Some say as New York goes, so goes the rest of the nation. New York is the central heart beat of our nation, so what is felt there or happens there will usually translate to the rest of the nation. If New York's economy is growing, usually so is the nations. If New York's unemployment rate rises, it isn't long before the nations follows. New York is a microcosm of our nation, so when things take place there we should pay attention.
On June 3rd of this year, just a few weeks ago, thousands of New York city fire fighters held a massive rally to try and stop the closing of 20 fire companies in New York.
The fire fighters, along with their brothers from the IAFF (International Assoc. of Fire Fighters), and 10,000 citizens were present to say that they were tired of a mayor and city officials who offer praise for fire fighters when the cameras are on, but then turn around and shut down fire houses. By doing this they are jeopardizing thousands if not millions of hard working people. Hmm sound familiar.
What their mayor, along with mayors and city officials here and nation wide, don't understand is that when fire fighters get called every moment counts. Whether they are responding to a spreading fire or man/woman suffering from a heart attack, seconds matter.
By closing fire stations or reducing staffing numbers (which is being considered here locally) lives of the New Yorkers (or citizens here as well) will be put in jeopardy.
Now to do this in New York makes absolutely no sense. New York remains a top terrorist target today. To shrink the public safety sector in a time of such terrorist turmoil is insane. These men and women are needed. The mayor of New York has even stated publicly that New York is a principal target among terrorist groups. So why in his right mind would he take away the people that are needed to aid his citizens if another attack or disaster were to occur?
Now we here locally are not quite that high on the terrorist target list, but we have quite a few dangerous situations that could occur.
We have the Port of Corpus Christi. On any given day we have multiple tankers coming through our port. These tankers carry all kinds of cargo, some that have the potential to cause a severe disaster. Also in the port area we have hundred to thousands of rail cars coming and going everyday. These rail cars transport anything from petroleum products to windmill turbines. A rail car explosion or crash would severely tax our cities fire department.
We have the Naval Air Station, where many military aircraft are placed, mostly for repair work. These pose a risk from terrorist attacks as well as accidental crashes, that would definitely tax our resources. We have an International Airport that carries all the risks of any other International Airport, accidental crashes, bomb attacks, etc.
We have more refineries here then I can actually name right now. If they were to be attacked or had a large scale explosion it would take all of our cities resources and then some to contain, confine, and extinguish the problem.
As we stated earlier, what happens in New York usually happens nation wide. Are we here considering closing fire stations? Well we will say this the city has stated that nothing is off the table, whatever that means. Are we considering reducing staffing levels? Sure they are. Are they considering brown outs, where they consolidate stations or apparatuses, possibly closing or putting a station or fire engine out of service for the day? We believe they are.
You see nobody needs a fire fighter/paramedic until you need one. Then you want them there as fast as humanly possible. When a family member goes into cardiac arrest or a diabetic coma, the family does not want to wait 10 to 12 minutes for help to show up because they had to respond from across town. When someones house catches fire, which a fire doubles in size every 7 seconds, they don't want to wait 15 minutes because the closest unit has been browned out.
The response time in Corpus Christi, for a ambulance or fire engine, is 5 minutes or less. Sometimes unfortunately that isn't fast enough either, but you can only imagine if you have to wait 10 or 15 minutes what could happen. People's lives are at stake.
A great idea we here would love to see implemented on a yearly basis, is having our city council and city manager go through a Fire Operations day. Have these individuals, that decide whether public safety personnel is needed or not, go through a full day of fire operations. They would come away with a better understanding that every person on the fire ground or ems call has a function and is needed. If you take just one person away, they will see how it effects the dynamics of the situation and put the responders and citizens in danger.
They would be put through scenarios such as treating a cardiac arrest patient, dealing with a fully involved car fire, extinguish a structure fire, and extricate a patient from a severe car accident. As well as daily duties such as map studies and in house training.
Now this is not a new idea, many states already use this program nation wide. It sure would help our officials here in determining whether the city can afford to cut the public safety sector as much as they think they can.
What do you think?
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