Firehouse Expo: Hunter Benke and Car 2

Hunter Benke with Assistant Chief Larry Garvin

Walking the floor of Firehouse Expo at the Baltimore Convention Center, I saw a whole lot of people I know. Toward the end of the day I ran into 2 people I didn’t know, but had written a lot about and read about.

One of them is Hunter Benke, the 11-year-old son of Captain Mike Benke. Mike Benke was among the 9 firefighters killed in Charleston at the Sofa Super Store fire. Hunter was to throw out the first pitch at Friday night’s Orioles game at Camden Yards. He is a very poised young man who was helping out at the booth where they were selling t-shirts honoring the Charleston 9.

Among the Charleston firefighters with Hunter Benke is Larry Garvin. Garvin is Car 2, the incident commander at the tragic fire. Assistant Chief Garvin and Battalion Chief Robert O’Donald were aware of STATter 911, mostly from our links to Jay Lowry’s Firefighter Hourly. We had a lively conversation about the press coverage of the tragedy. It was made clear they are not fans of Lowry’s work.

They believe that too many people are jumping to too many conclusions. They point out that not one of the critics was at the fire to see what they saw. Chief Garvin repeated some of the points he made in interviews immediately after the fire. He talked about the lack of fire on his initial visits into the building and his surprise at how quickly the fire expanded.

Other Charleston firefighters at the booth pointed out what is lost in the news coverage is how Chief Garvin was largely responsible for leading the rescue of the store employee just prior to the firefighters being killed.

I asked Chief Garvin what, in his opinion, is the biggest misconception or distortion by the news media. He didn’t hesitate with his answer: Charleston’s incident command system.

Chief Garvin told me that they have a system that works. Garvin and the other firefighters said, while they may not use the exact language used elsewhere, the City of Charleston firefighters understand it and that it is an effective system. Chief Garvin said, “I was in charge and then about 8 minutes later my boss arrived and he was in charge and everybody on the fireground knew it.”

As for the people who were not wearing gear, a number of the Charleston firefighters said those were all off-duty people who had arrived to help out in a crisis situation. They said all of those who were not in gear helped stretch hose lines and performed other activity outside of the building.

For the record, the Charleston firefighters, while very respectful and eager to talk, were not particularly pleased that STATter 911 has provided links and quoted from Firefighter Hourly. I did explain, if there is a website with a different view point on the Charleston fire and the investigations, I would be glad to relay that information to our readers.

As for Jay Lowry, he sent me an email with this statement:

Charleston booth at Firehouse Expo.