Volunteer Firefighting: Keystone Cops version. How to be inefficient without trying.

I had to wait two days to post this. The anger and frustration I felt, was just too great to attempt a measured, objective post. I apologize in advance for a rather bitter, dark, angry, and very long post. There are great professional and highly trained volunteer firefighters out there, my frustration, is just from what I have actually witnessed. I also learned from police work, that in the heat (no pun intended) of the moment, A minute can seem like an hour. Also, variables like heavy equipment can make people move slowly, however anyone with a professional eye can see a lack of enthusiasm and urgency, or cavalier attitudes.

Tuesday night, I was just preparing to shut down my computer at about 10:45 pm. On the police scanner I heard a call go out regarding a fire. Of all the strange coincidences that could occur, it was the man’s home whom we are buying our trailer from. It was on fire. Michelle and I drove the 1 mile and arrived just before the large fire trucks, this is where the nightmare begins. As we park you can see there was a “command vehicle” which is basically worthless in my opinion, other than getting to paint up an SUV and decorate it with lights. The firetruck/s are pulling up as well.

Initial arrival

As we pull up, flames are roaring out of a room on the end of the residence. Mr. Jimmy (81 years old) his nephew 15, and his daughter who has heart problems, and is on a list for transplant, are sitting on the ground. She is crying, begging someone to get her “babies” out. Her two dogs that are still in the trailer. Only one room is on fire at this time. The dogs are, one 2 rooms away that had run and hid under a chest of drawers, and one on the far end of the home that was not involved in fire for a while. You have to be there to feel the anguished cries of someone that fears for their pets and no one seems to care.

No One seemed to have a sense of urgency

No One seemed to have a sense of urgency as they arrived on the scene. Remember, these are units that respond many times a week to fires of different kinds. They are fully equipped with great firefighting gear. We stood there in amazement as it took nearly 15 minutes to get two hoses pulled from two large trucks. Most of the firemen are just standing around, doing nothing in full gear at the front door. Finally, in my video after a good while you see 4 men pulling a hose with some urgency. That will be the only urgency you see in the whole incident.

15 mins later they pull a hose, 2 deputies, ambulance driver, one firefighter. Other firefighters standing around front door talking.

Odd thing is, three of them were not firefighters, they were ambulance drivers from an ambulance company and deputies, only ONE pulling that hose was a fireman. They begin spraying water in the front door, down the hallway towards the burning room. It’s doing nothing for the fire roaring in the bedroom. I finally ask why they don’t apply water into the burning room through the open window. “We don’t want to drive the fire through the rest of the trailer” he says. After 30 minutes they finally pull the hose from the front door, and blast water in the window, putting the fire out in less than 30 secs. There were 3 large firetrucks there, but only two hoses deployed?

 

No firefighters made an attempt to look

There was no sense of coordination, no urgency, no logical assault on the fire, no concern over the pets. Of course human life is often valued over animal life when a choice has to be made. The owner of the home says they were trying to contain the fire with fire extinguishers and had it all but out when the first firefighter arrived. They were ushered out of the home (naturally) but no firefighters made an attempt to look in the rooms to retrieve the pets, even though they were given exact locations where the pets were. The fire was allowed to grow while the fire fighters stood around at the front door, Taking an inordinate amount of time to get a water line to fight the fire.

This is what I have learned from this horrific incident, and another incident here in our park within a single year, that I also personally witnessed. Information from current, and former volunteers, on this scene that night.

  • They usually automatically count a trailer fire as a total loss anyway. I guess that accounts for the non-urgency. However by allowing one to burn destroys many family items that might have been saved with a little effort to contain the fire more.
  • They don’t put a priority on animals/pets. So the cute little refrigerator magnet they give out or sell for donations, mean nothing.
  • There were about 30+ personnel there, most doing nothing. The most active people were the County Deputies and personnel from a private ambulance company, doing work that the firefighters that were standing around should have been doing.
  • There were at least 4 “Command Vehicles”, 3 full size pumper trucks, and about 25 other personal vehicles of responders.
  • Sources told me that this is a bad practice the departments in this area of response have of allowing structures to just burn instead of applying effort.
  • One source said two family members had volunteered/joined, and then left, after not being given a suitable answer for allowing structures to simply burn for lack of effort.

