The Baltimore City Fire Department began a pilot program Monday to assign senior officers to assistants responsible for making numerous fire scene decisions.
Dubbed “battalion technicians,” the assistants aim to assist firefighters with tasks that can become overwhelming in an emergency, such as: B. the Stricker Street fire in January, in which several firefighters were trapped when a vacant house collapsed; three people died.
In the past 16 years, six department reports have suggested that the department is instituting such a program, but it was only after the Stricker Street fire and the release of a damning investigative report into the incident that the department began providing aides to battalion chiefs. The department has six battalions, each led by a chief who acts as a “deployment commander” at a fire scene.