An issue you may not know about; What do you think?

[Meirno 550]

Let me run a situation by you, which is not too uncommon.

 

You live in a large city, with your family and your pet. It's 10 o'clock at night, and you're laying down in bed. By mistake you leave your stove on, you forgot to turn off that oven, you forgot to blow out the candle and the cat knocks it down on the carpet. Your fire alarm goes off. Without thinking, you rush outside. Head count. Wife/husband made it out, one child.. Where's the second? You run back in to the house frantically, just to get cut off by heat and flames. You can hear her screaming in her upstairs bedroom. Your spouse has already dialed 911 and has spoken to the radio dispatcher. She says the fire company is on their way.

2 minutes... 3 minutes... Where are they? 4 minutes... 5 minutes... 6 minutes... Finally. Sirens. Their coming. Their here, you tell them your daughter is upstairs. Look, they've grabbed a hose. They are stretching it to the front door. 7 minutes now. They are pulling a larger hose off the back of the truck. They are running it down the block. Still no water. 8 minutes, 9 minutes. The large hose has been hooked to a hydrant, now they have established a water supply. 10 minutes They start interior attack on the front door, they can't get firefighters inside for a carry out rescue, too much flame. 11 minutes. A ladder company gets on scene, you see the white helmets talking. They start stretching the ladder off the truck out toward her window. 12 minutes.. 13 minutes... Finally, their at the window, their breaking it out and sending firefighters in. 14 minutes, 15 minutes, 16 minutes. An arm comes through the window, followed by legs and a firefighter, carrying a soot covered baby girl. Their coming down the ladder now, which is stretched up 34 feet to her window. 17 minutes. 18 minutes... They got her at the ambulance now, and she is finally getting a blast of oxygen. 

Nearly 20 minutes, from the time of the call to get your child out of a house and in to professional care. 

The time it takes for nearly a full MLP episode to play through is the time it took. 

 

Now why is this? Lazy firemen? Not likely. Couldn't find the house? Nope. Slow truck? Still wrong. Why did[/img] it take so long? Because your nearest fire company has closed down for the night due to budget cuts, and the nearest open fire house was nearly 5 miles away. Add in traffic (light to moderate for the time of day) and the safe operating speeds allotted, they got to you as quick as possible. 

 

I don't know how many of you know it, but with the recent deficit, your public services have taken a heavy impact on the way they operate to save lives and protect property. Politicians are leaning on your local fire houses and police departments to try and save a buck.

 

Faulty equipment, less man power and changing hours is all beginning to plaque cities all around the states. My current home town currently employs 4 fire fighters per 24 hour shift, with 3 shifts totaling 12 firefighters all together. They also implement volunteer firefighters that may or may not show up. A House fire comes over the radio. 2 fire fighters will hop in the engine, 1 will get in the ladder truck and 1 will grab the ambulance. They show up on scene. Firefighters are not allowed to enter a building alone. We have a 2 in, 2 out rule which states, per NFPA; "No fire fighter shall enter a house until they have two fire fighters, in gear and tools in hand, at the front door and ready to recover them; Unless a possible save is viable" Well, let's go back to our situation where we have 4 fire fighters on scene. 1 Firefighter will be your IC (Incident Commander). He is unable to go inside due to the fact he must maintain radio communication with dispatch. Number 2 firefighter is going to be your engineer. He has to stay on the truck in order to supply attack lines with water, regulate pressure and ensure all hoses maintain optimal flow. Now we have 2 firefighters, pulling a hose line off the truck and ready to go, but they cannot enter until mutual aid shows up. Mutual aid is a request for a fire department from a neighboring town to come out and assist. My area, at regular responding speeds (15 MPH above posted speed limits) it would take 10 minutes for the next closest engine company to show up so that a save would be possible. This is just for one emergency. What if there happened to be second? Somebody must draw the short straw.

 

10 years ago, my fire department employed 10 fire fighters per 24 hours shift. That means you could have your fire fighters hitting the fire in a fraction of the time. Where is the money going? Recently, our county board members have been "Granted" 12 Dodge Chargers, so that while on official business they wont have to use their own gas and run miles up on their vehicles. They have the county pay for the gas when needed. 

 

My local police force, cut down to three police on each 24 hour shift, with two more on call. (At home but ready to go) They are not allowed to travel more than 60 miles on shift while not running emergency. That's roughly about 2.5/3 hours of patrol time and 20+ hours of sitting dead time. As you can imagine this takes a lot away from the public because as police patrol, they are able to spot anything from potential crimes to the beginnings of an emergency. Police are the preventative force for all agencies, ready to put their selves in harms to way to prevent the public from becoming harmed.

 

This isn't happening just here in my home town. It's happening next door, it's happening up state, next state over and all over. I ask you, would you prefer your senator rolling around in a state supplied vehicle, or would you prefer your local fire department to have the extra man power and equipment needed to get the job done as quick and safely as possible?

 

What do you think of this issue? What do you think can be done to resolve or even defuse the issue some?

 

I will leave you with this video of the East St. Louis Fire Department. One of their own firefighters put this together.

 

(tl;dr) Politics is messed up and your family is in danger cause firefighters and police don't have money, but politicians do.

Edited July 22, 2013 by Meirno