For those still waiting for a final pronouncement on the cause of the Eastern Market fire of April 30, 2007, be prepared to wait a little longer…maybe forever. As the City Paper reported in December (Cover Story, “Was This Really an Accident?”), various D.C. Fire & EMS personnel believe (and a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives report insinuates) that the three-alarm fire started on the outside of the building—a synopsis that contradicts the publicly stated opinions of District Fire Chief Dennis L. Rubin, who believes the inferno was caused by an electrical problem.

Eight months later, things are still muddled.

In the most recent issue of the Hill Rag, Rubin appears to be hanging tough with his original conclusion. Referring to a “final report” on the market fire, he explains that the blaze  “was determined to be electrical in nature with four or five suspected sources, but accidental in nature.”

But the report Rubin is referring to, authored by D.C. Fire employee and certified fire investigator Sgt. Phillip C. Proctor, doesn’t corroborate Rubin’s outlook. With 10 pages of painstaking detail followed by a one-paragraph conclusion, Proctor’s report is, at the very least, noncommittal. “Based on a systematic fire scene examination,” it surmises, “witness statements, and all the available information to date, it is the opinion of the undersigned that the origin of the area of this fire is near the west wall (Side C) of the structure. The exact point of origin has not been identified at this time. The cause of this fire has not been determined and is currently still under investigation.”

Not exactly the wrap-up a “final report” would merit.

The most damning blow to Rubin’s electrical-accident hypothesis, however, isn’t found in the ambiguity of the report’s conclusion, but in a bit of juicy info appearing on Page 8, where Proctor mimics—verbatim-0z–a bullet found in the ATF report on the fire:

All evidence of electrical activity found during this investigation was a victim of the fire and not its cause.

Fire department public information officer Alan Etter says in an e-mail he doesn’t think Chief Rubin’s statements and Proctor’s report are at odds.

“I think while the cause of the fire has not been definitively determined, anyone who’s looked at [the report] thinks it was caused by malfunctioning electrical equipment,” he writes. He adds that Chief Rubin was just “saying what everyone who’s looked at [the report] is sure of.”

—Rend Smith

(Photograph by Arthur Delaney)

Right now, At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson is giving the business to fire chief Dennis Rubin over Fenty administration plans to seriously hike ambulance fees.

In his questioning, Mendelson is suggesting that Rubin’s department attempted to circumvent a law that recently came into effect requiring the D.C. Council to pass judgment on such fee hikes by enacting an emergency rulemaking with an abbreviated comment period. At one point, Mendelson seemed to imply that the law had in fact been broken.

Earlier, Mendelson was similarly critical of representatives of the Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi over revenue projections for the fee hikes. At one point, Mendelson said to Gandhi deputy Angelique Hayes, “I know you’re trying to be diplomatic about it, but the analysis that was used to create the budget has been rejected.”

Responded Hayes, “I wouldn’t say it’s been rejected; it’s been refined.”

CFO reps admitted in their testimony they had a less-than-complete idea of to what extent Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurers would pay the hiked fees.

It’s the culmination of yet another testy week between Mendo and the executive branch. Last week, Mendelson was pissed after the mayor’s office failed to send an representatives from the emergency medical services department on a hearing on a bill on EMS issues. He chose to recess the hearing rather than close it, meaning the legislation is effectively held up. Then earlier this week, Mendelson’s office put out a press release decrying a lack of transparency in the Fenty budget.

One of my favorite signs (from the fire station at 14th and Newton):

I can’t help but wonder if this is a homage to the old Rolling Stone mag cover of Janet Jackson getting groped.

Last night, WJLA reported–along with everybody else–on a mysterious death inside Superior Court.

Here’s what we learned today: At around 3:30 p.m., a man fell to his death from the 3rd Floor. This is the floor where a lot of your criminal cases are tried. He was described to City Desk as an African-American male in his mid 50s. Although his name has not been released–at the time of this post–it appears he did not have a case pending.

He landed near the information desk. According to a source the man may have left a suicide note.

Within 20 minutes, paramedics had attended to the man and had taken him away in an ambulance. Police closed off the lobby as they considered it a possible crime scene. The front doors were shut. Police set about interviewing any witnesses.

Police re-opened the lobby yesterday evening.

Earlier this month there was another death inside the courthouse.

