Burn Page #5

We don't even have on

the radar buying new equipment.

You know? There's no

money for it, unless we...

A lot of things happen

here that shouldn't happen.

Everyone probably knows that we

parked a truck on a train track.

The Detroit Fire

Department is still looking

into why a firefighter decided

to park the ladder truck on the

tracks and in the path of danger.

I mean, how do

you park on a train track?

An Amtrak train track no less.

When you park a 700,000

dollar truck on a train track,

and it gets taken out, that's

700,000 dollars out of our budget.

We had another vehicle that

was driven under an overpass,

and we created a convertible

out of it.

The cab alone was 200,000 dollars.

I don't think we hold ourselves

accountable like we need to.

Let me ask you this:

What should happen?

To the individual?

Well, you tell me!

That backed up?

Or the officer?

Or the officer?

Let's start

with the officer first.

Well, I'm

kind of partial to that, so.

I feel like I'm

in a parallel universe.

Nobody else thinks

like this in the world.

And I don't want to get to a point

where I accept that as a norm,

because that is not the

norm everywhere else.

It shouldn't be the norm.

You know, how they say when

you're in Rome, do as the Romans?

I ain't doing as the Romans,

I'm changing sh*t around here.

Excuse my French, but this is

pure, unadulterated nonsense!

I don't care how many more

stations you badly want open,

or might need to be opened,

there is no more money.

What do you do in your own

families when there's no more money?

How many of you going to come to

work and not get paid in two weeks.

Raise your hands if

you come in to work,

and knowing you ain't getting paid.

I'm at tremendous odds with

the people in this organization

for the direction that it must go.

Go down to the shop,

we're not getting gear,

we're not getting rigs,

we're not hiring.

I ain't got any extra money.

Imagine being in a closet

with a hornet's nest.

You can hire now.

You're going to get stung.

This past month

was really, really tough.

I wasn't feeling very well

the majority of the month,

and it kept me out of therapy.

I hate even saying it, but I still

can't take a shower by myself.

I was supposed to work till I was 60,

have a big blow-out retirement party,

retire a Chief, and things

were going to be lovely.

It wasn't supposed

to happen like this.

You know, I still have large

dependence on other people.

That's one of the most difficult

things with the situation.

It wears on you.

I feel like sh*t as it is, not

being able to go down to therapy

and get exercise and

get your blood pumping,

and get that social interaction.

Right now, I'm rounding the corner,

on getting the driving thing back.

It'll lighten the stress a

whole lot once I'm independent

to where I can drive wherever

and whenever, and I'm not relying

on someone for transportation.

It's a really big step into making

me feel somewhat normal again.

Vacant?

Looks like it.

If they knock that down, if

they do, get out of here.

Come on down!

We're trying.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Oh, f***!

Big challenge,

how do we get rid of this?

How?

Seventy percent of our work

is going to this stuff,

80,000 vacant structures.

How many does the mayor

have slated to tear down this year?

He wants to

tear down 3,000 a year.

That's just a

drop in the bucket.

Of course it is.

This is whooping our behinds.

This is breaking our

firefighter's back.

It's increasing overtime, injuring

our firefighters, damaging homes next

to these vacant structures,

making the City look ugly,

we're being defeated.

We are so desperate, we got to

do something with this number.

You know, I'm almost resigned to the

point that until we get rid of this,

as Fred said, we're

just "managing misery."

Tonight on "Let it Rip,"

the new Detroit Fire

Commissioner has been on the job

for only three months, and

already he's shaking things up.

His controversial plan

is to fight some fires

in vacant houses, but not all.

I'm talking about

sometimes let it burn.

He's worked in Los Angeles,

but tonight, he's back in the city

of his birth, with a bold new plan

to save money, and save lives.

Mr. Commissioner, lay it out

for us, how will this work?

I'm changing our aggressive

strategy on these vacant homes.

When there's no one in the home, we

need to be more in a defensive mode.

What I don't want is

an over-aggressive

non-thinking firefighter.

We are a professional

fire department,

and we have to balance

the risk versus gain.

There's not a building in the City

that's worth losing a firefighter's

life on, particularly if it's vacant.

There's nothing within

100 feet of either side of this.

Let it burn.

Tony, let it go!

I thought we

weren't putting it out.

Chief said put it out.

I think it's absolutely

bullshit that somebody would tell us,

who's never been in a fire

here in the City of Detroit.

He might have lived here 30 or 40

years ago, but hey, I live here.

I know these neighborhoods or

whatever, and you never know

which house has somebody in it.

Bottom line, you never know.

Unfortunately, in

all the abandoned buildings,

there's a lot of people

that squat in these homes.

How long he's been down there?

He's been down here for a week.

He was coming down here to

get water, and evidently,

somehow he couldn't get out again.

I mean, I heard somebody

yelling, "Help, help, help!"

But from out there it

sounded like a little kid.

I got in there and

it was a grown man.

Homeless guy, his

feet are frostbitten.

I'll call the

Commissioner uneducated

about what he's talking about.

For him to be talking

about this city,

you have to be here for a while.

You have to see it, and

you have to work it.

So what other people consider vacant

or abandoned, or living in squalor,

these are people's homes.

So I'll park so you guys can get

out without banging

up my '86 El Camino.

So this is home.

Well, you know, you leave

work, you come home, you work.

You know, and because I'm not

married and don't have any kids,

it's just always working.

Man, that's when I had a hairline.

Lord have mercy, that was

back in my younger days.

And this is the helmet I was

wearing when we had a fire

on the eighth floor of the

Department of Health Building,

and this was the result of

me crawling on my knees,

and I crawled into a partition

or something, and I hit it

and I put the dent in the helmet.

So I tell the guys I've

been, I've been around.

My first day as Chief 9.

You officially make it?

I officially made it.

WHEN? Today?

- Today?

- Yep.

Congratulations.

Cap or... Chief.

Thank you.

We are doing our rounds.

We're going to go pick up the mail

from Downtown, and then run it

out to each individual fire station.

Hey, how you doing?

Hey, everybody.

You know what,

they're not even here.

Engine 47 is one of the

browned-out companies, as they say.

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