The Sub Burndown

Saturday December 26, 2015



Section 1
- The Sub Fire -


6 Minutes With The Arsonist
Incendiary #1 — The timeline of initial events that sparked suspicion of arson.
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Fire Investigation Never Done
Cover-up of The Sub Fire started two days later…
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SLO City FD Failure to Evacuate
Clearing the building and ensuring nobody is inside - a crucial step neglected by the SLO City FD.
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No R.I.T. or F.A.S.T Crew Assigned
BC-1 Berryman not only did not assign a R.I.T./F.A.S.T. crew, he put his command post where the fire did eventually burn to…
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The Sub Fire Load & Interior Details
Store inventory and layout tells a different tale...
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Sub Roof Details
The Sub and SDRS had a complete recent earthquake upgrade...to achieve a one-hour Class A roof fire rating.
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Seven Paths To Enter & Fight The Fire At The Sub
The Sub was unique in how many ways it would have been easy to fight a fire.
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Burning A Building Down Is Not Firefighting
You can't put a structure fire out with chainsaws.
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Unknown Incendiary Device #2
Our assertion is that all evidence points to UID #2, having been ignited on top of The Sub.
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See How the Fire Moved Through the Structures

Seven Paths To Enter & Fight The Fire At The Sub

The Sub was unique in how many ways it would have been easy to fight a fire:

  1. Smash in through the old glass front door into the room beneath the area where the fire was burning and attack (this is the only path that is dangerous) — this would work, but not as good as other options.
  2. Walk in through front door, take five steps, turn around, and spray water through the 36" opening above the wall (yet below the roof) onto the burning portion of the store (without going into front burning portion). This was totally safe to do when SLO City FD first opened the front door 20 minutes into the fire or at any time 20 minutes before or after this point.
  3. 100 Pismo Street rear exit door has easy entry, in sight of front door - bring a hose in and fight the fire or stay outside and put out the burning merchandise from outside.
  4. 100-B Pismo Street door into beaded curtain room leads to a 6' wide by 7' tall portal into main room to fight fire safely from beaded curtain room side of a 20-minute firewall. The beaded curtain room never burned and was safe for most of the rest of both fires.
  5. Smash in through old front door into 283 Higuera Street and go through the all metal middle building and then fight fire in main room through a 36" wide doorway behind a 12-hour brick firewall. You can reach the entire interior of The Sub main room safely from the doorway behind the firewall and never go into the building that is on fire.
  6. Through the cut open door into the 283 Higuera Street bathroom, through the all metal middle building, and then safely through same doorway as #5.
  7. Through the cut open doorway to the 283 Higuera Street blacklight poster room through the middle all metal building and then safely through the same doorway as #5.


Section 2
- Square Deal Recordings & Supplies (SDRS) Fire -


The Sub Office Fire Proves Fire Did Not Come into Front of SDRS from The Sub through the Firewall Between the Two Businesses

The Sub/ SDRS Corp.© stands to prove the fire did not come into front of SDRS through the firewall of The Sub
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Unknown Incendiary Device #3 in SDRS

How did the fire go from The Sub to the front of Square Deal Recordings & Supplies when the fire was out in the portion of The Sub adjoining the front of Square Deal before the fire started in the front of Square Deal?
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SDRS Fire Load Notes

The SLO City FD leadership has repeatedly stated we had a huge fire load at Square Deal Recordings & Supplies. This is relatively untrue and totally untrue from the perspective of the two hours they had to stop the fire that was not yet in our building or prevent it from entering Square Deal.
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11 Basic Stop Points for Preventing Fire Spread into SDRS from Rear

11 basic stop points for preventing fire spread into Square Deal Recordings & Supplies from the rear (Pismo Street)
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Hole Map Illustration

Holes cut by members of SLO City FD and incendiary devices placed by unknown person(s)
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Section 3
- San Luis Obispo City Fire Department (SLO City FD) Issues -


SLOCF Fire Calls 2009-2016
History of success rate in San Luis Obispo fires.
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SLOCF Press Release Corrections
These are what we believe to be factual corrections to SLOCF Chief Garret Olson's press release…
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Bravest Act or a Cowardly, Evil Act?
Cutting holes in roofs is something firemen do but most civilians can't tell...
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Is BC-1 Berryman an Arsonist?
In evaluating the actions of Berryman, we have come to the following realizations...
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Total Destruction is a Job Well Done
Total destruction considered a job well done because no fireman was injured.
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SLOCF Fails to Follow Own Rules
We will state the appropriate rule from the current SLOCF manual and then what SLOCF actually did.
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SLOCF Underground "Burndown" Policy
SLOCF leadership seems to have an underground policy of refusing to go into buildings that are on fire.
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Is SLOCF Corrupt?
While none of these indicators singularly means corruption, a Fire Department guilty of most of these practices is certainly suspect, if not corrupt.
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How Can You Believe…?
Fire departments who fight few fires do not easily gain experience... There are three ways to deal with this…
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NEXT STORY

