Existence of Academy and NFPCA Threatened by President’s Budget
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News coming out of Washington during the week before Christmas indicated that President Carter’s budget would not recommend any funding for the renovation or operation of the National Fire Academy. On top of this, it was further learned that the President’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would recommend that still another survey be undertaken to determine the need and purpose of a National Fire Academy. This after 10 years of study and survey surveying that included “America Burning,” the report of the President’s Commission on Fire Prevention and Control which resulted in the passage of the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974.
What is even more ridiculous is the fact that the academy site and buildings have already been purchased—under a budget approved by the current administration—which is a Catch 22 situation if we ever saw one.
Lou Amabili (president of the International Society of Fire Service Instructors) in a letter to his membership dated December 20, 1977, asked, “Of what value are the other divisions of the NFPCA if we are without an academy through which we can reach the fire service? In short,” Amabili added, “if the academy goes, so goes the administration (the NFPCA). And if the administration goes, so goes the federal focus (on the national fire problem) for which we all have fought for, for so many years.”
Amabili, who was part of a group that included Howard McClennan of the International Association of Fire Fighters, Don Flinn of the International Association of Fire Chiefs and Skip Smith of the NFPA, and which met in Washington on December 21, 1977, reported that “it was the unanimous feeling of those assembled that we must act immediately! If the funds are not recommended in the President’s budget, it will be impossible to get them restored in Congress.”
Amabili added grimly that “It’s pretty evident that Congress is not going to go against the Administration.”
So it seems that the Carter Administration, in effect if not in law, is out to repeal the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act. They are apparently going to ignore Section 2, Article 2 of that act in which “The Congress finds that—
“The United States today has the highest per capita rate of death and property loss from fire of all the major industrialized nations of the world”— and at a savings of some $7 million. Peanuts, really, in a multi-billion dollar budget.
The group that included Amabili and which were representing the Joint Council of Fire Service Organizations recommended that the following action be taken:
- The Joint Council representatives be polled to gain support for the restoration of funds.
- Telegrams be sent from the Joint Council, and individually from all constituent organizations to President Carter urging the restoration of funds.
- Each organization urge each of its members to send a telegram to President Carter—a priority item that should be done immediately.
There are approximately a million fire fighters—paid and volunteer—in the United States. And politicians always listen to their constituents if enough of the constituents raise their voices. So let’s see how many telegrams can be pumped into the White House—telegrams that express the disappointment of the entire American fire service in the action of the bureaucrats who seem to want to erase the federal focus on the fire service even before it gets off the ground.
