LODD: L.A. County Firefighter Specialist Tory Carlon, 44, was remembered as a man with "a big heart" and "the best engineer I ever knew."
“All units responding 8710 West Sierra Highway … possible active shooter still going on … use caution.”
Shortly before 11am on June 1, 2021, L.A. County Fire dispatched multiple units to an active shooting incident at a workplace location in the Agua Dulce community. Active shooter incidents are high-risk, high-stress responses — workplace incidents especially so, since that is where, according to the FBI, four out of five such shootings take place.
For the units responding, it was different this time. This time, it was their workplace.
That morning, off-duty L.A. County Firefighter Specialist Jonathan Tatone walked into his own fire station — Station 81 – and shot and killed 44-year-old Firefighter Specialist Tory Carlon, a well-liked family man and “firefighter’s firefighter.” When Fire Captain Arnie Sandoval sought to intervene, he also was shot multiple times. Tatone then got into his white Toyota truck and drove off, to parts unknown.
It was the start of what would come to be known as the Sierra Incident.
“Captain is awake, vitals are a little low. Engineer is going to be DOA.”
For most employers and employees alike, workplace violence is a looming (if often unspoken) reality.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, workplace violence — including assaults and suicides — account for about 15 percent of all workplace fatalities. Mass killings (four deaths or more) are also on the rise in the workplace – there have been four such incidents in the U.S. in 2021 alone. On May 27th — only days before the Station 81 shooting — a disgruntled employee had opened fire at the Valley Transit Authority (VTA) rail yard in San Jose. Nine people were killed, before the assailant turned the gun on himself.
Even in the face of this reality, the shootings at Station 81 came as a shock to the profession. While firefighters must often deal with violent or aggressive behavior on calls, fire stations have been seen as safe havens — both by the public and by firefighters themselves. Prior to the incident, the last time anyone could recall where a firefighter had actually killed fellow firefighters was in 1996 in Jackson, Mississippi.
“This is a place where you’re supposed to be able to come and be safe,” said L.A. County Firefighters Local 1014 President Dave Gillotte. “That changed.”
San Jose firefighters responded to a residential fire not knowing it was where the VTA shooter lived. After putting out the fire, they discovered the home contained a huge cache of weapons and explosives.
“Truck 24, Battalion 17 … respond to the first alarm … structure fire in (Acton) area … use extreme caution, this is where the shooter possibly is.”
There’s little doubt that the personnel responding to the structure fire at the shooter’s home were thinking about the recent San Jose incident.
At almost the exact time shots began ringing out in the VTA rail yard, a call came in on a residential structure fire eight miles away from the shooting scene. Because the calls came in so closely together, the units responding had no way of knowing it was the home of the shooter, who had rigged accelerant and ammunition to time the start of the fire. After the fact, over 20,000 rounds of ammunition, 17 Molotov cocktails, multiple cans of gasoline and a dozen weapons were discovered — a potential booby trap that, thankfully, was not triggered.
Fearing a similar situation, L.A. County sheriffs ordered fire to stand down from direct attack on the shooter’s Acton residence, which was about 10 miles from Station 81. Helicopter drops kept the fire from spreading into the nearby wildlands. Aerial views showed the presence of a single body in the pool behind the blazing home, later determined to be that of Tatone. “The decision to delay was totally appropriate,” said one L.A. County chief involved with the response. “There was no reason to rush in to put out that fire.”
Secondary threats in a violent incident are among the many operational risks for which fire and law enforcement train.
The increasing frequency of these incidents — most notably the rise in active shooting incidents — has put a premium on law and fire training and working together in order to respond effectively and save lives.
These underlying principles are at the heart of Cal-JAC’s Unified Response to Violent Incidents training. Thousands of California firefighters and law enforcement officers have received URVI training — a combination of online and in-class instruction. Principles from the URVI training were implemented in both incidents, as well as in many other active shooting incidents.
