#firemarshall

Fire Marshalls play an important role in keeping our society safe from potential dangers associated with fire hazards. But the question that needs to be asked is when does their enforcement of some antiquated fire codes become detrimental to school safety instead of enhancing it? I'm referring here to enforcement of fire codes that are left up to the interpretation of the fire marshall when it comes to door security enhancement during school lockdowns.

Shortly after the Sandy Hook School massacres in December of 2012, the Department of Homeland Security recommended enhancing door security in schools. The recommendation was based on the fact that the children and two teachers who were killed in the attack died behind two unlocked classroom doors. The DHS recommendation was that any classroom door that could not be locked from the inside without opening the door and without using a key should be enhanced. Loss of fine motor skills during an attack can prevent someone from locking a door, even if they have the key in their hand. We saw this happen in Sandy Hook. DHS recommended barricading doors with heavy furniture as a last ditch effort to enhance door security in a lockdown due to a violent attack. The photo above of the door barricaded with chairs is a training photo. This door opens outward, so the barricade would not be effective. The other photo is an actual door barricade used by college students during the June 1, 2016 UCLA shootings. Even if these barricading systems worked, would the first graders in Sandy Hook have been able to erect them in the short time it took the killer to enter the unlocked door to their classroom? That question answers itself.

Fire codes say doors in schools must be able to be opened from the inside with one motion, even if they are locked from the outside. There are some excellent door locks on the market that are compliant with this fire code and are able to be locked from the inside without a key, but most schools don't use them due to cost. So the question we faced in school safety after the post Sandy Hook DHS recommendations was how to enhance door safety to keep the kids safe, stay within fire codes, and accomplish this at an affordable cost?

The answer I came up with in my school district was to create "Safe Rooms" inside of the schools with enhanced door and window security. Shortly after the DHS recommendations, several door security devices hit the market. I began checking every device I could find, and didn't like what I saw. The devices I looked at didn't address my needs as most of them required opening the doors to engage them, required use of fine motor skills, could not be opened from the outside by emergency responders, or just didn't work on the types of doors in my schools. None of these devices were compliant with the aforementioned fire code, but then again, neither was the DHS recommendation about barricading doors. 

In July of 2013 I found a door security device called the Anchorman Anti-Crisis Tool (ACT). I am not affiliated with this company, but I use their product name here with the owner's permission. This device was designed by two of the most highly trained SWAT cops I have yet to meet, and had everything I was looking for in terms of door security enhancement for my safe rooms. It was well made, did not require opening the door to engage it, did not require use of fine motor skills to engage or disengage, could be opened from the outside by emergency responders using a special tool the company supplied to them, and could be engaged and disengaged in about 2-3 seconds by a person of any size. And in my interpretation of the fire codes, it was compliant. There is an exemption to this fire code that kicks in when a facility is used as a place of detention and not a public use facility. Safe rooms are not used unless a school is in lockdown and something bad is happening, so the school is now a place of detention. It made sense to me, but as I knew from my law enforcement career, common sense is not issued with authority and is often not used when enforcing codes or laws.

I started my safe room project in July of 2013 using the Anchorman ACT on doors and shatterproof window coatings on glass to create areas of safety to be used in schools during lockdowns. We started with the elementary schools first, as these are our softest targets requiring our maximum efforts to secure them. Parents thanked us for this and the local cops endorsed the idea. We worked with local law enforcement agencies so they could mark the location of safe rooms on their diagrams of the schools and work the concept into their Active Assailant Response training. The company supplied law enforcement agencies and the schools with the tool needed to open the door from the outside, and we also worked that into our lockdown planning and training. All was good, until a fire marshall came to town.

A local fire marshall and I disagreed about the interpretation of the fire code regarding opening a door with one motion. The irony here was this particular fire marshall was O.K. with the DHS recommendation of barricading the door with heavy furniture, even though that violated the same fire code and was not a viable solution to quickly securing a door during a violent attack, especially in a room full of kindergartners. This goes back to my prior statement about common sense not being issued with authority. The fire marshall ordered the security enhancement devices removed from the doors, but since fire codes are recommendations and not laws, I declined the order and continued with the safe room project. 

