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Posted on 07/09/2025 8:25:34 AM PDT by bitt
"What's important is that I'm not the last African American fire chief."
The Austin Firefighters Association intends to hold a vote of no confidence on Fire Chief Joel G. Baker over his failure to deploy advance teams to flood ravaged Kerr County ahead of the destruction. Now, it has been revealed that Baker, the first black fire chief in Austin, prioritized diversity goals shortly after coming onto the job.
He's been accused of not deploying Austin's specialized teams ahead of the destruction, despite having been asked by the state to do so, because Texas was delayed in reimbursing the department for $800,000 in past deployments.
In 2020, after just a year on the job, it became clear that diversity goals were paramount. After taking over Austin's department of about 1,100 firefighters, he said that he didn't want people to "dwell on me being the first African American fire chief, because that's not important. What's important is that I'm not the last African American fire chief."
One of his goals, he said was "really to increase the diversity at the Austin Fire Department. It needs to reflect more of the community we serve because I believe the youth of Austin and our youth in general, you will be what you see those young African American, young Latinos, people in the Asian community or LGBT community, if they see more firefighter that look like them, they will want to choose the Austin Fire Department as a career as well."
He was still trying to meet his goal, he told Fox 7 at the time. "Although we had an increase of Africans that had applied, I have not really seen an increase of Africans that have been hired so now we got to find out what's the barrier of getting them hired," Baker said.
"My goal is to let the community know if I can do it, they can do it, he said.
..more
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DIEversity kills!
diversity = incompetence
Completely lost due to incompetence.
I don’t know the area , but why is it the Austin FD’s job to deploy recourses to rural areas?
“The Austin Firefighters Association intends to hold a vote of no confidence on Fire Chief Joel G. Baker over his failure to deploy advance teams to flood ravaged Kerr County ahead of the destruction.”
Best of luck getting this moron to step down, it’ll never happen.....and if by some miracle he is removed, the howls of racism will of course be deafening.
HE HAS ADVANCED TO CHIEF & HE CANNOT FIGURE OUT WHY NOT MANY AFRICAN-AMERICANS (BLACK) ARE QUALIFIED TO BE FIREFIGHTERS???
HE IS BEYOND TEACHING.
He’s been needing The Boot pretty much since he was hired.
Now, they have an opportunity to weed him and all his DEI / BS
out of that fire department.
The area is known as flash flood alley for a reason.
Austin offering assistance in advance of a possible mass casualty event would be a wise thing to do if there was a need for it.
https://data.census.gov/profile/Kerr_County,_Texas?g=050XX00US48265
I’d say after looking at the above, yeah, it was needed.
I was wondering that, too. The web says Austin, Texas is not located in Kerr County. Austin is situated in Travis County, with parts of the city also extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Kerr County is located further west, with Kerrville, the county seat, approximately 100 miles west of Austin. Kerrville is in the Texas Hill Country, roughly 65 miles northwest of San Antonio
I wonder if there was any communication among Austin and/or Teavis County bureaucrats about whether or not aid should be offered...
If there was and there’s a record...
And/or if that record has been deleted.
Bet this goes farther up the food chain than the fire chief.
Troubling article but I’ll need to know if this dope actually had the authority to neglect help to what are predominately White lives.
See my reply #9. :-)
Travis County...
Note to the fire chief: If you’re going down, dude, be sure to take some people who also deserve it along with you.
Perform one last public service.
RACIST POS!!!
What about all those democrats who were happy the children 'got what they deserved' because their parents were white Christians who 'probably voted for Trump'? Maybe that's his REAL REASON for not sending help when it was called for. Lucky for him the corrupt 'press' will buy the excuse that he wasn't reimbursed money from the state and was 'getting even'... I think he didn't send help because the campers and children were white. He knows the srea.
And at the potential risk to their own city and area. Other factors mentioned in this article notwithstanding, absent policies, SOP/SOG to the contrary, it is the job of the FD admin to look at resource requests through the lens of Austin’s risk of incident. Imagine if AFD resources were not available for City of Austin because they were sent to another location while the threat for Austin exists and were ignored or not considered. We do not have all the information on this yet, but at this point making judgement of right/wrong decision on this through the lens of DEI is a red herring and not the issue. Could be AFD rank and file don’t like the current FC, or his policies (which is their prerogative and the city is probably driving most of that, anyway), and that’s fine, but don’t use this tragedy to grind your axe (no pun intended) for a dislike of unrelated policies. Admittedly, I don’t have all the information, either.
What about all those democrats who were happy the children 'got what they deserved' because their parents are white Christians who 'probably voted for Trump'? Maybe that's his REAL REASON for not sending help when it was called for. Lucky for him the corrupt 'press' will buy the excuse that he wasn't reimbursed money from the state and was 'getting even'... Or maybe he's just a jerk.
MUTUAL ASSISTANCE IS COMMON WHEN CITIES INTERFACE WITH RURAL AREAS. VERY COMMON
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