I am going to warn you now that I am getting on my soap box and if you continue to read you are going to have to put up with my ranting and raving. Ok here we go. I do not know if this is happening in your area but it is becoming a national problem. In these economic times many cities and governments are looking for ways to cut their budgets. That is a good thing. However HOW they are doing it is NOT a good thing. Many cities are deciding that they do not need to employe as many firefighters. In some cases they take a 4 man engine company and reduce it to 3. In other cases they are closing entire fire stations and having other stations cover that area. The state of Arizona has even gone so far as to stop all state funded training and certifications. Some of you may be thinking so what?? All firefighters do is sit at the station and cook and hang out most of the time so what could it hurt to reduce their crew size or close a station house. I am not making this up. I have heard people voice these very opinions and worse. On paper this may seem like a good idea. It is not. Lets start with the most obvious one; cutting all firefighter training. Most people can see the flaws in this but apparently not all since it has become fact in one state already. Most people can see that you can not just take someone off the street, put them in some gear, hand them a hose line and tell them to go into a burning building. :) It may feel like that but most departments require that you go through at least a year of training before you can do anything other than just watch or help on the outside. This is the program that has been eliminated. Training is one of the best ways to reduce line of duty deaths. Ok next on the list is closing some of the station houses. Ok so this means that the other stations pick up that area. Depending on the city how big that area is. Most stations are fairly busy and I am assuming that when they do this they close the slowest one but I do not know. Ok so if they close the slow one what is the problem? So two other stations pick up that stations calls. Lets say they got 12 calls a day. That means each station picks up 6 new calls. For those of you outside the fire service you may not realize that most of these calls are during the night and when you get one call you get at least one more. Ok so say the first call was for a 45 year old with difficulty breathing and chest pain at 3 am. We will say that this is squad #1. When they get on scene they discover that she is breathing just fine and is yelling at the police and paramedics. A little oxygen "magically" solves her problem and her chest pain is probably from the pepper poppers that she ate in large quantities at the bar. Her heart rhythm looks completely normal. She insists that she HAS to go to the hospital. While on this call another call is received for a man lying unconscious in a parking lot near a neighborhood bar. Ok the remaining members at the station can respond to that call. They get the job of checking multiple medical conditions and trying to determine if the man is drunk or if he had a medical condition causing the problem. The man does not regain consciousness and is placed on a back board and c collar and taken to the hospital for them to figure out what is going on. We have our suspicions but you can't leave an unconscious man in a parking lot. Ok so squad #1 and squad #2 are both transporting patients to the hospital. Squad #2 has to go to the trauma center which is farther away. Most calls in my area from when the call comes in to when we return to the station are around 1 hour. Squad 1 is on the way to the hospital and squad 2 is loading the patient into the squad when call #3 comes in. This call would have been the station that closed's call and is therefore farther away. Neither squad can respond to this call and all of the crew members are being used in the first 2 calls. Dispatch calls the other station. They are able to send a squad. The third call is for a vehicle rollover on the local highway. The squad gets there in 8 minutes and discovers a minivan laying on its top. Upon further investigation they discover the van has a family in it. There are 2 adults and 3 small children. Are you beginning to see the problem. I guarantee that the people who called will not understand that the government did not think that it was a priority!! If the mayor or city council members were in the same spot they would be asking "What took you so long?" upon your arrival on scene!! Just recently a town decided that their city library was more important than keeping their fire dept. REALLY?!?!??!?! I know I am a little biased but REALLY?!!?!? I love to read but having shorter hours or less books NEVER killed anyone and I fully believe that they are living on borrowed time before they realize they made a major mistake!!