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Above: Captain Matt Callahan cutting holes on both sides of interior firewall to help spread and intensify the fire. He knows no interior attack will be allowed.

Intentionally Assisting In Burning A Building Down Is Not Firefighting (You Can't Put A Structure Fire Out With Chainsaws

Allowing a fire in a display window box to spread and consume five buildings is not firefighting.

Burning through The Sub's roof:

The fire was burning and venting out through the still open louver above the front room in the front portion of The Sub. It was also venting out the access hatch that had been opened by firefighters on the roof over the front room. The fire was also venting out the main roof louver vent so there was no lack of ventilation to limit an interior attack. To have the fire move into The Sub’s main room, SLOFD leadership put the fire hose through the center of the front door, opened up the roof, and put a master stream of water through the overhead opening in order to drive air to feed the fire on the underside of the roof. [see video: hose through door].

After 40 minutes (or more) of fanning the fire, SLOFD caused the fire to burn the rest of the way through the left portion of The Sub’s roof.

Burn all roofs completely seemed to be the goal:

The sequence of photos showing the burning of 283 Higuera Street makes clear that SLOFD put no water on the fire until the roof was gone and almost everything was burned. This seems to be SLOFD leadership’s policy. They let the blacklight room (283 Higuera Street) burn over 20 minutes before they would allow the two nearby hoses to put the fire out. When they did finally put water on the fire, it only took three seconds to put the fire out. [see video].

The metal building between The Sub main building and 283 Higuera Street, a former gas station building (not flammable) would not burn – SLOFD leadership broke all the windows and cut the sealed doorways in 283 Higuera Street to open it up for more air – but it was still not enough. They took a chainsaw to the Pismo Street wall and cut an 8’ vertical slash in the wall to better fuel air to the fire. The reason to add air to the fire appears to be an attempt at burning the metal roof.

SLO City FD leadership appears to have caused most of the damage!

If SLOFD leadership had never taken over our fire scene and had done nothing, only The Sub would have burned.

We feel that a single volunteer fire truck and crew, if allowed to fight and engage this fire promptly, would have had the fire out in five minutes (except for mopping up)…

If only a volunteer fire company had arrived at our fire, and we would have only lost the front portion of The Sub.

By encouraging the merchandise and back wall in The Sub’s main room to burn fiercely (with air blown in through the front door by a fire hose on spread pattern and the two draft holes above), the “fanned" fire burned through the wall separating The Sub from the poster/CD staging loft adjoining the main Square Deal Recordings & Supplies building. It came slowly as, at first, the piles of cassettes kept falling into the area where the wall was burning through while slowing it down.

All the extra air blown in acted like a bellows and increased that fire greatly, raising the fire temperature and causing it to burn through up into the cassette/CD staging loft behind SDRS.

Without the extra air blown in by the water hose through the front door and overhead master streams through roof openings, the wall between The Sub and SDRS would not have burned through. It took the continuous bellows effect of all the blown in air and total refusal of SLOFD leadership to put water on the clearly visible, easy-to-reach-from-the-outside fire (which was burning to the right of the front door) to cause the burn-through. (This was easily done even with a defensive strategy in place.)

The fire then burned along the underside of the loft roof and into the apartment at 150 Pismo Street (with the aid of a 4’x4’ draft hole cut into the apartment roof along Pismo Street). If the apartment had been defended from the exterior through the two windows only, the fire could not have gotten through.

Finally, the fire burns into the back of SDRS into the poster room. If a pair of firemen had been stationed to monitor this, it could have been stopped with a garden hose.

At any time up to 90 minutes into the fire, one hose spraying the back interior wall of The Sub through the 100 Pismo Street door would have stopped the fire dead at this firewall. Even an unmanned ground monitor in the 100 Pismo Street beaded curtain display room or rear door of The Sub would have 100% stopped the fire from ever leaving The Sub main room.

