Firefighters are still putting out embers at this morning's fire in Mount Vernon (just hours after clubs on The Block burned) and already the city fire union (Firefighters Local 734) is blasting away at company closures. Two or three fire companies are shuttered each night throughout the city due to budget cuts.
Photo is of the Mount Vernon blaze and was taken by The Sun's Jerry Jackson.
Union officials routinely complain that the closures slow response time to fires and endanger lives of citizens and firefighters. Last year, a man was killed in a fire just a block from a firehouse that was closed, though a variety of factors, including a wrong address, contributed to a delayed response (read a tribute to the victim here).
The Baltimore Fire Department shoots back that closures have little to no impact on fighting fires (though Fire Chief James S. Clack warned during the last budget process that the department couldn't absorb anymore cuts).
This morning, the Firefighters Union 734 issued a blistering statement saying that once again the the Fire Department's shortcomings are endangering citizens, and noting that the city needed help from Baltimore, Anne Arundel and Howard counties (twin four-alarm fires in a strip of vacant houses in West Baltimore this summer required an assist from as far away as Washington).
Chief Kevin Cartwright, a spokesman for the Fire Department, shot back this morning, calling the union complaints overblown and old. "Response time had nothing to do with anything that happened last night," he said.
Both five-alarm fires brought nearly 150 firefighters to the scenes. Union officials are saying that a 5-alarm assignment today is roughly equivalent to a 3-alarm assignment in years past, due to cutbacks in personnel and apparatus. Fire officials counter that different chiefs have different protocols, and that better equipment and improved safety guidelines mean that fewer trucks and engines are required on each alarm).
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has reduced rotating closures from four to three in this year's budget, which ran a $121 million deficit. For more from the union and Cartwright:
Statement from Firefighters Union #734:
Response from Fire Department spokesman Kevin Cartwright: