Gadgetory

you I don't want to say I like seeing things burn or I like seeing people's houses burn but I'm a fireman my job is to put out fires I want to be where the fires are to be put out you're not supposed to say it but what I like most about being a firefighter is you know the risk and the adrenaline with it that'll never pass any kind of sight board if you take it but here it seems to work let's talk about Highland Park Michigan 27% unemployment more than 40% 40% of the population is living below the poverty line we've got stats about police and fire being cut we've got stats about Public Safety not being invested in good gangs be responsible for the recent rash of intentionally set fires in Highland Park according to investigators and homeland security the answer is yes and if you have any information on who could be responsible for these arsons please call Highland Park Police or the fire department because it could only be a matter of time before someone is hurt or killed you know they say we get fire bugs now and then where you get a bunch of fires like a rash of fires for a couple days and then it'll go away somebody's probably it's probably one person doing it you know but I'm not an expert so I really don't know just my theory I don't know why people let a lot of houses on fire around here honestly but I know if I lived in the city my investment was in my home there's a house filled with diapers next door when I had a chance I'd burn it to the ground Highland Park is I believe it's don't call me on the the number of the square miles it's like two point eight square miles something like that it's small we're completely landlocked by Detroit so all our border is all way around the city Detroit I mean there's a lot of history here this was on him from my understanding was one of the richest places in the country at one time obviously Highland Park out back in his heyday when Ford Motor Company over at Manchester and Woodward you know fort had pay our workers $5 wages and everybody came behind the party would want to work everybody wanted you know you had big people from for living in hang up our gear CEOs people on top you know but unfortunately riots and just the bad stuff came in you know and then obviously people scattered when people scattered baking homes the drugs the violence it's just an ongoing battle the fire department and Highland parts a lot different set up the most fire departments because we run with way fewer people than anybody else Detroit for instance they drop 21 people on average on a house fire and we drop six to seven on a house fire our department used to have 80 members and we're down to 28 people I think our chief said something a little while ago was like 80 85 percent arson most of my friends that are funded in the suburbs they go to a kitchen fire and it's a small fire they get there put it out person's house is fine we pull up to a holy full fully involved house with two other houses on fire and we got to put it all out somehow try to save these houses try to save the houses next door to those houses we do a lot of things kind of old-school ish because yeah that's what we have is the old scrap junk department the old station was so old they tried fixing things and the cities didn't have money to put big repairs onto it the roof was leaking really bad and it end up getting condemned so they scrambled around trying to find a place to put them and this is what they ended up with and it was supposed to be temporary that was eight years ago my first three months here I slept in a tent I mean another guy that got the job together we put tents up back there and just put little you know mattresses on the floor and stuff in there until we knew that we were gonna stay here cuz we didn't know we'd they were gonna keep us you know because we didn't know if we were gonna make it when I came back from my first deployment in 2006 from Iraq I showed up and the guys were back in this warehouse I actually had to asked one the cops in the area where it was I saw the guys had little cubicle walls set up throughout this 40,000 square feet not given any the guys a bunch of privacy I just come from an area where they had very minimal structures there I decide I want some privacy of my own so I built a little 8 by 12 room guys started asked me to build them rooms after that a couple guys want a bigger room so they started adnan doing their own thing on the outskirts of it we need somewhere the winner gets so cold in here you can see your breath the only place there's heat is usually up in the front where the trucks are to keep them warm but other than that if you're back here you gotta have your heater on in your room and same thing in the summer it gets hot in here a lot of our houses don't get knocked down so we'll drive through the city sometimes and you'll pass what I'm doing that was a good stop remember that one remember what happened there tell the story everybody talks about it yeah remember this happened that we fell in on us or this happened or you know we see some of the craziest fires here and you tell people's stories and they're like no way that didn't happen yeah it did don't get an opportunity to go into a fire unless you're a fireman this is the fire camp 1080 it attaches to the brim of my helmet I come withstand heat from 900 degrees to 2,000 degrees so I can take it into fires with me so I started filming and like putting him up on YouTube and and uh mostly just my friends and like some of my family would watching my mom refused to watch it for a while she's like I don't like that crap I missed a lot of good fires for a couple months seemed like and we finally got a real good one I did not think anybody would see that video I thought it would be just the guys here some of my friends other people that have watched my videos and that would be it then I put it on YouTube and it got like so many hits I never thought it would get put on a website so they got put on and then it was on the knew that it was kind of crazy maybe weird stories of the day how about that it comes from a young firefighter who wore a camera on his helmet for an entire year you get I get a lot of is that thing on gonna talk about it because that does that Ziggler's got his camera I give Scott a lot of initially for putting on the helmet camera now is actually gonna tear it off his helmet throw it into the fire sometimes we don't like people to see some of the stupid stuff we do when I made the the video that got like a million hits or whatever so many people are watching it but got a lot of negative activity from comments from people in the fire service if you read through some of the comments on my video amazing some of the people just say the most ridiculous thing they don't realize what we're dealing with here there's one as literally as a car fires video of a car fire I mean we just ran up took our hose line I popped into a hood other car within a matter of five seconds the fires out and these people are like because we didn't have our masks on we didn't have this we didn't have we didn't go by the book which I understand there's things that can happen and I don't know just different style of firefighting here it's like uh we feel like it's like an older old school you get that here in Detroit to a lot you do it you do it so much so when you're doing it today and then you got another one tomorrow or you go a week without one maybe and then you get three or four house fires it's more of a second nature so you it's just different why is there only three of you because we don't have any help why don't you call mutual aid well because mutual aid around here is scarce the Detroit is busy all the time I mean if they're getting their butts kicked you usually we're going in here too some days you just run from fire to fire to fire you end up on equipment like our old ladder truck which wouldn't pass a test in any other area to be used and you're going up on this thing you don't know if it's gonna come down you run out of air bottles you end up having to go down smoke hallways without a tank on I don't know I don't know how it's not safe it's not gonna maybe maybe that fire took a year off my life we get a lot of grief with the internet stuff going to this risk versus reward thing you know why would you put out a vacant house but what they're not thinking about is that just because someone's not paying their taxes doesn't make it vacant I think that we've found more people living in vacant houses than we have in houses that are supposed to be occupied so just cuz somebody doesn't pay taxes doesn't mean you're not supposed to go get them out you know our job isn't to decide financially where anybody's at we kicked in the door in the house one time sheet of plywood over it with a padlock on it we blew the padlock off went off there's five kids laying there with who I assume with their father the whole upstairs is on fire and this is by all definition of vacant house we don't we don't listen to vacant or occupied there's none of our business fire we go put it out there's no money you just do what you got to do is kind of improvised with with what you got kind of thing I don't know why does that why is that happening in an American city why are people just kind of being cross-eyed I feel like people say oh let's Detroit so then you get people say well just let the whole city burn down but the houses burn it's not the answer you can't just let things burn down when they started calling up here and asking about it I was hesitant I was like you know I don't want to I don't want it to seem like I don't want anybody thinking oh you're you're trying to like a glory hound for your fire department it's not that at all I want people to know how hard we work and how hard firemen worked I just want everybody to know this is what we're doing to think about it when you go to vote to pay an extra 50 cents a year or a day it's not going to affect your life very much but if you go against it if the politicians go against it it might affect someone else's it might affect yours your house might burn down because he didn't have an adequate response a fireman might get killed god forbid because they didn't have enough manpower on scene or they didn't have the proper tools to fight their fire nobody here works here for the money we all work here because we love doing the job