City Council approves hearing on fatal Kensington fire

Philadelphia City Council is planning to take a look at a fatal warehouse fire that took the lives of two firefighters. 

Firefighters Lt. Robert Neary and Daniel Sweeney died in the Kensington fire in early April.  Councilman Jim Kenney introduced the resolution calling for the hearing.

“Not to assign blame, but to try to figure out what we can do in the future, what the department can do in the future to learn from this situation to diminish the opportunity for this to happen again,” Kenney said.

Firefighters union head William Gault says the council hearings will help.

“We’re still in the grieving process and there’s a lot of answers that we haven’t received,” Gault said Thursday. “We appreciate anything City Council does to help us find those answers.”

The hearings won’t be held until the fall. By then, one of the official reviews of the incident should be complete.