Firemen Are Idiots, Not Heroes | Gerold's Blog

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WARNING: if you bypassed the warning on the Home page, here it is: “if you can’t stand to have your cherished beliefs challenged, then you better stop reading this and watch the crap on TV instead.”

It’s time to dispel another myth; firefighters are NOT heroes; most of them are idiots and overpaid government bureaucrats.

Here are four examples of firefighting idiocy that I’ve seen.

1) – A single-story commercial building (Palm Dairies) in Thompson, MB had large, multiple pane windows. The interior was on fire. There was smoke but no flames. The interior was black. In other words, it was ready to flash-over. A fire requires three things: fuel, heat and oxygen. This fire lacked oxygen. The proper procedure should have been breaking a small window pane, insertion of a hose with a mist spray to reduce heat and thus prevent flash-over.

Instead, the fireman, using axes and pikes began breaking all the windows on several sides of the building. Being a windy day, no sooner did they break the windows than the entire interior burst into flame (flash-over) with a heat so intense it drove the firemen back. The entire building was quickly engulfed in flames and destroyed.

2) – Apartment building – an old, large, multiple-story, wood frame, multi-unit apartment block once stood on the corner of Broadway and Main in Winnipeg, across from the CN Station. There were multiple fire trucks on hand with only two hoses in action; one on either side of the apartment block. The water from the hoses was directed through the smoke above the roof and landed on the other side of the building.

As a bystander, I could see the futility of trying to extinguish smoke. There was one fireman on each of the two hoses while dozens of firemen milled around scratching their nether regions. The two active firemen were getting each other wet as the water sprayed over the roof of the burning apartment block drenched the other firemen on the other side of the building. It looked like a competition to see who could drench the other guy the most.

Could the Fire Chief not see this? Needless to say, the building burned to the ground. There were fatalities. I know that the City Council had tried in vain to demolish this old building. Perhaps the firemen were performing a sort of urban renewal? If so, they did a great job removing an urban blight albeit at the lives of several tenants.

3) – a two story house fire in northern Winnipeg. One upper floor bedroom was burning. There were multiple firemen standing around scratching their nether regions while one fireman with a hose on an adjacent rooftop was directing a stream of water through the window onto the bedroom floor.

A room consists of six planes or surfaces; four walls, a floor and a ceiling. Heat and flames rise. From my vantage point standing on the sidewalk beside the burning house, I could see two walls and the ceiling engulfed in flames. If I had had a fire hose where I was standing, I would have directed the water spray at the ceiling where it would have splashed two walls and run down onto the floor. In other words from my vantage point I could have drenched four of the six planes (2 walls, ceiling and floor).

It might even have subdued enough of the fire so other firemen with hoses and breathing apparatus could climb the stairs, opened the bedroom door and extinguished the fire on the two remaining walls and saved the house. Instead, the idiot fireman on the roof was directing his water spray at only one of the six planes (floor), not the four I could have.

Witnessing such idiocy, I turned and left; knowing the house was lost. Even if idiot firemen extinguish a fire, they usually do so much water damage that much of the remainder of a building has to be gutted and rebuilt. More on this below.

4) – a color newspaper photo showed the interior of a municipal garage outside Thunder Bay engulfed in flames. The garage door was wide open providing the fire with endless amounts of oxygen. Again, there’s one fireman with a hose seen in the photo. Probably not pictured are the rest of the crew standing around scratching their nether regions.

As if supplying the burning interior with sufficient amounts of oxygen wasn’t stupid enough, the lone fireman with a hose was directing the water onto the roof which was NOT burning. Since it was a peaked roof, the water ran off the roof never touching the fire inside. Not surprising, the building was a complete loss.

Regular readers know I place little credence in conspiracies. Given a choice between conspiracy and incompetence; stupidity is usually the likeliest reason. This is especially true when it involves two of the stupidest creatures on earth; unions and governments. I suppose it’s possible that these firemen knew what they were doing and deliberately burned these building to the ground (for whatever reason). But, all FOUR of these cases? That’s highly unlikely.

There are cases of deliberate destruction. The twin towers of 9/11 were a 40 year old, asbestos-filled urban renewal project as well as a false flag event. And, the demolition of Building 7 conveniently destroyed Enron, WorldCom and other evidence of oligarchic malfeasance but, this is a story for another time and is already well-documented.

I was once in the renovation business. I’ve seen the amount of damage water can do to wooden buildings. That damage can result from either slow leakage over a long period of time or saturation in a short period of time that’s not properly dried before being ‘buttoned-up’. With only my fingers, I’ve crumbled multiple 2X4 and 2X6 lumber destroyed by dry rot caused by water.

