I think we all know why this item is titled "Flames".
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May 8, 1999 - Oklahoma City tornadoes - 45 dead - 3,000 buildings lost - let me guess - how many extra people did OKC FD have on duty that day? - ?ZERO? - what was their response times? - how long did it take to inspect all of the damaged structures for trapped people or fire hazards? - ?6 hours - ?12 hours -?18 hours????
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May 3, 1999 - interesting news items -
New York City FD - 93% white - NYPD - 67% white - 13% black - 17% hispanic - Corrections - 21% white - 60% black - 17% hispanic - NYC in general - 50% ?white - 25% black - 25% hispanic - new state law may be filed to require all police and fire new hires to live in city.
Fatal Car Crash in Phoenix - immediately called into 911 by cell phone - newspaper says - firefighter jumps frantically on metal of drivers door to reach (deceased) victim in rear seat after adults and children removed from front seats (paraphrased).
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April 23, 1999 - Columbine High School - Littleton, Colorado - ?35 shot by gunmen (?15 fatally) - multiple bombs involved - occurred on 4/20/99 - The Littleton Fire Chief, in an interview on www.firehouse.com said that the initial response was 2 ambulances - he also said that the fire engine at the rear of the building was driven there by SWAT people.
What I saw on TV was - no hoselines run - critically injured people laying amongst EMS personell without any apparent transport capability - at 1652 (EDT) hours, kids were running past Engine 11 at the rear of the building and 3 or 4 firefighter looking guys were huddled there at E11 the whole time apparently - 1703 hours, 12 SWAT guys pull into rear of school to protect ?40 kids (previously only ?5 police officers were outside the rear of the school without body armor or longguns).
I also saw three apparent accomplices of the perps go strolling by the media/EMS staging area before they were confronted by 1 police officer. Could have been 20 or 30 media or EMS people killed right there.
Apparently no one learned anything from the Waco Massacre - if FD cannot pull hoselines into building, then have SWAT do it - if SWAT cannot do it - have bomb guys do it - if bomb guys cant do it, then you are screwed. Someone who dies in a fire is just as dead as someone who is killed by a gunshot or bomb.
There was an author of a history book on NPR recently - his book was about World War 1 - his conclusion was that "men like violence". Maybe this will answer a question or two for you about the motives of the perps.
Dear news media - do not broadcast the fact that multiple people are hiding in a building when gunmen are running around inside - do not show live video of SWAT ops - do not run endless senseless stories about senseless events - are you gonna run endless stories about the helo crash in Tennessee? - "The Tennessee Massacre"? The Arkansas DUKW sinking - ?"The Arkansas Massacre"? (Have you not heard that all the publicity about violence further motivates others to emulate the perps?)
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April 21, 1999 - some fire magazines are now calling for support of a Federal piece of legislation that would give $1 billion per year to the fire service - how much do you want to bet that local support of FDs will drop by $2 billion when Federal support increases by $1 billion? See the other file on this website with the full text of this bill.
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April 18, 1999 - Please tell me that 911 does not slow down emergency responses. Please tell me that when 911 calls get routed to the state police HQ, and then passed to the local SP barrack, and then routed to the local sheriff, who then calls the local fire red phone net, - that this setup is really better than not having any 911 service at all.
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April 17, 1999 - I sent an Email to ISO (Insurance Services Office) at the website (?www.iso.com or www.iso.org) about 6 months ago asking for the data or research they use to justify their Fire Department requirement / Grading Schedule / Protection Grading - no reply yet - is it possible that the requirements are GROUNDLESS!!!!
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April 17, 1999 - My guess is that 25% of the fire losses in the USA are due to a lack of cooperation between adjoining fire departments. Just think of a square being surrounded by 4 other squares and then consider how much of the total area is near the boundary lines - it is around 25% - that is where my number comes from. (This is a really rough approximation - any statistics, geometry, or math geniuses out there to back me up on this?)
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April 17, 1999 - And the people who most commonly die from the lack of FD cooperation are children, elderly, and disabled - right? Think about it.
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April 17, 1999 - Dear California - get rid of the strike teams and task forces - smarten up your mutual aid system - think about the 40 year old reason behind the formation of strike teams (2 or 4 channel radios). Centralize all mutual aid coordination to one laptop computer in Sacramento!
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April 17, 1999 - 2 engines plus one ladder are no longer the best FD response to a building fire - the best response now is "4 firefighters per trapped victim" above the minimum required to do a timely rescue and fire knockdown. Or something like that - you figure out the numbers - a house fire with zero people trapped should not get the same response as a house fire with 20 people trapped!
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April 18, 1999 - per the Friday, April 16, 1999 1000MDT Incident Mgmt Situation Report from NIFC in Boise ID - Port St Lucie FL has a 2400 acre fire that destroyed at least 45 homes - no further info - no airtankers, helos, engines, nor handcrews sent by NIFC - this apparently means that Florida never requested any backup air support from the Natl Interagency Fire Center in Boise - perhaps FL thought they could handle the situation with their Air Natl Guard helos and air assets from neighboring states.
April 17, 1999 - I just read the Florida Department of Forestry (FDF) situation report for 4/15/99 - it states that 1 Natl Guard helo from Lakeland and one airtanker (which made 1 drop) worked the 500 acre fire in Port St Lucie that damaged or destroyed 70 buildings (unknown size on airtanker) - the latest TV news said that ?60 homes were destroyed - it was a very busy fire day in Florida - a quick look at the FDF sit report shows that ?3 airtankers and ?3 helos were in use statewide - they probably could have put 30 more tankers and helos to good use.
