No one every sung, “Fuck the firemen!”
Shower thought inspired by this Short.
And while we’re at it, my ex-FIL fought two tours in Iraq, won a Bronze Medal for successfully delivering a monster generator for civilian use. No issues.
Came home and ordered his men to cut houses in half with chainsaws, push them off the road, to clear a path through the Mississippi back roads, in order to relieve civilians after Katrina. They scooped corpses out of trees. Gave out Walmart bikes to little blacks girls so they could feel some semblance of “It’s OK”. I saw the fucking pictures.
Lived Hurricane Ivan. It ain’t what you see on the news. Ever seen transformers exploding across the city, like blue lightning, one after another? Ever seen the Milky Way because there is no power? Ever heard that train sound for 10-hours, non-stop, terrified there’s a tornado across the street you cannot see? Ever went to bed in the summer and woke up with no leaves on the trees? Ever wept in the street for your new city? Katrina was worse.
PTSD saw him leave his wife of 32-years, abandon his only child, my ex-wife.
Sorry if my prose is a mess, I’m crying, again.
Fuck these masked animals rolling all over our country. The 2nd Amendment is your right, whether you like it or not. Take that as you fucking like.
Every volunteer fire/EMS organization in the USA is struggling to keep the trucks filled. Most stations in the country are one or two volunteers away from just shutting down entirely.
If you can show up, please volunteer! My station desperately needs not just firefighters - these roles at my station are barely covered by a few overworked volunteers:
Most fire companies would be thrilled to have someone show up and join as a member with the goal of just doing one or more of these roles. We don’t just need firefighters, we need a whole host of other things to keep the organization healthy and stable. We’ve seen what happens when these roles are neglected: we lose memberhip and when we lose membership we lose the bench needed to keep the trucks filled and ready to respond.
(I will say, if you do try to respond and find the people at the station are grumpy, generally it’s because they’re extremely overworked and lash out because of it. Don’t let them push you away, you are doing this for your community, not for someone at the station)
Do you guys pay really low taxes in the US? I just wonder why this isn’t a critical public service and therefore something that is funded through tax by the government?
It depends what state/county/city you live in. For instance, battling the Palisades Fire we had the city LAFD, the LA County Fire Department, and CalFire all coordinating resources, including some of the incarcerated firefighters who just got a raise from $1.00/hr to $7.25/hr and are starting to be able to apply for regular firefighter certification when they get out. And yes, our taxes pay for this, one of the most-supported uses of that money. They also do fast-water rescue when we have enough rain to flood the streams and rivers, help extract crash victims and put out flaming vehicles on the highways, and rescue hikers and mountain bikers on the local trails…
Whereas if you live in a rural red area, there may only be volunteers, because there’s not voter support for a professional fire department.
That’s really interesting, thanks. Incredible that it’s a political stance, why do Republicans vote against it can I ask? - is it seen sort of like a socialist provision?
I wouldn’t know, but probably something like “I ain’t payin’ for putting out someone else’s fire! And I sure as hell ain’t payin’ a buncha guys to sit around the firehouse when nuthin’ is burnin’!”
Meanwhile a lot of the work our firefighters do throughout the year is clearing brush, creating and maintaining pre-emptive fire lines so they’ll have places to make a stand when wildfires do erupt, and making sure buildings are less likely to burn in the first place.
Oh that reminds me, I should probably add, “Ain’t nobody gonna tell me what I can do on my property!”
Yuuup some really low taxes and also a lot of money gets turned into fighter jets and missiles which are of limited use in a structure fire. If they asked me I’d shave off a cheeky 5% of our defense budget and turn it into emergency response but they don’t ask
Everyone pays central government taxes also yes! (is that what “Federal” means?). It’s a shame something like you suggest can’t be pushed through pragmatically at that level but like you say, you can’t yeet firefighters out of planes at people :)
Yes, but the central government has a bunch of rules surrounding how it’s formed that can be summarized as “not elected by the people, but by the amount of land you own” so the central federal government doesn’t do anything that helps people, only things that enable big businesses to make more money.