Fire Report Stresses Old Lesson: Never Assume Commander At Pang Blaze Didn’t Know There Was A Fire In The Basement

One of the lessons of the Pang warehouse fire is an old one: never assume.

A new federal report says the commander at the scene of the Jan. 5 blaze that killed four firefighters didn’t know there was fire in the basement below the doomed workers. He did not know there was a basement.

So fire crews entering the Mary Pang Food Products warehouse “from the east side did not realize there was a basement below them,” says the independent report.

“The crews entering from the west side located the fire in the basement, but did not realize the attack crews (were) above it” and assumed other firefighters knew about the basement blaze.

The firefighters - Gregory Shoemaker, Walter Kilgore, James Brown and Randy Terlicker - died when the main floor collapsed.

Martin Pang, the son of the building’s owners, is charged with murder in the arson deaths. Authorities are seeking his extradition from Brazil, where he fled after the fire, to face the charges.

The new report was prepared for the National Fire Administration, a branch of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and submitted Friday to the Seattle Fire Department.

“One of the real lessons to come out of this tragic fire, and I’ve seen it in other fatal incidents, is sharing information, making sure everyone has the information and not assuming what you are seeing is common knowledge,” said Gordon Routley, who wrote the NFA report.

In a statement Monday, Fire Chief Claude Harris said the report is “an important tool” for examining the events of Jan. 5 and determining “what lessons can be learned” by his department and firefighters around the nation.

“This report doesn’t pull any punches. It identifies many things that went right on that tragic night, but it also identifies things that went wrong,” Harris told a press conference Monday.

“We have already begun to take steps to address problems identified at the Pang fire. As we receive objective investigations, we will be taking every step to further improve firefighter safety,” Harris said in the statement.

The report says the fire “illustrates that multiple firefighter deaths can occur at an incident where fire-suppression operations are well-organized, wellmanaged and well-executed with a strong emphasis on firefighter safety.”

The firefighting strategy was “by the book,” the report says.

“The initial risk assessment supported an interior offensive attack to keep the fire out of the building and an east-towest attack plan was effectively communicated to the operating crews,” it says.