Opinion ID: 2995134
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Extinguishing the Fire

Text: Mr. Honaker also asserts that the district court erred when it ruled that no reasonable jury could have found that Mr. Smith, in his role as fire chief, failed to extinguish properly the fire at Mr. Honaker’s house. After extensively reviewing the evidence in the record, we must agree with the district court’s conclusion. The record does not contain a legally sufficient amount of evidence from which a jury reasonably could have inferred that Mr. Smith and the firefighters on the scene used anything less than their best efforts to extinguish the fire. As an initial matter, the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrated that, after receiving the call informing them of the fire on March 1, 1997, the Lovington Fire Department arrived at Mr. Honaker’s house within minutes. Fire Department records show that the call was received at 1:51
truck arrived at 1:56 a.m., two more trucks arrived at 1:57 a.m., and a fourth arrived at 2:09 a.m. See Def. Ex.7. Additionally, a number of firefighters corroborated the swift arrival time of the Fire Department./7 Moreover, despite the fact that the fire occurred in the early morning hours, the Fire Department responded with four fire trucks and twenty volunteer firefighters. Pursuant to a mutual aid agreement with the neighboring Sullivan Fire Department, which employs paid personnel, the Lovington firefighters also called for assistance from Sullivan. Lovington firefighter Steven Fleming testified that Sullivan would not have responded automatically to a fire in Lovington; instead, the Lovington Fire Department must affirmatively have requested their help. As a result of this call for assistance, Sullivan dispatched, in addition to several firefighters, an aerial fire truck which enables firefighters to direct ladders and water to the upper floors of homes. Lovington’s Fire Department did not own this type of truck. Additionally, all of the testimony at trial suggested that, upon arriving at Mr. Honaker’s house, the firefightersconsistently and vigorously fought the fire to the best of their ability. Particularly on point was the testimony of Tankersly, the investigator from the Illinois State Fire Marshall’s Office, who was called to the scene to determine the cause of the fire. Tankersly, who had 15 years of experience and who had investigated over 1,000 fires in his career, testified that when he arrived at 3:30 a.m., [f]irefighters were actively engaged in putting out hot spot fires within the structure. R.70 at 275. He also said that the firefighters had made every effort to put out the fire and that they could not have done anything more than what they did. He also corroborated Mr. Smith’s view that structural problems had rendered the house unsafe for entry by firefighters. A number of the firefighters themselves corroborated that the fire had been fought vigorously. They explained that, when they arrived at the scene, they immediately put water on the fire and began actively combating the blaze. See, e.g., id. at 217-20 (testimony of Doug Thomas); id. at 294-98 (testimony of Harold White); id. at 404-08 (testimony of Mr. Smith). Even James Webb, a neighbor and friend of Mr. Honaker’s, testified that, when he first noticed the fire at 2:10 a.m., he saw at least twenty members of the Lovington Fire Department fighting the flames. Mr. Webb’s testimony bore witness to the significant scope of firefighters’ response when he explained that I walked outside, and I saw the fire trucks. They were halfway down the block on Railroad Street [the street on which Mr. Honaker’s house was located] and almost all the way down the block on Middle Street. Id. at 304. Mr. Honaker points to three facts to support his assertion that Mr. Smith and the firefighters did not use their best efforts in combating the fire. First, he notes that it initially took the firefighters three hours to conquer the flames, a length of time that he suggests was far too great. Next, he submits that the fact that the firefighters did not enter his house to combat the fire suggests that they did not perform their duties properly. Lastly, he cites a piece of trial testimony in which Mr. Smith made the assertion that he did not let the firefighters enter the house because that house wasn’t worth getting hurt for. Id. at 167. Mr. Honaker claims that this statement demonstrates that Mr. Smith’s animus towards him was the reason why the firefighters did not enter the structure. As to the amount of time that it took to combat the fire, we have already noted that substantial testimony supported the conclusion that the firefighters made every effort to control the blaze and that Tankersly, an experienced fire investigator, testified that there was nothing more that could have been done. On the other hand, as the district court noted, Mr. Honaker presented no evidence that three hours was too long a time to put out this type of fire. R.61 at 9 (emphasis in original). Mr. Smith had explained that the fire raged for that period of time because the firefighters had difficulty in identifying the proper heat source on which to train their hoses and because the great amount of debris in and around the house made it difficult to quickly develop an entryway through which the water could attack the fire. Mr. Honaker did nothing to contest this explanation or to suggest that the firefighters lingered unnecessarily at the fire scene. A jury would have no evidentiary basis from which to infer reasonably that the Fire Department took an unreasonable amount of time to extinguish the fire. Additionally, as to the claim that the firefighters should have entered the house, Mr. Smith explained that he did not allow them to do so due to the precarious nature of the house’s structure. Every witness who testified on the subject confirmed that, during and after the fire, the floor joists supporting the second floor of the house were cracked and that the second floor itself was sagging--presenting the serious threat that, if the firefighters had entered the burning building, the house might have collapsed around them. For example, Tankersly noted that, after the fire was extinguished, the floor joists or the ceiling joists from the first floor were actually starting to crack or sag inward and agreed that it appeared that the second floor itself was actually sagging. R.70 at 276./8 Even Mr. Honaker agreed that, after the fire, one floor joist was broken and that the second floor was sagging downward. Additionally, overwhelming evidence established that the dwelling was in great disrepair because Mr. Honaker had been in the process of gutting the inside of the house. Id. at 307. Since he had purchased the house, Mr. Honaker had removed a non-load-bearing wall, had torn the kitchen ceiling out and even had experienced part of the chimney falling down on top of him. Lastly, witnesses with experience in investigating and fighting fires testified that, under the circumstances, it was not improper for the firefighters to combat the flames from outside the building. Tankersly explained that during his investigation, he saw that the collapse of the second floor shows major cracks beginning to show in the floor joists and that these cracks made the structure pretty much unsafe to even be in. Id. at 278. Mr. Smith explained that the classes in which he and the other firefighters were trained taught that a fire should be fought from the outside in and that if the structure is in danger of collapse, they should not enter the building. Id. at 407. In contrast, no witness, with or without firefighting experience, testified that the Lovington Fire Department should have entered the house under such circumstances. Mr. Honaker argues that, because the frame of the house continued to stand after the fire and because the firefighters later entered the building to hose down fire that had rekindled, the house was not in such precarious condition that the Fire Department could not have entered it when they first arrived. We do not believe that these facts, without more, are sufficient for a reasonable jury to conclude that the firefighters should have entered a burning building that, by all accounts, appeared to be in serious jeopardy of collapsing./9 Ultimately, Lovington’s volunteer Fire Department responded to a substantial fire in the early morning hours with four trucks, twenty firefighters and significant assistance from a neighboring fire department. Moreover, not only was substantial evidence presented that the firefighters actively fought the flames with their best efforts, but Mr. Honaker offered no testimony from any witness to demonstrate that the firefighters should have or could have done anything differently. As a result, we must agree with the district court’s ruling that there was insufficient evidence for a jury to find that Mr. Smith, in his capacity as Lovington’s Fire Chief, failed to fight the fire with his best efforts. Therefore, the district court properly granted judgment as a matter of law on Count I.