PHOENIX — It was March 14, 2001, a call for debris on fire near Southwest Supermarket at 35th Avenue and McDowell Road spread into the store and engulfed it in flames.
“It’s been a long time, but it also feels like it was yesterday, especially for those that worked with him or who responded to that call,” Capt. Scott Douglas, a public information officer for Phoenix Fire Department said.
In the midst of the massive response to try and get the flames under control, was Firefighter/Paramedic Bret Tarver.
“We never want to forget,” Douglas said.
According to records from Phoenix Fire Department, Tarver ran out of air and became disoriented through the smoke and flames.
It took several of his fellow firefighters about 50 minutes to locate him and get him out of the building from the first time he called for help.
Tarver died from carbon monoxide poisoning while battling the 5-Alarm fire according to the department records.
“Bret Tarver was a great firefighter. We remember him, we remember his family,” Douglas said.
Capt. Ashley Losch, who works with Glendale Fire Department, was a recruit in the academy when Tarver died.
“There isn’t a firefighter in the Valley that doesn’t remember where they were when Bret Tarver died,” Losch said.
Losch said before the supermarket was torn down, firefighters from across the Valley were taken through the building, including her.
“We were able to see exactly where he was, exactly what happened, where his crew was,” Losch said.
It’s another moment that Losch has vivid memories of.
“It’s almost unbelievable, you almost think to yourself, how could that have possibly happened?” Losch said.
Now, it’s fire departments across the Valley that have taken the lessons learned from March 14, 2001, and put them to practice, on fires like the one that destroyed a Safeway near 35th Avenue and Northern in 2018.
“We work together as a team and by doing that we honor Bret’s memory,” Douglas said.
Losch said certain calls are dispatched differently, and firefighters now don’t go more than 150 feet from the building.
In the academy, firefighters also learn the Tarver Drill.
“We’ll take firefighters and have them blackout their masks and have them stay on a hose line and listen to the reports of a lost firefighter,” Douglas said. “They attempt to locate that firefighter.”
The training, Losch said has saved lives.
“Absolutely, there’s no question. His circumstances weren’t the last time that has ever happened, and I’m sure that it will happen again. But how we react to it has changed, and that is what has saved lives,” Losch said.
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