Arizona Republic photo

WHEN THE FRONTIER EMERGENCY PRODUCTS business and shop in Phoenix burned down Saturday night, one of the losses was a new pumper schduled for delivery yesterday.  The El Mirage Fire Dept. is one of the busiest stations in the Phoenix area and was planning to put their badly-needed E-One engine is service soon.

The equipment service company was finishing installing the computers and hand tools on the engine, which was valued at $500,000 plus the $100,000 in equipment that the city had installed on it.  The fire chief is now looking for an emergency purchase of a line-piece because they cannot afford to wait another nine months for a replacement.

Last week

The fire destroyed another smaller apparatus that belonged to another department and caused $10,000 heat damage to a Glendale engine that was stored outside.

The Arizona Republic has the full  STORY.

Political Fires

Within hours after the tragedy that killed two FDNY firefighters last week, everybody knew that the weight of political might would come out fast in order to cover up the misdeeds of the meddling politicians.  It always begins with a race of $1,500 suits to the microphones to be the first to bewail the loss and to make promises to get “to the bottom” of the mess that caused it.  This is followed up with back-room maneuvering to get the blame placed on somebody else, preferably someone who doesn’t have the ability to withstand the blizzard of blaming that pours down on them.

Step one has just been taken in New York.  Using the power of the office and the press release, the millionairemayor has very publicly restored the citizens’ trust and the integrity of the city by demoting the station captain.  You could see it coming, but just didn’t know who was going to take the fall.  The poor guy never had a chance.

Within hours of the fire, the newspapers were (rightly) publishing the long list of deficiencies and shortcomings that various city agencies had ignored and which compounded the FD’s problems on the fire scene.  One of them was the fact that the next-door fire station was supposed to do a walk-through inspection at least once a week but they had not done that since March of last year.  And why hadn’t they?  Well before this fire ever took place, the word had already spread throughout the department grapevines that the station officers had been ordered to stay out of the building completely.  They were forbidden to go inside and look around.  This was so well known that even one of the newspapers reported on it the day after the fire.

But who generated this standing order, and more importantly why, is the key to it all.  The District Attorney’s office  is investigating the situation that led to the fire and they are fairly insulated from the City government.  But it will still be a challenge to find this particular answer because the politically powerful have severed the chain of command that passed the order along.  The captain, his boss the Batt. Chief, and their superior District Chief have all been taken off the street (swiftly and very publicly) and transferred to headquarters where they can be closely watched and controlled.  But what about the other two shifts?  The message has been sent…..clam up, buddy, or this can happen to you.  Dirty stuff.

Now let’s get the equipment checked.  See you at the coffee table.

*  Firefighter Blog is keeping up with the Greek situation.  Today he has several videos posted HERE.

*  Roanoke Firefighters is featuring a tv stand for the kitchen of Sta. 1.  It’s made from a fire alarm pull-box pedestal and it really looks nice.  See it HERE.

*  STATter911 is following the problems that D. C.’s Metrorail system is having.  Electrical fires 2 nights in a row now.  Click HERE.

*  FireRescue1 has an interesting story on the Sun Valley (Idaho) ski resort using its snow-making machines to help fight the Castle Rock forest fire.  Read the full STORY.

*  FirefighterHourly is reporting that an embarrased ISO is returning to Charleston HERE.

*  EMS1 carries a story about how a Kansas City medic crew revived a newborn that had been put into a toilet HERE.

*  SConFire tells about a fire district board of directors that can’t bring itself to make a decision HERE.

*  Today’s Major Wildfire Incidents MAP.

THE WILMINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA FIREFIGHTERS haven’t had a raise in years.  In fact, none of the city employees have, except the City Manager and the City Attorney.

Surprisingly, Wilmington is the most expensive place to live in the entire state.  More so than Charlotte or Raleigh, even.  But a recent study done by the firefighter’s Local showed that FF’s salary is 40% below that of comparable cities that size.

Back in June they attended en masse the City Council’s public hearing for the upcoming budget, but the Council refused to give any of the City employees anything other than a measly 1.5% raise.  The firefighters were asking for 5%.  The public meeting became acrimonious, according to the newspaper account, and the FF’s rallied on the front steps and vowed to politic for new council members in this year’s election.

What really has the city’s workers grumbling is that the council has appropriated $5 million to develop a ½-acre park.  That’s right….one half acre.  A lot of citizens are curious to see which friends and relatives get the landscaping and outdoor furniture contracts for that one.

Last week at the City Council’s regular meeting, they voted to spend $220,000 for……a study to see how much the City’s employees should be earning.  They hope that it will be completed by early next year so they can consider any pay raises for next year’s budget.