We know that if we ever have a fire, all is lost. There is no way this group, or apparently many of the departments within miles of us, have the training and leadership to efficiently battle a fire. There were 3 separate department entities there, and numerous private volunteers, a one room fire could not be contained in an efficient manner.

I plan on delving deeper in this. I have not verified it from actual active volunteer members, but a former volunteer source stated the department receives a small amount per call responded to, and each volunteer that shows up is compensated. This would explain the mad reckless dashes, to far away calls in other jurisdictions in private vehicles. As I stated, I would like to update this with official sources. This is something that needs more improvement since lives do depend on their skills. I intend on shining a light on the departments that are poorly trained and cause unnecessary loss of property and life, be it human or animal.

Lastly, here is a video I pieced together from the 3 hours were spent on the scene with our friends during the fire. The nine-year-old dog found in the farthest area from the fire was deceased from smoke inhalation. It was revived however. The large 6-month old puppy had run and hidden under a chest or drawers scared, and snapped at the boy when he tried to get him. They hoped the fire department would go in quickly since they were there with gloves and suits on and save the puppy, which at that time was a good two rooms from the fire. However, the firefighters made no attempt to enter, or start fighting the fire for over 15 mins, and the smoke and intense heat as the fire increased, overcame the dog, it’s throat was burned to badly from the intense heat, to incubate him.

One Hero of this entire group

There was one firefighter, a female that was also a Vet Tech in personal life. She entered the building while it was more involved, and located the 9-year old small dog in the far end of the trailer. She then went in later as the others finally stopped standing around, and put some water in the hallway, and retrieved the larger 6 month old puppy. She work feverishly doing CPR but it was too injured to be revived. You will note, that while everyone else was just standing around talking, she had retrieved the pet, and she and an ambulance driver are carrying it. He is from a personal company. Why were not 2 firefighters carrying the animal.

I failed to get this firefighters name, but she went above and beyond.

Comments welcome,

It’s not how fast you mow, it’s how well you mow fast!

The full moon was June 9th, which was this past Friday. It was quiet around here that day. Maybe this is just residual craziness left over that never took effect. Last night we had the impromptu fireworks at 9pm.

I was awakened this morning by the alarm at 5:30am. As I staggered for the coffee pot, I heard what sounded like a lawn mower. Couldn’t be a mower at this time of the morning. Peeking out of the office window blinds I see the resident handyman David, mowing along in the right-of-way area near the mailboxes. There is a plume of mist coming from under the mower, as it attempts to mow the wet, dew laden, grass.

https://youtu.be/ysTj89LH02Y

When I turned on the computers, the main one started it’s time lapse of the front area from the security webcam, it was dim outside. It looks lighter, but that is because the  camera is low light capable. You can see the vehicles passing on the roadway with their lights still on. Any darker and he would have needed a flashlight. It is a short snippet, someone comes and talks to him and he leaves soon afterwards.

Either the new park manager is a slave driver, or the poor fellow was in the heat too long yesterday. I swear it looked as if he had on Bermuda shorts, or his boxer briefs. He NEVER wears shorts. This is the same poor fella seen in an earlier post last year, “A hard day is relative”.

Whatever the reason, he stopped mowing when he was two-thirds finished. Maybe he was sleep mowing, and woke up. He’d probably been at it since 5am.

Comments welcome,

 

Tuesday: Fairies, Fireworks and Puppies.

A great Tuesday for smiles. The grand-daughter was over, and grandma had bought her some wings. She is 3 going on 4 and a bundle of smiles. Her hair is pulled up behind her head, she does have more hair than that. Only her grandpa is missing hair. 🙂
Of course Max had to check her out.

Baeliegh and Max

 

Then it was time to feed the new puppies. Everyone had a bottle to feed with or had the job of burping them.

