Drinking and firefighting not a new concern for South Dakota

We learned Friday morning that Valley Springs volunteer firefighter Steve Ackerman was legally drunk when he responded to the April 12 house fire that killed him.

Ackerman's blood alcohol content came in at .18 – more than twice the legal limit to drive a car.

The news will surely come as a shock for at least some of the thousands who supported him in the days and weeks after his death.

The issue of drinking in the volunteer fire service has come up before. Volunteers cover most of the state, each department sets its own standards for behavior, and not every department is ready to tell a firefighter responding to an emergency that they can't go because they smell like they've had a beer.

I explored this topic in 2010, after Madison firefighter Scott Johnson was charged with driving a fire truck under the influence of alcohol. Johnson eventually pleaded guilty to DUI. His blood test came in at .098 BAC – just over the legal limit of .08 but slightly under the .10 threshold of my youth.

Many within the community of Madison came out in support of Johnson after his arrest, as you'll see from this story, which originally ran on Sept. 19, 2010.

"Firefighter dilemma: When not to respond … Some volunteers who have been drinking make that decision"

The people who put out fires in most of South Dakota aren't waiting at the station for the next emergency.

They're probably at work, at home on the couch, or - in some cases when the timing is bad - inside a bar.

Seventy percent of South Dakotans - 95 percent of the state's square miles - are served by unpaid volunteer firefighters.

One of those volunteers, 43-year-old Scott Johnson of Madison, was arrested two weeks ago after he drove a fire truck to a false alarm following a work shift at a nearby bar, and possibly some drinking. He was charged with first-offense DUI.

The case drew media attention and stirred emotions in the Lake County town of 6,600. But it also highlights the best and worst qualities of the volunteer model that forms what State Fire Marshal Al Christie calls "the backbone of the fire service."

The loose network of about 7,500 firefighters who make up the roughly 350 recognized volunteer departments in South Dakota largely is unregulated. Each department writes its own rules and sets its own standards. There are no state training requirements for volunteer firefighters.

The system works - and works well, for the most part - through a combination of kinship, peer pressure and a shared sense of responsibility.

Tea Fire Chief Grant Van Riesen's department has adopted a zero-tolerance policy for alcohol use, but it's never easy for a experienced firefighter to stay home when an emergency situation arises.

"These guys think they have to provide that service," Van Riesen said. "They just have a certain kind of blood in them that tells them they need to respond."

Firefighter was working at bar before arrest

Scott Johnson finished working Sept. 5 at Teezers Bar in downtown Madison, about a half hour before a faulty sensor set off the fire alarm at Falcon Plastics.

He checks identifications, works security and helps bartenders at Teezers on the weekends, according to owner Jeff Gates. Gates said Johnson had been in Sioux Falls earlier in the evening, but he was sober enough to do the job and worked until the bar closed at 2 a.m.

"He was absolutely fine," Gates said. "Scott would absolutely never put anybody's life in jeopardy by going out if he couldn't handle it."

When the fire call came in at 2:30 a.m., Johnson was among about a dozen firefighters to respond, according to Chief Jerry Johnson. The manufacturing plant is less than a mile from the fire station.

Madison Patrol Officer Aaron Talich also responded. The officer had seen Scott Johnson at Teezers earlier that night. Talich followed Scott Johnson to the station after the false alarm and administered a breathalyzer test before citing him.

Madison Police Chief Chuck Pulford declined to discuss the results of the breath test or the details of the case as it moves through the court system.

On Thursday, Johnson pleaded not guilty to the charge of first-offense DUI through his lawyer, Dan Brown. Had Johnson pleaded guilty, Lake County State's Attorney Ken Meyer was prepared to read a statement including Johnson's blood-alcohol content into the public court record.

Because he pleaded not guilty, the prosecutor's office won't release the results of his blood-alcohol test.

Support for volunteer; police defend their action

Some Madison residents were upset by the arrest of Johnson, an eight-year veteran of the fire department.

Three letters to the editor pledging support for Johnson and the volunteer department have appeared in the Madison Daily Leader since the first reports on the case were published. Two came from individuals; one was signed "Members of the Madison Volunteer Fire Department."

Henry Hauck of Wentworth wrote one of the letters. He said firefighters can take care of their own. If Johnson had been too drunk to drive, he said, someone would have stopped him.

Talich could have stopped him, too, Hauck said.

"They watched him over there where the fire was supposed to be and they let him get back in the truck and drive away," he said.

The department's letter apologized to the city, saying Johnson made a "mistake in judgment" and that the rest of the firefighters will learn from that mistake.

