A Few Questions on Fire Safety

* In response to Robert Drobish’s July 19 letter (“Fire Union Wrong Regarding Volunteers”), I offer a few questions for all of us to ponder:

When you need a doctor, would you settle for a volunteer who has not graduated from medical school? When you need a lawyer, would you settle for a volunteer who has not passed the state bar? When you travel by airplane, would you settle for a pilot that does not have a pilot’s license? When you need a firefighter to come to your home in the middle of the night or the day-care center where you leave your children, would you settle for waiting for a volunteer to show up to the station who is not state certified? Or do you want a professional who has completed a state fire academy and is state certified?

Unbeknownst to most taxpayers of Orange County, half of the firefighters employed by the Orange County Fire Authority are volunteers, the vast majority of whom are not State Certified Firefighter I or Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT). OCFA training for volunteers does not include a full-time fire academy or EMT training.

Mr. Drobish claims that many of the volunteers are career firefighters. Well, the fact is that the OCFA terminated every single OCFA career firefighter from the volunteer system because those career firefighters were entitled to extra pay by federal law, which amounted to a few dollars per call. Most of these volunteers aspire to become professionals but have been passed over for other applicants.

Don’t be fooled, taxpayers. The OCFA has placed the almighty dollar ahead of your safety. If volunteers are such a great deal, how come no other fire department in Orange County uses them?

Either the OCFA management has brilliance far beyond its peers in other fire departments, or it’s not such a great idea after all.

Sure, volunteers are commonplace in many areas of the United States that cannot financially support a professional force, but why must we settle for less in Orange County--one of the most affluent areas in the country? Something smells here . . . and it’s not the fish!

LINDA ROBBERTZE

Dana Point