HARRY R. CARTER, Ph.D., MIFireE

Many times I sit staring at my computer screen wondering what if I will ever be able to write my commentary column, and what it might look like. My brain is on vapor lock, and my stomach is in knots. I am drinking coffee and popping Advil. I sit there sure and certain that I will never write another word.

And then WHAM! An e-mail will come screaming into my inbox that causes me to run screaming from my office. It’s not like that every time, but sometimes it is.

Just such an event happened today, Wednesday June 7, 2000, at about 1420 hr. A fellow subscriber to Gil Emery’s Fire-L group, Matt Kivela, sent us all a link to an article in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. The article in question spoke of the fact that one of the Worcester widows, Michelle R. Lucey was blasting the city council for being cheap. Cheap indeed!

Bless your heart Matt, you lit the fuse, now here comes the explosion.

It seems that the very same city that lost six firefighters last December, and captured our nation’s heart, has returned to its old nickel and dime approach to fire department funding. I was astounded as I read the comments attributed to various officials at the Worcester City Hall.

By the time I finished reading the article, I was steaming mad. I was ready to get into my car, drive up to Worcester, pull up to city hall, and start a protest demonstration. Fighting the urge to pick up speeding tickets from the Connecticut State Police and get myself into trouble with the Worcester Police Department, I began to pound the keys on my poor computer.

According to the article on the website, the city is once again crying poormouth. Oh, poor, poor Worcester; we are big and we are broke. At least that is my fire service translation of the mealy-mouthed carping of Mr. Thomas R. Hoover, the city manager. I love his quotation in the web article wherein he states, "… the fact is that the city only has so much money, and we have to prioritize what we use our money for."

So let us see what he is really saying. We only have so much money, so what if we kill a few people because we don’t have a number of critical pieces of firefighting apparatus and gear. If only poor, poor Worcester had more money we would surely give it to the fire department. BULL!

Fire Chief Dennis Budd is under the gun. He is attempting to get a radio for each firefighter on duty. He is working hard to overcome years of penny-wise and pound foolish financial policies. If ever there was a place that paid in blood to prove that a lack of radios can be fatal, it is Worcester. He is also pushing for more automatic defibrillators. Because of the largess of a grieving public, many donations have been made. As a matter of fact, there are now 13 defibrillators in service thanks to public donations. But now it seems like the bean counters in Mr. Hoover’s office are putting the brakes on Chief Budd’s efforts to upgrade his fire department.

The city has capped Chief Budd’s fire department capital budget at $500,000 this year and $550,000 next year. It is my guess that the people in Worcester City Hall are like people in city halls across our country. They have absolutely no clue as to the real cost of fire equipment. All they know is to count the beans and stack them into neat piles. Human lives mean nothing to them, however bean piles mean everything.

Mr. Hoover even had the unmitigated gall to say that Chief Budd chose to buy a fire truck, rather than radios. Well I guess that if the choice is between having a fire truck that runs well and can respond to fires, and having a radio to talk on, you pick the fire truck. You can talk on a radio all day, but it does no good if you cannot get to the fire and have a modern vehicle with which you can go to work. What a crock!

Worcester Mayor, Raymond V. Mariano, is probably the most honest of the whole bunch in city hall when he states in the article that he, "… continues to be embarrassed that citizens have to be donating money to the Fire Department so it can purchase key pieces of equipment."

Embarrassed, hell, he should have his butt kicked for allowing the department to be as under-funded as it is, and has been. I can remember sitting in front of my television last December listening to the Mayor talk about how the City of Worcester is a family, and that the family was grieving for the loss of family members. Hell’s bells, he must have been referring to those po’ folk out on the edge of town, you know, the fire department. He really had me snowed under in BS.

I guess that in the inner-most recesses of my heart I really knew that he was a politician who was saying what he perceived to be the right words at the right time. And good old me, naïve firefighting slob that I am, sat there crying and nodding in agreement. While reading this article the word, "sucker," kept running through my mind.

It should have been clear to me that this was merely one more politician who happened to be at the helm of a city that had just become liable for the deaths of six loyal firefighters.

In his defense, he has made finding the extra money for the radios a priority. He vowed to withhold all capital funding, except for emergencies, until the city manager comes up with another $200,000 in capital funds for the Fire Department so it can purchase radios and self-contained breathing apparatus.

In a masterful piece of understatement, Mr. Hoover was quoted as saying, "… We should not try to rob Peter to pay Paul." Well somebody had better rob somebody, and they had best do it soon, or we may all be headed back to Worcester again some day.

And while we’re at it, maybe someone in Congress will finally get the point that the fire service is not kidding when it says that we need federal funding to get the job done. There are more fence sitters out there, staring at the Pascrell Fire Bill than there are cowboys on the fence at a country rodeo.

I think that I shall close this message with the words uttered by Mrs. Lucey at the city council meeting. They speak volumes about the sorrow in her soul.

"As I sit through this meeting, I now understand why my husband would come home feeling anger and disappointment, knowing once again that the Worcester Fire Department was on the bottom of the food chain."

I will close with the old Will Rogers’ saying: "All I know is just what I read in the papers." That means that I now know that the long-term memory of local government in Worcester, Massachusetts is approximately six months.

The commentary in this column does not necessarily reflect those of Firehouse.Com, Firehouse Magazine, their employees or parent company Cygnus Business Media. Harry R. Carter, Ph.D., MIFireE, is an internationally known municipal fire protection consultant and contributing editor to Firehouse Magazine. He recently retired as a Battalion Commander with the Newark, New Jersey Fire Department. His commentary appears regularly on Firehouse.Com. For more commentary and information, visit Carter's web site at www.harrycarter.com Harry has published several books available for online ordering, including Firefighting Strategy and Tactics and Management in the Fire Service