced," said Local
718 president Edward Kelly. "We'll welcome
those mechanics to our union, and we wel-
come them to our department, because our
fleet is in deplorable condition."
_________________________________________
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