Policy problems

Special to The Detroit News The Fire Department sold the Greektown fire station to the make way for the Greektown Casino. That decision means the nearest pumper truck to downtown is more than a mile away and the nearest ladder truck is two miles away.

Questionable decisions add to risks

Recent mismanagement magnifies Fire department’s deficiencies

Special to The Detroit News One of the department’s newest ladder trucks was damaged when it was backed into this tree at a Detroit Zoo public relations event.

By Charles Hurt and Melvin Claxton / The Detroit News

he Detroit Fire Department paid $1.8 million 21 years ago for a boat with a special bow that could cut through ice to reach fires during the winter. But it never gets a chance to ply the frozen Detroit River because it is taken out of service from fall until late spring.     The boat — moored during the summer at the foot of West Grand Boulevard — has a full-time captain and deckhand, but the firefighters assigned to it are stationed more than three miles away.
    The boat’s companion truck which carries large hoses that enable the fireboat to supply water to major blazes far off the river is stationed more than five miles away.
    There are many such stories in the Detroit Fire Department, where over the past two decades top officials have made decisions that cost the department money, allowed fire trucks to fall into disrepair and put the city’s residents at risk.
    A nine-month Detroit News review of fire station journals and other department records found many examples of mismanagement by fire officials in recent years.
    Here are some of them:

Parked ladder trucks
    Although the Fire Department has a chronic shortage of working aerial trucks, fire officials decided its two newest ladder trucks would only be sent to major blazes.
    This meant that the trucks weren’t sent to dozens of fires even when they were the closest aerials and lives were at risk.
    Fire officials changed the policy in April, after a non- working aerial was sent to an apartment building fire at Pallister and the Lodge in which four people died.
    One of the new ladder trucks, Ladder 6, was damaged in July and had to be sent to the manufacturer for $25,000 in repairs. Ironically, it didn’t have the accident on the way to a fire, but at a public relations event at the Detroit Zoo.

Closed station
    City leaders closed the last remaining fire station downtown in February 1999 when it sold the building that housed the station to the Greektown casino group. Today, the nearest pumper to the downtown area is more than a mile from the Renaissance Center, the city’s tallest building. The nearest aerial ladder truck is two miles away.

Wasted money
    Fire officials took a 20-year-old ladder truck out of service and spent two years trying to repair it. Today, the truck remains broken in a musty Fire Department warehouse and fire officials have paid $598,000 to replace the aerial truck.

Foam trucks axed
    In 1938, the city had seven trucks equipped with foam tanks to battle fuel fires. Today, with three major freeways carrying thousands of tanker trucks each year, the city doesn’t have a single foam truck.
    Fire officials got rid of the last three in 1978. The department uses fire engines that carry three buckets of foam — just enough for about four minutes of fire fighting.
    The department’s 14 new pumpers were ordered with the wrong hose connections which make it nearly impossible to spray foam.
    Without foam trucks, the department has had a hard time getting large quantities of foam to fires. On May 27, a fuel tanker turned over on Interstate 75, spilling burning fuel onto the freeway. It took nearly an hour to round up enough foam so the 27 fire trucks at the scene could put out the fire, according to Fire Department dispatch records.

Wrong size trucks
    After reinforcing the floors of the Fire Department’s headquarters downtown, officials bought a ladder truck for it. Only after the truck was delivered did they discover that it wouldn’t fit through the station doors.
    The same thing happened when city and fire officials bought trucks for the City Airport, Engine 46 at Grace and Knodell, and Ladder 7 at Second and Burroughs. All three trucks were too big for their fire houses.

Limited hours
    The Fire Department’s supply shop is closed on weekends, evenings and holidays. This sometimes leaves firefighters without essential equipment such as axes, fire fighting clothes, and radios.
    The storekeeper, only called in a major emergency, can come in to unlock supplies. But in one such emergency, when a fuel tanker exploded and firefighters ran out of foam, the storekeeper took an hour to get to the shop to unlock extra foam.

Flooded basement
    When fire officials installed new radio repeaters, they put them in the training academy at Grand River and Warren, built in 1926. The building has a history of flooding. The repeaters were placed three feet from the floor in the basement, but heavy rains this summer flooded the basement and ruined the repeaters. All radio communications were muted for nearly an hour before a dispatch technician rigged a back-up repeater downtown. During that time, firefighters and dispatchers were forced to use their personal mobile phones to dispatch trucks. The Fire Department still uses the back-up system and has requested Federal Emergency Management Agency money to replace the ruined repeaters.

Communications glitch
    The Fire Department’s computer system that dispatches and tracks the city’s 70 fire companies was installed more than a decade ago, uses outdated technology and routinely fails. The only back-up system is the department’s two-way radio system. But the city uses only one frequency for citywide communication, virtually jamming that frequency when there are several fires at once. And the radio system has been known to fail, as it did twice this summer.

Poor credit
    The Fire Department is so bad about paying its bills that many suppliers refuse to provide materials without cash up front. The city’s debtors include: Ladders Towers Inc., owed $275,000; KME Fire Apparatus, owed $12,000; American-LaFrance Michigan, owed $116,000.
    Though these truck-makers continue to do business with the city, American-LaFrance refuses to return one of the city’s repaired trucks until the bills are paid.

Patchwork trucks
    Earlier this year, fire officials bought a $40,000 aerial ladder and attached it to Ladder 20, a truck built in 1978. In April, the truck with its new aerial was taken out of service after an Underwriters Laboratories Inc. inspection found 22 safety violations on the rig.
    The city just replaced the aerial ladders on three more trucks at a cost of $255,000. Each of those trucks is 8 years old, older than some large cities even keep ladder trucks.

Scant supplies
    The Fire Department provides insufficient equipment for the city’s six squad trucks, used for rescuing fire victims and people trapped in wrecked automobiles. The rigs went without basic supplies such as ropes, jacks and saws, until Ford Motor Co. donated the equipment last year.

Returned money
    Over the years, fire officials have insisted that the department’s major problem is a lack of money. But during the 1998-99 fiscal year, department leaders returned to the city $3.7 million from their budget for salaries. That’s enough to pay 123 new recruits a year in a department that consistently understaffs its trucks.

Special to The Detroit News A firefighting boat, designed to cut through thick ice on the Detroit River, isn’t used at all in the winter. Its crew is stationed three miles away from where it’s docked.

Contact the reporters at churt@detnews.com and mclaxton@detnews.com.