"... as volunteer firefighters, we make mistakes like everyone else. Being volunteer firemen, we are on call 24/7, but we still like to relax and do what we like to do in our free time," the letter said.

Pulford has heard plenty of criticism, but said people might see the incident differently if they knew all the facts.

"It's just an opinion," Pulford said. "We have to let it run off our backs."

Jim Adams, who owns a house on Lake Madison, doesn't know the details of Johnson's case, but he knows he's worried about the precedent the arrest has set.

"My biggest concern is about the other firefighters," he said. "If they've had a beer, are they still going to go out?"

State's 350 volunteer units govern themselves

Denny Gordon, head of the South Dakota Firefighters' Association, said the subject of drinking alcohol comes up in every volunteer department at some point, but there's no uniform standard for alcohol use.

To be recognized by the state, a volunteer department must have 15 members and a heated garage for equipment. Everything else is up to the volunteer unit. Constitutions, bylaws, budgeting, training procedures, hiring and disciplinary policies are written and defined by individual departments.

"You really have 350 totally different and distinct organizations that basically govern themselves," Gordon said.

Gordon's volunteer force, North Haines Volunteer Fire, requires its members to stay home if they've had any alcohol within the past eight hours. North Haines firefighters answer calls in the areas north of Rapid City.

Attention focused on drinking after '03 death

A lot of departments, especially those in West River, began to think deeper about their alcohol policies in 2003. That's when 16-year-old fire cadet Anndee Huber climbed into a truck with a Westin County, Wyo. volunteer firefighter who'd been drinking.

The truck rolled on the way to a fire call. Huber died. The firefighter, Ronald Callier, pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and was sentenced to prison.

Westin County is just across the South Dakota border, about 40 miles west of Custer. Wyoming and South Dakota volunteers work together on wildland fires in the Black Hills National Forest

"That brought a lot of attention to (drinking) to the departments in the state," Gordon said.

Back on the eastern side of the state, the Tea Fire Department also follows the eight-hour rule. With 35 members answering more than 200 calls a year, Van Riesen said a strict policy guards against potential liability issues.

InMadison, the policy is not as stringent, according to Chief Johnson. If his firefighters have been drinking but think they're ready to respond, they can. However, they are not supposed to drive a truck. Everyone has a different tolerance level, and Johnson said he trusts the judgment of his firefighters.

When 24-year-old Lance Parliament drove his car head-on into a motorcoach on Highway 34 two years ago,Madison firefighters showed up quickly to assist the 51 elderly passengers injured in the crash.

"In a situation like that, I'm not gonna put a PBT in their face and say, 'Blow in this before you can go,' " Johnson said.

Scott Johnson has been suspended until his case is settled. Chief Johnson said the department will decide what disciplinary actions are necessary when he returns.

Johnson did not return several telephone calls seeking comment this week.

Crews struggle with recruitment, retention

Taxpayers may voice concerns about how local departments are run - particularly when the units make annual budget requests. But the attitude toward regulation statewide is hands-off.

At least in part, that's because it's difficult to attract volunteers, Gordon said.

"Most departments nowadays are struggling to recruit and retain firefighters," he said. "That's not a South Dakota issue, that's a nationwide issue."

To expect everyone who fights a fire to complete 120 hours of training first could leave some of the state's more rural areas without anyone to fight fires.

"In some areas of the state, everybody who lives there is a firefighter," he said.

It also might be unrealistic to expect an ironclad alcohol policy for departments with fewer than 15 members, Gordon said, because there might not be enough people to respond if everyone who has a sip of alcohol in their free time had to sit out calls for eight hours afterward.

Time commitment a barrier for volunteers

Complicating matters is the increasing mobility of younger people, Christie, the fire marshal, said.

People change jobs and move more often than they did in decades past, he said, and the time commitment involved in becoming a firefighter can be a significant hurdle.

In Menno, the volunteer fire department's members were the first on the scene Aug. 23 when a natural gas-fueled house explosion killed 56-year-old Gail Guthmiller and destroyed her neighbor's home.

Fire Chief John Huber was on the scene from 10:30 p.m. that night until noon the next day. The volunteers put out small fires, cordoned off the area and drove injured neighbors to the Freeman hospital as EMTs tended their wounds.

Menno Mayor Darrell Melhalf, an EMT himself, was impressed with how quickly the locals showed up that night.

"When something like that happens, you figure out how good of a crew you have," he said. "That was one of the fastest responses we'd seen."