Wallace Hunt of the Free and Accepted Masons presents a donation of $1,000.00 to James Ewanyk of the Webbs Mills VFD to help purchase much needed Fire/Rescue equipt. at our monthly meeting on Oct. 20,2008. The members of the Webbs Mills VFD are very thankful for this donation and will be putting it to good use in helping protect the local citizens of Webbs Mills.
Speed and driver inexperience were to blame for the crash that killed a firefighter from the West Hill Volunteer Fire Department on July 8, according to investigation results released Monday by the Chemung County Sheriff's Office.
The firefighter -- Ryan T. Barker, 25, of Elmira -- died after he was thrown from the 1978 GMC fire engine he was driving when it veered off West Hill Road A in Big Flats, overturned and smashed into a clump of trees. Barker was traveling south on the narrow, winding road about 6 p.m. when he crashed just north of Vanderhoff Road.
Barker was alone in the truck, which was equipped with a 750-gallon tank with capacity for about 6,000 pounds of water, when the crash took place. A member of the West Hill Volunteer Fire Department since January, he was returning from a gas grill fire call on Harris Hill Road.
An accident reconstruction team from the sheriff's office estimated the truck's speed to be between 47 mph and 51 mph, according to a summary of the investigation's findings. The posted speed limit on the section of road where the accident occurred is 35 mph.
Chemung County Undersheriff William Schrom said on Monday that the reconstruction team determined the speed estimate of the truck based on the pavement, the grade of the road and the length of skid marks.
Paul Kelly, a Rochester lawyer for the Barker family, however, said the investigation pointed unfairly to Barker and overlooked the fact that he was driving a 30-year-old firetruck that he had noted, before the accident, he had difficult operating.
A physical inspection of the firetruck by the New York State Police Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Unit found that the vehicle had no mechanical problems or safety violations. Toxicology reports from Monroe County have determined no illegal substances were in Barker's system at the time of the crash.
"One of the things we wanted to make clear was that we had no reason to believe there was any indication that he was acting carelessly or negligently operating the vehicle," Schrom said. "He had previously expressed a little difficulty in shifting the vehicle, and part of that was because of his not being familiar with it. The best we can do is surmise it was a contributing factor of him picking up more speed coming down the hill."
Schrom said that before the accident, other motorists who witnessed the firetruck go through an intersection near the crash scene said they saw nothing out of the ordinary and that the truck was not speeding.
"He wasn't followed when he turned down the road (where the crash took place), but witnesses who saw him just prior felt like he was driving like he was supposed to, so we surmised he was having difficulty getting the vehicle in a gear that would slow it down," Schrom said.
Although Barker had experience in operating a variety of fire apparatus, his experience on the truck he was operating at the time of his death was limited, the sheriff's office said.
But Barker family lawyer Kelly said Monday that the sheriff's office investigation has been too quick to fault Barker for the accident.
"Ryan Barker died in the line of duty as a volunteer firefighter serving his community as he done since he was a young man," Kelly said. "So it's very troubling to this fine family that there seems to be a rush to blame Ryan for this accident. That's very difficult for the family to accept.
"We have been told, though we haven't had access to the police records on this, that he told one of the firefighters at the scene of the fire before the crash, literally minutes before the crash, that he was having great difficulty operating the truck and was very concerned with how that vehicle was operating," Kelly said.
At the same time state and local agencies were conducting their investigation, the state Department of Labor was doing a parallel investigation, said Chemung County's Fire and Emergency Services Director Michael Smith. The Emergency Services office acted as an interface between the Labor Department and the local investigating agencies. Smith added that county officials are still awaiting the completion of the Labor Department's investigation.
"The sheriff's office is looking into the cause and the Department of Labor's safety and health group is looking into the things they are responsible for, like training issues and investigating the fire department's operations," Smith said.
"We all recognized that speed was going to be a contributing factor, but what caused that high speed will remain unknown," Smith said.
Schrom said the delay in his office receiving the toxicology report caused the delay in completing the sheriff's part of the investigation.
"We knew a majority of the details after the incident, but Monroe County was slow in getting the report back to us," Schrom said. "We knew that people would be asking those questions, and we felt that it was important in this circumstance because of what he represented. We wanted to be 100 percent sure."
Kelly doesn't believe the sheriff's report is the final word on the case. He remains concerned about the truck Barker was driving and whether he had the proper training to operate it.
"The only thing that makes sense to me is that something was wrong with that truck," Kelly said, "and he identified that before he died and was just trying to get back to the fire station safely and couldn't."