May 2, 1999 - Subsequent fire reports from NIFC show 2 or 3 helos working each of the 3 or 4 federal fires in progress in Florida in the week following the Port St Lucie fire - looks to me that helos were slow to mobilize in Florida and Port St Lucie paid the price.
April 16, 1999 - ?50 homes destroyed by wildfire in Port St Lucie FL. I wonder how many heavy airtankers were moved into the area before the fire by NIFC in Boise? None? - minus twenty? Nobody could see this coming right? Brush fires all week long - counties shopping around the state for mutual aid - Disney World actually sending rigs off the compound - yet, no C130s or other large airtankers sent to Florida - great!
Woooooh! - hold the phone - maybe there were some airtankers on the job - but how many? what size? when did they arrive? where did they come from? It is the same old question - were forces mobilized quickly enough?
Did you know that each air to air missle fired by the USA costs $200,000 - at least the newer ones do. And those cruise missles are a ?million bucks each. Imagine how many pumpers that could buy! (I just started to read an article in AWST magazine about how the USA is ugrading to $200,000 air to air missles so they can catch up to the Russians - yup -catch up to the Russians with their newest fighters and missles - everyone might think that we are way ahead of everyone else, but maybe we aint)
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April 16, 1999 - The three primary pictures that I have seen on the incident where 3 firefighters were killed at the church fire in Texas show : #1 - 2 guys with yellow helmets with chainsaws on the roof - next two photos show 2 guys with yellow helmets plus 1 guy with a red helmet that has fallen thru the roof - obviously there is a major time differential between photo 1 and the other photos - please keep that in mind when you evaluate whether or not anyone should have been on the roof versus the fire conditions depicted.
Before anyone gets bent out of shape over me commenting on this : did you have any problem with the photos appearing in various fire mags in full color?
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April 16, 1999 - A while back, New Hampshire got a heavy airtanker and two handcrews when they had Class 5 fire weather - this week they had only 1 additional brush truck with 2 guys to handle ?3 days of Class 5 fire weather.
May 2, 1999 - still is Class 5 in New Hampshire and no federal airtankers have shown up yet - there are 2 patrol planes and 1 helo in operation now. Making progress!?
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April 16, 1999 - Russell MA Deputy Fire Chief dies of a heart attack at woods fire - why didn't the Natl Weather Service have any info at all about extreme fire conditions on their website or radio broadcasts on that day? There is a subject heading for Fire Weather at the Boston NWS website and I would bet that they receive additional funds to provide fire weather forecasts - why wasn't it done?
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April 16, 1999 - if the FCC wont accept APCO 25, and this will delay use of the new 700Mhz freqs for 4 years (as reported in the APCO Journal) - then why doesnt everybody in APCO and the FCC just retire and go away! Why don't public safety workers wise up and realize that their leaders are clueless when it comes to radios!
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April 16, 1999 - The February 1999 edition of QST Magazine on page 81 has this to say about the Florida wildfires of 1998 that destroyed 300 homes - "One major problem encountered by the department (FL Dept of Forestry) occurred during the Florida fire disaster last year when interagency communications failed." "Amateur (radio operators) could be especially useful in covering ""pockets of communications outages"" for firefighters on the firelines." ""Firefighters like good radio coverage"". How much do you want to bet that Florida Dept of Forestry has fewer radio channels in 1999 than in 1998? (Said another way - I have not heard of FDF making any major radio changes in the last year.) (Florida is one of these states where public safety agencies use low band, high band, UHF, UHF-T, 800Mhz, 900Mhz, and cellular and PCS and ?satellites - everything under the kitchen sink).
May 2, 1999 - FDF just released a press release looking for volunteers to help them with their communications problems - good luck.
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April 16, 1999 - What is going on at the US Fire Administration - it takes them 18 months to put out a press release on their July 1997 report documenting the fact that the USA has the 2nd highest fire death rate in the world. Now, they are at least two months behind schedule on two radio reports that were supposedly due for publication in February of 1999.
Did they really spend $200,000 for a model of a little city?
April 18, 1999 - posted on Fire-L : from Steven Hill at the US Fire Admin - Arson Info Mgmt Software is not Y2K compliant - USFA will no longer support it - replacement being ?developed.
May 2, 1999 - Farmington Michigan Fire Chief is now running the Fire Academy or USFA or something - looks like a palace coup is underway and the Carrie Brown is being slowly dislodged from the throne.
The Year 2000 - Y2K did not cause computers to crash all around the world - thankfully the computer experts had fixed all of the systems in time - Worcester Massachusetts lost 6 firefighters in a warehouse fire in December of 1999 - approximately 100 firefighters died in the line of duty in the USA in 2000 - approximately the same number died in 1999 - there seems to be more young firefighters dying on duty from heart attacks
24Jan01, 2001 - Metheun MA - 4 frozen hydrants in a City of 50,000 people - 2.5 story wooden house heavily damaged - no serious injuries
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Last Update - April 23, 1999 - May 2, 1999 - 5/8/99 - 9/11/99 - 25Jan01 (some 2000 + 2001 info added)
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