By Ihosvani Rodriguez
Miami Bureau
April 21 2005
The widow of a Miami-Dade firefighter recruit killed in 2003 during a training exercise at Port Everglades filed a wrongful death lawsuit this week against the facility’s owner and the city of Hialeah. Wayne Mitchell, 37, a lifeguard who waited years for a chance to become a Miami-Dade firefighter, died when he became separated from four fire cadet classmates during the Aug 8, 2003, exercise that simulated a blaze inside of a cargo ship.
His widow, Nancy Mitchell, who declined to comment through her attorney, is seeking an undisclosed amount for the death of her husband. Mitchell filed a similar lawsuit against Miami-Dade County and last May accepted a $1.9 million settlement, county officials said.
The latest lawsuit blasts the training simulator’s owner, Resolve Fire and Hazard Response, Inc, and Hialeah officials who were supervising the training. The suit claims that an exhaustive list of safety precautions were not followed and portrays the training exercise as a hellish situation teeming with safety violations that all but guaranteed Mitchell’s demise.
The lawsuit also blames a "macho boot camp mentality" that caused trainers to ignore safety policies and pressured recruits into dangerous predicaments.
Most of the violations cited in the lawsuit mirror those contained in an investigation report released earlier this year by the Florida Division of State Fire Marshal. The Miami-Dade Fire Department conducted its own internal investigation that led to changes in training exercises and the transfers of instructors involved in the incident to other positions.
Nancy Mitchell’s attorney, Samuel Spatzer of Coral Gables, said Wednesday he hopes the lawsuit would help shed new light on what occurred that afternoon. "They call these drills `live burn drills’ and they don’t call them that for nothing," Spatzer said. "You can literally burn alive in these drills. You have to have the highest concern for safety for these young recruits in a situation like this, and here we see plenty of violations of safety standards and rules and regulations." Resolve Fire and Hazard vice president Todd Duke and Hialeah City Attorney William Grodnick each said they have not seen the lawsuit and declined to comment.
According to the lawsuit and other reports on the incident, the exercise required the recruits to use a fire hose to guide them through a smoky and highly heated steel structure that was set on fire. The structure became overwhelmingly hot during the exercise, and the recruits turned around and made for the exits. Mitchell lost the hose and wandered into other rooms, getting lost in the thick smoke. No one realized that Mitchell, the class leader, was missing until his exhausted classmates stumbled out of the building. One student lost consciousness after exiting the structure, and four other cadets were transported to area hospitals with burns.
The reports have noted that other trainees had been injured during previous exercises at the site while under the supervision of some of the same instructors. There were no firefighters available in case of an emergency, and there was no ambulance nearby. Another student rushed to the nearby office to dial 911.