The Social Network & Community JUST for Firefighters
Man drowns... Department Policy verses Ethical Behavior
Posted: 06/05/2011 01:00:49 AM PDT
Alameda Police and bystanders watch the man drown.
An Alameda Fire Engine was video taped driving by the scene.
Department policy prevents firefighters from entering the water...
ALAMEDA -- Only two people went into the chilly San Francisco Bay waters on Monday to help a suicidal Raymond Zack, and neither was wearing a police or firefighter uniform. When Zack, 52, despondent and depressed, walked fully clothed into the Bay at Robert Crown Memorial State Beach to take his own life, at least 10 Alameda firefighters and police officers made the choice not to come to his aid. They stood on the beach and watched, for about an hour.
( Full Story... ©KRISTIN J. BENDER/OAKLAND TRIBUNE )
References:
http://www.thereporter.com/news/ci_18210604
http://www.washingtonpoliticsnews.com/?p=2002
http://www.whatthefolly.com/2011/06/03/us-news-alameda-ca-drowning-...
Video:
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
-
Mark,
If you had read the Alameda budget memo a little more carefully, you would have realized that it specified that the FD would conduct primarily "land-based water rescue". There is no evidence that the money for the water-entry rescue was ever actually budgeted or that if it was, that it trickled down to the firefighters that were actually on the call in question.
Bridge jumpers are a completely different situation than someone wading in the surf zone. What other fire departments do for in-water suicides simply isn't pertinent. The only thing that matters is what Alameda's policies, procedures, and the training of those actually present at the scene were.
As for the Firehouse Heroism awards, they are not pertinent here.
No one would require firefighters to enter burning buildings without turnout gear and SCBA. Asking firefighters to enter cold water with no thermal protection, PFDs, or current training is telling them to be suicidal, not heroic.
The bottom line is that it is impossible to cut budgets without cutting services. Telling AFD and APD to do that is as silly as asking them to reach a victim 300 feet from shore with a 75-fooot rope.
-
Permalink Reply by Mike Schlags (Captain Busy) Retd on
-
A very well thought out (and researched) data that again spells out a disaster for the Police Chief, Fire Chief and elected Alameda County officials, not to mention the local EMS Services and planning folks who possibly allowed bean counters to dictate response capability and actions.
As mentioned previously, the response area included water hazards. How this be could be completely discounted, knowing that there were not posted / on duty lifeguards is a point that won't be hard for attorneys to run with.
The old saying, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure applies here. Voluntary training coupled with donated equipment, could have prevented millions of dollars in punitive costs to the county and the jurisdictions.
When will we ever learn? The sad thing is that this type of budget savings mentality will rise again, and again... unless we learn from these mistakes and apply them to our own jurisdictions. Remember, one way to protect your agencies liability is to identify the problem and bump it up a pay grade until it reaches the right person(s).
To not identify a problem and ignore it makes you part of the problem. We should always keep our eyes and ears open for new and innovative ways to provide a better service to our customers, at a reduced cost whenever possible. Some of those cost saving ideas have been shared here. But will folks listen? Sure hope so...
CBz
-
-
I liked SoCal - in the late 1960's, but all of my friends there tell me that the legal system has been turned into essentially legalized extortion for people seeking insurance settlements as it's simply too expensive to even defend a basic lawsuit for the average small businessman or professional provider.
All that's going to do is to increase Cali's massive budget deficits.
SanFran is a cool place, but their social programs aren't sustainable. Sooner or later, you'll see someone blaming SanFran-area fire and police departments for allegedly being overstaffed, overpaid, and having cushy pensions...right?
-
Permalink Reply by Marc Hansen on
-
Ben,
According to the 2009 memo that the interim fire chief showed that put the water rescue program on hold and disallowed entry in the water, the funding was available to restart the training in 30-45 days from the date of the order- first for land based rescue and then for rescue swimmmers. This is a copy of that order from Alameda's website you can read for yourself.
As for bridge jumpers being different than someone that wades into the water being different. Those are the first examples I could find for suicide rescues conducted by fire departments involving water. How different is the suicidal person that jumps into the water versus walks into the water?
And about doing something without equipment: A)On April 13, 2010, Firefighter was off duty from his firefighter job with Truck of
the MD, County Fire Department. At 3:35 P.M., Davidson was taking a nap in his
parents’ home when his mother came into the bedroom, screaming the house was on fire. Fire and
heavy smoke were pushing from the attic eaves and had begun to take over the living room. He got his
mother and two dogs out of the house and instructed his mother to call 911. He re-entered to get his
father. Davidson grabbed a four-foot shovel and an extinguisher to keep the fire in check. Davidson
met his father in the hallway and he was being overcome by smoke. The father is disabled and suffers
from severe emphysema. Davidson positioned himself between the fire and his father. He removed
his father from the house and re-entered to keep the fire from spreading.
