The District was reminded of the dangers of firefighting Monday when four firefighters were injured in a rowhouse fire. That makes a recent report by Washington’s Office of the Inspector General even more disheartening. According to the report, firefighters aren’t even safe in their firehouses.
The report released last Thursday found shocking inadequacies in D.C.’s firehouses: 50 percent of the firehouses didn’t have heat in all working and living spaces, 53 percent don’t have adequate air-conditioning and others had broken windows that went unrepaired.
Three firehouses even had asbestos, a building material long linked to cancer. The asbestos was originally discovered in 2002. Five years later, it’s still there, putting firefighters and anyone who enters the station at risk.
All D.C. residents, even those uninterested in the state of firehouses, should be concerned by the report’s findings. Several buildings had malfunctioning or unreliable emergency alert systems, with broken loudspeakers and printers. That means a slower response time to emergency calls.
But while asbestos and broken windows make for unsafe work environments, apparently they don’t spoil the mood. The Metropolitan Police Department is investigating firehouse prostitution, according to Mayor Adrian Fenty’s spokesperson Dena Iverson. These kinds of mismanagement in a critical city service should be blamed on the head of the organization: Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services Chief Dennis L. Rubin.
Rubin didn’t waste any time responding to the Inspector General’s report. In a letter to Inspector General Charles Willoughby, he blamed deficiencies on budget restraints.
“The poor conditions in your office’s report are a product of decades of fiscal problems,” he wrote in the letter. “This additional funding has been requested over the last several years but has not been approved.”
According to Rubin, all the problems noted in the report are fixed or are scheduled to be. That’s good, but D.C. shouldn’t take Rubin’s word for it. After all, the asbestos was discovered five years ago and it’s still there.
A FEMS spokesman was less diplomatic than Rubin.
“We’re not saying much,” Alan Etter, a FEMS spokesperson, said. “We’re working on it, okay?”
You don’t have to be the kind of person who wears an FDNY hat to think that FEMS’ treatment is insulting to firefighters and human dignity. All workers deserve decent conditions at their jobs, especially those who risk their lives for the city.
