Families of Three Fallen Baltimore Firefighters File New Lawsuit

Attorneys representing the families of three Baltimore firefighters who died battling a Stricker Street blaze filed a new lawsuit against the city after their federal suit was dropped last month.

Firefighter John McMaster, who was injured but not killed in the early 2022 blaze, was also named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit filed last week in Baltimore Circuit Court.

Like its federal counterpart, the lawsuit alleges that the city failed to inform firefighters that it had discontinued a program called “Code X-Ray” that marked vacant residences with an “X.”  That program never formally ended, but the use of the marks was halted amid complaints that the signs were tarnishing the reputations of certain communities.

McMaster, as well as Fire Lt. Paul Butrim, Lt. Kelsey Sadler, EMT and firefighter Kenny Lacayo, had been injured while battling a fire from the inside of a vacant rowhome in Southwest Baltimore’s Mount Clare neighborhood.

Butrim, Sadler and Lacayo died after the structure partially collapsed. A report on the deadly Jan. 24, 2022, conflagration found that firefighters were unaware of the building’s lengthy vacancy and blamed the city for failing to notify firefighters of the structural deficiency.

Baltimore has thousands of vacant properties, and a Baltimore Sun investigation found that they burn in the city at twice the national rate. But officials keep track of fires at vacant structures inconsistently, making it difficult for firefighters to know what they’re stepping into.

The lawsuit alleges the city withheld information about prior fires and collapses at the Stricker Street building and says that the firefighters would not have gone inside had they been aware of the structural deficiencies.

The property had been vacant for 14 years and had burned twice, once in 2015 and once in 2016, causing a partial collapse of the interior that had trapped other firefighters, the lawsuit says.

The city’s pattern of conduct “went far beyond the ordinary government neglect that is sadly synonymous with Baltimore leadership,” the complaint says.

“This was no accident,” lawyers wrote in the complaint.

The plaintiffs did not provide a dollar amount for damages in the negligence lawsuit filed last week but noted they were seeking a judgment against the city of over $75,000. They requested a jury trial.

The claims are similar to the firefighters’ previous lawsuit, which had been dismissed in December by a U.S. District Court judge who ruled it did not meet the high bar set in federal law for claims regarding “state-created” dangers.

Baltimore City didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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