Your Thoughts on Kentland, Rosenbaum and Fire Safety for Seniors

A reminder that there is a place to give us your view on anything you see here. At the end of each entry you can click “comment”.

I have received a few responses directly on the blog and a lot more of them by email. Since you haven’t seen the ones that come directly to me, or may not have looked at the posted comments, let me share a few of them.

On the Kentland controversy, Anonymous wrote:

It’s about time that Kentland has begun servicing the community the way that every other station has. Kentland has this view that they (the members) are better than the other surrounding stations. I truly hope that EACH person volunteering at Kentland takes a deep look inside himself/herself and realizes the reason they don’t want the ambulance because THEY don’t want to serve the community in which they visit.

Chris looks at it very differently:

I’m an EMT with a volunteer fire dept., and I absolutely refuse to get on an ambulance and transport a patient. There are too many people that use EMS as a taxi service. It’s total BS that we cannot refuse to transport non-emergency patients. I’ll gladly step up, and help anyone, who is having an emergency. I will do anything for a brother or sister firefighter.. But I will not take a drunk to the hospital. EMS Should be private and run by the Government. People call 911 for a taxi, then assume it’s free, and they don’t pay the bill.

On the firing of a DC firefighter over the David Rosenbaum incident, Rick wrote:

Dave: When is someone going to get the facts out concerning the Rosenbaum case? From what I understand, the testimony at the trial board, from medical folks, indicated that there was not an open head wound, no blood, and that type of injury would have been very very difficult to determine on the scene (ie: outside of a definitive care facility). This has been a witch hunt from the beginning and it appears that the Chief upped the penalty just to feed the sharks. Maybe you could obtain the transcripts and/or the rulings from the trial board proceedings. You’ll find that, again, from what I understand, the IG’s report was seriously flawed. However, that is the report that everyone, media included, uses as a basis for all that is evil with Emergency medical care providers. This leads me to my second comment regarding the alleged “culture of indifference” regarding emergency responders to medical incidents. Although it’s catchy cliche, it is currently far from the truth. There was a time, not so many years ago, EMS response times and service provision was abysmal. For better than 10 years, this department had researched, discussed, argued and been involved in endless hearings regarding the concept of a Dual Role/Cross Trained force. This included Paramedic Engine Companies and firefighter staffed EMS units to improve service delivery. This concept finally started to crawl into reality in 2004 and has slowly been evolving throughout the department. Since then, response times have been the best the department has seen in it’s history. EMS was essentially a “3rd” service in the past and it failed miserably. I hope we don’t repeat that mistake.

In response to Rick, I did see the case made about the trial board’s findings versus the IG’s in Local 36’s May 2nd statement. I think it is a good idea for us to FOIA the trial board material. I am not sure that will be successful.

On a completely different topic, Bob Jarboe, one of the many Jarboes who have populated local fire departments, contacted me about an idea he had that may be of interest to those working on the fire safety problem with senior citizens. This comes after last week’s fire that killed Craig and Pat Reynolds of Kensington.

Bob points out that many seniors have repair people and others visiting their homes to provide services. He thought there might be some merit in training them to point out obvious fire safety issues they notice during their visit.

While we like to think of this as the role of firefighters, often the firefighters only see the inside of these homes when it is too late.

Taking Bob’s idea a step further, what about some major chains that send service people to the home, having trained people who can offer a free fire inspection when they are doing an appliance or other installation?

Some people might think they are being a bother if they call the local fire station for an inspection, but might be willing to have it done if it was offered free with the new washing machine. I can see some of the pitfalls in doing this, but is it a completely stupid idea?

On that topic, Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett, County Fire Chief Tom Carr, Kensington VFD Deputy Chief John Thompson and Kensington Mayor Pete Fosselman are taking part in a town meeting about the Baltimore Street fire. An important topic will be senior citizens and fire safety.

It is being held this Thursday, May 17th, at 7:00 p.m., at St. Paul’s Methodist Church, 10401 Armory Avenue in Kensington.