HARRY R. CARTER, Ph.D., MIFireE

One of my favorite Biblical parables comes from the book of Matthew. It involves the story of the feeding of the multitudes. This is a simple story involving the incident where Jesus went to an isolated place to get away from King Herod, after Herod had slain John the Baptist. Many people followed him to that place. And it was at that place where he and his disciples are said to have fed the multitudes from an initial ration of five loaves of bread and two fishes.

It seems simple enough. Take 5,000 people, add five loaves of bread and two fishes. And you have instant brunch. It seems now, dear readers, that people in the political world of Baltimore are going to attempt a similar feat, but in a reverse order. They are going to take away seven fire units and 140 personnel, and then, as if by magic, there will be no impact on the quality of fire protection. Wow!

As might be expected, there is just a bit of disagreement between the city administration and the firefighter’s union in that great city. The city is shutting four engine companies and 3 truck companies. Their position, as espoused by Mike Maybin, the department’s Assistant Public Relations Officer is that, "… (W)e feel that we will still be able to give adequate coverage." That is a fine statement. But what is the basis for that feeling of confidence.

It seems that Mayor Martin O’Malley has this clever little group in his city that he relies upon for ideas on how to make government operate more efficiently. In a May 10, 2000 article on Firehouse.com it was stated that, " … (A)s part of the Presidents' Roundtable/Greater Baltimore Committee (GBC) review of city government, Mayor Martin O'Malley charged a IO-member team, led by James L. Shea and Joshua C. Matthews, with making recommendations to enable the Fire Department to better perform its mission."

Are any of these people fire or EMS experts. No, they are local business people who were asked to take a look at the fire and EMS service delivery system in Baltimore. And I would guess that they are both successful and supporters of the Mayor. Oh, great, people who know precious little about what we in the emergency service’s world do, coming in to tell us how to do our jobs better.

This reminds me of the time in Newark, New Jersey when the brilliant city business administrator, who is now a judge, asked the city engineer to take a look at the fire department fleet. When I asked if I could go over the manner in which engineering development studies were conducted, my request was met with less than stirring approbation.

Wonder of wonders, he said that we had more than enough equipment. A few years down the road, the Newark Fire Department is playing a continual game of musical fire trucks, as units that should have been replaced, continue to break down. But of course the Engineering Department said we are alright, so I guess we are. It is tough to focus on that thought while you are waiting for a distant pumper to respond in place of the nearby unit that is out of service for maintenance.

Needless to say, the union people are not happy. "We think the mayor and administration are totally wrong," said Rick Schluderberg, Vice President of Local 734, International Association of Firefighters in a June 18 Firehouse.com article. "The elimination of these stations leaves the city in danger, if several emergencies are going on at once."

Why do people who know nothing about what we in the emergency service do, presume that they know what is best for us? Can you imagine how offended those people on the President’s Committee would be if I showed up at their front door and began to tell them how to run their businesses? But since we are only the fire service, we poor misguided children must be taken by the hand and shown the way by these brilliant titans of business. This is sheer nonsense.

These outsiders looked at the raw data and saw that there were fewer fires, so that must mean we need less fire equipment and fewer fire personnel. Does this mean that those fires that occur in the areas formerly covered by the closed units will require fewer firefighters to control? I mean, if there are not as many fires, then the fires that do occur will obviously know that they will need fewer people to extinguish them. And will the fire be so kind and considerate as to wait until the fire units that have further to travel make it to the scene of the emergency. I don't think so.

What these brilliant outsiders fail to recognize, along with far too many of our cohorts in the fire service, is that there is one critical thing that never varies. The one element of the firefighting equation that will never vary is the physical element of the standard time and temperature curve. All things being equal, a fire will grow to its flash over phase according to a strict set of guidelines that was established many years ago. If you get to the fire in a pre-flashover stage, the fire is usually easily extinguished. If not, well…

A primary goal of adequate fire suppression should involve putting enough water onto a fire so as to cool it down before its heat production reaches a self-sustaining flashover phase. So you see, each additional second that it takes a fire department pumping unit to reach the scene of an emergency, is one second less that the fire has to wait until flashover.

Another element that is frequently overlooked in these equations is the concept of risk. It is one thing for a non-fire service person to say that increasing the response time to a fire is acceptable. It is another for a women sitting on the third floor window sill of a burning building with her baby in her arms and smoke curling around her. How many extra coughs does that choking woman have to endure until help is at hand? How much lung damage to that infant is acceptable?

I would propose a practical lesson for the President’s Committee. It would be my suggestion that each of the people who recommended the cutting of fire fighters be taken to the burn building at the Baltimore Fire Training Center. They should be placed upon second floor window sill, while the instructors are inside stoking up the smoke. And they should be made to wait for help, just like the citizens of Baltimore.

As the smoke curled around them, the instructors would call off the time in 30-second increments. These wise individuals could then ponder the true difference between the 3 minutes it once took Engine Company #128 to reach a residential home in South Baltimore and the time it will take for their stand in to make that trek. I do not know about you, but I have seen rescues where we could not have withstood another second tacked onto the time clock of life.

Another sales pitch from the wizards of the city administration says that the current practice of playing fire station roulette can now come to an end. For those of you out there in the real world, fire station roulette comes from the closing of different fire stations on different days of the week. Rather than hire enough people to do the job correctly, people in the community are put at risk by the random act of chance. Your life is dependent upon the day that you have your fire.

This type of plan has been in place for years in Newark, but it has been done for so long that it has even been institutionalized. Three companies are closed on every shift, but different units are closed on each of the four shifts. I have had to wait at the scene of a roaring blaze for an aerial ladder to steam across the city to my aid. And I have had the privilege of watching a truck company laddering a building and then waiting for a far-away engine company to arrive with the much-needed water that would allow us to enter the flaming structure.

A corollary part of the report stated that the EMS units in Baltimore were overwhelmed. The people on the Presidents Roundtable recommended that more ambulances be placed on the streets. They suggested that ambulance working hours be altered to allow for peak time staffing of units. What in the heck is peak time staffing? Do ambulances and their crews suddenly materialize like the coach and horses in Cinderella? And do they turn back into pumpkins and mice at midnight when they are not needed any longer?

I have had it with people who know nothing about fire protection telling me that five loaves of bread and two fish worth of fire protection will feed the Red Devil of Fire. Until a full-scale fire risk study of the City of Baltimore is performed by personnel trained and expert in this area, the citizens will continue to be at risk because of the meddling of political cronies.

To top this whole sad mess off, the wizards in Baltimore City Hall are closing those companies and stations on the day that Firehouse Expo comes to town. I know that I shall rest easier in the Inner Harbor. Because I guess the city didn’t want to cut any companies where the tourists stay. I am sure that this fact would cause me to rest easier as a citizen of Baltimore, knowing that the Mayor cared more about the tourists than the residents.

Folks, I do not make these stories up. I just call them as I see them

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