Truly one of the dumbest articles ever written about firefighting & The Washington Post should be ashamed for publishing it

Sep 6, 2015

Another person has come forward to tell us that because the number of fires has decreased in the United States we need a lot fewer paid firefighters in the nation’s firehouses. This time the writer is a professor of law and economics at the University of Miami. His name is Fred S. McChesney and the article was published in The Washington Post on Friday. We’ve all read a lot of very similar opinion pieces over the years, but I have to say this may be the dumbest.

It’s not so much that I disagree with Professor McChesney. It’s that, based on the world we live in, his solutions are comically ridiculous. This column is so misguided, beginning with its basic premise, that The Washington Post should be embarrassed for posting such drivel.

How can such a learned man rely on a few statistics and not the realities of the world, much less the realities of firefighting?

Read Professor McChesney’s article

Let’s start with McChesney’s overall theme:

” … many cities and towns should consider throwing out the very concept of the career firefighter and return to the tradition of volunteers.”

Professor McChesney, I have a question for you about this lofty idea. Did your statistics explain why the number of career firefighters has been rising as the number of fires fall? I can assure it isn’t just because the IAFF does such a great job of lobbying for more career firefighters.

I didn’t need a highly paid professor to find the answer to that question. Any volunteer or amateur researcher armed with Google could figure it out: Career firefighters are replacing volunteer firefighters who are no longer there (here’s a link for you).

It’s hard to get people to volunteer in today’s world. Any of the many articles in that link can explain why. (IMPORTANT NOTE: This not an anti-volunteer message. There are still plenty of thriving volunteer organizations. It’s just a reality check about the overall challenges facing the volunteer fire service in the U.S.)

Volunteer fire departments are desperately trying to recruit new members and, unfortunately, many (but not all) of them aren’t succeeding. This is quickly becoming a crisis for hundreds of communities around the country. A lot of small towns wish they had the means to hire career firefighters to fill in for the vanishing volunteers. In some communities it’s so dire that many responding volunteers are in their sixties and even seventies with no replacements in sight.

So professor, without a magical influx of volunteers, who will respond to fires when the number of career firefighters is slashed to meet your formula?

Here’s another secret your beloved statistics don’t reveal. When your house burns it doesn’t know that there are a lot fewer fires in the United States. Fires still burn the same way they always have (actually that’s not exactly true, but I will explain in a moment). This means it still takes the same number of firefighters to suppress the fire as it did before there were fewer fires.

Let me put it another way for you professor. When your house is burning with your family trapped inside, do you want just one or two firefighters arriving on the first fire engine or would you prefer three or four followed by other similarly staffed engines and ladder trucks? How do your stats answer that question?

And let’s get back to how fires burn these days. Do your stats show residential fires are burning hotter? Do they show how modern construction promotes faster fire spread within and outside the home? Do they show how often firefighters today arrive on the scene of a burning single family home in the suburbs and find two or three other homes on fire? Of course not.

This leads to my final real world question for you professor: When your neighbor’s house is burning, the vinyl siding on your home is melting, and your house is two minutes away from igniting, would you like more or fewer firefighters showing up on that first engine?

Now professor, lets talk sprinklers. You believe sprinklers help justify cutting the ranks:

When they (building fires) break out, sprinkler systems almost alwaysextinguish the flames before firefighters can turn on a hose.

You got something right professor. Sprinklers are damn effective. They save lives and property.

The firefighters you want to get rid of are among the biggest advocates for residential sprinklers. They fight for them even though people like you suggest it’s a reason to eliminate their jobs.

In the real world, mandating residential sprinklers is still enormously difficult. The problems are money and ideology. Advocates in the fire service and elsewhere continuously fight the home building lobby and their big contributions to politicians. And they have to deal with those who oppose sprinklers because it runs counter to their beliefs about deregulation and government intrusion (that wouldn’t include you, would it professor?).

In Maryland, right now, the fire service (career and volunteer) is among those fighting builders trying to roll back residential sprinkler requirements.

Professor, I’m not likely to convince you that replacing career firefighters with volunteers holds about as much water as a very leaky fire hose. You’ve been fighting for this since at least 2002 (looks like the Washington Post published a 13-year-old rewrite). How could I expect some schmuck with a fire service blog who barely graduated high school to convince a college professor with degrees in economics and law that he’s wrong?

So humor me and let me float this idea. Don’t just promote a fantasy world filled with volunteer firefighters who take the jobs of their career brethren. Also use your academic credentials to save lives. Lobby for mandatory residential sprinklers. Start by writing a letter to Maryland’s political leaders telling them that gutting mandatory sprinkler requirements is as stupid as trying to replace career firefighters with a phantom firefighting force that doesn’t actually exist in 2015.