Mike Hendricks
The Kansas City Star
(TNS)
Three and a half years after a young, inexperienced fire truck driver killed three people in a crash in Westport, and weeks after the city refused a payout for him, the Kansas City Fire Department has initiated a formal driver training program.
Like most of his peers over the past couple of decades at least, Dominic Biscari was in the process of learning to drive a 40,000-pound fire truck on the job when he ran a red light at full throttle while behind the wheel of Pumper 19 on Dec. 15, 2021.
The big rig hit a compact SUV that had the green light and was passing through the intersection at Broadway Boulevard and Westport Road. The impact killed the SUV’s two occupants, as well as a woman who was on the sidewalk. Her body was recovered hours afterwards from beneath the wreckage of a building that was also damaged in the crash.
The new training program is meant to prevent future tragedies like the one that haunts the victims’ families, ruined Biscari’s career and cost Kansas City taxpayers millions of dollars.
From now on, young firefighters who want to fill in as drivers on their way to becoming fully certified in that job will have classroom and hands-on training during a 40-hour course of instruction, the Kansas City Fire Department announced this week.
During a news conference on Thursday in the parking lot of the American Royal, Deputy Chief Steven Shaumeyer said the driver training program for “working out of class” (fire department lingo for filling in for someone in a more senior position) was part of an overall increase in emphasis on professional development within the department by his boss, Chief Ross Grundyson.
Response to fatal crash?
Shaumeyer would not respond directly to repeated questions as to whether the new training had any direct connection to the Westport crash, which in addition to the lives lost cost the city $3.6 million in settlements paid to the victims and owner of the damaged building.
And that bill could rise. The city recently refused to approve a more than $900,000 settlement to Biscari to settle a legal dispute over the fire department’s failed attempt to fire him. An arbitrator ruled that his termination was unwarranted, in part, because the department allowed firefighters to drive fire trucks without formal training.
The city took steps to terminate Biscari after he pleaded guilty while maintaining his innocence (what’s known as an Alford plea) to three counts of involuntary manslaughter in 2023 and was sentenced to probation.
Shaumeyer said it was “not within my purview” to discuss whether the new training course might have helped prevent the Westport accident or others and changed the subject to discuss the broader training program.
“Chief Grundyson, two years ago, set a big goal of expanding professional development within the KCFD,” said Shaumeyer, who heads that division within the department. “We’ve added approximately 15 people to our division, and so we’ve expanded training throughout the department.”
Atop the list is training for firefighters who want to work as apprentice drivers when no certified driver is available. As Shaumeyer outlined the program to reporters, eight young men who graduated from the department’s academy within the past two years stood in a half circle across the parking lot.
They were gathered around Capt. John Young as he lectured from the bucket