There’s no guarantee that a different strategy would have resulted in a different outcome — that the victims would be alive today if something as mundane as an administrative spreadsheet had one more agency added.
But in each of four fatal fires over the last 11 years, the structure of mutual aid calls for volunteer fire departments just beyond Peoria city limits has resulted in scenarios that appear to contradict the most basic tenets of firefighting. In each instance, when the primary firefighting agency called for help, that call did not go to the next nearest fire station, where full-time crews respond around the clock.
The calls instead went to other departments staffed by trained volunteers, either personally selected by a fire officer on scene or according to a predetermined order on file with the agencies and dispatchers.