In other words, the firefighters are being put off for another year and the politicians are refusing to do anything before the election.  Local 129 has work to do.

The Wilmington Star-News has the STORY.
WWAY Channel 3 has the VIDEO.

THE PELOPONNESE HAS BEEN taking the biggest hit by the hundreds of wildfires in Greece.  No families on the island are untouched by the disaster and the economy, largely dependent on tourists visiting the picture-perfect beaches, has been destroyed.

Reuters is relating this poignant tale:

“What is there to do now? My life has been turned upside down,” said Panagiotis Panagopoulos, who lost his mother and sister in the flames.

“We stood in awe as the flames rose to tens of metres and just scorched everything.”

Sitting at his hotel and surrounded by relatives and friends, Mr Panagopoulos said the two women had gone to save their goats just north of the town but had no time to escape the racing flames.

His silent father, sitting near him, nursed burns on his hands, face and feet. He had attempted to retrieve them but it was too late, relatives said.

“There was no time to do anything,” his 17-year-old son Thanassis said. “The flames just grew and grew in seconds and we could do nothing. We lost them.”

“We fought a losing battle and in the end we were left with this,” he said pointing to the nearby forest of blackened tree trunks. “How do you rebuild that? You can’t.”

BANDERA, TEXAS CALLS ITSELF THE “Cowboy Capital of the World.”  The old settlement suffered a downtown fire last night that destroyed the town’s oldest building along with another business and inflicted severe water damage to one of its major tourist attractions, the Old Spanish Trail restaurant. 

The fire was well underway when the FD’s were called and the surrounding volunteer fire depts. were able to contain the fire to those buildings.  None of the departments out there has a ladder truck, so they pressed into service some line trucks of the Bandera Electric Co-op and created some aerial streams.

The San Antonio Express-News has the full STORY.
TV station WOAI has a VIDEO.

“Where are my gloves? ….my coat?”

Make up your own caption for this picture and put it in the comments.

LAST NIGHT JUST BEFORE 9 PM (Pacific) near Palm Springs, California, and American Medical Response ambulance was responding to a call with full lights and siren going.  While going through an intersection with a green light, a Ford Thunderbird went through the red light at a high rate of speed, swerved around the stopped traffic and struck the ambulance head-on.

The two front seat passengers of the car were killed instantly and one in the back seat was ejected from the vehicle while a fourth was not. 

The driver of the ambulance and the paramedic were entrapped and seriously injured.  The driver has some broken vertebrae, but his spinal column is listed as ok.  The paramedic had her arm trapped under the ambulance.

Witnesses said that the auto was speeding erratically and weaving for several miles before the collision.

The Desert Sun has the complete STORY.

Palm Springs Desert Sun photos

DORCHESTER COUNTY, MARYLAND, ON THE STATE’S EASTERN SHORE, is the where the home and offices of Michael Kemp and his wife Laura Murray are located.  Now it’s just the home that’s there.  The offices, two large mobile trailers, had a total burn-out yesterday morning.  Officially they were the offices of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental and Estuarine Study.  All of their research papers for the past 30 years along with all the computers, servers, backups, etc. were destroyed.

While they are understandably devastated from losing their life’s work, the University needs to explain why nobody had redundant copies of the papers, or why there were no monitored fire alarms in the offices.

The Baltimore Sun has the STORY.

Horn Point Laboratory Campus
Univ. of Md. image

THE BOSTON TEA PARTY MUSEUM building burned yesterday.  Fortunately, the building was vacant and was scheduled to be demolished, then replaced with a modern structure.

Boston Globe photo

A welder working on a nearby bridge accidentally started the fire when sparks from his torch dropped onto the roof.  Because of the wind and tide, the fireboats were unable to approach it and the FD had difficulty getting a good angle of attack on it.  The building was on a dock that extended out into the river.

The Boston Globe has the full STORY.

Firegeezer adds:  This is a little off-topic but you can add it under “Why Johnny Can’t Write.”  The story quotes a sixth-grade school teacher as saying:  “The whole inside was totally infernal.”  Arrrrgh!!

Click thumbnails to view full-size
Boston Herald photos

 The power struggle taking place in Prince George’s County, Maryland has become a nation-wide spectator sport.  FossilMedic has laid out this week’s field position for those viewing from the outside.  (ed.)

