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DC Fire-EMS and Detroit Fire-EMS







On a national level, EMS services in Washington DC and Detroit have taken a beating lately regarding the operational aspects of their services.  From local reporting in Detroit and DC to national attention on Firehouse.com and JEMS.com, these services have been hit for potential mismanagement and operations hazardous to the lives they are charged with protecting.

Now, both of these situations are very public and magnified due to the overall size of their department.  Are the DCFD and DFD the only departments that are experiencing, or have ever experienced this...the answer would be no, but because they are under a microscope, all problems will be visable.

Detroit Fire Department.

Charlie Leduff of Fox2 Detroit has been an open source of review for the Detroit Fire Department. Over the last several months, his investigative journal reports have gone "viral" being reposted to youtube, and rebroadcast through other services such as Firehouse.com, EMS1.com and JEMS.com.  In his report, he speaks about the quality of the Detroit Fire Department, quickly giving the rank and file members a tremendous pat on the back, but informing the public about how bad the leadership is.  In these reports, Mr. LeDuff asks the question "where's the beef" when trying to answer the question why is EMS response times in Detroit greater than 12 minutes, and where are all the ambulances.

Now, as we know there is two sides to every story, and when you widen the angle of the camera lens you will always see more then when narrowly focused on a specific problem.  Is the Detroit Fire Department lacking in response to the level that Mr. LeDuff mentions...really, that is a difficult question to ask.

Washington DC Fire and EMS Department.  

DCFD is another agency that is in a position much like that of the Detroit Fire Department, especially in the last couple of weeks.  There have been several reports written in the EMS trade publications, as well as local news reports regarding the state of the DCFD.  When an officer of the DC Police Department was hit by a motorist they had to wait for an ambulance to come into DC under a mutual aid agreement because DCFD was out of available ambulances (http://www.jems.com/article/news/dc-police-firefighters-unions-outraged-a).  Just days later a lady suffering from stroke like symptoms was transported, not in an ambulance but a fire truck.  (http://www.jems.com/article/news/dc-firefighters-transport-stroke-victim).  Now, the firefighters association for this area has initiated a no confidence vote in the Chief which passed.

Again, what is side number two.

In looking at these fire departments, I find myself thinking about what it would be like to enter these agencies for the sole purpose of "cleaning" them up.  Now I use that term very gently because again I don't know what is going on with the agencies and don't know how to "clean" them up at this time.  I look at the business community.  You will find that there are businesses that have started to fail because of a change in the economy and their CEO will leave for them to hire an individual who is very well positioned to be a clarifying figure.  These CEOs are know for their ability to enter any type of business and keep them from declaring their business dead in the water.  They have the ability to make profits happen and stock prices to sore again.  Is this what DFD and DCFD need?  That is a good question.

Now, my wife and I have a unique conversational style sometimes.   There are times we will submit a conversation to each other only to argue both sides and see if we can determine an adequate process for solving the situation.  We were talking about these situations one day, and about my thoughts of a cleaner CEO and how that would work in a agency such as this.  We both thought about how much an individual like this that knew emergency services, business and law could do in these situations and we figured that if the departments were as bad as they were being reported our only question is how long it would take.  That is until...

We actually spoke about this topic much longer than we normally do for conversations such as these,  and as we continued to get into the weeds of the discussion we found that our plan would never work.  See, when one of those CEO's comes into a business for the sole purpose of making them profitable again, they clean up the management side of the house.  They remove much of the management staff and bring in their own leadership personnel to help in the recovery.  Due to the fact that both DFD and DCFD are governmental based organizations that have protections under the law, removal of leadership staff to the level normally seen in these turn-arounds would not be possible.  Therefore as a agency chief you would be trying to right a ship that has staff trying to keep it on the same course.  Would their be a provision that would say, hey we need help and we need it now.  We can hire this individual and provide him with emergency powers that allows him to correct the leadership issues and prior protections be eliminated during the revamping period.  In business they are able to do a lot of things that were previously protected because they file for bankruptcy protections that allow that changes to be made.

DCFD and DFD are in need of assistance.  Not only do they have image problems to correct, it sounds as if there are some operational aspects that need to be changed.  At what level will it require, and will those brought in to change it be allowed to make the required changes.

Take Care and Stay Safe

Combomedic.
twitter.com/dsblev


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