B)On Aug. 11, 2010, at 5:35 P.M., District Chief was off duty heading to a vacation at the New
Jersey shore when he came upon a one-car motor vehicle accident. He saw an overturned vehicle about
40 feet off the road. The vehicle was on fire and he could see a person was still trapped upside down.
With no tools or protective equipment, he entered the passenger compartment through the broken
rear driver’s-side window. He found a 61-year-old female trapped upside down by her seatbelt. Fire had
breached the firewall and was rapidly spreading into the area near the driver. After eight tries, DC
released the seatbelt and placed the driver on the ceiling. At this time, DC and two others who
arrived pulled the driver about four feet from the vehicle. The fire and smoke intensified so the patient
had to be moved away several more times.
Both of these examples show firefighters without gear or equipment performing rescues. Both of these examples came from Firehouse Heroism awards list. (I deleted names and departments because I am not attacking or trying to discredit these individuals). The point I was trying to make is a national magazine about firefighters (by firefighters) has made a national award that gets wide media attention to say these guy are heros. Public perception is the reality and when the public sees a press release saying these heros did these dangerous things without PPE or tools then we should all be able to do that. This part of the PR disaster is the fire service in general because we created the medal day and the press releases that recognize feats like this.
While I agree that throwing a 25yd lifeline to someone 150 yds from shore is useless, there are so many operational issues here that point to a problem a long time (at least since 2009) in the making. In an island community why no water rescue of any kind(air,water or shore)? Or how about automatic mutual aid? The FD transcripts are rather sparse but on the PD transcripts officers have to ask dispatch about contacting certain departments for boats. My department doesnt have a ladder truck but for calls at the local industrial areas one is assigned on the first alarm. And again last but not least the elected officials bear blame in this also if you cut budgets and dont know what gets cut then someone is not doing their jobs. Keeping your head in the sand doesn't mean all is well it just means you can't see. - Attachments:
-
-
alameda ca fire.pdf, 305 KB
-
-
-
More good information that makes it pretty clear that someone was rolling the dice, hoping for something not to happen. Should be interesting to see how hard a hit the Alameda FD will end up with. This screams liability and a large settlement. This is guaranteed to get very ugly.
-
Permalink Reply by joemac on
-
So, in the thirty-five minutes or so, that the individual was standing in 55 degree water, no one was capable of taking a small boat out to attempt to talk to the guy from a short distance?
Or, was it that no one was willing?
-
-
Lots of hole in your theories there Marc.
1) There has been no evidence shown that the money budgeted for the rescue swimmer training was actually spent for the budgeted purpose. Fire departments shift line items around all the time as budget priorities change during fiscal years.
2) There is no evidence that there was ANY water rescue equipment at the scene in question. There is also no evidence that there was an adequate number of rescue swimmers on duty in all of Alameda to make the rescue, let alone if there were enough on scene or not.
3) Bridge jumpers are different from someone wading in coastal waters in several regards. First, they are much more likely to be injured or disabled, and thus less likely to be able to fight the rescuers. Second, rivers are either narrow or wide channels. It's easy to throw ropes in the narrow ones and to have boats waiting immediately downstream in the wide ones. Revisit the cases you cited, and I believe you'll find that was the case with those. Open water out of rope reach and no FD boats - no such luck.
4) Fire scenarios - absolutely not pertinent, unless the firefighters had to swim into the burning building to attempt rescue.
5) Firehouse Heroism Awards - also not pertinent. Whether someone else gets an award based upon subjectivity for another rescue attempt has zero bearing on this one.
6) Have you considered that Alameda might not even have statutory authority to do water rescues at all? Some island communities' city limits stop at the mean high water mark - were you aware of that? I'm unsure if this applies to Alameda or not, but if it does, then Alameda's island status is also not pertinent in regards to water rescue in the bay.
7) Alameda knew EXACTLY what was cut. That's why they had a SOG that they didn't do water entry rescue. It's difficult to understand how you'd try to stretch that into someone not knowing what was cut.
8) Automatic aid on an island can be a slow proposition at best and non-existant at worst, depending upon the bridges, traffic, distance to the automatic aid, how busy the automatic aid department is at the moment, and a host of other variables.