Here’s what At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson, chair of the committee on public safety and the judiciary, has to say about the hike in ambulance fees:

“The proposed fees sound steep to me….That could lead to a backlash. After all, we are talking an emergency need,” he says.

He’s somewhat skeptical of the argument that this is no big deal because insurers will pay in the vast majority of cases: “Does that mean we can charge $5,000 and CIGNA will pay?”

And ambulance fees, Mendelson says, shouldn’t be looked at as a way to boost the bottom line. “I don’t think it would go over well: We need $7 million, so we need to tax the victim in the ambulance.”

He’s most critical, though, of the short notice on the public hearing, which was held this morning: “You’re not talking about a lot of time,” he says. “I don’t think this is a hearing where questions will be raised.”

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s budget, announced last week, indicated a hike in ambulance fees expected to generate an additional $7.24 million in fiscal 2009. There was, however, no accounting at that time of just how much of a bump there would be.

Well, the numbers are out—they were included in an emergency rulemaking published in last Friday’s D.C. Register. And they represent a significant jump.

A “basic life support” ambulance, which includes care from firefighters/EMTs, now costs $268 a ride. An “advanced life support” ambo, which is staffed by paramedics, costs $471.

Under the proposed rules, BLS ambulance rides will cost $530—a nearly two-fold increase, while ALS rides will cost $832. The new rules also add a third category, for “Advanced Life Support—Level 2,” that will cost $953. “Level 2″ fees apply when a certain amount of intravenous drugs are administered or when any number of medical procedures are performed, including manual defibrillation, intubation, central-line insertion, or surgically opening an airway.

Also new: A $6.60 per mile surcharge on top of the rest of the fees. (It’s not specified whether that charge includes the trip to pick you up or just the trip to take you to the hospital.)

William Singer, Fenty’s budget czar, says the fee hike was recommended by a task force on EMS reform created in the wake of the David Rosenbaum death. After consulting a survey of 200 cities done by a national EMS organization, he says, they found that the District was “well below the mean” when it comes to ambulance fees.

Singer makes the point that this is a burden rarely borne directly by the average citizen: “This is a medical service and we can recover some of the cost from private insurers and Medicaid,” he says. The District, he says, rarely pushes to collect the fees from uninsured patients. Another hope is that hiking the fees will lead to fewer uses of ambulances for nonemergency uses—transporting patients between hospitals or nursing homes, for instance.

Care to tell the mayor how you feel? A public hearing is being held this morning at 10 a.m. at Fire & EMS headquarters at 1923 Vermont Ave. NW—that’s only seven days after publication of the rules in the D.C. Register. That’s quite a bit less than the 15 days customary for rulemakings like these. (Written comments are being accepted until April 10.)

Singer says the short notice is appropriate: “This issue has been talked about quite a bit over the last year.”

Photo by Daquella manera

My story in this week’s City Paper examines the claim by Office of Unified Communications director Janice Quintana that OUC dispatchers are 99.99 percent accurate. The story lists several instances of questionable dispatching by the OUC.

WUSA Channel 9’s Dave Statter has more. Statter reports that he “has been waiting for OUC to answer a number of FOIA requests on some recent and not so recent calls.”

On Jan. 17, ABC 7 News ran a brief story about harassment based on race and sexual orientation at a firehouse in Northeast. The piece described a couple incidents, including one situation in which firefighters hung a mounted deer head with chains and a marijuana blunt in its mouth. Apparently, below the deer head, there was a sign that used the derogatory word “Buck,” saying “The Buck Stops Here, Da Heights Zoo.” (Punctuation added.)

According to the ABC story, Fire Chief Dennis Rubin “issued a statement saying he takes the allegations very seriously and intends to learn all the facts of what occurred.”

Well, clearly Rubin’s response was inadequate to some. A group called E.R.A.S.E. (End Racism And Stop Exploitation), based in Ward 7, is distributing a flier excoriating the department’s handling of the buck incident and the racist culture at the firehouse. Among other allegations, the flier says that “the deer head was bolted to the wall and decorated as part of a pattern of intimidation and exploitation that has included: sex scandals; black firefighters being attacked, hit by plates thrown at their heads by officers, with injuries serious enough to send them to the hospital.”

The flier also blames firehouse leaders and Mayor Adrian Fenty, as well as past mayors, for allowing a racism to “foment” unchecked. E.R.A.S.E., which has roughly 20 members, came together after local firefighters spoke at a ANC 7D meeting, said group commissioner Rick Tingling-Clemmons.