“Assistant 3, can you go ahead and start peer support?” “Assistant 3, affirmative, we’ll start peer support.”
L.A. County’s peer support coordinator Capt. Scott Ross got the call on the Sierra Incident while sitting in a roomful of firefighters … in San Jose.
Ross had coordinated the peer support teams targeting San Jose personnel who’d responded to the VTA shooting. Ross has been all over the nation providing similar resources following extreme incidents for more than two decades. Now, unspeakable tragedy had hit his home department, and the firefighters he was helping became his helpers.
“It was very emotional,” Ross said later. “What I was trying to do for them, they were trying to do for me.”
Ross’s temporary absence didn’t diminish L.A. County’s peer support response — peer support was mobilized within five minutes of the first call. Since the incident had struck within the heart of the department, however, many of the county’s 150 peer supporters were in need of support themselves. All those years supporting other jurisdictions, and now it was L.A. County that needed help.
It was here where the solidarity and connections of Local 1014, IAFF and CPF mobilized to effectively fill a critical need. Calls to CPF President Brian Rice and IAFF 10th District Vice President Steve Gilman produced immediate mobilization of peer support resources. President Rice designated Newport Beach Division Chief Kristin Thompson — a member of CPF’s Behavioral Health Task Force — to coordinate what amounted to a massive mutual aid response in peer support.
“We had peers from 13 agencies in 12 hours,” said Gillotte. “We covered 36 stations, all three shifts, administration and dispatch. We made 850 contacts, including families, in the first four days.”
Beyond the immediate response, Local 1014 and its partners focused on helping the families heal. Presidents Rice and Gillotte worked through CalOES to provide five days of backfill for the entire battalion connected with Station 81: a critical five-day “reset”. With logistical help from CPF, Local 1014 organized a “family day” picnic, allowing members and families bond in a sense of post-COVID normality.
“L.A. Copter 22 is released from the Sierra Incident.”
In many ways, the end of a major incident is only the beginning of the work. As the department began individual after-action reports, Local 1014 convened a day-long gathering of all the relevant departments with the objective of identifying lessons learned and ways to improve. The union’s efforts focused in on a number of areas that will command response not only within the department, but statewide.
Firefighter behavioral health: Both the Sierra Incident and the VTA shooting reinforced the corrosive exposure to violence that is part and parcel of the job. In 2019, CPF fought for and won passage of post-traumatic stress presumption law — SB 542. This year, CPF is leading the effort to extend that protection to dispatch personnel, whose exposure to emotional stress is similarly acute.
Peer support: Both incidents again underscored the need to incorporate peer support directly, and automatically, into incident response. While mobilization through the unions was effective, it still usually happens only when somebody thinks about it. The Behavioral Health Task Force has been advocating for incorporating and funding peer support automatically on incident response. Institutionalizing this approach through CalOES remains a goal.
Memorial and family intervention: As a large department, L.A. County Fire already had a memorial management team to organize services and chaplains to support the families of the victims. Most small departments do not have that luxury. For these departments and locals, the California Fire Foundation’s Cal-LAST program has been a valuable resource. A coordinated team that includes honor guards, family support, chaplains and Foundation staff, Cal-LAST can provide critical logistical support on everything from memorial services to media support.
Workplace safety: The Sierra Incident is a stark reminder that the fire service is not immune from disagreement and tension within the workplace. Although the firehouse seldom sees gunfire from within, firefighters face, if anything, a greater risk of internal conflict: close proximity on the job and the prevalence of “alpha” personalities in the firehouse are a recipe for dissent. Given these circumstances, the Sierra Incident — like many incidents — may serve as a catalyst for change.
“The question is, can we be better by looking at the tools of the trade both reactively and then proactively, (and consider) resiliency training and conflict identification?” said Gillotte. “In memory of Tory Carlon (and) every firefighter who has taken their life … we can’t let this moment go.”
