Has anyone else here been following the fallout from the SSS fire. I have, and I'm starting to get a little bit worried from the state's response. As background, until this year I lived in Charleston County, and knew at least in passing 6 of the firefighters that died. I attended the service and helped my old department man one of Charleston's stations while the CFD personnel were attending the services. I used to be one of those guys that laughed about some of CFD's practices(e.g. their love of the booster line,) but in my experiences with their personnel always found them to be consummate professionals from a well trained, well equipped aggressive fire department.
My concerns are centered on the fines levied against CFD not for violating OSHA requirements, but for not meeting NFPA standards not specifically referenced in 29CFR1910. While I may not agree with all of the practices that CFD follows, what precedent does it set when OSHA can pick and choose any NFPA standard and use it as the basis for a violation. If the state's assertation is that NFPA standards are a regulatory requirement based on their status as generally accepted practices, then pretty much every department in the state should be cited, because I can just about gaurontee that NO ONE is fully compliant. This affects vollie departments even more because we tend to not have the same level of funding, training and administrative infrastructure that larger paid departments can call on. Additionally, which specific NFPA standards are to be considered as written in stone? Are some standards to be considered a requirement and others as simply a best practice to reach towards or are all of them equally binding? I'm not trying to say that CFD is perfect, I don't personally agree with some of their policies and procedures, I just don't think that their policiy decisions which don't specifically violate OSHA standards should necesarily be considered compliance issues. OSHA exists to apply a specific set of requirements(29CFR1910 as ammended by a rather short list of regulatory interpretations which can be found on the SC LLR website), not enforce NFPA standards. Am I going to find an inspector at my station next fining my department for having a truck which is too old for NPFA satisfaction(plenty of us still have 25-30 year old trucks in service,) or because my small vollie department doesn't have everyone trained to FF2/EMT-p/hazmat-tech/USAR/RSAR/water rescue and ICS-1000000000 qualified as reccommended by NFPA? Am I going to have to pack out for every little yard fire now because there is a POSSIBILITY that smoke MIGHT exist? Right now I'm just looking for feedback on what others think about this issue. I'm considering sending a letter to SC OSHA for clarification as to what the rules are now and I would like to know if others in the industry agree that this might be a dangerous precedent to set. Thanks in advance for your feedback.