WILL WASHINGTON FINALLY LISTEN?
BY BILL MANNING
For more than 10 years, politicians and pundits have claimed, with great flourish, “The `sleeping (fire service) giant` has awakened!” At first, we were enthusiastic, tantalized by images of Firefighter Gulliver striding confidently into the Land of Lilliput, D.C.
Over time, though, the ring of those words sounded hollow and dim. We began to cringe at the cliché even before it left the speaker`s mouth. We became wary of being patronized, because we knew the fire service really was fast asleep, as far as Washington was concerned.
In truth, the fire service has not helped itself. It is carved up by egos and divergent agendas into disparate “national” and “international” fiefdoms that do not speak with one voice, so the lobby is absent or diluted. And it is victimized by its own righteous can-do spirit, bordering now on martyrdom, which helps fix the perception that fires and emergencies handled by the fire department are strictly a local problem rather than a national plague demanding a serious federal commitment. Like Boxer in Orwell`s Animal Farm, the firefighter generally has responded to the “do more with less” political credo of the `80s and `90s with the resigned attitude, “I will work harder!” Washington knows this just as well as the local officials and fire service management do.
And Washington, by and large, would keep it that way, despite our horrendous annual fire loss statistics and the fact that the fire service, from a response perspective, is reaching critical mass.
For a brief time, in the early to mid-`70s, the fire problem received national attention. The period yielded the landmark fire service document America Burning, which defined the fire problem and called for sweeping reforms; and federal legislation, Public Law 93-498, the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974. This law established the United States Fire Administration, defined the role of the United States Fire Administrator, and established the National Fire Academy under the direction of the Administrator. The idea was to create a national fire prism that spread light outward onto state and local jurisdictions.
The momentum was short-lived. President Carter`s 1979 move of taking the USFA out of the Department of Commerce and placing it under the control of the Federal Emergency Management Agency commenced the rape and plunder of the Federal Fire Programs. Over the next several years, the fire service fought bitter battles for the survival of the USFA and NFA. The Federal Fire Programs survived the threat of zero-funding but sustained gradual cuts nevertheless and never returned to the strength they had going into 1979.
Though she proclaims herself a long-time champion of fire service issues, current USFA Administrator Carrye B. Brown has not improved the situation. Brown was appointed to the position in 1994 with the strong backing of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, International Association of Fire Fighters, National Association of State Fire Marshals, International Society of Fire Service Instructors, and others. I was one of the few individuals–if not the only individual–to express publicly my concerns over the qualifications of Ms. Brown for the Administrator position. I believe the “top fire official in the nation,” as she likes to call herself, should know the difference between a pike pole and a pitot gauge and carry more relevant educational credentials than degrees in home economics and child development. If such loose standards were applied to, say, the appointment of U.S. Attorney General, the law enforcement community would go ballistic. But this is the fire service, and the fire service organizations, particularly the IAFF, perhaps just eager to exert influence on the neophyte administrator, lined up behind staffer Brown and what they called her surefire ability to “navigate the halls of Congress.” The sextant must have broken along the way.
The fire service got for its symbolic national leader an able congressional staffer who had worked on the handful of fire service legislation enacted over the past two decades. Some might argue it got a fire service friend, too. But if that friendship were to include by definition a strong advocate for advancement of the Federal Fire Programs; a national spokesperson for including the fire problem in our national agenda; and a champion for securing desperately needed federal resources to benefit the understaffed, undertrained, and overcertificated firefighters within her ever-diminishing dominion, then you`d have to wonder.
FEMA and everyone else is quick to call on the local fire departments and various assemblies of fire service personnel for all manner of natural and man-made catastrophes. They are quick with platitudes, but when it comes time for the Washington roll call, FEMA forgets its “built-in army” funded almost exclusively with local tax money, bake sales, and so forth.
Consider these points compiled by the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1983–the union members at the National Emergency Training Center in Emmitsburg, Maryland–in a paper published March 13, 1998, entitled Building a Fire Safe America: The Campaign for a Stronger USFA:
Between 1989 and 1994, there were 500 fatalities in natural disasters. In that same period there were 28,710 fatalities from fires. Yet FEMA`s budget request for fiscal year 1999 is $3.07 billion for natural disasters and $0.29 billion for fire.
Annual economic loss is $38 billion from fire compared with $13 billion for natural disasters, yet 91 percent of the FY99 FEMA budget request is for natural disasters (nine percent is for fire).
The USFA is scheduled to receive five percent of FEMA`s total budget activity in 1999.
“The erosion of FEMA`s support of the Federal Fire Programs and its neglect of USFA programs has contributed to the increasing residential fire death rate since 1994.”
“The [total] cost of fire … is an astronomical $115 to $154 billion annually.”
1996 federal law “requires that all Federal agencies develop specific program performance objectives by which their success will be measured. If a program fails to achieve its objectives [which, for the USFA, is a five percent reduction in the loss-of-life rate from fires and `related hazards`], its administering office is subject to elimination by Congress. FEMA is putting the USFA in jeopardy by its failure to support the USFA`s mission and intent of [the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974].”
“Program cuts have resulted in this disturbing fact: USFA research into life-saving sprinkler technologies and residential application has all but ceased.”
“The USFA Firefighter Health and Safety Program annually requests and receives approximately $1,000,000 …. Between 1993-1997, approximately $800,000 annually was reprogrammed for other FEMA/USFA activities …. In FY98, only $175,000 is allocated for Firefighter Health and Safety Program projects.”
The paper makes numerous fact-based arguments that clarify the sorry state of the USFA and lack of FEMA commitment to the fire problem and makes strong pro-fire recommendations. (Fire Engineering will reprint this paper in the June issue.)
The Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974 has been virtually ignored for 18 years. FEMA/USFA is continuing a shameless disregard for the law.
The USFA administrator`s role within FEMA is minimal. Brown is a nonpower. She has little credibility within FEMA headquarters. It appears she is moved not by her 1.1 million firefighters but by the strings of FEMA Director James Lee Witt, “Mr. Emergency Management,” whose desire to keep fire in the time-out corner is documented.
Mr. Witt and Ms. Brown are really quite a pair. His apparent aim to keep his army in bare feet is perfectly complemented by her self-fulfilling quest to be a nonentity.
If Brown deserves the heat she is now feeling from the much-circulated “White Paper” complaint issued in January by the NFA Program Chairs (see Fire Engineering, April 1998, page 63), then so does Witt.
Reaction to that Paper has itself been a political mess. It was easy to detect a sense that the chickens were scrambling to avoid the ax before it came down. “Insiders” made at least six attempts to discourage our publishing the White Paper. Cynthia Wilk, chairperson of the NFA Board of Visi-
Continued on page 90.
