Personal Responsibility
Recently I wrote about how Chicago Mayor Richard Daley requested that all first responders take 24 days without pay, which would save the city millions in 2010. Some readers were supportive of the mayor, and I was surprised.
One reader wrote, “I applaud Mayor Daley’s courageous and principled stand on furloughs. Firefighters, police, and EMTs are no different from other municipal employees, or for that matter, the millions of other Americans who have lost their jobs or suffered cuts in hours or benefits as a result of the financial crisis.”
I feel for Americans who’ve lost jobs — I have friends and family members among them. But I’d like to be assured that their lives are somewhat secure; if they were in an accident or a house fire, I want them to survive because our first responders are on the job. Public-safety still is a priority, even when citizens are losing their jobs.
The same reader commented that, “Your thesis assumes that the community depends on firefighters, police, and EMTs in a way that if true suggests the community has lost more than just its economic footing. In a functioning community, police, EMTs and firefighters serve as an extension of the community’s capacity to organize itself to provide for mutual security.”
I agree with him — an engaged citizenry in Chicago would be great. If people took responsibility for their community and showed 5% more courtesy, it would be a safer, warmer place to live.
But it’s totally unrealistic.
It just doesn’t happen in this city, which is segregated by either ethnic or socio-economic standards. In addition, Chicagoans are self-absorbed. In fact, children in the city are taught to yell “fire” versus “help” if in danger because residents are more willing to react if their own safety is threatened instead of the safety of others. It’s sad to say, but generally in people the city are not helpers. In fact, folks usually just try to stay out of each others’ way.
Finally, he wrote, “When Chicago firefighters went on strike many years ago, the number of fires actually went down. Something very similar happened in the United Kingdom during their recent industrial dispute with firefighters.”
I am unfamiliar with the case in the United Kingdom. I lived through the Chicago Fire Strike in 1980 — and I learned there was an uptick in fires and violence throughout the city. In addition, union leaders jokingly called it “the second Chicago fire.” So I doubt fires go down if fewer firefighters are on the job.
Maybe looking at the way funding is distributed would help the budget crunch, even more than furlough days, implied another reader. I’d be interested in hearing other readers’ thoughts on his suggestion below:
“[I] consider Chicago my hometown. Many of my friends and family are firefighters and paramedics on the city. My only concern is this; most cities have a very large fire department with millions of budget [dollars] for equipment and salaries. Most buildings have fire sprinklers. Would it not be better to have a fire department that does 80% EMS response and have more ambulance personnel with two per ambulance and less fire apparatus with four to six people per vehicle to save lives and decrease the budget by decreasing salaries and equipment expenditures?”
In the end, I agree with a reader who said society needs first responders as their first line of defense against a disaster.
“[T]he nation’s first responders are — whether anyone wants to pay them or not — our nation’s first and last line of defense against any catastrophe, manmade, intentional or accidental,” he said. “We need those men and women to show up and be compensated for placing their lives on the line daily and not have to worry about anything but being the best they can at what they do, protect you.”
November 19th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
First, thank you for acknowledging my comments to your previous post, and taking my arguments seriously. An intelligent and civil debate, even if it ends in disagreement, is a far better outcome, from my perspective, than the silent acquiescence and cascade of fear our fellow citizens have accepted in place of thoughtful discussion of other important public safety topics in recent years.
The subject of cascade effects is among the topics of your fellow Chicagoan Cass Sunstein’s recent book Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide (which I have been reading of late). Sunstein is a former University of Chicago law professor who served on the faculty there with President Barack Obama. He is currently on leave from his position as a member of the Harvard Law School faculty while he serves in the Obama administration as an advisor on regulatory affairs.
Sunstein’s work has focused on regulatory interventions, and, in particular, the tendency of government to overreach in the absence of benefit-cost assessments of policy proposals. In his current book, though, he looks at the markets for ideas, and how people seek out and encourage support for their own biases.
I believe his analysis provides useful insights into the current state of our fire service culture and an interesting perspective that should inform our approach to a number of public safety questions. As a closed and relatively homogeneous culture where the range of free expression is limited by a hierarchical social order, we are prone to polarized views. This sets us up for reputational as well as informational cascades that squelch dissenting views and promote more extreme interpretations of the situation than we would otherwise be inclined to adopt based solely on our own independent observations and experience.
If informational cascades operate in the society at-large, and are influenced in large measure by the increasingly extreme views of firefighters themselves, we should wonder whether this is leading the public in the direction of learned helplessness. Maybe I take a more sanguine view of human nature than most, but I would like to think people are still capable not only of assisting themselves, but remain willing to lend one another a hand when they see a need and know they can help.
If I am wrong, then we, as fire service leaders, should be asking ourselves not how we can secure the funding to maintain the status quo, but rather what it will take to change the situation for the better. How can firefighters and cops engage citizens to make our communities better places to live by encouraging people to take more responsibility for the places they live and the people they live with?
November 20th, 2009 at 10:36 am
First resonders are the first and most often the last line for providing public safety. Which everyone takes for granted will be there until the time comes they aren’t due to station closings, budget and personnel cuts or any number of reasons.
