Paying for Savings
That unusually large apartment fire in Philadelphia yesterday burned for seven hours before it was declared “under control.” Seven alarms ain’t small potatoes and it took a huge part of the FD’s resources to contain the fire that really was unextinguishable until almost everything was gone.
But one of the first things in everybody’s mind was the recent shuttering of five engine companies and two ladders by the mayor who claimed that the contractions would still allow sufficient coverage of all areas of the city. When Hizzoner arrived on the fire scene yesterday, one of his first utterances was, “Two minutes response time here.” It sounds like he’s still a little defensive. However, a spokesman for Local 22 pointed out that while all this was going on, the city was calling back off-duty FF’s to put the decommissioned engines and trucks back in service in order to maintain coverage.
A fire department official said that it was standard procedure to call back off-duty FF’s during emergencies and “that city cutbacks had no effect on response to this fire.” There they go…that magic word “response” again. While it’s true that response times weren’t an issue yesterday, it still turned out that those shut-down companies were needed. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have paid all that overtime to put them back in service.
Nothing will come of this. The disbanded companies will remain vacated. But there will be a lot of press releases spewing out of the fax machines, generating some entertainment for a few days.
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Meanwhile up in Boston, there has been a lot of grief within the FD following that tragic accident involving the aerial that lost its brakes on the steep hill Friday. This one won’t be dying down anytime soon. The union has been on a campaign for a couple of years now protesting the poor maintenance and the ages of the apparatus.
This truck that crashed Friday was 13 years old and was involved in an accident last year due to faulty brakes. Most of the ladder trucks in the fleet are more than 10 yrs. old. A deeply-seated problem like this cannot be solved quickly. It will take years to upgrade the trucks and restoring the integrity of the fleet by completing the proper repairs and upgrading the maintenance quality will take untold millions of dollars that the city is not willing to spend. But they’re sure paying for their savings now.
We’d better get our stuff checked out now. I need to get the coffee going.
