Another view: Statter is wrong – the professor is right

A few days ago David Gustavson challenged me to a debate on Twitter concerning my blasting of a Washington Post op-ed piece about the fire service by Professor Fred McChesney (Truly one of the dumbest articles ever written about firefighting & The Washington Post should be ashamed for publishing it).

In short, I thought McChesney left out major realities that undermine his premise. Gustavson thinks I am the one who got it very wrong. He took me up on his offer to express his views in more than 140 characters.

FYI, David Gustavson is a graduate of Folsom Lake College in California. He has an Associates of Science in Fire Technology and is a certified EMT-Basic.

Look up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, no it’s straw man!

By David Gustavson 

First of all I would like to thank Mr.Statter for allowing me to respond. Social media can be a bit hard to get your point across. I take issue with how Mr.Statter presented his argument. On one hand he states that “It’s not so much he disagrees with Professor McChesney, it’s that based in the world we live in his solutions are comically ridiculous”.

Read STATter911 response to Fred McChesney

What does that mean? So he agrees to disagree? Mr.Statter spent the rest of the article lambasting Professer McChesney and asserting that there are not enough people to recruit. If the problem is recruiting then why do rural areas spend money on career firefighters? Shouldn’t they invest the money in a different area (i.e. training, recruitment, and equipment)?

The fact is there should be no shortage of money whatsoever. Take a look at the Congressional Research Service report on “Assistance to Firefighters Program: Distribution of Fire Grant Funding” . In the report it details funding allocated to state and local areas for Fire and EMS. Not to mention there’s several different organizations to search for grants and donations as pointed out by the National Volunteer Fire Council.

Where do we look for recruitment? The answer lies within the city/town government officials. If a city or rural area can’t get volunteers say due to age, then why not put an incentive on becoming a volunteer? Use grant money to put up a scholarship fund. That would attract younger generations to become volunteers. Create a Fire Explorer program as several departments do here in California. Teach them to get involved with the community. Broaden the fire district lines so more people are available to recruit, are just a few examples. In my opinion, that would solve the issue of needing warm bodies to fill out the ranks.

Solutions are the key to problems, not just pointing out that someone is “dead wrong”. At least we can all agree that fire sprinklers do save lives. Now that we found something we agree on, let’s move forward with solutions and hopefully I have presented some good examples above.

Thanks again, Mr.Statter.