THE TULSA, OKLAHOMA, FIRE DEPARTMENT is looking for ways to reduce expenses and one of the areas where costs can be cut is the fuel expense.

Beginning this month, the TFD is starting to receive a replacement fleet of hybrid-powered automobiles for the officers, inspectors, etc.  Within a year they will have put 12 hybrid vehicles into service.

While the initial cost of the new cars is higher than the traditional gasoline-powered sedans, they believe that the ultimate fuel savings will more than offset the purchase premium.

KOKI-TV Ch. 23 has a video report:

A CHICAGO FIRE DEPT. ENGINE COLLIDED with a car at an intersection Thursday afternoon while responding to a medical emergency.

NBC Ch. 5

The engine then careened into the corner of a building.  The five FF’s on the truck and the two people in the car were all transported and treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

The engine was severely damaged to the cab area.  The building was being renovated and was unoccupied.  While it had noticeable damage, it is still structurally sound.

NBC Ch. 5

WMAQ-TV has the story and a photo gallery HERE.

NATIONAL POLITICS IS THE LOCAL INDUSTRY in Washington DC. Behind every national figure are hundreds of employees, consultants, lobbyists and volunteers.  I work at a university that focuses on this industry.

8:30 PM:  EMPTY VIRGINIA STREETS

There have been a few times when the streets are empty in the DC suburbs.  Like the first morning after a blizzard or when the Redskins were in the SuperBowl. I worked during two SuperBowls and recall a fire station day room crowded with on duty cops and firefighters watching the game.  I need to add last night to that short list.

Driving home there was less traffic than I have seen at 3 am.  An Arlington County diner that is normally bustling had three patrons. It was eerie!

11:30 PM:  THOUSANDS SURROUND THE WHITE HOUSE

When it was clear that Obama was the winner, thousands of George Washington University students left Kogan Plaza and swarmed to the White House. 

Josh Wolf, a photographer for The GW Hatchet newspaper, took this picture in the part of Pennsylvania Avenue that was closed off in summer 1995 after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. 

 They chanted “Yes We Did!” and “O-ba-ma.”  Some sang the Na Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye song to the Bush administration (play song).

THE MORNING AFTER

Bleary eyes, happy faces and many people still wearing the “I voted” sticker from yesterday.

CIRCUIT CITY STORES, THE 2ND-LARGEST CONSUMER ELECTRONICS chain in the U. S., announced this morning (Nov. 3) that they are immediately closing and liquidating 155 stores and halting all new store openings.

The troubled retailer has been suffering plunging sales for eighteen months and has twice tried to retrench and reverse their slide.  Last week the New York Stock Exchange warned them that they were being considered for delisting since their stock had been trading for less than $1 per share for 30 consecutive days.  On Friday, at market’s close, CC was trading for $0.26 per share.

photo by Heartburn

Circuit City currently operates 721 stores and outlets in the U.S. as well as 770 mostly smaller locations in Canada, and employs roughly 55,000 workers including holiday help.  Employees in the affected stores were told of the closings yesterday morning and the workers in the auto installation department will be let go within 48 hours.  The rest of the sales force will be kept on as temporary employees of the liquidator who will take over the inventory immediately and close down the store by Dec. 31.

For a list of the 155 stores slated for shutdown, CLICK HERE (.pdf file)

ALTHOUGH YOU STILL MIGHT LIKE TO TRY IT if you’re late for work and get stopped.  Just hope that the magistrate doesn’t learn of this precedent that was just set in a Swedish court.  The Local news from Sweden tells us:

A woman from southern Sweden has lost her bid to have a speeding fine overturned on the ground that she was suffering from diarrhea at the time of the offence.

The 49-year-old woman from Trelleborg explained to the local district court that she was experiencing stomach problems when she was pulled over for driving 86 kilometres per hour in a 70 km/h zone.

But the court ruled that a case of the runs did not equate to a need for speed.

A situation can only be classed as an emergency if somebody’s life is in danger or if a driver hits the gas in an attempt to prevent a serious crime.

As the woman’s desire to get home to her toilet did not fit into either category, the court ordered her to pay the speeding fine.

There’s no doubt the decision is binding.

THE TINY TOWN OF IDYLLWILD IN RIVERSIDE COUNTY, California, has but 3,500 residents.  Yet they have one of the biggest conflicts with their own fire department than anybody else in the state.

Many residents are accusing the department, under the leadership of Chief Steve Kunkel, of abusing their authority and bullying people into cooperating with their mandates.  As Scott Gold with the Los Angeles Times writes:

Criticism of the department has been building for months, and by now, some in town say their firehouse has degenerated into more of an uncurbed fiefdom than a professional department.

Fire officials have been accused, at one time or another, of throwing a trash can at a moving vehicle during a fire call, stealing department records and haranguing a school principal until she moved off the mountain — because, she says, she dared question them.

(T)these days, being a firefighter here is a delicate matter — “like the old Frankenstein movies,” said Capt. Jim Manietta, “where the town is approaching with pitchforks.”

 
Street drills are a “must” in Idyllwild.
(Los Angeles Times photo)

Relations with the citizens just got worse this past June when a county grand jury considered the conflicts and suggested that the FD be abolished and absorbed into the county fire protection district.

Among other things, the jury found that the fire commissioners “have attempted various forms of intimidation,” conducted unauthorized burns and improperly discussed the fire chief’s salary in secret.  On top of that, they haven’t published a budget.  “We have a budget,” (one of the commissioners) said. “It just hasn’t been approved.”