When Richard Ferris (owner) asked Fire Chief Olson to do this and explained why, he was again ordered to stop interfering with public safety and threatened with arrest.

An interior attack could have also been conducted by going into the cut open doors, or the front doorway of 283 Higuera Street (blacklight room), and putting water on any part of The Sub’s main interior through the 36" doorway behind a 13" masonry firewall – a totally safe location from which to put water onto the fire. This building did not catch fire until over an hour later. There was no effort to defend either small structure at 283 Higuera Street.

At no point during the 12 hours of the fire did any water get put on the actual fire burning on the underside of the roofs or any merchandise burning in the building.

If we could have fought the fire ourselves with no help or interference from SLOFD, we would have 100%, for sure, saved all of SDRS and most of The Sub – Buckets of water, sheets of plywood, and people who cared would have done way better than SLOFD leadership did!

SLOFD leadership is taking up the space of actual professional firefighters. Until leadership is changed, they will victimize other San Luis Obispo residents to ensure their own safety, and ease of job, while claiming credit and glory for work they did not do.

All the firemen knew it was a turndown:

Towards the end of the fire, when it was heading toward the comic locker, Ferris found a fireman who seemed to listen. Ferris explained the two-level nature of the comic locker roof – that it was a big refrigerator with ample cork insulation. Ferris further pointed out that the only way the fire could get to the building was along the underside of the dock roof which would be easy to defend even from outside the building. The fireman was very interested, then suddenly seemed to remember it did not matter.

The fireman told Ferris they knew everything they needed to know and ordered him back and away, refusing to speak further with him.

On a defensive fire, there is no reason to cut holes in the roof – Berryman declared it defensive from the beginning, so cutting holes in the roof is only to help in burning down the structure.

Communication with San Luis Obispo Fire Department personnel during the fire:

  • The SLOFD personnel knew everything they wanted to know and would take no input from the start of the fire forward. They appeared to arrive with a burndown already decided, as there was nothing about the structure they wanted or needed to know.
  • Every offer to help with much needed information was repulsed with arrogance and extreme authoritarianism.
  • Only if they planned to burn down all five attached, but separate, structures before the fire started does this make sense.
  • For over 30 minutes the fire only burned in the front upper part of The Sub. Other than initially dousing the two window boxes where the fire started, NO effort, no re-evaluation, no size-up, and no firefighter ever went into The Sub either to fight the fire or to evaluate fighting the fire.
  • The command post was set up with no view of the fire scene.
  • Quality Fabrics & Supply Company, next to SDRS, was never in any danger due to a 13" brick wall (5’ taller than the Quality Fabrics roof), a 9" block wall, and their metal roof. Instead of sealing the Higuera Street front door to save the inventory from smoke damage, SLOFD leadership insisted it be left open so they could save 30 seconds walking through Quality Fabrics building instead of around. They had full access through Quality Fabrics rear door so there was no need to damage Quality Fabrics inventory of fabric and foam. SLOFD leadership had zero concern for the damage they did to Quality Fabrics and no reason to do the damage in the first place. Carelessly using one side of Quality Fabrics roof as a walkway (when going onto SDRS roof was the same at either end) causing damage and requiring a new roof. In addition, careless water usage on the roof damaged the inventory. Quality Fabrics had to do a total roof job to repair the damage.

Section 4
- Comments, Observations and Correction on Narratives by SLO City FD -


Preamble to Narratives
The overall situation with the SLOCF narratives is that they seem to be an attempt to cover up gross negligence, professional malfeasance, and cowardice…
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SLOCF Battalion Chief-A Neal Berryman
Comments, Observations, & Corrections on Narrative by SLOCF Battalion Chief-A Neal Berryman
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SLOCF Deputy Chief Jeff Gater
Comments, Observations, & Corrections on Narrative by SLOCF Deputy Chief Jeff Gater
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SLOCF Chief Garret Olson
Comments, Observations, & Corrections on Narrative by SLOCF Chief Garret Olson
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SLOCF Captain Michael King
Comments, Observations, & Corrections on Narrative by SLOCF Captain Michael King
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SLOCF Captain Mark Vasquez
Comments, Observations, & Corrections on Narrative by SLOCF Captain Mark Vasquez
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SLOCF Captain Matt Callahan
Comments, Observations, & Corrections on Narrative by SLOCF Captain Matt Callahan
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SLOCF Captain-Paramedic Station 3A David Marshall
Comments, Observations, & Corrections on Narrative by SLOCF Captain-Paramedic Station 3A David Marshall
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