Morning Lineup - August 8

I was reading through some of the links that STATter911 posted HERE about the fines being levied on North Carolina fire departments. The agenda item, of course, was the double-fatal FF casualty in Salisbury earlier this year.

The state Department of Labor thoroughly investigated the all the actions taken during the fire and issued a report focusing on the mistakes that were made by the several fire companies working the incident. That’s all well and good. It needs to be done and everybody in the country should be able to learn from these mistakes and made certain that they don’t duplicate them.

But I have a problem, I think, with this levying of fines on the affected FD’s for their actions. By doing so, the DOL has transformed the report from a factual document into a means of punishment. Is punishment really the proper response here? Aren’t all of the FD’s that were there already feeling the results of the fire?

Once you begin using the findings of the investigation as grounds for punitive action (absent criminal negligence, of course) then you start assigning blame and seeking retribution. Once that bureaucratic boondoggle bounds out of the bottle, then you have a mess. Finger-pointing and letter writing begin to take precedence over the importance of education and improvement.

One of the charges made in the report was: ”Safety inspectors found that on more than one occasion firefighters entered and exited the burning structure without radio or visual monitoring from the command post.” C’mon, now. While we’ll agree that is not a good thing to happen, is it always avoidable on a large property like that? Does that warrant fines and punishment on the overworked firefighters and officers that were there?

I don’t know about all this. I’ll have to think about it some more. What were your first thoughts when you read that report?

Well, we’d better direct our thoughts toward getting the equipment checked out. Mine are focused on measuring out some coffee for the machine.