"Wheres The Fire?" Article says too many Firefight

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DAILY EXPRESS

Where's the Fire? 

by Gregg Easterbrook 

   

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Only at TNR Online | Post date 08.09.04    E-mail this article 

After witnessing the valor of the New York City Fire Department on September 11, it is impossible not to admire firefighters: The words "firefighter" and "hero" are going to be synonymous for a long time. For the John Kerry campaign, there's a second level of firefighter admiration; the International Association of Fire Fighters was the first major union to back Kerry, and stayed in his camp when the chips were down. Kerry has responded by constantly praising firefighters and by calling for federal legislation to fund 100,000 more firefighters. Firefighters were prominent on the Democratic National Convention stage in Boston; firefighters and fire-union officials often appear with Kerry or John Edwards at campaign stops. Yes, it's impossible not to admire firefighters. But it's quite possible not to want more of them. Indeed, most cities in the United States need fewer firefighters.

Though firefighters have numerous duties, their chief task is to fight building fires--and building fires are in a long-term cycle of decline. In 2002, the most recent year for which statistics are available, there were 48 percent fewer building fires in the United States than in 1977, though there were substantially more buildings. From 1977 to 2002, civilian deaths in fires declined 46 percent and deaths of firefighters declined 38 percent. The trends of fewer fires, fewer civilian deaths, and fewer firefighter deaths hold for almost every year of the past quarter-century except 2001, the year of September 11. Stricter building codes, the proliferation of smoke detectors, and the fact that most new commercial structures and many new homes have built-in sprinkler systems has led to a big drop in the incidence and severity of building fires.

Once, fire trucks roared out of firehouses on a regular basis; now, a fire company may go days or even weeks without a fire to respond to. For instance the fire department in Green Bay, Wisconsin, reports that in 2003 , it received 389 fire calls--an average of one fire call per week for each of Green Bay's seven fire stations. Some fire departments have begun sending fire trucks along on ambulance calls, just to keep firefighters in practice manning their trucks and moving out fast. The decline in building fires should be credited in no small part to firefighters, their unions, and fire departments: All three spent decades pushing for smoke detectors, built-in sprinklers, and tougher building codes. The results have been extremely beneficial to the public. But this leaves firefighters with less to do.

Yet Kerry wants more firefighters, and he's not the only one. The Safer Fire Fighter Act, which would add 75,000 federally funded firefighters, has 15 Senate co-sponsors including Kerry and Tom Daschle, and 53 House co-sponsors. (The bill concerns civic firefighters, not the wilderness wildfire problem, though sometimes civic fire departments do end up fighting wildfires.) Many in Congress think their sense of gratitude to firefighters for their brothers' sacrifice on September 11 should be expressed by more federal funding. For the Kerry campaign, his proposal to add 100,000 firefighters to communities echoes Bill Clinton's backing of federal funding to put 100,000 more policemen onto the streets, an initiative that both helped reduce crime and won praise for Clinton. But many cities really needed more policemen. It's much less clear that more firefighters are needed, except in a few core inner-city areas where fire departments are chronically understaffed and overburdened by minor medical calls.

Some of the impetus for more firefighters stems from a 2002 report from the National Fire Protection Association, the standards-setting body of the firefighting profession, that declared that 75,000 to 85,000 new firefighters are needed. This report formed the basis of the Safer Act before Congress, and buttresses claims by Kerry, by the International Association of Fire Fighters, and others that big staffing increases are required. Also, the NFPA report has caused some cities and towns to begin seeking more firefighters, owing to litigation fears--if someone dies in a building fire and the local fire department did not meet the new NFPA standards, some municipal attorneys fear, the city or town may lose a liability suit.

Yet the basis of the main finding in the NFPA report is not that there are insufficient firefighters to stop fires. Rather, the report makes the assumption that all fire trucks should be staffed with four firefighters, while most fire departments today assign two or three firefighters per truck. If you assume that a fire truck should never roll with less than four men (most firefighters are male), then the fire departments of the United States are understaffed. But it's an open question, at best, whether every fire truck really needs four firefighters, especially considering how often the trucks end up responding to calls that don't even involve a fire. The NFPA report contains dozens of tables of facts and figures about firefighters, fire departments, budgets, and equipment, but the decline in most kinds of fires (wildfires are the exception) basically goes unmentioned in the 160-page NFPA document, since this tends to kick the chair out from under calls for a big increase in the number of firefighters.