So why do idiot firemen destroy with water saturation that which was not destroyed by fire? Because they’re in a hurry to get back to the fire house so they can continue scratching their nether regions, watch TV, lift weights, cook and play video games. The reason they give is they need to extinguish the fire as fast as possible to be able to respond to the next emergency.

That’s a crock of shit. They can send all the fire trucks and most of the crew back but all it takes is a couple of fireman to remain with a garden hose and a $25 hand-held heat detector. Instead of flooding the entire building after the fire is out, a simple heat detector can find hot spots that can be extinguished with a small amount of water. But what do I know? I’m not an idiot fireman. It certainly makes me wonder what it takes (or doesn’t take) to become a fire chief! Obviously, a complete lack of common sense is a requirement.

So, I get a little skeptical and suspicious when firemen try to make themselves look like heroes. Lest you think this is merely one man’s slanted opinion, let’s examine some statistics and you’ll see how I come by my slanted opinion. Look at the graphic below from NPR that shows the number of U.S. work related deaths by occupation.

The four deadliest occupations are fishermen, loggers, pilots and farmers/ranchers. Also above the national average for work-related deaths are police and construction workers. However the so-called heroes; our glorious firefighters’ work-related deaths are BELOW the national average. In fact, firemen are about as likely to die on the job as cashiers. Some heroes!

In the article facetiously titled “I Put My Life on the Line Writing This Article!” says, “firefighters having a lower death rate than the average American worker and barely edging out cashiers in terms of putting their lives on the line. Most cashiers are killed on the job because of homicides, whereas a quarter of firefighter deaths are from fire truck accidents – and the numbers have declined, apparently, after concerted efforts to convince these heroes to buckle their seatbelts.

“Fishermen, loggers, pilots and farmers/ranchers have the most dangerous jobs in America. Police officers and sheriffs fall below farmers, but above construction workers. About half of their deaths are because of car accidents, often the fault of their own driving habits.”

So when’s the last time you heard a fisherman, logger or pilot claiming to be a “hero” for “putting their lives on the line”? How many of them hand out heroism awards to their fellow union workers? And, oh yes, not only are firefighters government workers but they’re union workers who do everything they can to put volunteer fire fighters out of work – people who donate their time for free and make idiot, overpaid firemen look like the cretins they are.

There’s another myth that firemen and police deserve their enormous pensions because so many of them die shortly after retiring. That’s another crock of shit.

Steven Greenhut, writes, “police are the longest-living public employee category followed closely by firefighters. They live well into their 80s, enjoying those millionaires’ pensions that their unions have secured for them.”

I’ve been involved in logging equipment for a number of years. I’ve watched insurance companies’ half-hearted attempts to regulate and standardize equipment fire suppression systems. It amounted to naught. Despite a high incidence of equipment fires, it’s easier for insurance companies to simply raise their rates than help reduce fires. The same applies to house fires and resulting water damage. You, the homeowner or renter, are paying more for insurance than is necessary to cover the additional renovation costs caused by idiot firemen’s’ excessive water damage.

We, the taxpayers are also paying through the nose for their rich salaries and pensions. In the article $822,000 Worker Shows California Leads U.S. Pay Giveaway Bloomberg reports an extreme example; bankrupt California where public salaries and pensions far outstrip the private sector as well as in Californian’s $609,000 Check Shows True Retirement Cost

Lest you think this is only an American problem, Canada’s Pension Tension reports that, “Public sector pay: already paid $19 billion more every year than if they were paid at private sector norms.”

“Federal public servants: pay only about 37% of their pension costs—taxpayers pay the rest. Estimates show these are underfunded by between $150 and $230 billion. (There are billions more in unfunded liabilities at the provincial and local level as well as other public sector institutions.)

“Early retirement: full pensions and extended benefits only exist in the public sector. Many civil servants can retire at 55. Governments even top up CPP/QPP for those retiring early.”

As I said, we homeowners, renters and taxpayers are being fleeced. The more people know about this, the better we can stop this “heroic” propaganda and pressure our governments to be accountable for their excessive pensions; beginning with politicians themselves.

So, are all firemen idiots? No, I’ve known a few well-meaning ones, but most are idiots. And, are firemen entirely useless? No, they do serve a function. They sometimes save lives and they often prevent fires from spreading. For that, we should be grateful.

But are they heroes? Not on my sweet ass they aren’t.

Gerold March 9, 2013

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