Oh, Alameda….
It didn't matter which Fire/EMS online news source is your favorite because whichever one you visited first yesterday had the weird story about the Alameda, California, firefighters and police officers standing around for over an hour watching a man drown in four feet of water. (If you didn't make it to the keyboard at all yesterday, you can get caught up on the topic by reading our updated posting HERE.) This turned out to be one of those stories that sailed around the world in a matter of minutes bringing millions of angry, curious people into the conversation before the city council finished their lunch. They probably still don't know what hit them.
KGO-TV
Mayor Marie Gilmore has issued a statement saying, "We are absolutely going to do an investigation, and we are planning to do it in as transparent a way as possible." Sounds great, and should be completed by the close of business today, but I'm not holding my breath waiting on that. The foundering city council will have to come out of hiding first and set out in an orderly way to repair this broken part of public safety. The trouble is, they've been actively disassembling their public safety agencies for the last two years.
Up until early 2009 the fire department had a 3-pronged water rescue policy. One utilized a fire boat, the second was a "swift water" response and the other was a so-called "shore based" rescue procedure. The fire department's only boat, though, was is such hopeless disrepair that the vessel was scrapped. Also, council whacked the entire water rescue program by eliminating all training funds for it while they were laying off 18 firefighters and permanently closing one of their five fire stations. The fire prevention bureau was effectively eliminated and the entire training budget was slashed by 50%. When the firefighters' Local protested and made public the major reduction of service, the council responded by accusing both the firefighters and police officers of wanting "to bankrupt the city." That wanton accusation didn't sit well with the fire and police who have not had a pay raise since 2007.
By the end of yesterday the entire council and the mayor were doing a lot of double-clutching and trying to distract from their previous decisions with the city manager stating that the water rescue training will be re-instated in the upcoming fiscal year. And just to show that they are really only 30 years behind the times, they are now thinking of purchasing a practical Zodiac-type inflatable boat. And while they are in full damage control they aren't saying much about their current plans to eliminate nine more policemen and five more firefighters in the next budget. I think I'll begin referring to Alameda as: Gary-West.
We should begin referring to our checksheets now and get this equipment checked out for the day. I really need some more coffee, so I'll make a side-trip to the Bunn-O-Matic before we meet back in the day room.
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