Left to Right: Jessica (our daughter’s friend), Michelle, Marissa.

 

No night complete in the trailer park, without fireworks for no apparent reason. Second time in the last 3 days.

https://youtu.be/I5NJshtpaCw

Have a great night, comments welcome.

When the emergency help, is worse than the problem.

Let me start by saying, volunteer emergency persons, especially firefighters/medics, are a good thing to have. Many times they may be all that stands between life and death. That being said, they should also show restraint, professionalism, and leave the egos out of the job. There are some links in this post to previous post I have done that make for pretty good reading.

I don’t know about other areas of the nation, but here in the South we tend to have a myriad of people that join the volunteer departments that have huge egos. While I can’t lump all of them in the same basket just because of a few, I’d have to put the percentage of those in it for the adrenaline rush and status, at around 80%. When you see a jacked up 4 wheel drive truck, with 30 inch wheels go screaming by, with only a vehicle theft-alarm and some white strobe lights in the grill, sporting a muffler system so loud you can’t hear his make-shift siren, you know you’re in the south.

I was sitting here dodging the heat outside and realized I had posted this to my forum but forgot to put it here. After watching some regular large tired  white 4X4 pickup go rushing past the house with strobe lights in the front and rear flashing and some type of siren that could barely be heard above the clamor of his “Flow Master” exhaust system.  It reminded me of the piece I had done on the Chaplin Unit and the downed tree. So without further delay let’s get that out there.

Here in this area they dress their vehicles up with all kinds of lights. Not just enough to get by safely, they look like ornate Christmas trees screaming down the road. This post was prompted this morning from a near head-on collision between a volunteer (unmarked) vehicle and myself. The unmarked large pickup truck with only it’s flashers on moved into my lane in a no passing zone forcing me to take partially to the shoulder of the road. The irony is the person was responding to a head-on collision that had just occurred about 7 miles down the road.

Give me a Badge

Even though they have modern radio communications, they over respond most of the time, leaving their own areas of coverage with no one to respond to an emergency. They love to direct traffic in the hopes of getting to put someone in jail over not following their directions and ending up in an argument with “emergency personnel” at an accident scene. A special clause in the law written just for them.

I watched in wonder a few months back as a trailer burned here in the park, a firetruck arrived, but they realized after 10 minutes that they did not have a fully filled water truck. They also stood around debating whether to kick the door in because the owner was at work, to save the animals inside that people were telling them were there. Two cats, a snake, and a lovely dog perished while they debated. The scene was pandemonium. Approx 30 vehicles of all types parked in the roadway with various types of lights, many with just 4 way flashers on.

Someone forgot the water…

30+ responders, a firetruck with fully dressed/equipped emergency firefighters and they couldn’t decide to kick in a door and save the animals that were barking in the one room that burned. Oh yes, let’s not forget they brought the truck, but forgot to make sure it was full of water.

Sadly volunteer firefighting has become more of a business in some areas. They get funds from federal grants based on how many “calls” they respond to. They have even been known to “generate” their own business. This results in all of them from surrounding areas running over one another to get there first, to claim the call. Federal funds means free money, which opens some departments to the temptation of misuse.

Volunteer firefighting used to be an honorable calling. A service you gave of your time to help your fellow man for very little reward. You held bake sales and donation drives. You cobbled together equipment to serve. Now it has learned to nurse at the breast of the federal government funds, this invariably leads to corruption with most. They also don’t seem to screen volunteers for egos, or maybe they rely on recruiting those with egos just to fill slots to get funds for training and equipment.

It is a sad change that I have witnessed over the last 30+ years. From a time when people responded to help others, with just your flashers running and driving as safely as possible, to dressed up personal vehicles with tons of flashing lights doing 70-80mph. NONE, of these vehicles are “legal” unless approved by the director of public safety of the state, or a police chief. How many of the fore mentioned persons do you think will sign off on being responsible/liable, for the driving of a personally owned volunteer firefighter vehicle.

Comments welcome,

A couple Alabama homemade emergency response vehicles.