FireLink

What do you guys think?

http://firelink.monster.com/news/articles/7640-did-firefighter-error-le...

It is incredibly sad to hear that their house was a total loss, however, the Firefighters are not to blame, it is not their fault that there was no water pressure, i have never heard of a city having 4 inch mains, i think the homeowners should be talking to a lawyer about suing the city, I mean come on....you know the guys who built the city and put in those small mains knew that fire protection was an issue and just wanted to save money and put in the smaller mains, shame on whoever gave the "ok" on putting 4 inch mains (disgusted)

rome21 says ...

There are 2 points to this...The first being that the firefighters didn't install the 4" water line that didn't provide enough water. The second is the fact that the firefighters didn't start the fire. How can it be thier fault? We have to work with the cards we are given every day. We do the best we can, and sometimes no matter what we do we loose the battle.

ok  here is my two cent.   I was not on the call so I do not know the whole story, but this is what I did get from the artical.

Disp. was at 0356 am, three Eng's and a ladder got there five min. after disp. at 0401 am. two more Eng's at 0402 and another two at 0414.

Now you are looking at 20 min from 0401 when the first trucks got on scean to 0421 when the started to complain about water problems. Last time I cheaked it did not take 20 min to catch a plug and find out if it works or not. then it took them 34 min to find a new plug when all this time they had 7 Eng's with 3500 to 7000 gallons to use wile the looked for a new plug.

 To me they did not use the cards they were given that day.  they should of know that the plug there had now pressure if they do any type af hydrent tests

I am in know way trying to degrade anybody i am just giveing my two cents on how I read the story

I don't know why anyone would want to blame the Firefighters, They were only trying to do a job the were  called to do. 

The firefighters are not at fault. They didn't lay the water main so therefore they didn't know what was there. They did what they was trained to do which is put out the fire at the best of there abillities. I feel they did that.

You can preplan and should you can have 100 fire fighters on had without water we are just driving around. This is more of a political battle and at this time the Fire Department are the sacrficial goats right now. An eight inch main for the supply and multiple engines how soon before that water line is not enough. Hey guys get your infrstructure in place to help support your town or just blame everyone and fix nothing. The team did the best they could with what they had.

 As a point of reference... not all Fire Departments do hydrant tests.  Some cities choose to use the public service or water departments to do these tests.  

We can all stand back and attempt to judge the actions and intent of these Firefighters or we can learn from this incident and be better prepared to be more effective and efficient Firefighters in our own communities.

As an ex-wife of a water department employee, in a city where the water dept does all the testing on hydrants, it's kinda hard not to stick up for the firefighters. There is absolutely no way they allowed the home to burn. I suspect that they had 'ok' water pressure until the 3rd crew arrived. At that point in time, I imagine there was a noticeable drop in pressure (just like if you get in the shower and two people at opposite ends of the house turn water on -- there's none left in the middle.

As for the yahoo who says the citizens shouldn't have to pay taxes to have the pressure and line increased -- HELLO??? Do you have a magic wand that will allow you to reconfigure the size of the water lines.to add more pressure? If so, my I please borrow it?

I'm sorry for the family who lost everything, insurance won't cover all of the memories or the pictures of family members. I know, I just went through a fire.

All I can say is if the citizens of the fair state of Tennessee, want better protection, they need to think about shaping the department and helping to get biger means to light the other end of a rough tunnel. I assure you if the citizens don't want to get the proper equipment someone needs to be tackling getting the insurance to pay.

firedup says ...

  I personly think that it is  the departments responsibility  to know what water resourses are available to them in their call areas. All fire fighters should know where hydrants are located and what supplies them.  However I do not believe that the fire fighters here just let that house burn down, nor should they be held accountable. Obviously there is going to be a drop in pressure when that many lines are being suppplied off 1 hydrant.  Fire fighters on the incident should have forseen that. But still I would not hold them accountable or responsible. Also, there should have been someone overseeing the incident, a supervisor of some sort. That was the person responsible for locating additional water supplies or calling in more resources to deliver an adequit supply. Since the situation was not anticipated earlier, there probably should have been adjustments made to the plan immediately upon realization of pressure loss.  Without reading the full report, we have no way of knowing whether any of these things were considered and/or evaluated. But I still would not lay blame on the fire fighters. Im sure that they did the best job that they could with the resources that they had available. There may or may not have been mistakes made, but I do not believe they determined the final out come. The home was already engulfed when the first team arrived, It was probably already  a total loss, why risk fire fighters or their equipment ?

   Everyday we hear people complaining about the quality of the fire service in their commmunities, yet when the day comes to vote, they vote down any extra funding that would improve the departments abilities to protect them.  Go figure?! Everyone still wants their cakes....

Oh, I hear you on this one. Our city is broke. They are asking for a 10% cut of all department's budget. This will include laying off at least 7 firefighters. The public should be up in arms about this, as we aren't meeting any of the NFPA standards as it is due to a shortage of manpower. But they are screaming to lay off firefighters and cops...according to them, we don't do anything anyway, and, besides, it's just temporary, right? *exasperated sigh* Sometimes I wonder.