NATIONALIZING THE FIRE SERVICE
OPINION
More and more, Americans are looking to the federal government for prescriptions for problems traditionally addressed at the state and local levels. Everything has become a national issue. In a world that seems to grow more confounding with each passing day, it has become second nature, a comfort, to throw the responsibility at Washington. That way, when things don’t work as we intended them to —and through Washington they almost never do—we have someone or something to blame.
This centralism has not passed over the fire service. Numerous groups and individuals believe that the fire service must walk the nationalization path if it is to progress in the areas of safety, training, and operational effectiveness. They have sounded the OSHA cavalry charge and are knockknock-knockin’ on Clinton’s door. Do fire departments require federal regulation to help keep their wheels spinning forward?
They do not. Increased regulation will not solve the real problems facing the fire service: lack of responsible leadership, lack of finances, and lack of firefighting basics. These problems can be addressed only at the state and local levels, with support, not dictation, from Washington. But right now, self-appointed tire service missionaries are forging through the Washington jungle trying to convince officials that firefighters and fire departments must be protected from themselves, and that they’re the ones tor the job. It is a display of arrogance mixed with political and economic opportunism at the expense of firefighters and taxpayers who ultimately would pay the price for federal “protection.”
The fire service needs to be better equipped, better trained, and better staffed to be more effective. Where does OSHA —a regulator, not a facilitator—fit into this picture? Would OSHA hand every fire department a check for each regulation published? OSHA would continue to operate under a selective enforcement policy targeted at areas that can “afford” to pay the fines, thereby satisfy ing the final bureaucratic objective, which is to fatten itself. Its regulations would be enforced, in essence, by investigators reading IFSTA’s Essentials of Firefighting on the way to the scene. If you don’t believe it, just ask our brothers and sisters from the heavily regulated industrial sector.
Where will the fire service get its money to comply with OSHA regulations? Under the Bush Administration, the fire service did not fare well in terms of dollars for training, safety, and operational preparedness; and we must not expect that to change with the new Administration, particularly with the national referendum on deficit reduction. The USFA escaped President Clinton’s proposed FEMA budget reductions only through the tireless efforts of a small group of Congress members and federal officials; and even so, a USFA budget five times the size could not begin to address all the training, educational, safety, and operational needs of our vast and diverse fire service.
The broad hand of federal law cannot possibly take unique local fire department circumstances into account before it squeezes down. The federal government could not save an untold number of “unknowns” who would gag on generic medicine dispensed in the name of the public good. Which public? Whose good? The great expanse and diversity of America make pulling 32,000 fire departments in line with one another an unmanageable and unfeasible task. We are not the same. How can we be made to behave the same?
OSHA regulations would not be an issue if the fire serv ice acted with self-empowerment. As it is, the fire service has acted poorly, for many reasons and with plenty of fault to go around. Let’s use the gift of self-empowerment, the legacy of America, now, before it’s too late. Policing fire department activities through increased OSHA regulations is a big step toward nationalizing the municipal fire service. And a nationalized fire service is not in the best interest of the fire service or America. Once again, the choice is our own —but maybe not for too much longer.
