The inventor of the "competent all-american mistake made in good faith", Bubbers44, in his relentless fight against -foreign- incompetence, remarked that " The fire crew didn't put the body in harms way, the pilots did."
Pushing this logic “ad absurdum”, shouldn’t the parents of this hapless girl be designated as the ultimate culprits? Had they not conceived her… etc…
More seriously, we all recognise that in life-threatening emergency situations, potentially bad things can and do happen. I certainly don’t suggest that rescuers should be systematically thrown under the bus when overlooking certain aspects related to an emergency. But potential shortcomings should be analysed and lessons learned from them.
What I find disturbing in the case of the Asiana crash is the level of denial that has from the start surrounded the performance of the SFO’s fire department. And all the publicly available evidence (witness testimony, CCTV recordings, helmet-mounted camera footage) suggests that that performance was less-than-stellar. This is probably where the real issue lies.
Again, as I
pointed out previously, the first reaction of Chief Joanne Hayes-White was to ban helmet-mounted cameras and take disciplinary action against the Battalion Chief wearing it. The footage recorded by the BC is precisely today a central element of the NTSB’s enquiry and Ms Hayes-White’s reaction amounted to a desire to supress critical evidence, a most unwelcome attitude for any emergency professional.
However, I am certain that under the rather firm and uncompromising leadership of Deborah Hersman, the NTSB will take a long, hard and fair look at the overall performance of the SFO’s fire department. And that’s how it should be.