CREDIBILITY
CAPITOL CONNECTION
United States Senator Wendell Ford—one of the two or three most respected and powerful men in the Senate—listened to all of the experts who testified one winter afternoon. “I believe the fire marshal,” he said. And that was that.
We live in a time when many of the leaders of our society have lost credibility. Physicians, bankers, government officials, police officers, teachers, supreme court justices, business and labor officials, and even clergyall have been tarnished by scandals and questions about their integrity and have suffered a general loss of public trust.
Firefighters, for the most part, are still America’s heroes. A uniformed firefighter testifying before a congressional committee is treated with respect and is believed. The fire service has no greater political asset than its credibility.
But ask the physicians, bankers, cops, and all the rest what it is like to lose that credibility. They will tell you that credibility is easy to lose and impossible, not just difficult, to regain.
In my view, there are at least three issues facing the fire service today. Any one of the three has the power to strip firefighters’ credibility away.
ISSUE #1: JOB DISCRIMINATION
Minorities and women still play a very small role in the fire service. I am unaware of any other branch of government, any industry, or any institution that hasn’t made significant strides in recruiting women and minorities and advancing them through the ranks. Hey, it’s 1993! Everyone else is trying to figure out how to accommodate disabled workers whilemaintaining the racial and genderrelated progress of the past 20 years.
For a minute, forget that job discrimination isn’t nice or legal. Of the six members of Congress who mean the very most to the fire service, two are African-Americans and one of them is female. One represents a district that is overwhelmingly minority. Another one is a woman and a leader on civil rights issues, and not one of the six would stand for—much less defend—job discrimination.
Many urban departments are under, or have been under, court orders to hire and promote minorities and women. They get all of the heat here, but that is hardly fair.
Very, very few volunteer departments recruit minorities and women firefighters. (Women EMTs are easy to find and do a wonderful job.) Volunteer departments are the training ground for many career firefighters.
The problem is, you say, “We can’t find any good ones.” “We had one but he was a lazy bum.” “They don’t really want to join the department.” “Hey, we’ve got a great one, but even he says that none of the others are worth a damn.”
But the fact is that all of the excuses in the world don’t count. The moaning and the excuses didn’t work for any of the other organizations that resisted hiring and promoting minorities and women. And they won’t work for the fire service, either.
ISSUE #2: FIREFIGHTERS WHO ARE ARSONISTS
“Firefighters who are arsonists.” That sounds like an Oprah Winfrey show, and we’d better hope this “time bomb” of an issue never becomes one.
A firefighter intentionally and maliciously setting a fire is no different from a squad of L.A. cops beating up on Rodney King. We Americans expect more from our heroes. We don’t really care what the mitigating circumstances might have been, and we don’t believe that we’re seeing the work of a “few bad apples.”
A few bad apples? Everyone’s favorite movie, “Backdraft,” was about a firefighter-arsonist.
When Congress hears testimony on arson legislation this year, they’ll hear about firefighters who set fires. The Los Angeles Times, in December 1991, wrote about three firefighterarsonists and added that they “are believed to be among hundreds nationwide driven to firesetting by boredom, vanity, economic gain, or a nagging desire to be accepted as one of the guys.” Ugly, ugly words.
In Pennsylvania, a state legislator thinks that firefighter arson is enough of a problem to push for mandatory jail sentences for convicted firefighters.
This is the issue that makes folks wince. In my travels around the country, I often ask chiefs and fire marshals about firefighter arson, and every one of them has a story.
- There were the young volunteers who kept a logbook of who set what fire. They were trying to convince their chief that they knew how to fight fire—they just needed some fires to show their stuff.
- There were the firefighters who took a bus across state lines, set a fire, returned by bus, and then responded as mutual aid.
- There were the firefighters who were laid off because of city budget cuts. They set fires to demonstrate how much they were needed.
ISSUE #3: FIREFIGHTERS AS POLLUTERS
It no longer matters why you pollute the environment or who you are. No one is allowed to pollute.
A Missouri fire chief told me recently that the state environmental protection agency requires him to remove all asbestos and other “nasty stuff” from the roofing and interiors of abandoned houses he burns for training purposes and to purchase a SI00 burning permit. “I told them to (several expletives deleted) themselves,” he said.
Another chief in an Arkansas town bragged about how he had washed some “gunk” down a storm sewer after a hazardous-materials incident. “We’re not equipped to handle this stuff,” he said.
In Nassau County, New York, the fire academy was forced to remove virtually thousands of yards of contaminated soil from the training ground.
Schools, hospitals, farms, the neighborhood laundromat and gas station, and even churches have been cited for pollution and subjected to reams of bad publicity.
Halon will be pulled from the market because of environmental concerns, and carbon dioxide may be next. Dry chemicals —they even sound bad. If someone invented water today and tried to get it approved for public use, I doubt that federal environmental and food safety agencies would let them sell it.
When it comes to environmental issues, don’t look for fairness or logic. Look for shelter.
THE THREE BIG ISSUES AND SEVERAL SMALLER ONES
Boozing it up in the fire house … the 350-pound guy reading dirty magazines in front of bay number two … the hot-rodding to and from fires—none of these actions help much. But job discrimination, firefighter arson, and pollution each have the potential to rob firefighters of their credibility before Congress, state legislatures, and the public.
Job discrimination, arson, and the environment are not just potential public-relations disasters. They are real issues pushed by real people, and the fire service may be in real trouble if it ignores anv one of them.