Concerns about perceived arrogance were not alleviated when fire officials said, in effect, that they would ignore many of the grand jury’s recommendations. “Are they experts?” Kunkle, the fire chief, said. “I don’t think so.”

There’s more.  Read the whole story in the Los Angeles Times HERE.

EARLIER THIS YEAR THE PONEMON INSTITUTE conducted an extensive survey of 106 major airports in the U. S. and found that about 12,000 laptop computers are lost in airports each week.  That’s 600,000 annually.  Furthermore, only about 33% of business travelers recover their lost computers.

The top ten airports for total laptop loss are displayed in this bar chart showing the average number of missing laptops per week:

Of the laptops that go missing, 17% of them are reclaimed from lost-and-found before the flight takes off.  16% are reclaimed after the flight leaves.  The remaining 67% are never reclaimed.  While the airports generally destroy unclaimed laptops eventually, there are millions of sensitive files stored on them that are exposed to various airport workers.  53% of business travelers say that their laptops contain confidential or sensitive information.

Nearly 40% of them are left at security checkpoints, according to airport representatives.  This chart shows the most common locations where they go missing:

When interviewing individual business travelers, Ponemon found that only 1% admitted that they had ever lost a laptop, but 84% of them say they know somebody else who has lost one.

This survey was conducted for Dell Computers and was primarily concerned with the loss of, and protection of sensitive business data.  It contains findings on several other related practices that lead to these losses and also contains a chart showing the loss experience for all 106 airports.

You can read the entire 18-page report on a .pdf file HERE.

FIREGEEZER COVERED THE OFF-DUTY SEXUAL FANTASY BEHAVIOR by Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone in April (HERE). Firegeezer had the good taste NOT to post a link to the videos circulating the Internet

His daughter, a Sky TV Sports presenter, is posing for the UK branch of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals:

Link to the story HERE.

So I am either (a) promoting the PETA agenda, (b) shamelessly stealing an item from the back page of the October 20th issue of AutoWeek or (c) still groggy from a west coast red-eye. 

THE FOUR TOPS WAS NOT ONLY ONE OF THE MAJOR POP SINGING GROUPS OF the last half of the 20th century, they were unique in that they performed for 40 years without a single change in personnel.

Levi Stubbs, 72, was both the lead singer and the major domo of the successful group.  Mr. Stubbs reportedly died peacefully in his sleep Friday following a lengthy, debillitating illness.

Levi Stubbs (1936-2008)

Stubbs formed the Four Tops in 1954 with high school friend Abdul “Duke” Fakir, Renaldo “Obie” Benson and Lawrence Payton.  In 1963 they signed with the Motown Records label and produced 20 top-ten hits over the next 10 years including the memorable:

• I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)
• Reach Out (I’ll Be There)
• Shake Me, Wake Me
• Bernadette
• It’s The Same Old Song
• Baby, I Need Your Lovin’

The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 and has also been honored with a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Stubbs’ death leaves Fakir as the only surviving member of the group.

The Washington Post has a good obituary HERE.

FOLKS IN THE GEEZER GENERATION GOT SOME WELCOME NEWS Thursday when the Social Security Administration announced its annual cost-of-living adjustments for beneficiaries.

Next year the retireees receiving social security benefits will be getting a 5.7% increase effective in January.  This is the largest COLA in 27 years and more than double this year’s 2.3% rise.

That temporary spike in oil costs, along with the resultant retail and agriculture increases due to higher fuel prices, came at just the right time to affect the yearly appraisal of living costs for food and services.

An added bit of good news was the announcement that the Medicare trust fund is sufficiently endowed that there will be no increase in Medicare premiums this year.  It is rarely that happens, but Firegeezer points out that these larger benefits payouts somehow always come along just a few weeks before Presidential elections.

AMERICA’S MOST FAMOUS MEDDLING MAYOR, Chuck Taylor of Circleville, Ohio, just keeps stepping in it.

The last we checked, Hizzoner was wandering into the path of a collapsing wall of a burning commercial building (see Firegeezer report HERE) while talking on his cell phone.  When he refused to leave, a police officer had to arrest him and then removed him just two minutes before his perch was buried under several tons of old bricks.

Mayor Chuck Taylor

Mayor Taylor is back in the news yet again this week.  Now he wants to cut down on fire department overtime costs by calling in neighboring  volunteer fire departments to work the large fires instead of calling back the city’s paid firefighters.

Fire Chief Tim Tener, getting a little fed up with the meddling mayor, said “No way” was he going to go along with that scheme.  “This is more of a safety issue than a financial issue,” Tener said. “It’s the life safety of the public and the life safety of my personnel.”

It hasn’t been reported yet on what the neighboring volunteers think about being pressed into carrying the city’s responsibilities.

Firehouse.com has the latest on this spectacle HERE.

CAPTAIN DARRELL FEUERHAHN RETIRED FROM THE REDLANDS, California, Fire Department on September 7 after serving 26 years with the FD.

Friday noontime Feuerhahn, 52, and his wife Debbie, 54, were riding on a desert road on their Harley-Davidson motorcycle with Darrell doing the driving.  According to the California Highway Patrol, as they entered into a curve in the road the motorcycle drifted across the center line into the path of a pickup truck colliding head-on.

The Feurerhahns were both killed instantly and the 53-yr.-old man driving the pickup was injured severely enough that he was airlifted to the hospital.  The couple was married for 32 years.  Their son Darrell, Jr., is a San Bernardino County FD firefighter.

Darrell won a silver medal in 2007 in martial arts at the World Police and Fire Games in Adelaide, Australia.  He was also an instructor of confined space, trench and elevator rescue.

The Riverside Press-Enterprise has a good REPORT.