HARRY R. CARTER, Ph.D., MIFireE

It is with a swirling mix of many emotions that I sat down at my computer to compose this week’s missive to the masses. It is the Holiday Season, a traditional time for joy and deep reflection. It occurs this year at the convergence of a number of different religious holidays. I offer my personal best wishes to you as you celebrate your chosen set of holiday traditions.

The reason I say that I write with mixed emotions comes from the joy and the sorrow that I have seen pass through my computer with an increasing frequency lately. Friday evening December 15, 2000 was a memorable time for the American Fire Service. It was at that time that Congress finally got off of its collective duff and authorized a figure of $100,000,000 for the funding of the FIRE Bill. I am pleased to see that the fiscal spigot has been opened ever so slightly on the financial funding fountain for the fire service of our great nation.

At the same time as our national fire organizations were proclaiming victory in the battle for federal bucks, other wars of a far lesser known status were and are being fought across our country. While we are celebrating the small present received last week from the great Federal Santa, other people are suffering from the Grinches that regularly attack the fire service, whether it be Christmas time or not.

Two of those places that really need to receive a hit of the old Christmas Spirit with the full force of Miracle on 34th Street and It’s A Wonderful Life, are the City of Chicago, and the City of Brotherly (HA!) Love, Philadelphia. But I digress. Let me first share the joy of the FIRE Bill victory, before moving on to a couple of groups that really need our prayers this year.

Like many people who fought long and hard in the battle for Congressman Pascrell’s FIRE Bill legislation, I would have preferred to see some more bread placed upon the altar of our existence. However, this is no time to be an ingrate. Given the size of the fire service, I am going to say thank you to Congress for the approximately $75 that is due to come my way. As a matter of fact, in the spirit of this joyous holiday season, please send my money to the folks in those little towns throughout America that are literally begging on the street corners of their respective communities for money to buy gasoline and diesel fuel for their vehicles.

In that same spirit of the season that celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ, I ask all of you whose needs are being met to let the first several rounds of FIRE Bill funding go to those in the greatest need. As quickly as the e-mails were blazing throughout the computers of our fire service this morning, something else was happening. The minds of the Grant Writers in our larger fire departments were going to work on how to get their share of the funds.

Let us be realistic about this. The people who really need this type of funding will probably never see a penny of it. Maybe I am a cynic, but my experience tells me that the old phrase, "… money goes to money…" is probably going to apply in this case.

I read Ken Burris’ words in Firehouse.com’s coverage of the funding authorization. I know Ken personally and believe him to be an extremely reasonable man. I have no reason to doubt him when he says that, they were in the process of providing initial planning for the program. But no one in the department has read the final language of the Act. When we see the final bill then we can speak a little more intelligently about it."

I would like to offer my two cents to Mr. Burris at this time. Let us make sure that the grant application mechanism provides a way for those smaller, rural fire departments to apply. Understanding that many may not be able to come up with the matching fund percentage, we must still insure that the process is simple and easy to understand.

Reading between the lines, what I am saying is do not make the application so hard that it will require a Doctorate in Fire Service Administration to understand the lengthy government gibberish generally associated with grant-writing. And if your fire department is one of those that can afford to devote the labors of one staff member, or more, to writing grants, then you should take a bye on the first round of this program. Let the truly needy take a shot before the truly greedy rush forward to stick their snoots in the trough of government.

I serve as a Fire Commissioner for a comfortable, suburban Fire District. We are able to raise the funds for our needs via taxation. Our fire company does a little fund-raising to buy a number of nice perks for the members. At the district level, we create a reasonable budget and live within the constraints that it mandates. For us to apply for funding at this time would be the height of myopic greed.

However, I am equally certain that my words will stick in the craw of every me-first administrator out there in America. I shall now devote one sentence to describing how those people think: ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, ME.

Let us adopt the true spirit of Christmas and give to the fire service needy, wherever they might be.

And speaking of the Christmas Spirit, let us all hope and pray that someone can bring a fresh blast of wisdom and compassion to the hard-hearted denizens who dwell in the bowels of the Firemen's Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago. In an action worthy of the infamous Ebanezer Scrooge, twenty-five widows of Chicago firefighters who died in the line of duty have been told their pension benefits will be cut nearly in half on Dec. 31 when a 63-year-old retirement age is reinstated for police officers and firefighters.

I guess it is the contention of the louts and cretins at the pension board that those guys would have had to retire when they were 63 years old anyway. Well Duh! I don’t know whether they would have stayed on the job until they were 63 years of age or not, but I can be fairly certain that none of them wanted to die. None of them wanted to die just so that their widows could collect a pension. It is just this type of flawed thinking that causes me to wonder which part of the under world we dredge up to find people such as the heartless denizens of the pension board in Chicago.