There have been several citizen based programs around CERT, Citizens Corps, and quite frankly, our area has a very high participation in those programs, but they lack the equipment,certifications authorization ect! all of which costs $$$$, so whats the answer, I don’t know, we have a first responders expanded our mission ten fold over my 28 years int he service and have not senn a ten fold increase in $$$ or manning to assist. So why look at essential services to sacrafice more, we risk our very lives for the community, what do the clerical or support politicans do? Let them take a month off without pay and still perform, provide and serve, the savings won’t costs anyone thier life. Just MY Humble Opinion !!!!!!
November 30th, 2009 at 9:20 am
Clearly we are all (unless you’re really lucky) being asked to do more with less. Essentially what we’re going to have to do is ask the public what level of protection they’re willing to pay for. In most states we can do this through the initiative process, levies, or special taxing districts. These cuts are having real impacts that cannot be ignored. The mere suggestion that “everyone is cutting back, so should the fire service” shows a lack of understanding of the disastrous effects it can have. My own department has had staffing cut recently due to budget cuts. About one week after it happened, we had a fire in a half million dollar home that, due to the cuts, we hit with 3 people. We basically stood back and watched it go from a room and contents to burn the place to the ground. This has a domino effect on the entire economy, not to mention the safety of our personnel if we had attempted to fight it.
December 4th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
In my view, initiatives and levies are simply ways of avoiding responsibility for making tough decisions. Presumably, the public has already weighed in on the level of taxation it is willing to impose upon itself for the bundle of services it expects from local government. Those taxes pay the salaries of elected officials and executives authorized to make and approve budgets. These budgets must take account of and operate within taxing and spending limits.
Chief Franklin’s example of the impact his jurisdiction’s cuts had on his department’s operations underscores my main point: Who did this incident really affect besides the homeowner? Presumably, the owner of a million-dollar house had a mortgage and insurance that covered his exposure. It has been my experience that such houses are often set on rather large lots, which would limit the likelihood of the fire spreading to other properties. Will the loss of this house significantly affect the value of neighboring properties? Not likely. Is there any other material impact on the community as a whole? I doubt it.
Indeed, this fire could prove to be an economic benefit to the community rather than a loss. With construction spending otherwise limited due to the recession, the opportunity to rebuild this home with the proceeds from an insurance settlement could well provide badly needed employment to local tradesmen and spur sales of locally sourced and supplied building materials.
Surely, the fire was a tragedy for the family who lived there. But the fire department is neither the first nor the last defense against loss for those experiencing a fire. It is, however, a safeguard against damage spreading to others’s properties and causing them harm. When that is not a major concern, the best thing we can do is keep from growing our service and our demand for resources beyond that required to satisfy the public good, not an individual property owner’s private good.
This may sound crass, but it is hardly disingenuous. We need to be honest with ourselves and our communities about what fire service is really there and what it can do rather than trying to meet all expectations.
December 10th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
I think you raise some valid points, Mark. The insurance payout for the home could certainly pump some money back in to our economy. In this particular case the family has indicated they may rebuild out in the county, which will cost our city some property tax dollars, but all in all they’ll still be spending at local stores.
The part where I disagree is that this sort of incident is acceptable so long as lives and surrounding properties aren’t lost. While a somewhat rhetorical question, I would ask you this: If this family had lost a child in the fire, would you be at the next city council meeting with me demanding that the FD staffing be restored, or would you consider it an acceptable casualty of a declining economy? That’s not an attacking question either, I’m genuinely curious where you think we should draw the line. In my view, the line between a tragic fire death and simply writing an insurance check to replace some material goods is very fine indeed.
I also tend to view levies or tax increases as a way to give people a voice in what they’re willing to pay for. Since this fire, we’ve had people filling up city council meetings and writing editorials criticizing city politicians for cutting FD staffing. I think a voter-approved levy is just what the doctor ordered. If the voters want 10 more firefighters at the fire station, and they’re willing to pay for it by approving a levy, why not let them? If the measure goes down in defeat, at least you know that the public doesn’t support paying more money for fire services and that you’ll have to deal with it for some time to come.
January 11th, 2010 at 8:31 pm
I am generally unpersuaded by the “burning baby” defense of fire department staffing. I have been involved in a number of studies that show fire departments rarely receive calls for assistance in time to make rescues in the situation you described, especially in suburban, rural, and low-developed-density urban communities.
A very large proportion of all fatal fires involve the misuse or abuse of alcohol or drugs, which means many victims are themselves impaired or under the direct care of someone else who is at the time of their deaths. Fire departments have very little chance of saving most victims.
Most of the cases described as rescues by fire departments do not involve genuine danger to those assisted. In those very few instances that do involve substantial risk to an exposed “victim” and responding firefighters, we could chalk most up to sheer chance not quick response or staffing.
If we’re really concerned about saving lives, we have many better alternatives than fire department staffing. When fire departments promote these, however, they almost never give an inch on staffing. Put simply, we want to have our cake and eat it too!
If we had a way of determining which fire victims were really “savable” by firefighters out of the total killed each year, we would find the number infinitesimally small. I would argue that this number alone is poor justification for a fire service system that costs taxpayers billions of dollars annually, especially when we have so many other needs competing for funds that will produce positive returns on our investments of scarce community resources.
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