James Muller was still in high school when he knew that he wanted to be a firefighter.
By 25, he was married, the father to a young son and serving with the Irmo Fire District. On May 26, 2023, he was killed while assisting the Columbia-Richland Fire Department in battling an apartment fire at the Tropical Ridge Apartments near the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, South Carolina.
While fighting the fire at its source inside of a second floor kitchen, Muller and three other Irmo firefighters were buried by debris when the two floors above collapsed on top of them. According to a lawsuit filed by Muller’s widow, the collapse was caused when the Columbia Fire Department had turned their powerful “deck guns” on the roof, unleashing “enormous” amounts of water on the fire-weakened building…