Report Number: 05-0000173
Report Date: 05/27/2005
Event Description
This incident happened approximately two years into my career.
We had a working fire inside of an auto body shop. An auto was burning inside the paint booth. Myself and three other fire personnel were instructed to ladder the roof and ventilate. The roof was a low pitch, possibly 4/12, metal roof. As I was walking across the roof I stated to the man behind me that the roof felt "spongy". The next moment he went partially through the roof in the same area. It turns out this was a fiberglass corrugated skylight. We could not tell the change in the roof material, as it was dark and slightly smoky. Mostly we could not tell because there were no lights on inside the business to "light up" the skylight.
Thankfully the firefighter was carring a K12 which caught him on the edge of the metal and prevented him from dropping down to the concrete below. Had he fallen in full gear, with the K12 and a 14 foot drop onto concrete, I feel this would have caused a significant injury or death. I feel I was spared because of my size, 110 lbs without gear.
Lesson Learned
1. Watch carefully for skylights on prefab metal buildings(manufacturer name deleted)
2. Prevention: Awareness of the situation
3. Actions: Preplan. Training to address these particular buildings. As a note, I went to a (State name deleted) Public Safety Training Center "Principles of Building Construction: Noncombustible" training class last week and this was not addressed until I brought it up.
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