9) I don't disagree that this is a PR disaster, but I've also discovered that you can't spend revenues that your tax base no longer has.
0)
-
-
Money ALWAYS dictates response capability. Without it, you have no staffing, no vehicles, no training, no equipment...
Once again, voluntary training is just that - voluntary. Ditto for donating equipment. There's no evidence that anyone was interested in either in Alameda. Then there's the issue that I previously discussed - if any off-duty training is required for that "voluntary" training, then the city is on the hook for time-and-a-half OT costs and worker's comp for anyone who may get hurt during that training. If they didn't have the money to fund it, then they're not going to be able to provide it. It's also a violation of federal law (FLSA) to volunteer and work full-time at the same agency.
There's also the question if Alameda could legally even do water rescue. has anyone determined if their city limits extend into the water or not? If not, then they have no legal obligation to perform rescues outside their city limits.
-
-
More on this - Alameda's Fire Chief states that it will cost between $20,000 and $40,00 to train and equip 16 firefighters as rescue swimmers.
Seven days later, the Alameda City Manager proposed additional budget cuts, as city revenues continue to decline.
The proposed cuts include additional budget reductions in the Fire Department and Police Department.
Wait a minute. Alameda is going to cut the Fire Department budget even more while insisting that the FD spend an unbudgeted $20,000 to $40,000 on the rescue swimmer program???
Something isn't adding up here.
-
-
Ben,
The firehouse heroism awards are pertinent to the pr disaster. To
John Q. Public he sees the newspaper articles and press releases proclaiming these individuals as heros for entering a building on fire with no gear on and saving someones life. Then he reads the paper wher his hometown FD stood by as someone drowned, saying they didn't have the correct gear. Now he starts thinking that his hometwon guys are over paid and lazy because they didn't try. This is the part of the pr disaster that we as the fire service own. Now look at the memo that the fire dept is using to say we don't enter the water for rescue...the next paragraphs state that the money is available and training would begin within 60 days...and didn't. Now if the money was there and not spent for its intended purpose because of a FD decision then who becomes the bad guy again? This problem has been a lomg time coming for a lot of departments just bad luck that it happened to AFD. Now they have to explain the contradiction in their own memo, and another round round of budget cuts with almost no public backing. Let's face it the only way to counter a politician is with angry voters. Personally I don't fault the on scene decisions I wouldn't have tried it either. In my posts I am only working the in the court of public opinion which for good or bad is where the future of the fire service is going to be decided.
-
-
Marc,
The fact that you join some of the public in confusing firefighting with water rescue in no way makes a magazine's arbitrary heroism award pertinent.
As for the PR - better a PR disaster than dead responders. Some of the public expects firefighters, LEOs, and medics to commit suicide for them, but we have no obligation to die, let alone an obligation to die for someone who was obviously suicideal.
As for the fire department's water rescue budget not being spent for its intended purpopse - some of it was. It was spent for the shore-based rescue training and equipment that doesn't work for offshore rescues like the one in question.
Fire departments have to move money from one line item to another to take care of unanticipated problems all of the time. Let's say we have $20,000 for water rescue, but we have an apparatus accident that requires a $10,000 repair, then we need to replace $6,000 of turnout gear damaged at a fire, then we have a bunch of firefighters hit with the flue and have to shell out and unanticipated $4,000 to cover the OT to keep the department running - and suddenly that $20,000 is gone without anyone who wants to do water rescue seeing a drop of water other than coming out of a nozzle.
And frankly, when the public and the city are cutting AFD's and APD's budgets even more, they are probably going to get even bigger reductions in service.
The bottom line is that you get what you pay for, whether you like it or not. If you don't have the money to maintain a given level of service, then you're going to get reduced services, reduced capability, and more lives and property lost.
-
Permalink Reply by Michael David White on
-
I live in a town with a river dividing it in two. Also a fishing community so we have a boat. We almost never have to use it but, we are fortunate enough to have it if needed. In the winter the boat can be transported to the water by two or three people if needed. I think if you have water in your district you really should have a boat. Can't understand why a fire department with such a vast shoreline wouldn't have a small rescue boat. Ours is only small but, it can fit three people and a backboard (or four people) not very expensive but, vital. I agree with you in every aspect. Some departments seem to forget that we have more than one type of terrain. Huge oversight I think. I'm sure local businesses would have loaned them a Jet Ski or a Zodiac or Surfboard.
© 2024 Created by Firefighter Nation WebChief.
Powered by
