No time for turf war
If James Tutko, the Danvers fire chief, really wants to do something to aid the investigation into the stunning explosion last week, there is one step he could easily take: Get out of the way.
It is absurd that the federal Chemical Safety Board can't get onto the site to investigate the cause of the blaze, because the fire official has decided they aren't needed.
Tutko said Saturday that he already has a team investigating the blaze -- made up of State Police and local and state fire officials -- and the federal investigators are not part of it. He described the feds as a "distraction." Speculation that good sense would quickly bring the dispute to bay has not borne out.
Daniel Horowitz, a spokesman for the safety board, said yesterday, "We're in a holding pattern right now and still seeking cooperation from state and local authorities so our work can go forward." His frustration was palpable.
The national board is a fire equivalent of the National Traffic Safety Board. Its role is to go into scenes such as this and assess the cause of the fire and, just as important, what steps might be taken to prevent such disasters.
It is the second of those duties that sometimes causes friction with local officials. The feds may find, for example, that inadequate local fire codes contributed to a fire. They may find that inspections were not up to par in some regard. They may also produce findings that differ from those of local officials, who are accustomed to investigating fires together -- and, in some cases, covering each other's backs.
"Our role is to determine the root causes and make those public, so other communities in Massachusetts and elsewhere are protected from this kind of devastating accident," Horowitz said.
While conflicts sometimes occur, they seldom develop into the type of standoff that is going on in Danvers, Horowitz said. This kind of stubbornness is unusual, as well as counterproductive.
He insisted that under federal law the safety board does not need local permission to do its job.
"We have the full authority to gather evidence, subpoena whatever witnesses we need to, and convene public hearings, and we will use whatever legal authority we need to carry this investigation forward."
While that may be true, it matters that the safety board is, at this point, locked out. Its investigators need to see evidence before it has been picked over by several other investigators. Otherwise, the safety board investigators' ability to reconstruct the fire could be severely compromised .
One of the last things anyone needs at this point is a turf battle. A fire has displaced hundreds and wrecked the peace of a city. When a plane crashes, local investigators do their work, and federal investigators do theirs. That is the way to serve the public interest, and frankly there's no good reason any of this should be up to the Danvers fire chief.
The collapse of the Big Dig ceiling made one fact clear: There can never be enough competent review of a tragic accident. The locals should investigate the fire, the state should investigate the local officials, and the federal government should keep an eye on everyone .
Instead of that, we have a bureaucrat jealously guarding his turf, his little piece of power.
One would think the absurdity of that would be obvious to Tutko, whose town is living every day with the wreckage wrought on Wednesday morning.
Other than assisting the residents who bore the brunt of the damage, nothing should be a higher priority than learning what happened.
But Tutko takes a different view. He has his team, and, according to him, they have it covered. That someone else would have something to contribute seems barely to have crossed his mind.
That's why the federal investigators need to be allowed in -- and why he shouldn't be making these decisions.
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com. 
