Quick Takes: April 10, 2012.
A special video response to STATter911.com and our readers: Remember the Citizen Comment of the Year video I ran last week (here it is)? The woman heard calling the firefighters a derogatory name, and her son, who shot the video of the firefighters handling a house fire, have been in contact with STATter911.com. Both have been blasted by many of our readers for their criticism of the fire department and by me (and others) for mom’s word choice. I didn’t see enough in the original videos to begin to form any judgment about fire department operations. The family continues to maintain the fire department is poorly trained and believes this latest video (above) somehow proves their point. We don’t pretend to know any of the local political battles and, in fact, did not even know where that fire occurred until now. It turns out it was in Greene County, Pennsylvania. Here are some of the details.
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Lt. Robert Neary and Firefighter Daniel Sweeney: We delayed this week’s Quick Takes a day to concentrate on yesterday’s breaking news out of Philadelphia. Our coverage of the five-alarm fire and subsequent collapse at a furniture store that killed two Philly firefighters and injured three others can be found here, here & here.
Foreshadowing the tragedy in Philly: Ryan Briggs had visited the abandoned building where yesterday’s fire started and wrote a column for the blog Hidden City Philadelphia just 11 days ago about the neglect of the former Thomas W. Buck Hosiery Company. Here’s the story.
West Coast close call: An RV fire in San Diego sends out a fireball taking firefighters by surprise. Click here for the video.
East Coast close call: A propane tank on the roof at a Brooklyn fire explodes as a firefighter approaches via aerial ladder. Here’s that video.
And another close call: Firegeezer has Steve Roth’s pictures of a firefighter almost going through the roof at a house fire on Friday in Adams County, Pennsylvania.
Fire chief killed in collapse at restaurant fire: The fire in Parsons, Texas early Saturday morning took the life of Chief Kenny Fox at the Decaturville Fire Department. Reports indicate that Chief Fox pushed others out of the way when the roof came in. His son, also a firefighter, was on the call. Here’s more.
UL ‘bringing science to the streets’ on basement fires: UL’s latest firefighter safety research project is on basement fires. There’s an online interactive training program along with six technical reports that provide suggestions for tactical considerations. Here’s the link to all of the material.
Citizens grab fire department hose at car fire: One of our regular readers wrote after seeing this video from Texas that it looks like the citizens have graduated from the green line. Well, not quite. The bystander who initially tries to take things into his own hands found the pipe a little too much to handle. Check it out.
Virginia chief moves cross country: My friend Rob Brown, who was the first fire chief for Stafford County, Virginia, says his job is done here (is a fire chief’s work ever done?) and is moving next month to California to become chief of the Fresno Fire Department. The details from Katie Thisdell at Fredericksburg.com.
Letting the public in on why a new fire engine is needed: Glenn Usdin’s FireTruckBlog.com has the story of one fire department that gave the local news media a very blunt assessment of the fire engine they are about to replace. Click here.
Fireground audio and early video from Virginia Beach: If you haven’t seen and heard this yet from Friday’s jet crash at an apartment complex, make sure you click here to listen and watch. There’s more video here.
Audio & video from Baltimore rowhouse fire: Check out the video, audio and details posted by IAFF Local 734 from a fire on Saturday on Druid Park Lake Drive.
House fire in Newark, NJ: Raw video from a fire last month on Clifton Avenue.
State found no wrongdoing by Maine medics: Remember the story at the ski resort where the nurse from Canada complained she was left on the side of the road by the ambulance crew treating her dying husband? Curt Varone at FireLawBlog.com has details from the investigation by Maine’s Division of EMS.
Virginia golf tournament: The 7th Annual Virginia Public Safety Foundation Golf Tournament, is scheduled for Wednesday, April 25, 2012. Join golfers from all over Virginia at Raspberry Falls Golf Club in Leesburg, Virginia. Click here for the registration form and here for the PSF website.
Training in Prince George’s County, MD: This sounds like a good event: Lifesaving Leadership is a two day seminar put on by the Prince George’s County Fire/EMS Department on May 11 and 12 featuring some of the programs from the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.. It is quite inexpensive. Check it out here. Also, if you are interested in being a sponsor of this event click here. For more details contact PGFD’s Risk Management & Safety Office at pgfdos@co.pg.md.us.
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Norman “Doc” Zaffater: We are a little late in learning of the death earlier this month of Norm “Doc” Zaffater from Shreveport, Louisiana. Doc, an orthodontist by trade, had also been a firefighter and a well known fire buff who co-founded Shreveport’s Signal 51 Group. We got to know Doc just a little bit through a series of emails that began almost five-years-ago when we started posting some of the wonderful old fire films he had on YouTube (Click here for the Zaffater archives of almost 300 clips). Here’s the tribute from the Signal 51 Group website. Above is a 1990s TV news report on the Signal 51 Group that features Norman Zaffater.
