Steve Neavling of Motor City Muckraker, who has been chronicling daily the challenges the Detroit Fire Department faces, writes about a troubling 14-hour period in the city.
It was a frigid, frustrating and overwhelming 14 hours for Detroit’s exhausted firefighters.
Between 2 p.m. and 4 a.m. Tuesday morning, three firefighters were injured, the city didn’t have enough rigs to respond to fires and wind knocked down hundreds of power lines.
The culprit – an ill-equipped fire department and strong winds that howled into the early morning.
During the 14-hour period, the understaffed fire department responded to more than 200 calls for fires, people trapped in cars and downed trees and power lines.
The department was so overwhelmed that some downed power lines sparked for up to 45 minutes before available fire rigs were available. Shortly before 4 p.m., firefighters were unable to save a burning house on the 14000 block of Ohio because there were no extra fire engines available. At about the same time, a fire engine malfunctioned at the scene of a commercial building fire at Alfred and Orleans.
