Bridgeport CT Firefighters Remembered Nine Years after Deaths

BRIDGEPORT, CT—City firefighters gathered alongside friends and family of Lt. Steven Velasquez and firefighter Michel Baik for a ceremony in their honor Wednesday on the nine-year anniversary of their line-of-duty deaths.

Velasquez and Baik died July 24, 2010, while battling a fire at 41 Elmwood Ave. in the city.

A medical examiner said Baik died from smoke inhalation complicated by a heart condition and Velasquez died from asphyxia and smoke inhalation.

On Wednesday, veteran firefighters took time to remember the loss and new members learned of fellow firefighters who made the ultimate sacrifice.

The department is preparing to see a lot of firefighters retire in the coming year, which means they’ll be replaced by newer firefighters — ones who never met or heard of Velasquez and Baik.

“We do it every year just to honor their memory and honor the sacrifice,” said Fire Chief Richard Thode. “It’s important for the firefighters who were on the job back then to remember their friends ... And a lot of the new people don’t know who they were so it’s important for them to see these kind of things to understand sacrifice and duty, and to understand it’s a dangerous job.

“It’s a reminder that anything can happen at any time,” he said.

“Two of our own gave the ultimate sacrifice, and we should not ever forget them and all that our firefighters do every day for our city,” said Mayor Joe Ganim. “It’s also a reminder for the city and all of us in the city to recognize the Bridgeport Fire Department and all that they do for public safety in our communities.”

After the fatal fire, officials found out the third-floor living area in the Elmwood Avenue dwelling was an illegal apartment that likely hadn’t been inspected by fire officials for several years.

In February 2011, the fire department was charged with five serious state safety violations linked to the deaths of Velasquez and Baik.

The state Department of Labor’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health found the fire department didn’t perform tests on the firefighters’ breathing gas tanks, failed to conduct medical evaluations, failed to ensure air masks fit correctly, did not ensure firefighters wore breathing equipment inside the burning building and failed to follow mayday rescue procedures.

In February 2011, Carlos Reyes spoke to Hearst Connecticut Media about the fatal fire. Reyes, who was assigned to the Beechmont Avenue fire station, said he heard the mayday call and rushed inside immediately. By then, he said, it was too late.

He told the reporters at the time that after they found the bodies of the firefighters another firefighter said that maybe the mayday call they heard wasn’t the first one.

Now, the Bridgeport Fire Department practices mayday drills daily to ensure everyone — from dispatchers, to firefighters, to battalion chiefs and all other fire personnel — are prepared should the worst happen.

“They go to a fire house and say everything they’re supposed to say during a mayday,” Thode said.

The department’s members go through a specific information protocol with officials when they relay a mayday. Thode said the point is so everyone knows where the firefighter is in the dwelling, who the firefighter is and what problem they’re facing.

The department has seen a lot of changes since that day in 2010, “and a lot of it is because of the results of things that happened that day,” Thode said.

Other than the mayday drills, the department also put a spotlight on the Rapid Intervention Team. Now, Thode said, the RIT is focused solely on firefighter rescues.

“It used to be here’s four guys doing nothing ... put them to work,” Thode said. “That doesn’t happen anymore.”

Now, that team will be outside a dwelling as firefighters work to extinguish flames inside, prepared to intervene at any moment.

Rather than drag in members of the RIT if additional fire units are needed, the department’s fire officials “highly encourage and make it a point to call extra companies so they’re right there,” and not racing to the scene from one of the other fire stations when they’re needed, Thode said.

The department also used grants to replace all the department and member air packs with a bigger air bottle that could be used for 45 minutes rather than 30 minutes, which was the case with the older equipment.

“We got those new air tanks because one of the contributing factors of that day was the guys ran out of air,” Thode said.

Through another grant, the department got new radios with a “man down” button, lights and loud buzzers and alerts to help rescue teams find hurt or downed firefighters in an emergency.

Bridgeport firefighters also have a pack tracker, which Thode said serves as a radio beacon that can help a rescue team get to the area where the downed firefighter is.

“The point of today is to show that all of those new procedures, all of that new equipment, it’s not just a story,” Thode said.

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