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The Honolulu Fire Department said Monday it is working with the state to ensure workplace safety after it was cited for not following proper safety procedures and exposing firefighters to asbestos in the deadly blaze at the Marco Polo condominium.
The Hawaii Occupational Safety and Health Division, part of the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, fined the department $7,000 after many of the
120 firefighters who responded to the July 14 incident didn’t properly bag contaminated protective firefighting gear and equipment while at the scene, instead waiting until they returned to their stations or the next day.
HFD, which has up to
20 days of receipt to contest the citation, didn’t say
why the procedures weren’t followed.
“The HFD places the health and safety of its personnel at the highest priority and will continue to work with HIOSH toward ensuring workplace safety while maintaining its ability to serve the public,” said spokesman Capt. David Jenkins. “The HFD will provide further information once the process is completed.”
Gear or equipment known or suspected to be contaminated with hazardous materials should be evaluated at the scene to determine “the extent of contamination and the need … to be isolated, tagged and bagged on scene,” according to the
National Fire Protection
Association, a trade group that creates standard policies for the industry. Contaminated gear “shall be isolated during the incident personnel decontamination process and removed from service.”
“Honestly, in our business … this is just plain and simple fire department common sense,” said Bobby Lee, president of the Hawaii Fire Fighters Association, the union that filed the initial complaint with HIOSH in July about the incomplete decontamination procedures. “If you have contaminants, you isolate it; you don’t throw contaminants into your fire truck and you don’t take it back to your stations to where it’s open and exposed.”
The Fire Department received confirmation in
August that the Marco Polo building contained asbestos and said it was taking additional precautions to ensure the safety of the firefighters’ gear that may have been exposed to the hazardous material. Many of the
568 residential units at the 36-story complex remain uninhabitable from the fire, which killed three people. A fourth person died after being hospitalized following the blaze.
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