There are a great many things to discuss this morning but let's quickly catch up with recent events from Sunday:
Sadly, The First Ever Shawnee Firefighter Died In The Line Of Duty.
Tragically, on Sunday Night there's yet another killing on Swope Park after a rolling gun battle.
Midtown standoffs marked the weekend.
It looks like we're getting closer to Kansas City Summer Mayhem. Hold on to your helmet. More links and content on the way . . . Stay tuned.
Photobabe: Fernanda Motta
Here's another case when the media NEVER CHALLENGES fire administration field calls or training to see if the various city fire departments have their shit together.
ReplyDeleteA case where media never second guesses cops or firemen.
BUT THE FACT REMAINS...why did this fireman die on such a scene??? Were his colleagues not where they should be to back him up, were they not well trained, or does shit just happen?
You'll NOTICE NO MEDIA EVER SECOND GUESSES FIRE TRAINING! Why?
Did that guy die because that department didn't train enough? Are small departments not trained enough?
If media isn't asking these questions like to do cops on some serial killer in south KC, then they aren't doing their jobs and their noses are too far up the fire administrations asses to do their jobs!
Media just sucks up to police and fire too much...and so if there are institutional problems with police and fire, the media will be the LAST to raise them, for fear of pissing off those who give TV their best pictures night after night.
Dear Mr. Tony: Thanks for continuing to keep the city posted on homicide totals--something lots of people around town want to forget. Trend lines not looking good for black neighborhoods: Bloodbath in black sections of KCMO that began in spring 2008 is continuing; at this point in 2007 we were at 33 homicides (22 black/11 white/asian/hispanic); now we are at 40 homicides (32 black/8 white/asian/hispanic). This at a time when all over the country homicide totals in black sections of cities are have been declining since 2007. (NB: These figures are from annual reports of KCPD--their website continues to have computer problems.) Sincerely, Respectfully and In Christ, Ernest Evans
ReplyDelete@Radioman:
ReplyDeleteThe media may not question the training and tactics of the Shawnee FD, but you better believe that the Shawnee FD will. It is in the nature of the people who do emergency services to question everything when an incident turns bad. The goal is to do everything to the very best level of quality, and to save lives, first, and save property, second (in the case of the fire department. EMS, hospitals, PD, have different goals...)
As to what happened in this case, it is too early to tell. Each firefighter on the scene will have to be interviewed. The radio transmissions will be listened to, transcribed, and analyzed. The Command decisions will be looked at. Safety equipment will be examined. You may never hear of any of this, as the fire service tends to keep it private, a tendency that may not be always for the best.
Try this: Go to the front door of your house. Blindfold yourself. Try to go around your house going into every room. For true authenticity, crawl on your hands and knees with a 20 lb pack on your back. If you did that pretty good, try it at someone else's house. Make sure it is in a different neighborhood, with a different floor plan then your own.
If the media wants to jump in and do some work quantifying the training of the Shawnee FD, and documenting its extent and nature, I suspect that the fire service would be open to that. The point of my comment is to remember that the fire department will do plenty of analysis of its own. The second point is that what FF Glaser was trying to do is not as easy as it may look.
@Earnest Evans--you need a blog. I always find your comments temperate and sensible.
You tell us what you HOPE will happen. And maybe it might. But my experience over a decade or 3 is that both cops and firemen tend to investigate per their preconceived notions.
ReplyDeletethere are certain assumptions on which are based the postulates of right and wrong.
Like this one. When told there are lives inside a severely burning building, it's acceptable for firemen to heroically enter buildings at their own risk.
if no lives are at stake, let it burn, don't let it spread. don't risk your people. just put it out.
As well as all the strategies which are firefighting school assumptions. when fully involved, when roof involved. single story, multiple story. easy entrance.
Whatever in the firefighter's book of fighting strategies.
And yes, there may be no answer about this one, for shit does just happen and we must just sigh and give what console we can to his family!
War is like that too, but doesn't happen once a year. it happened fifteen hundred times a day in 1944 in the Pacific during island invasions in places like "Okinawa". Exhale, beloved uncles who died before marrying and giving us cousins.