When assessing Hazards and Vulnerabilities, we look at frequency and likelihood of occurrance, and the intensity of impact a man made or natural hazard presents. We have not lost a child in a school fire in the U.S. since 1958, but we had just lost twenty-one babies and five adults to a school killer in Newtown Connecticut six months prior to our beginning the safe room project. After doing the math, I was reasonably certain there was a better chance of losing a child in a school killing than to a fire. Unfortunately I was correct in that assumption, so my decision to continue with the safe room project was based on the evaluation of the threat posed to children who can't get behind a locked door when bad things happen. It was also unfortunate that some fire marshalls did not agree with my assessment of, and response to, this violent threat to school safety.

During the course of the next three years, we continued with the safe room project, installed more door security devices, never removed a single device, and I engaged in multiple and sometimes heated discussions with fire marshalls about code compliance of the project. One of those discussions occurred in a 2015 meeting were seven fire marshalls from the city, county, and state level came to my school district to "ask" us to remove the door security devices based on their fire codes. Not one of those fire marshalls knew about the exemption in their fire codes that allowed use of these devices during a lockdown, and they couldn't supply documentation that the devices weren't allowed for use during a lockdown. Not a single one of them knew how many babies we lost behind unlocked doors in Newtown Connecticut on December 14, 2012, but I let them know. I also let them know that when I heard the mother on one of those angels stood up at an Arizona conference, held up an Anchorman ACT, and told the crowd "if this was on my daughter's classroom door that day, she'd still be alive today," my decision was made that logic trumped antiquated fire codes in my schools. The fire marshalls left that day, and the door security devices remained.

My parting statement to the fire marshalls was that when they get together and write a code specifically saying the door security enhancements were illegal, I'd make sure they were removed. I would not personally remove a single device as I could not live with that decision if a child was ever injured because of it, but I guaranteed my school district would be in compliance with any such code. They told me that day that new codes addressing this at the state level "were coming down the pike." I don't see that day coming, because fire marshalls in other areas of my state of California, ones in many other states, and ones at the federal level have approved the use of these devices in schools to create safe rooms. I respectfully told them until they could get their house together and agree on this issue, my house would remain safe, because my house contains our most precious assets and we'll do whatever it takes to protect them.

I have the utmost respect for my colleagues in the fire services and have worked side by side with these brave women and men in countless emergency incidents, including ones where their life saving skills kept wounded cops alive. I mean no disrespect to them here, but I do ask each and every one of them to get behind our efforts to provide safety in our schools when it comes to locking them down when a bad thing is happening. The fire codes cited here were written in the 1960's. We didn't have killers coming to schools then, but unfortunately that has changed. Different tactics are used today in law enforcement to address active assailant threats. We've changed our tactics and rules of engagement, and it's time fire services took a look at doing the same.

We're all in this together, and we all have a common goal. When I retired from my school district position in October of 2016 the safe room project was still in place, and the Anchorman ACT devices were still secured to the doors in safe rooms. I recently learned the same fire marshall visited my former school district and cited the same code to try to get them to remove the door security devices. He told them "there were new laws coming down the pike" that would address the use of door security devices. The fire codes had not changed since I started the safe room project almost four years prior, and neither had the wording of the fire marshall about new laws "coming down the pike." That idiom means soon to happen, and it is the same one they used with me in July of 2013. I do not foresee a code ever being passed that specifically prohibits use of door security devices, since they are recommended at the federal level. I do hope the fire marshall is correct that the codes will be updated in my state of California and elsewhere, but I hope those updates reflect proactive changes that approve the use of door security enhancements as long as there is a written plan for their use, accompanied by a training program. This is what we're seeing in other states, and it makes sense. In the meantime, we are deep in the fight to interject common sense into the application of these fire codes, and will never sacrifice the safety of our students based on a vague interpretation of an antiquated fire code.

