What Would You Have Done?

You are the fire captain. Would you have handled this any differently?

According to a news report, a citizen called 911 when he saw a telephone pole smoking after a thunderstorm had passed . Firefighters quickly responded, sprayed down the scorched area of ground with fire retardant and left.

About ten minutes later, the same citizen noticed the pole had begun to burn in full flame and called 911 once again. Witnesses related that the fire truck stopped, firefighters got out, and watched as the flames licked the dry wood atop the pole.

"A fireman in the front passenger seat of the engine got out and walked up to me and told me to stop calling them for the telephone pole fires," a neighbor  wrote in a letter to fire chief. "He informed me that this was a power pole company issue and that I should call them for assistance."

Then, witnesses say, the engine drove away. The top burned off the pole, and the lights went out for a day.

"It was pretty hard to believe," another taxpayer said. "When I saw them start to drive away, you should have seen me coming off the couch. Afterward, my husband was kind of kicking himself for not saying anything (to the firefighter). I think he was just dumbfounded."

She saw an engine revisit the neighborhood about an hour later. She said the crew sprayed some foam on the broken pole, which had long burned itself out.

The fire chief, for the record, thinks it did not happen the way the citizens described in their letter from the morning after. After speaking with the engine company involved, he said the firefighters saw no fire to extinguish.

"I think what happened here was a misunderstanding," the Chief said. "The captain didn’t see the pole arcing, and he didn’t see a fire. He reported it to the power company." Above all else, he hopes residents will always report any flaming utility poles they see: "Always call 911. We will always come out."

The citizens can vouch for that — just no guarantees about the attitude.

So that’s the end result. Six neighbors signed that letter to the fire chief. A crowd of them watched from a safe distance while the fire atop the pole grew and consumed enough wood to break the crossbar, about 30 minutes after the engine left. What do you think they were saying to each other while they stood there?

We don’t know how it went down, We don’t know if the crew was called away to another emergency. We will not second guess the actions of the fire captain because we were not there.

But what we do know is this incident left a sour taste in the mouths of the taxpayers and citizens there, so much so that they banded together to follow up on their disgust with a formal letter to the Chief.

Somehow, the press got involved. Great. Now this one crap call escalated into a $^#&-storm of its own.

If you don’t stay out in front of these things, they just might get away from you and bite you in the ass. Apparently, that’s what happened here.

Would you have handled the call any differently?

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