Question Fire

12th August 2021

My Dear Friends in the Los Angeles Fire Department,

Over the last few days a question has come up that you may resolve. I recently wrote the Governor regarding the wild fires in which I had two major points. The first was that we could rent tanker trucks full of water to help with fire fighting and the second was that there are retired fire trucks for rent in Hollywood.

I figured that if nothing else the industrial tankers can be rented or hired in mass with drivers and could hose down areas near fire or resupply fire trucks with water. The idea there is just numbers. It was about getting as much water to the fire as possible.

Now, the idea of using fire trucks that have been retired and are now used for movies and film was simply that, well, the more fire trucks the better. I did some poking around and found a company that rented trucks that had last fought fires in nineteen eighty five. Its trucks looked to be in good working order. That company had six trucks, but there are more companies with more trucks and in a wild fire every fire truck counts.

On FaceBook this was dismissed as small thinking and I was then told to leave the fire fighting to the people in charge. The Governor himself has not responded. This leads us to the two questions ‘are these ideas worth consideration?’ and ‘is it important to express my concern over the wildfires with the Governor?’.

In a world where every life counts lives are saved as much by funding as by people. Further, that funding will insure that our fire crews have what they need to fight the fire and come home safe. Writing the Governor about fire safety and ideas is one way of saying that the voters care about this topic. That would mean that even if I wrote to the Governor saying ‘buy more fire trucks’ I would still be supporting fire fighters and a safer California.

What do you think?


Richard Leland Neal