A fire chief should know engines don't do errands

Posted by adn_jomalley

Posted: October 24, 2009 - 2:42 pm

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An Anchorage Fire Department engine, staffed with three or four on-duty firefighters, rolled up to Dimond High School on Monday afternoon. But it wasn’t there for a fire.

It was there at the request of Fire Chief Mark Hall to pick up his 15-year-old daughter and take her home from school.

The firefighters drove her about two miles and dropped her off. And the chief was not inconvenienced. And some time later the chief’s wife, in a fire department thank-you tradition, showed up at Station 7 in Jewel Lake with sundae fixings.

But this wasn’t your average fire department ice cream situation.

Hall isn’t a your average firefighter. He’s the chief. He’s also a public servant who should know he can’t ask his employees in city vehicles to do personal errands, even if they are paid in whipped cream and chocolate sauce. So it didn’t take long for the story of the fire engine pick-up to make its way around. And pretty soon I heard about it. On Friday, I called Hall to ask him what happened.

Hall was friendly and contrite. Before I heard the story, he said, I should keep in the back of my mind that the fire department does tours where trucks might pick up kids from school. What happened Monday, he said, went like this: his wife called him to say she couldn’t pick up their daughter. He told her he’d take care of it but he was busy. At first, he said, he thought he would just call the battalion chief on duty at the Station 12 near the Seward Highway and Dimond Boulevard, who drives a department Suburban, he said. But then he decided to call the Jewel Lake station, which is closer to the high school. Hall said he got the captain.

This Hall told me, is how he said the conversation went:

Chief: "Hey, you know how we have those tours that we give kids rides to and from school?"

Captain: "Yeah?"

Chief: "I’m in a jam and I need a favor. I need to get my daughter from Dimond High to home."

Captain: "You want me to do what?"

Chief: "You know what, never mind. I’ll work out another way to do this."

Captain: "We’ll do it. We’ll do it. No problem."

Chief: "Okay."

Here’s the thing: By calling the station, it meant that an engine with a full crew would have to go the school. By regulation, on-duty firefighters can’t be separated from their rig or each other when they are on shift, so they are always ready for a call. One of them couldn’t just go pick her up in a private car.

Later Monday evening, after his daughter rode home in a fire engine and his wife dropped off the ice cream at the station, Hall got a call from a friend in the department, he said. The friend heard he ordered a firefighter to pick up his daughter at school. What, his friend wanted to know, was Hall thinking?

"I didn’t make (the firefighter) do it, I asked him to do it," Hall told me.

But it occurred to him after his friend called, he said, "In my position, when you ask somebody do it, it can be taken as a direct order."

And so the next day, Tuesday, he apologized to the station captain, and to all the fire fighters there, and he told his boss, City Manager George Vakalis. He gave Hall a "verbal reprimand" and put a note in his file, Hall said.

"In retrospect, I wouldn’t do this again," he told me. "It was a mistake and I think I’m paying the price."

Then he said I should understand that doing favors for fellow firefighters is part of the culture of the department.

"The fire service is a brotherhood, you know, and sometimes you go out of your way to take care of each other," he said.

After we hung up, I dialed the Jewel Lake station to see if anyone there would tell me about the other side of the conversation. The phone rang and rang. I called the fire department public affairs office and found out there is a public education program that allows fire trucks to give people 20-minute rides. Ride certificates are usually donated to charities as auction items. The department might do one or two a month.

All riders pay $50 and sign a liability form. With children, a parent has to follow along in a car. If the truck is called into service, the passenger is dropped off. No one is allowed to ride on a truck to a real call without special training.

But the chief’s daughter wasn’t part of this program. He didn’t fill out any forms. He didn’t pay $50. He wasn’t riding behind her. The ride was about him being in a jam. His mention of the program to me seemed like a fire-engine red herring.

I talked with Vakalis. He confirmed what the chief said and called Hall’s actions "absolutely improper." He didn’t have any indication Hall had done that sort of thing before, he said. The city is reconsidering the ride-along program, he told me. He acknowledged the program wasn’t the same as what happened with the chief.

I thought about how Hall mentioned that firefighters help each other out. I spent a night shadowing some of them recently, and I know that’s true. But brothers are on equal footing. Once you’re the chief, there’s a power imbalance. Hall’s a relatively new chief, but he’s worked in the department for 19 years. He should know that.

Hall had ethics training in July. I got my hands on some of the materials and flipped through them. A page caught my eye. It read "The 4 Enemies of Integrity" at the top. Underneath were four points: "1. Self Interest: things we want; 2. Self-deception: A refusal to see things clearly; 3. Self-righteousness: an end justifies the means attitude; 4. Self-preservation: by any means necessary."

I thought about Hall’s account of what happened. I couldn’t get around the fact that he needed to be told by a friend, after the fact, that it was a bad a idea to call anyone on duty in the fire department to do a personal errand. Certainly he was sorry now, and he did the right thing telling his boss and apologizing. But back on Monday afternoon, why didn’t he just pick up the phone and call a cab?

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