Posted on 03/23/2021 12:31:16 PM PDT by L.A.Justice
DETROIT – Members of the Detroit Fire Department have reached out to Local 4 Defenders with their concerns about the allegations of firefighters drinking while on the job.
On Sunday night Trenisha Hawkins’ car was struck by a Detroit fire engine.
Hawkins’ sister was sick inside the home and when Detroit Fire Department Squad Six arrived at the scene, a 26-year-old firefighter behind the wheel of a $500,000 rescue vehicle struck Hawkins’ car.
“It’s horrifying,” said Local 4 legal analyst Neil Rockind. “Those rigs are like tanks.”
Rockind said the entire fire crew has to be ready to save lives and the driver of the fire engine has to be sharp.
Detroit firefighters are constantly on the run, saving lives and property. Members of the firefighters union said this one incident doesn’t show that the department has an alcohol problem.
Other Detroit firefighters -- their identities confirmed by the Local 4 Defenders -- have claim otherwise.
“I am a firefighter for the city of Detroit. All of the information is completely correct,” said one Detroit firefighter. “We need a change as a department. Our guys are routinely drunk on calls.”
Another confirmed firefighter said not all fire crews are bad, “but they have a lot who party at work.”
The Detroit Fire Department chief Robert Shinske is heading up the investigation into the firefighter driving drunk, but members of his own department point out that Shinske was suspended from the department in 2017 after being caught on camera parking a Detroit fire vehicle outside a bar in Dearborn.
Detroit’s fire commissioner has vowed to investigate Sunday’s party that led to the firefighter driving drunk and crashing a fire engine.
Rockind said the city is opening itself up to big legal trouble if it has known about on-duty drinking and hasn’t addressed the problem.
Maybe CHICAGO FIRE will have an episode on drunk firefighters in the future...I sometimes watch CHICAGO FIRE...
The fire truck came from a party when it crashed into a woman's car...
A supervisor took the firefighter for a drug and alcohol test. One source said the result was a bodily alcohol content of .108, but other sources said it was much higher.
$500,000 for a fire truck? That is expensive...
As my Dad used to say, nothing's too good for the taxpayers!
Being somewhat familiar with these, I'll say fire rigs are typically custom builds and have a lot of hand labor.
“Rockind said the city is opening itself up to big legal trouble if it has known about on-duty drinking and hasn’t addressed the problem.”
Your higher officials in any bureaucracy rise to their positions via kneepads and backstabbing. These management levels fill up with the worst of the worst. To expect these political animals to do anything but cover up wrongdoing is foolish. Cover-ups are the usual state of affairs in govt.
And when you do occasionally get a decent mid-level manager the filthy employees union is there to protect the worst employees. In addition the decent manager will receive no end of shyt from his superiors (worthless suck@sses all) for making waves.
The bigger the city, the worse.
They spend their days cooking for each other, washing the truck, shining the pole and getting drunk.
Not a bad job.
Between the orgies and drinking - being a firefighter must be a tough job.
Of course its 500 kilobucks. It has a ladder and a big pump
Not really. That seems kind of cheap. The average police car is pushing $100,000.
I once met a Baltimore firefightere who told me their technical rescue unit went a year without a call.
It's terrible when a drunken engine crashes.
Was it drinking diethyl ether?
Maybe somebody was feeding too much Firewater to the Drunken Engine.
Population of Chicago 2,693,976 as of July 1 2019.
Even with Baltimore having only 22% of the Chicago poipulation, that seems like a long time to be totally idle.
The cost of a brand new fire truck will greatly depend on the type of fire truck as there are a few different kinds of the market. A simple bush fire truck can cost $90,000 to $150,000, whereas a platform aerial truck with an outfitted engine and all of the necessary equipment can cost close to $1+ million. Most fire departments, from what we researched, will pay a finalized price of $600,000 to $950,000, again, depending on its outfitting and the type. As each department will have its own specifications depending on the local environment and demands, the costs can greatly vary.
Yea, I was surprised too. It was a technical rescue team so I don’t suspect they go out all that often.
Flip side is Detroit. They are a very busy department. I saw a documentary about them. One pumper had 125,000 miles on it.
Probably just a big old truck full of specialized rescue equipment called Heavy Rescue or such. No pumps or firefighting stuff.
My town bought a new ladder truck 7 or so years ago.
$978,000
In the United States, technical rescues will often have multiple jurisdictions operating together to effect the rescue, and will often use the Incident Command System to manage the incident and resources at the scene. National Fire Protection Association standards NFPA 1006 and NFPA 1670 state that all rescuers must have a minimum of first aid (infection control, bleeding control, shock management) and CPR training to perform any technical rescue operation, including cutting the vehicle itself during an extrication.
Maryland has mountains, that are not really really big mountains, except for maybe Backbone Mountain which reaches an elevation of 3,360 feet, they have the ocean (but some distance away), as well as, rivers. The Intracoastal Waterway, and Delaware River are close by. They have auto accidents which require extraction. They have construction, though not sure how often structures actually collapse there, though I would suspect that some trenches occasionally collapse.
If they are that under utilized and serve only Baltimore, then they need to expand the region they cover. 8>)
The municipality of Detroit had a 2019 estimated population of 670,031, making it the 24th-most populous city in the United States.
So yeah, you would think they would be about the same, but then of course we are talking apples & oranges by comparing technical rescue with just plain fire dept. activities.
It’s Detroit, MI for goodness sake...
No need to make a big deal out of this...
If you do (according to the Kenyan negro / mulatto), you are a racist, misogynist, and disaffected...
IOW, you are a deplorable...
“led to the firefighter driving drunk and crashing a fire engine.”
We need to ban this dangerous drug.
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