It isn’t bad enough that these brave ladies have had to live without the love and support of their husbands who died serving the city. It isn’t bad enough that they had to raise families by themselves. They now have to suffer through a cut in pension benefits, because of the arbitrary and capricious decision of a bunch of City Hall bureaucrats. What an absolute crock!

Let me share some of the sadness that I saw portrayed in the article written by Chicago Sun Times City Hall Editor Fran Spielman in her November 30 column. "I feel like they ripped my heart out," said Vicki Waliczek, whose 46-year-old husband, Theodore, died of a heart attack in 1982 while fighting a fire at a Southwest Side restaurant. "My husband gave his life for this city. I got a degree in programming after he died and put three kids through college myself. I was finally looking forward to enjoying my retirement. I wanted to travel and go back to school. I wanted to spend time with my grandchildren. Now I can't do any of that."

Under the mandatory retirement provisions, widows' benefits will be reduced in the year when their husbands would have turned 63. Imagine the callousness and depravity that leads bean-counting bureaucrats to reduce the pensions of people who have already lost their husbands. What is the next step for Chicago pension board officials. Are they going to buy up the mortgages of widows and toss them out into the snow drifts of winter time Chicago.

As our fire departments ask more from us each day, we would all like to think that someone will be there for our families if, God forbid, we meet out final fate. If you live in Chicago, you may want to think a little harder. I offer to the citizens of Chicago that there is a monster running amuck in your city during this joyous Holiday Season. Wake up folks. If they can do it to the brave widows of our firefighters, who is next? Rise up as one and march on City Hall. Push past the guards at the front door, race up the stairs and begin pounding on Mayor Daley’s door. And do not stop until this ridiculous pension cut is killed.

By the way, if you are in the mood to pound on a Mayor’s city hall door, get up to Philadelphia and join Lieutenant Mary Kohler of the Philadelphia Fire Department as she stayed camped out on his door step in Philadelphia City Hall. She has been across the hall from his office for nearly two weeks. She has vowed not to leave until the Mayor comes around to the union’s way of thinking.

It seems that Mayor John Street called for an appeal of a recent arbitrator’s decision that, among other things, provides hospitalization and sick leave benefits for Philadelphia firefighters that have contracted Hepatitis C. Lt. Kohler is suffering from Hepatitis C, which she claims she contracted in the line of duty as a Philadelphia firefighter and paramedic.

The City of Philadelphia seems intent of throwing their sick people to the wolves. Local #22 of the International Association of Firefighters has labored long and hard to protect is many members who have been stricken by this incurable liver disease.

According to Firehouse.com, Kohler, an 11-year veteran in the Philadelphia Fire Department, is one of about 200 local firefighters and paramedics who claim they were infected with the sometimes-deadly blood-borne virus while working at emergency scenes in the 1980's and early 90's. The city has refused to recognize Hepatitis-C as a work-related injury. On Thursday, the two briefly spoke during a radio interview at City Hall. Kohler says the mayor said he was concerned over her health and wanted her to leave City Hall. She says he even agreed to meet with her but made it clear he would not change his position on the contract appeal.

It would seem like the folks in Hollywood overlooked a lot of first rate candidates when the picked comedian Jim Cary to play the Grinch in Dr. Suess’s "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Mayor Street, or any of the pension board commissioners would have made a fabulous, real-life selection as Grinches. As a matter of fact these are the kind of Grinches who are not content to steal Christmas. They want people to suffer for each and every day of the other 364 days of the average year. (365 in a leap year.)

Can you imagine the fear that dwells in the hearts of Lt. Kohler, and the widows in Chicago, as well as the more than 200 other Hepatitis C sufferers in Philadelphia? As you pause to open the many presents that Santa Claus will deposit under your tree, take a moment and think of these people and their battle with an intransigent government.

If it is your way, when you come to the end of this article, pause and utter a prayer. Within that prayer you may wish to ask that the seeds of a miracle be planted in the hearts of some very hard-hearted individuals. The parts of my prayer are simple, and to the point:

Let Mayor Street, and all people who govern, see the way to the path of righteousness. Let he and they work to see that the dedication of their firefighters needs to be met and returned by dedicated support of them in this, their time of desperate circumstances.

Do not praise us in public and damn us by your actions.

Let the Firemen's Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago of Chicago learn the simple lesson taught to us by the Biblical Golden Rule, which urges us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

Let those who are writing the rules for the first round of FIRE Bill funding remember to make it simple, so that the truly needy can come to the table.

Having said all of this, please accept my personal best wishes for a joyous, safe, and happy holiday season.

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