Boston Fire Department – The Fire Critic

The Boston Local has been fighting the smears for a while now. They have created a website (FireFightTheSmears.com) recently to provide more information to the public. The site is very informative and its sole purpose is to fight false information and allegations from their Mayor.

This is my take on the site…I think that the Boston Local has created a great product. The product being the web site, and the most beneficial part of it being the “Who We Are” section. Sure, the “Fact Vs. Fiction” part is great but the “Who We Are” section really makes the site unique.

Why you might ask? Because it provides a face for the public to view.

Lets be honest, all the public cares about is that we answer THEIR call for help. They don’t care if we answer Ms. Parker’s 911 call down the street. They don’t care about who we are, what we do, or who we go home to in the morning.

“Who We Are” could change all of that.

Back in the day, firefighters were pictured in the paper all of the time with news of what we were doing. We were special to the public and the newspaper knew it. Now the paper loves to print when we screw up. If they won’t do it for us then we must do it ourselves. Put our firefighter, our pictures, our stories, our plights on the computer of our citizens. Use twitter, facebook, youtube, flickr, and wordpress just like Boston’s Local has!

The Boston Local is on to something….I promise you that! What I recommend is your Local/Department/Crew doing the same thing. Oh, and one other thing…there should be a backlog of every Boston Firefighter waiting for their mug and info to show up on FireFightTheSmears.com!!!!

Great job guys!

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Call it what you will, but I call it poor management.

The three highest priorities in any jurisdiction should be:

Public Safety
Education
Refuse Collection

Those are in no particular order. Those are the necessities. PERIOD. Over the last 5 or so years..maybe longer, firefighters and EMT’s have seen their budgets cut, hacked, and brought down to an all time low.

I don’t care where you are or who you work for, your City/County/Locality should not be cutting the operational funds of any fire and/or EMS department without completely cutting other programs. When I say “CUTTING”, I mean completely gone like they never existed before. Things like economic development, risk management, transportation, technology, fleet management, social services, homeless assistance, general services, planning, neighborhood services, parks and recreation. These departments should be decreased to a skeleton crew and or merged with another department. Other programs should have been deleted way before we got to this point.

Below are stories about Station Closures, Brownouts, Layoffs, and such from the past month to today. Today is important because it is the first day of many jurisdictions fiscal years.

I recently wrote about Flint, Michigan learning the hard way here.
STATter911.com on West Coast Firehouse Roulette
Alemeda, California lost Firehouse #5
Alemeda – Website on the issue by firefighters
Sacramento Fire Department Plans to Expand Firehouse Rolling Brownout Program
Sacramento – Brownout Blues: Response Slowed on Another Fire
Boston - Fire union protests “brown-out” at Neponset’s Engine 20
Boston – Mayor, fire union spar over ‘brown-outs’
FireGeezer on Boston Brownouts
San Francisco - Fire station brown outs mulled
San Francisco – Website on the issue by firefighters
San Francisco – Proof of Station Closures
Atlanta Fire Department Continues Rolling “Brownouts”
Vallejo closes another fire station
Muncie Firefighters Mark Final Day On Job
Fire chief: Lawrence layoffs, firehouse closures ‘terrible’
Is anyone home? New Prince George’s County overtime reduction plan leaves some firehouses empty. Volunteers staff others.

And yet some firefighters have agreed to make up for budget shortfalls out of their own pocket! And to think that there are some assholes out there who just don’t get it. The Administrations, Fire Chiefs, City Councils, County Supervisors, Aldermen,etc. will never understand that we mean business and we are in the business to save lives! We don’t stand up for what we believe in just to hear ourselves talk. Check out these ALL-AMERICANS.

San Bernardino council approves firefighters’ wage cut – Council members approved the agreement unanimously. Firefighter union members already had approved it, union President Scott Moss said.
San Diego – City firefighters agree to concessions, ratify contract
Santa Rosa firefighters, police give up raises to avoid layoffs

These are just some examples of closures, brownouts, and layoffs as well as some departments who have given up even more to prove the point that we CANNOT afford anymore cuts for our safety and that of our citizens. Feel free to chime in if you have another City, Link, Story related!

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