Fire Department

EVEN GOOD news can't be simple in this city. For example, last week's announcement that civilian fire deaths in the city have reached the lowest number in recorded history - 25 in 2012 - is nothing but loose topsoil covering a rat's nest of complicated issues besetting the Fire Department. Many of these issues are illustrative of the evolution of a department in which changing trends - like more fire-resistant buildings and better prevention education - has led to far fewer structural fires, but medical emergencies, which the department also handles, have risen, and the city, Fire Department management and the workforce have not stayed on pace with these trends.

I HAVE LIVED and worked in Philadelphia all my life. I have paid taxes on my home for over 55 years. The only things I have asked for in all that time have been trash removal, safe streets and police and fire protection. Now Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers tells us that updating our EMS system would be "a long, arduous process, a costly process. " Stop telling us why things can't be done - just get them done! And while we're talking about the Fire Department, Mayor Nutter, give the firemen their raises.

ALTHOUGH HOMICIDES in Philadelphia spiked in 2012, fire deaths fell to their lowest level in at least 70 years, the Fire Department announced Wednesday, with a year-end total of 25. Mayor Nutter applauded the department's community-risk-reduction and fire-safety-outreach efforts and the leadership of Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers. Despite cutbacks, the department "has demonstrated the ability to do more with less," Nutter said. Ayers said that there's still work to be done and that the goal is zero fatalities.

Their South Philadelphia warehouse was still smoldering from a four-alarm fire earlier in the day, but members of the Fralinger String Band declared Monday night that they would not miss the Mummers Parade. "Fralinger will never back down from a challenge," said Thomas D'Amore, 24, the captain. The band had been renting first-floor space at Second and Wharton Streets to make props and costumes, D'Amore said. "Unfortunately, this is the first year we've rented this spot," said D'Amore, drinking a Pepsi outside the Shamrock Pub down Two Street.

ZED'S DEAD is an electronic band that took its name from the Quentin Tarantino thriller "Pulp Fiction. " The film includes a grisly overdose scene - and at the band's performance Saturday night at the Electric Factory, fact mirrored fiction when at least four people overdosed, causing the gig to be canceled, according to the fire department and social media. Police responded to the Electric Factory, at 7th Street near Callowhill, about 8 p.m. and found nine concertgoers passed out from possible overdoses, the Associated Press reported.

CITY COUNCIL grilled the Nutter administration at a hearing Tuesday about its plans to rotate 293 senior firefighters to stations throughout the city starting in January. Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers spent two hours defending the plan at a Committee on Labor and Civil Service hearing before a group of skeptical Council members and dozens of heckling firefighters. "None of this makes any sense," said Councilman Jim Kenney, committee chairman, calling the administration's actions punitive.

Blast levels Mass. building SPRINGFIELD, Mass. - A natural gas explosion leveled a multistory building housing a strip club in one of New England's biggest cities on Friday evening, injuring at least eight people. There was no word on whether there had been any fatalities, Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno's spokesman Thomas Walsh said. Eight people were being evaluated at Baystate Medical Center, but none had critical injuries, a hospital spokeswoman said. It was unclear if people had been taken to other hospitals.

All Diane Neary wanted was someone to repave her driveway. So the widow of Lt. Robert Neary - one of two Philadelphia firefighters who died in the five-alarm fire at a Kensington warehouse in April – asked her neighbor Mike Whalen, who's also on the force, to ask around. Many firefighters do contracting or construction jobs on the side to make extra money, and so Whalen sent out a request on a department forum, asking if anyone wanted to take the job. On Monday, 30 firefighters showed up at Neary's Northeast Philadelphia house.

All Diane Neary wanted was someone to repave her driveway. So the widow of Lt. Robert Neary - one of two Philadelphia firefighters who died in the five-alarm fire at a Kensington warehouse in April - asked her neighbor Mike Whalen, who's also on the force, to ask around. Many firefighters do contracting or construction jobs on the side to make extra money, and so Whalen sent out a request on a department forum, asking if anyone wanted to take the job. On Monday, 30 firefighters showed up at Neary's Northeast Philadelphia house.

After getting out of the Air Force in 1972, Henry "Harry" Magee wasn't considering a career in the fire service. "I went to have coffee with my uncle one night and wasn't even thinking about the Fire Department," Magee said. "He said, 'It's a good job,' and I said, 'Well, I'm just a regular guy.' He said, 'We're all regular guys.' " At his uncle's urging, Magee took the Philadelphia Fire Department test and, nearly 39 years after he joined the department, he stood Friday on the second floor of the Fireman's Hall Museum as the 2012 recipient of the Firefighter of the Year Award.