Turf and Testosterone
Kentland VFD vs. PGFD update:  House Arrest

When Ambulance 339 was not in service on August 20, Prince George’s (Md.) Fire/EMS Department suspended a second Kentland volunteer chief and, at 1900 hours, restricted the fire company to responding to only incidents in their first due. This is how the PGFD press release read:

“The Fire/EMS Department will reduce the amount of mutual aid responses of the Kentland Fire Department to ensure personnel are available to respond to the more than 5100 Basic Life Support (BLS) ambulance calls within their first due response area. The Fire/EMS Department will evaluate Kentland’s ability to maintain adequate response to all calls in their first due prior to any adjustments. Continuity of service to the citizens shall not be reduced as the same amount of Fire/EMS units will be dispatched in accordance with standard procedures.”

Within the unique rules of PGFD, suspending command officers and restricting the VFD response area are legal actions that have been done by prior county fire chiefs.

On August 21, the county used overtime to increase career staffing in the stations around Kentland. There is also an aggressive transferring of units into fire stations adjacent to 33 in order to reduce the chance that Kentland will need to respond out of its first due area because an adjacent fire station has no crew.

For example, as soon as HazMat 30 starts on an incident, using the three-person crew that staffs Engine 301, the county is transferring a fire company into the Landover Heights fire station. A couple of times a day rigs move to cover 30’s district.

The county is incurring thousands of dollars in overtime, but has not placed Ambulance 339 or any additional transport unit in the 1st Battalion. FossilMedic thinks that ambulance coverage may not be the driving issue in this conflict. The executive summary from a 2004 Tri-Data report on the fire/ems department may provide a clue.

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Government Oversight

The government oversight process of [PGFD] has had negative affects on the department’s ability to function effectively. Past county administrations have often dealt with the fire department politically, not wanting to alienate either volunteers or career groups. In doing so, county administrations have often taken the path of least resistance, reluctant to make some of the tough decisions regarding the structure, changing the model of delivery, or adding additional career staff in fear of alienating either volunteer or career personnel.

A particularly troubling issue is not empowering the county fire chief to exercise the duties of this office. Overall, the coordination aspects of the structure between the volunteers and the chief are not well defined, often handcuffing the chief. Past chiefs we spoke with confirmed a “fundamental lack of control” over the organization as the number one problem they faced. Under the current charter, and backed by several court decisions, the fire chief is the recognized senior official of the department. In practice, he is not.

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Suspending two volunteer chiefs, restricting the VFD to its first due, freezing the flow of station management and 508 funding would indicate that the department wants to knock down the loudest of its well-staffed volunteer organizations. It appears that the county executive Continue Reading »

A FEW DAYS AGO WE RECEIVED A COMMENT from Mr. Kostis A—. who lives in Athens.  He mentioned that a major part of the problem was, in his opinion, the fact that recently all the country’s mid- and high-level fire officers had been replaced for purely political reasons.  I asked him if he would tell us some more about that and he has graciously taken the time to report back to us.  Here is his unedited comment on the subject:

After a mail from Mr.Bill Schumm asking me to write more about my “after winning the election three years ago fired all the captains and the head chiefs of every service of Greece” statement, i wanted to make some things clear.

First of all my friends i read some of your “politcal forum” opinions and i want to tell you that its NOT an act of terrorism (as a friend said). Its the incompetence of our goverment that helps this fire burn for 5 days now.The death toll has risen to 63 people. 63 members of OUR family. Whole Greece is mourning.

Because we are in a site related to fires i ll write down these facts. France has sent three Canadairs,Italy one,Cyprus 30 special trained firemen,Turkey one plane and Germany two helicopters.(The last two came today-5thday!!!)apart from that, i havent a clue wheather or not the other countries will send help.US in NOT going to sent(sb wrote that in the forum)

With our last goverment we had the head officer that did an outstanding job in the Fire Dept.(the cherry on the top was during the Earthquake of 1999 in Athens) and so the Head Officer got promoted to the National Protection Office.

After the former goverment didnt get elected three years ago, the new goverment stepped up and retired 70 percent of the highly ranking officers of the fire dept (18 from 28 people even though they required 2-3 years to go into pension) as well as another big percentage of the medium -lets say- ranking officers, in order to put people that help the goverment get elected.

But this people didnt have any experience what so ever (because the former goverment was for 10 years straight and every officer had experience for several occasions)

Now try to imagine what happens when the Chief of the Fire Dept has to work with the Head Officer of the National Protection Office for every little or big disaster but arent speaking to each other because they are from a different political parties and the Chief of Fire Dept wants to make unnecessary changes in the force in order to help people of his political party.TOTAL CHAOS

I mean from the Olympic year of 2004 where everything worked properly,to this mess 3 years later.
Its a shame…You cant imagine how beautiful were those places…