Corolla (Outer Banks), NC- 8th Alarm 06-12-15

We've been in that building many times as renters through Brindley Beach vacations.  What a shame. Thankfully it was only property and not lives that were lost even though losing your business is nothing to celebrate either.  Outer Banks is a great place to vacation especially up in Corolla where my family and I usually stay.
 
Great video.  Thanks, Truck4, for finding & posting it.  A few points/questions:

1.  Don't have any idea how long this had been going before the video starts, but i'd guess a minimum of 10 minutes based on the amount of fire and the fact that they had lines stretched to the tower ladder.  Brindley Beach is less than 5 miles from the Duck, Carova Beach, Collington, Kitty Hawk and  Kill Devil Hills Fire Depts., yet almost 25 minutes into the incident, there were apparently only 2 engines and one tower ladder on scene. IMHO, that doesn't sound like a very quick response from the mutual aid departments.

2.  Again, due to the invaluable insight of Monday morning quarterbacking, it would seem from the video that protecting the exposures from this conflagration was an afterthought.  It wasn't until 8 minutes into the video that they began to reposition an engine to cover exposures, and not until 11:10 did the guys in the tower ladder begin to think about the exposures.  I won't mention the positioning of the tower ladder, because on arrival, they didn't have the opportunity to see the drone video and realize the exposure problems they had.  But maybe this video demonstrates again the value that a video drone would have to an incident commander.

3.  Lastly . . . the tower ladder didn't go into operation until 8:48 into the video.  It was on scene already when the video began.  Should it take that long to set up a tower ladder and its water supply and put it in operation?

I don't mean to criticize anyone with these comments.  I think the Corolla FD probably did the best they could in the circumstances.  But I think there are lessons to be learned here.
 
Where are the 7 other alarms? That was painful to watch. Resources and water in the proper application extinguish fires, protects property and saves lives! My heart hurts for the first due companies! I guess we know what the weekly drill will be for the next 52 weeks.

For the record, screaming at the drone video does not help and it scares the animals!
 
Much to learn from watching the videos of this incident.  Many departments are fairly close to each other along the Outer Banks, so I am not clear why mutual aid units were not on the scene much sooner.  I know some of these departments run with very minimum staffing on their apparatus, sometimes driver only or two man companies.  So many departments are shorthanded, possibly one reason it took them so long to get the tower ladder in operation.
 
raybrag said:
Great video.  Thanks, Truck4, for finding & posting it.  A few points/questions:

Brindley Beach is less than 5 miles from the Duck, Carova Beach, Collington, Kitty Hawk and  Kill Devil Hills Fire Depts., yet almost 25 minutes into the incident, there were apparently only 2 engines and one tower ladder on scene. IMHO, that doesn't sound like a very quick response from the mutual aid departments.
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Raybrag, I am very familiar with this part of the world and I would respectfully disagree with less than 5 miles comment.  Duck is the next closest department (to the south in dare County) and it is easily more than 5 miles to the north side of Corolla (in Currituck County) where the fire building was located. While I am surprised there isn't a Duck engine or their tower on scene yet I am not all surprised there is not a Carova, Collington, or any other department on scene yet.  Carova Fire, located to the north, maybe geographically closer than Duck but their units have to cross three-plus miles of beach (literally) to get anywhere, and the Dare county departments other than Duck are 10 miles or more down on Highway 12--a heavily traveled 2-lane road.  Even without the usual summer vacationer traffic issues it is still quite a ride for them. 

Then there is the staffing issue. I can very easily see how long it would it would take mutual aid companies to arrive even if they were staffed with career personnel.  However, to my knowledge only a couple of the departments on the OBX have fully staffed career fire crews (Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills come to mind).  The smaller departments have career chiefs, admin staff, etc but not much more than that.  They rely heavily on on-call volunteers for fire crew staffing. So I assume there was a wait for crews to respond...which might be why they had to go to 8 alarms.

Fascinating fire, though. Love the drone video.
 
I stand corrected on the distances.  Nevertheless, I would have thought that SOMEBODY else would have been on scene by the end of the video.
 
raybrag said:
2.  Again, due to the invaluable insight of Monday morning quarterbacking, it would seem from the video that protecting the exposures from this conflagration was an afterthought.  It wasn't until 8 minutes into the video that they began to reposition an engine to cover exposures, and not until 11:10 did the guys in the tower ladder begin to think about the exposures.  I won't mention the positioning of the tower ladder, because on arrival, they didn't have the opportunity to see the drone video and realize the exposure problems they had.  But maybe this video demonstrates again the value that a video drone would have to an incident commander.
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This is certainly the first thing I thought. It wasn't hard to see from the street that there were a lot of exposures on the downwind side of the conflagration. At the very least the Tower Ladder should've been set up from the street side to protect those exposures (100 yards to the left in the video). It would've taken a drone view to determine that.
raybrag said:
I stand corrected on the distances.  Nevertheless, I would have thought that SOMEBODY else would have been on scene by the end of the video.
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I noticed that partly to the video there was a second engine that stopped at the entrance to the building and then disappeared. I never did see where it is up going but it seems like it should have gone to the street that went to the exposures. That's obviously a bad tactical position because it's downwind but it was basically the only position that could've helped protect the exposures.

I also wonder if the owner of the drone ever offered to provide the video live to the scene commander? It certainly would've been helpful in this case. I doubt that happened because it looks like from the video that he was actually located quite a ways away from the actual scene.
 
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