Defective fire departments - ignorance or ego at work?

Once upon a time there was a house fire near the city of Newark Ohio that should inspire a new way of regulating the activities of volunteer fire departments.

I do not understand exactly why Newark Township did not respond until almost after the fact. I've read all the news reports, but that only confuses me more. Maybe the reporters don't understand the cause or they can't say, at least not in a way that I can understand.

They seem to be tip-toeing around and behind the various egos within the township and/or city fire departments. It's long past time when someone came out from behind the mumbo jumbo and tells the rest of us what really happened on the morning when a Newark Township home belonging to a Newark city firefighter was heavily damaged by fire.

You don't have to be a fireman or to understand the exact nature of a "run card" - on which this travesty is being blamed - to know that someone screwed up because of ignorance or ego. Perhaps local governments are also open to those same ignorance and/or ego charges

Either way, the loss of this home demonstrates that the regulation of fire departments is defective. That can be fixed here, at the city and county level, or maybe we'll fool around until the state seizes this opportunity to create more power and more bureaucracy for itself.

Better that we get the real problems out in the open here, and then solve them. Let's do it before another home is unnecessarily damaged or destroyed.

911 response time under fire

The house fire on Manning Street 2/5/07, the subject of a photo I posted here became major news because 1) it was the home of a city fireman and 2) it took 11 minutes for the first fire truck to arrive and 3) the last fire department to arrive - after 16 minutes from the time of the 911 call - was the volunteer department which held responsibility. All this brought a boat load of comments on the Advocate's web site and buried deeply within all that was a proposal posted Tue Feb 06, 2007 5:12 p.m., which reads, in part: "I suggest that all of the political leaders, particularly the Commisioners, explore creating a Licking County Fire Department. By combining revenues from throughout the entire county and matching (them) with the needs of the county, a better fire and EMS service could be created. ... By having several jurusdictional areas being protected by one department, you can eliminate some of the resources. Now, spread that over the entire county and, instead of run cards that contain different departments (each of which have to be toned out seperately), you now have the resources to be deployed for each type of incident, not unlike large, multistation fire departments. Also, a 'Fire Board' could be created to oversee the operations of the county fire department with represtatives from the various communities, the fire service and laypersons from the county. The stations could be staffed with paid people and supplemented with part-timer and volunteers. Now you have the closest 'station' rather than the 'department' responding..." Read the whole thing at this link.