15 Detroit Fire Companies closing, nearly 200 demotions

[Rocko]

I'm not sure if anyone actually posted about the $$22.5 million grant the city is receiving regarding the FD: so here is the Free Press article about it:

Detroit Fire Department gets $22.5-million grant to preserve jobs

July 7, 2012

Nearly two weeks after Detroit announced it would lay off 164 firefighters because of budget issues, Fire Department officials received a $22.5-million federal grant check on Friday that will restore 108 firefighters.

U.S. Rep. Hansen Clarke, a Detroit Democrat, presented the check from the Department of Homeland Security's Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response [[SAFER) program to Detroit Fire Commissioner Donald Austin.

Clarke also announced he was working directly with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to expedite the payment of the grant to avoid layoffs, which were expected to take place by the end of the month.

Austin said he still has to formally accept the grant.
"This is probably the best news I've had since I've been here," Austin said after receiving the check. "This is going to be the beginning of a lot of change that will help the city and the residents and certainly the members of my department."

The grant will cover the salaries and benefits for the firefighters over two years. Austin said the department is also applying for another SAFER grant that has a filing deadline of July 16 and the Assistance to Firefighters grant that was filed Friday.

"Our goal is to get them an additional award that could be released as early as September so that the remainder of those firefighters that are slated for layoffs can be able to stay on the job," Clarke said.

The administration, Austin said, was in the process of identifying who would be laid off.

"There are 56 that will have to be laid off," Austin said. "But that number is shrinking every day because we have people that are actually separating."

The grant, Austin said, makes up a little more than 5% of the department's budget.

Read Full article >>http://www.freep.com/article/20120707/NEWS01/207070367/Detroit-Fire-Department-gets-36-22-5-million-grant-to-preserve-jobs?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

Contact Melanie Scott Dorsey: 313-222-6159 ormdscott@freepress.com

[downtownguy]

"If you want peace -- work for justice"

If you want a good fire department -- work for financial solvency -- and pay no attention to municipal power brokers, city boundaries, politics, racism, prevailing wages, corporate oppression, or just about anything else.

Just pay attention that workers are paid reasonably [[with or without unions) and that taxes are fair. Those two tools -- with every thing else pushed aside -- can solve all.

Who knew it was so easy?

[Carey]

The DFD is half the size it was in the 1960's. With the same fire load and square miles it services. Not to mention a couple more vacant structures...

Until the cuts this week, the DFD of today wasn't half the size it was in the 1960s. There were 89 companies in 1960 and 66 until Wednesday, but usually only 58 or so in service every day.

But now that the city has cut the DFD by about 40 percent, to between 40 and 45 companies a day, it is about half the size of the department in the early 1960s.

The fire load is smaller today, however, at least compared to the late 1960s. From 1960 through 1969, there were between 10,688 and 15,802 fires a year, with the number generally rising as the decade progressed.

In 2010, there were 9,937 fires; in 2009 there were 10,343. [[I don't have the figure for 2011.)

The peak year for fires was 1984, with 23,765.

In the last couple years, the DFD is fighting about the same number of fires as it was when Detroit was peaking in population in the early 1950s. But the department had 101 companies then!

[jcdfde5]

The thing of it is, if Police are cut, you can hire a private security firm. It's not quite the same, but if the security helps to deter crime, then it's effective. If the city-run EMS service is failing, you can outsource to a private ambulance company to do runs in the city. Last I checked, there isn't a readily available supply of private fire engine operators just waiting to get a chance to put fires out in Detroit. The mower gang can cut grass when the city won't. The rent-a-cop can patrol the streets when there aren't enough police. I hope the homeowner garden-hose squad has their spigots at the ready.

What is happening at these "Closed" firehouses regarding scrapping is just disgusting. The FOX article made it sound like no firehouses were officially closing, more that a certain number would go unstaffed on any one day, on a rotating basis. Unfortunately, their placement around the city doesn't allow the city to staff all engine-only companies, while temporarily shutting down the engines that share a firehouse with a ladder, battalion, or medic unit also based there, essentially keeping all buildings occupied and off the radar of the scrappers. Is the city really not shutting any specific engines down, or is the Fox article incorrect? If they are, does anyone know which ones are on the chopping block?

Engine 33 in Southwest
Engine 5 in midtown
Engine 8 Downtown
Ladder 10 Mt elliot Gratiot [[oldest active in State 1892)
HazMat Eastern market
Ladder 1 Eastern Market
Engine 32 Eastside
Engine 38 Eastside
Engine 46 Eastside

Just to name a few it changes everyday.
The rig is left in the building along with a few lights on just to keep the citizens feeling safe... Look in the parking lots [[no Cars)


That Detroit won this $22.5 million grant is good news, but the city needs to constantly be applying for additional funding to keep staffing where it needs to be and to keep equipment and property in good repair. The city can't fund all of that? FINE. Then they need to spend the money to pay people who know what they're doing to try to win them the money.

A person may get robbed, or their property broken into, but they still may decide to stay in Detroit. If their property has a significant fire or burns to the ground, they're gone. Detroit may be a wreck of itself but in a few places, things are either stable or on the upswing. Cutting the FD to half a shoestring is not going to convince anyone that their future, money, or time should be invested in Detroit.

-Rocko, who visited Detroit last week for the first time in 9 months since officially moving to Connecticut.

Our Commissioner is from California..
I believe he thinks leaving the houses empty with half a million dollar rigs and copper gutters that it will not be vandalized..

Sad part is that when the hot water tank/plumbing is gone its going to cost big money to open the house again.. After the experiment!!

[jcdfde5]

Carey,
Nice work fact finding!!

[Hermod]

Who knew it was so easy?

Most concepts and principles are easy. It is the details of the implementations that are hard.

[iheartthed]

Because there wasn't a magic wall at 8-Mile. If they had built multi-units, the couple with two kids would have gone elsewhere to fulfill their single family dream.

Isn't that what they did anyway? Even though Detroit did build all of those single family units, most of which are now sitting empty and rotting away. So are you saying Detroit was in a lose-lose situation?

It wasn't like Manhatten. Detroit was never squeezed between natural boundaries. Detroit had been growing out for decades. The Grand Boulevards were originally as far as Detroit would grow. Then it was Outer Drive. Then Detroit grew past 8-Mile.

The Detroit dream was always a single house on a lot. This dream was reinforced after WWII.

New York has plenty of single family suburbs. Levittown, the blueprint for postwar suburban America, is on Long Island, NY. The presence of Levittowns surround the city still didn't stop Manhattan from growing taller. And Manhattan didn't grow tall because it's on an island -- it grew tall because market forces dictated that it expand upward.

If Detroit had been built out, as you have stated, then pure market fundamentals would have dictated that the city grow denser [[i.e. taller). This would happen regardless of what was happening outside of Detroit.