Rekindle vs. Due Diligence

I read an article recently where a fire department is facing a $1.9-million lawsuit ... OUCH! How does that happen in today’s technology-driven society that has equipped the fire service with the most advanced tools for its firefighters?

In this column, I’m going to discuss rekindle and due diligence and what steps the fire department could have taken to prevent this lawsuit from happening.

Let me summarize the details of the circumstances that occurred to elicit this lawsuit: A structure fire had occurred several streets over from the plaintiff’s residence, at which time some embers had ignited on the roof of the resident’s house at 1:40 a.m. The fire department had responded and extinguished the fire on the roof and with minimal damage the family could reenter and stay in their home. At 7:30 a.m., the homeowners woke to the roof being on fire and once again the fire department responded and extinguished the roof fire, but this time a more significant amount of damage occurred, making the home uninhabitable. At 7:15 p.m., the fire department was called for a third fire that had ignited from the same roof of the plaintiff’s home, causing the home to sustain even further damage.

In the court documents, the plaintiff alleged that the defendants:

1. Failed to inspect all areas of the house where the possibility of the presence of a residual fire, remaining embers, or smoldering fuel might exist when they knew—or should have known—such a set of circumstances was likely to exist.
2. Failed to ensure that the initial fire and rekindle were completely extinguished prior to leaving the house and handing over responsibility for the house to the plaintiffs.
3. Failed to conduct a reasonable, or any, fire watch at the house following the initial fire and rekindle or otherwise failed to follow a reasonable, or any, deployment process so that a fire watch could be maintained.
4. Failed to exercise reasonable care or take adequate, or any, precautions, such as maintaining a fire watch, in circumstances where the house had a high fuel load because of its old and dry cedar-shake roof, which they knew, or should have known, could be easily susceptible to a rekindle.

Now, what could the fire department have done to prevent this from happening by using due diligence? Firefighters could have used their thermal imaging camera (TIC). When the fire department responded the first time at 1:40 a.m., members should have used the TIC to conduct a 360° search around the structure based on information that the embers had ignited the roof from several streets away. The firefighters should have asked what else might have been burning that was not detected by the naked