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Still Burning from Lack of Response

We don’t want to flog this dead horse any more than necessary, but the story of the Alameda Fire Department doing absolutely nothing to come to the aid of 53-year old Raymond Zack in neck-deep water off Crown Beach on Memorial Day just won’t die. People are still disgusted and angry.

The idle Alameda Police Boat. Frankly, we think the fleet of government boats in the area was beside the point, as the Raymond Zack situation called for a ‘wading’ rescue by firefighters, as per their job description.

latitude/Richard
©2011 Latitude 38 Media, LLC

Yesterday morning a group gathered on Crown Beach to call attention to the fact that the Alameda Fire Department could and should have done more. A dozen of them demonstrated this by effortlessly wading/swimming out to the spot Zack had been and in the same tide and weather conditions. The swimmers told KGO TV that they proved coming to the man’s assistance would have been easy.

A few people have argued that coming to a large suicidal man’s aid would have been risky to members of the fire department. If he had been violent, which he didn’t appear to be, and if fire fighters had approached him foolishly, that could have been the case. But at the very least, several members of the fire department could have — at zero risk to them — waded out to the half-frozen, unathletic, clothed man, and encouraged him that he had people who loved him and that they were there to help. This was the same technique public safety officials used over the weekend to, at no risk to them, successfully talk a man out of jumping to his death from the Bay Bridge.

Then readers Rich Pipkin and his wife Mary McGrath took the editor of the Alameda Sun around to show him various government resources that they thought could or should have been used. They included the Alameda Fire Boat, "which has been on the hard at Alameda Marina for 10+ years," the Alameda Police Boat on a lift near Mariner Square, plus the Alameda County Sheriff’s Boat — "bought with reportedly more than $1 million in Homeland Security funds." Pipkin says, "I’ve never seen the Sheriff’s boat, which is a RIB, ever leave the dock." But as stated, we believe this was a wading rescue situation, not a boat rescue.

Another angry citizen looked into the job descriptions for various levels in the Alameda Fire Department. In several of them, "water rescues" were very specifically noted as among the required duties.

It will be remembered that one of the Alameda Fire Department’s many, many excuses for why they didn’t at least attempt some kind of assistance is that their funding for rescue swimmer training had run out in ’09. As reported in Friday’s ‘Lectronic, the Contra Costa Times reported that the fire department had actually been given the money for that training, they just hadn’t spent it. The Interim Fire Chief has had no more to say on that allegation than a cigar store indian.

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