Hypocrisy Regarding Local Fire Departments: Guest MINDSETTER™ Tom Kenney

Hypocrisy Regarding Local Fire Departments: Guest MINDSETTER™ Tom Kenney

There’s no group of people I dislike more than disingenuous politicians…that is except the disingenuous department heads who lie through their teeth for their bosses even when they know they are lying, just to keep their jobs.

In both cases, the victims are the people they’re supposed to represent and serve. In both cases, the victim is the truth.

The biggest difference is that department heads are usually people with direct knowledge and experience in the matters that their department handles. They know the truth and the facts regarding the areas of their expertise. Politicians know what they want the truth and facts to be. You don’t appoint a plumber to oversee your electrical needs and you don’t appoint an electrician to oversee your plumbing needs. You appoint experts in the particular field to oversee a department in which you (the person who appoints them) have little to no knowledge about so that they can run it on a day to day basis and advise you of the particular needs of that department.

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And in no department is it more important for the politician to defer to the department head than in public safety…military, police or fire!

These are areas where no individual who has not served in the field has any knowledge or understanding of the specifics of the field or understanding of the consequences if not run correctly. And lives are at risk on a day to day basis!

If the example above regarding hiring an electrician to oversee a plumbing department seems preposterous to you consider the City of Providence assigning a career policeman as the Chief of the Fire Department. This was done over four years ago and that police officer is still in command of the fire department with no plans to step down or appoint a career firefighter any time soon.

Providence Public Safety Commissioner and Fire Chief Steven Pare doesn’t necessarily lie for his mayor but he lies to keep his job and his bloated salary. About five years ago I wrote that the Providence Fire Department was about 100 men short of staffing requirements. He promptly called me out as a liar in the Providence Journal. Within a year of this public denial that the department was short-handed he hired an additional 100 plus new firefighters. And that is just one of multiple downright lies that he’s stated regarding the fire department since he’s been Commissioner.

The mayor of New Bedford and the Town Administrator of Middletown are guilty of lying to the public regarding their fire departments also. And as I stated earlier, however, their Fire Chiefs are even more guilty for lying to the public in order to keep their jobs, because they know that what they’re stating is anything but the truth.

In New Bedford, the fire department has been suffering through “brownouts” for over 10 years now. A brownout is the closing of random individual fire companies on a day to day basis. The result of this is that a citizen never really knows whether or not the closest fire station and its firefighters are on duty on a particular day or night. This could add as much as an extra 4 minutes to the response time of the first in fire apparatus. There have been a number of instances of this type of delay over the years. Who knows how much of the property loss or civilian injuries could have been avoided had apparatus not been closed that shift.

In the last three months, two elderly residents have lost their lives to fire in New Bedford and the closest engine company happened to be “browned out” for the night. Can anyone state unequivocally that either of these two people, or both, would have survived had the fire companies been staffed that shift? Of course not, but if they were fully staffed these citizens would have stood a better chance due to the quicker response times. That is undeniable. Or so you would think.

As expected, the Mayor of New Bedford, Jon Mitchell, denied that the closing of these companies had any adverse effect on the outcome of the fire and the deaths of these elderly victims. Unfortunately, the Chief of Department, Paul Coderre, mimicked the same false narrative of the mayor despite the fact that his knowledge of fire behavior and fire-tactics should have made it impossible for him to at least allow the idea that delayed response time had a negative effect on the fighting of the fire and possible search and rescue operations. This set of circumstances played itself out after each fatal fire, one in October and one in December.

To me, a 35 year veteran of the Providence Fire Department, this is a gross disservice to the fire service in this area. Obviously he made these statements to keep his own job. That is not the responsibility of a leader. A leader will put the true facts on the table and let the chips fall where they may and not cow-tow to his immediate supervisor (the mayor) or his own job security. When he swears to protect and serve it is the citizens he is bound to serve, not the mayor!

In Middletown, the circumstances are slightly different but the results are pretty much the same. The Town Administrator states that there’s nothing wrong and the Chief of Department swears to it.

Middletown depends on a single fire station that houses a rescue company and an engine company but only four firefighters and a shift Captain on duty at any given time. In the case of a fire call or even a second rescue call their department depends exclusively on Mutual Aid from Portsmouth, Newport or the US Navy Base.

On New Year’s Eve, all of Middletown Fire Department’s resources were tied up on a single rescue call when another call came in to their dispatch center reporting a structure fire. A Newport Engine Company was the first staffed fire apparatus to reach the scene at a considerable delay. Two residents of the dwelling were seriously injured and were eventually transported to the hospital. The same denial occurred after this incident with Town Administrator stating that the delay was not a factor in the injuries or for the greater destruction of property and the Chief of Department, Peter Faerber, backing him up. This is totally unacceptable.

It is sad, but true, that the average citizen expects to be lied to by their politicians. Those same citizens, however, should be able to count on the regular working people in government to tell them the truth. Most of the time this is what happens. Once someone takes a political appoint things somehow change. Their employment no longer depends solely on their job performance, but also on keeping their appointer happy with their blind support. If this person doesn’t have a strong sense of integrity he/she begins on the slide down the slippery slope that eventually makes them untrustworthy.

The same type of hypocrisy exists in our assigning “expert” status regarding fire departments.

Ken Block is our self-proclaimed fire service expert and the media has pretty much coroneted him as such despite the fact that he’s never ridden on a fire truck or spent a single day in a fire station.

They, the media, don’t trust anyone in the fire service because they believe that everyone in the fire service has something to gain by proclaiming things are unsafe as they are today.

Well, I’ve been retired for over three years now and have absolutely nothing to gain by writing about understaffing and unsafe standards except the satisfaction of calling out these charlatans who call themselves experts or public servants for the sake of safety and the truth.

While no amount of staffing can guarantee that no one would die as a result of a fire in their home it stands to reason that a fully staffed department which reduces response times and has enough firefighters arriving on the scene in a timely manner greatly increases the odds of survival of any potential victims unable to exit the building on their own.

Isn’t that what you would want for your loved ones and family members?

 

Tom Kenney

Secretary, PPFRA (Providence Police and Firefighters’ Retirement Association)