Hayes-White destroying SFFD

(SFWeekly uncovers latest sins)

(1-14-10)

I’ve been writing about and advocating for the removal of Joanne Hayes-White since the
mayor made her the fire chief. As an ex-firefighter myself (’71-’76) I know the
trade and she’s a politically correct appointee who has been a disaster for the
department.

For the following reasons:

She’s not qualified

She was appointed over dozens of more qualified applicants because her family is
politically influential and she filled out the mayor’s triad of female Public Safety
chiefs (Ann-Marie Conroy and Heather Fong being the other two and they weren’t
qualified either).

White had barely 13 years on the force when promoted to head it. Her primary
experience had been as a chauffeur for real fire chiefs. The length of her service
alone wasn’t enough to work your way through the ranks to junior officer, not captain
and certainly not onto the command staff. But, she had political pull. I heard
an analogy that it was like putting Eisenhower’s female chauffeur in charge of D-Day.

Refused to live in Chief’s residence

Her first act was to refuse to live in the Fire Chief’s house that the people built
centrally on Bush street. The residence was built as a practical way to honor the
Chief of the SFFD who was killed in the 1906 quake. The place is like a shrine and
Hayes-White continually disrespects it. She said that she could drive from her house
on the SW SF border near Daly City because she knew where all the fire houses were due
to her years of delivering real chiefs to them. She suggested that the City
convert the Chief’s home into a bed and breakfast. And, they pretty much did.

The upshot was that one of the ‘guests’ at the SFFD’s ‘hotel’ got pissed at his roomie
and tried to burn the place down. It was hushed up as much as you can hush
something like that up. Imagine the Fire Chief’s house being burned down by an
arsonist. Last year the house was burglarized.

Refused to aide L.A. in fire storm

This was probably her cardinal sin to date (hey, Dufty loves her and you’ll have her
for the next decade if he’s elected mayor). All departments have what are called
‘Mutual Aid’ agreements with other departments and agencies for help in the event of a
disaster. When L.A. county burned last year Hayes-White was the only chief whose
department had an agreement with them to refuse to help. Later at a Fire Commission
meeting questioning revealed that she didn’t even know how many trucks she had.

Fought standardizing fire plugs

There was a good sized residential fire in the Castro a couple of years back and the
reason it got so large was because the first responding unit could not hook up to the
nearest fire plug because the truck was new and didn’t have an adapter to access the
water. Can you believe that? They had to wait for another piece of apparatus to
show up with adapters. As the fire grew.

A couple of years before this a BOS committee heard testimony about the lack of
standardization of SF plugs. I watched expert after expert testify that they could
provide adapters for every plug for as little as ten bucks apiece (hard plastic).
White said ‘no’. She said that if we had a disaster we could meet incoming mutual
aid units (why should they respond if we didn’t?) … we could meet incoming units
and give them adapters. What about blocked streets? Destroyed signs (it’s why
corner pavement at intersections have the names of the street stenciled into the
concrete). Pure arrogance, incompetence and idiocy (all trademarks of the
Hayes-White regime).

Tossed ambulances out of fire houses

About 90% of the calls that all big city fire departments respond to are medical
emergencies. When I was a firefighter I used my GI bill to go to community college
for over 2 years to learn all I could about my trade. It took 6 months to be
qualified as an EMT (see ‘Trauma’) and I never did reach the Paramedic level. The
SFFD had higher standards. Every house had an ambulance with fully accredited
paramedics. Until Hayes-White took over.

If you can believe this, the firefighters who almost never leave the engine houses
complained that the ambulance crews were keeping them awake with all that going in and
out doing their jobs. You know the sirens and all.

Well, White changed that. She was able to talk an ignorant BOS into accepting a
departmental restructuring which she dubbed ‘dynamic patrol’. That means that the
ambulances once spread evenly across the City now wander districts like cabs waiting
for a call. Of course, like cabs instead of spreading out they cluster and response
time suffers. Just recently our PC chief supported a move to lower the level of
credentials required to ‘man’ an ambulance in SF. Creeping privatization.

Surrounds herself with cronies

When she took control one of her first acts was to fire a deputy chief (forget his name
and got a work-out to do so you look it up) … she fired what the guys I talk to at
the houses … fired the best fire ground chief in the department. Why? She
said that another chief had been drinking on the job and that this guy should have
known about it. Any reason to get rid of him.

Congrats to the Weekly

And to Anna McCarthy who did the excellent piece uncovering yet another Hayes-White
foul-up. McCarthy wrote about White’s dismantling of the SFFD arson investigation
unit in yesterday’s (1-13-10) edition of the SF Weekly. Hey, I’m an old Guardian
fan but anyone who can read can see that the Weekly has been kicking their ass on depth
of stories for at least a year. For the past two weeks for instance, the Guardian
did covers with cartoons and punk bands while the Weekly did in-depth investigative
articles on pot legalization and the destruction of our City’s fire department.

Along those lines. I may owe an apology to Joe Eskenazi at the Weekly. If I
lumped him in with Ben Wachs in some of my critical work, I apologize. Wachs is a
whining wimp with no substance. He’s the kid who copied over your shoulder in math
class. Eskenazi has been the most prolific (other than myself) writer covering the
local political scene over the past year at least. Perhaps as part of the
Guardian’s settlement they could force the Weekly to trace Eskenazi for Steven T.
Jones. That alone could bring down the Weekly.

Go Giants!