The good news is proactive school districts, hospitals, and businesses throughout the U.S. are setting up safe rooms and practicing door and window security enhancement to protect against threats. I witnessed this firsthand when I was putting on training in a small school district in central Nevada. The superintendent had installed Anchorman ACT devices on every door in his four schools. These were older schools and some of the classroom doors couldn't be locked quickly. I stood in the hallway of the district's high school and asked the superintendent if he had any problems with the fire marshall when he had the devices installed. The superintendent told me the fire marshall's kids went to his schools, he wanted them safe, so there was no problem. As we say in emergency management and response, common sense is encouraged, but you have to learn how to use it. I saw it in use by the fire marshall in that small town when he made the determination between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law..

We read and hear over and over about people having to barricade themselves in rooms during random acts of violence because they can't lock the door. This was the case during the San Bernardino terrorist attacks on December 2, 2015. On June 1, 2016 the L.A. Times reported that "Thousands of students built makeshift barricades against classroom doors that wouldn't lock" during the UCLA shootings. On June 19, 2017 the San Diego Union Tribune reported that "students were quick to flip over tables and barricade doors when a student with a gun was reported in the area of Bonita Vista H.S. in Chula Vista, CA. The list goes on, but you get the point. Naturally, fire marshalls did not issue citations to any of these folks who were violating the letter of the law to stay alive. But if you ask any one of those persons who were behind barricaded doors if they would have traded belts and chairs for an effective and simple door security device, I'm sure you can guess what the answer would be.  

If there is a fire, the school won't be in lockdown and the door security devices won't be in use. Schools evacuate during a fire, and the fire department responds to put out the fire. Law enforcement responds to violent incident at schools, so why are we not getting their opinion and feedback on this? Fire marshalls are not citing folks for violating fire codes by barricading doors with furniture, even though it violates their codes. But ask any cop if they'd rather get inside of a classroom using a tool to unlock a door security device, or try to get through one barricaded with heavy furniture, you'll get the same answer every time. Seconds matter and can mean the difference between life or death.

As I mentioned at the start of this, it all comes down to individual interpretation of the law. Every cop, myself included, has dealt with that situation when interpreting criminal law based on a particular situation. For example, when I was a young motor cop in Reno NV, I got into a high speed pursuit one night that ended up with the car I was chasing crashing at a downtown intersection. It turned out that the driver was trying to get his wife to the hospital, as she was giving birth in the back seat of their car. As highly trained cops, we determined she was indeed in the midst of child birth when we looked into the car, as we could see her baby trying to make an early entry into the world. We did our thing, the paramedics did theirs, and they completed the delivery in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Mom and the baby were fine and no one got hurt in the wreck. The dad had been in a couple of scrapes with the law and figured he was going to jail. I remember him looking at me and asking if we could take him by the hospital before booking him so he could see his new baby. This one was a no-brainer for me and the other cops. I told the dad he wasn't going to jail and explained the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. One of my partners gave him a ride to the hospital and we left it at that.

I never gave that incident much thought, till about five years later when I was working a uniformed assignment at a University of Nevada Reno football game. I didn't recognize the guy who came up to talk to me, but he recognized me. It was the same guy who I chased that night while he was trying to get his wife to the hospital. He said he never forgot what we did for him and his family, or what I said about the letter of the law vs. the spirit of the law. He also introduced me to his five year old son named Jeffrey. Maybe the name was just a coincidence...

This is a true story I share with my fire service colleagues to show that no law is written in stone, and we're allowed to use common sense when interpreting the letter of the law vs. the spirit of the law. Some of them get it, and some never will. Hopefully the ones who get it will be the same ones who can someday update fire codes to help us address threats of school violence. We won't give up the fight till the do. Stay safe...