Currently, according to the NFPA, there are 266,100 paid career firefighters and 822,850 volunteer firefighters in the United States--more than a million total firefighters, a pretty sizeable number even if a career firefighter is much more valuable because he's better trained and faster to the scene than a volunteer. In 2002, there were 1.7 million fires in the United States: less than two fires per firefighter over the course of the year. While some individual fire houses may be overworked, on the whole today's firefighters are underworked--which is good!

But aren't firefighters on the front line in the war on terror? In the aftermath of September 11, many, including proponents of the Safer Act, have begun to argue that all fire departments must now prepare to handle terrorist attacks, hazardous materials, and biological contaminants, while being ready for catastrophic city-wide fires and explosions. The Council on Foreign Relations went so far as to declare in 2003 that firefighters and other first responders are "drastically underfunded"--this is after three years of big homeland-security budget increases--and complained, among other things, that only 10 percent of U.S. fire departments had equipment to handle a large building collapse. But even in an age of terrorism, large building collapses are likely to remain rare: Most firefighters will never see one. True, the detonation in a United States city of a crude atomic bomb, the terror attack we should fear more than any other, is something no fire department in the country is ready for. But no fire department will ever be ready for such a dark hour. Meanwhile, the chance of any given firefighter or fire house ever being asked to respond to a terrorist attack is incredibly small.

The principle job of a firefighter is to fight fires, and for that, the United States already has plenty of firefighters: bearing in mind that some communities have more firefighters than they need while some inner-city fire departments are understaffed. In many urban areas, firefighters would benefit from improved social and community services that would shift non-emergency medical calls and nuisance calls off their duty lists, freeing up time to train and prepare for hazardous-material or biohazard problems. But the argument that the country needs a huge increase in firefighting personnel seems weak. Where there's smoke, there may not be fire.

Gregg Easterbrook is a senior editor at TNR. 

[Stench60 29]

Great job ferreting this one out, Lord knows The New Republic website is not a regular stop for me, I've always been partial to National Review myself.

Since the magazine is one of the house organs of the left/ Democratic Party it makes very interesting reading between the lines. It manages to bring up that great feel good failure of the Clinton Administration; the COPS program. The program that neither gave you a 100,000 additional police nor a reduction in crime. The crime control techniques pioneered by Bill Bratton, Jack Mapple and spearheaded by Rudy Giuliani, the so-called "broken window" theory along with a decade of get tough prosecutions and sentencing accomplished a hell of a lot more than the unlamented COPS program.

The fact is while some cities did not participate at all in the program (I believe New Rochele was one) because at the end of federal funding (3 years or thereabouts) they would be stuck with the additional officers and all the expenses that went with them, most PD"s did participate in some form or another. The catch was that 95% of the time the money was used to temporarily fund additional officers until the money ran out , these officers then filled the posistions of officers who had resigned, been fired or retired. This resulted in a net increase of zero in the size of the department and its' budget.

The same would take place with the fire service, if not even more so. Of course the article quotes the NFPAs' " call " for 85,000 new firefighters, and also the IAFFs' same cry. What isn't stated is the fact that the IAFF packed the NFPA meeting to force through their agenda. And of course every " municipal attorney" is running scared.

"even if a career firefighter is much more valuable because he's better trained and faster to the scene than a volunteer. "

I won't even dignify that quote with a response.

I honestly believe that the general mebership of the IAFF has been sold down the river by their leadership. Nothing comes out of this magazine unless it receives the imprimatur of the Democratic National Committee. What's being said is, hey we've made all these promises in public but we know your rank and file aren't voting for the Democratic ticket anyway so all that money isn't going to be wasted on firefighters or fire programs but on things that really matter to the hardcore base of the Democratic Party ie. AFDC, Section 8, affirmative action programs, enviromentalist nonsense etc. etc. etc. Oh, and we’ll make sure Harold Schaitberg gets a nice cushy job for his undying loyalty.

These are my opinions, whether you agree or disagree, if I got you to sit down and think for a minute, I did my job.