“We wanted to draw attention,” he said about circulating the flier. “We want people who are responsible to act. If I was fire chief, I would immediately have an investigation, and there would be action. I think it’s really bad for men to go into battle like that, with fire–and work in that kind of atmosphere. I would be really afraid myself personally.”

Tingling-Clemmons says the flier is being distributed at various locations in the neighborhood and via e-mail. Read it yourself here. There’s even a picture of the decorated deer.

I got a call today about all those suspicious fires in Capitol Hill. A fire fighter wanted to address the Capitol Lounge fire that did serious damage to the watering hole’s back patio area and an adjacent card shop on August 9. The fire department had claimed that the blaze was caused by a smoldering cigarette left in a bucket. This fireman says he was there and that the damage–especially to the back awning–just couldn’t be caused by a cigarette.

“You can throw three or four cigarettes in a bucket and leave it,” he explained. “The likelihood of it burning and torching a place? No.”

But he doesn’t believe it was caused by the dumpster being torched. “I remember pushing the dumpster away from the wall. But the dumpster wasn’t a factor,” he says. “The dumpster was a non-factor.”

Many!

Here’s a pic snapped by fire department media guy Alan Etter at a fire yesterday morning on Morris Road SE:

NB: We’re just playing, firefolk: You’re America’s heroes.

Two D.C. firefighters were injured when the roof collapsed in a raging fire at 2627 Adams Mill Road, a condo building that was almost certainly destroyed this morning. Things could have gone worse, of course, since no residents were hurt or killed, but things could have decidedly gone better. But don’t worry, folks. Jim Graham is on it.

The councilmember, who lives around the corner at the Ontario, got the call around 2:30 a.m., about an hour after D.C. Fire and EMS got it, and, per his usual, was at the scene shortly thereafter to assess things. By 10 a.m. he was ready to sum up: D.C. has crappy infrastructure. Well, to be fair, he did not say “crappy.” What he said to me this morning was “ancient,” but what he meant is crappy. To fight a four-alarm fire, you need a good amount of water pressure, something the 8- and 12-inch lines running under Adams Morgan can’t really provide. So firefighters were forced to line hose all the way from Connecticut Avenue, where hydrants are hooked into 20-inch lines, across Ellington Bridge, down the length of Calvert Street and around the corner to Adams Mill–some 2,000 feet of hose–which consequently closed all those well-traveled streets, as well as the intersection at 18th and Columbia.

While that was happening, flames powered through the red-tiled roof of the building, which has roughly 30 units, according to Graham. Residents of 2627 Adams Mill and those in the buildings on either side were evacuated; the Red Cross was called in. The two injured firefighters were hit by falling debris and possibly went though roof; at least one, says Graham, had to pass directly through the fire in order to get out. Another one had to climb down two strung-together ladders: The 45-foot one firefighters had on hand wasn’t long enough.

“A four-alarm fire is unusual,” Graham said, “but we have to be prepared for the unusual. This is a warning for us.” Next up: Graham vs. WASA.

Yesterday, the D.C. Fire Fighters Association—the union representing members of the District fire department—announced it was asking the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority to pay the city $900,000 to cover the costs of inspecting more than 10,000 city fire hydrants.

Good idea, but how come it’s the union asking—not, say, fire Chief Dennis Rubin?

Dan Dugan, the union’s president, says he was forced to take the lead on the issue because negotiations between WASA and the department over paying for hydrant inspections had stalled. He doubts that WASA General Manager Jerry N. Johnson is interested in making a deal. “This guy’s all fluff,” Dugan says. “When it comes down to signing the [agreement] to make it all happen, he doesn’t want to sign it.”

Dugan says the dollar amount came from a source with knowledge of the negotiations between WASA and the fire department.

An Aug. 30 closed-door meeting ended without an agreement, but both department spokesperson Alan Etter and WASA spokesperson Michele Quander-Collins say that negotiations are ongoing, with a another meeting likely before the end of the month.

Quander-Collins says Dugan has no basis to make any demands. “He’s not part of the discussions,” she says. “I’m not gonna make him part of the discussions now.”

Last week, I was squatting with a friend who had just moved into a town house on Harvard Street NW when he got a special “welcome to the neighborhood” surprise. One evening, he stepped out for a late-night caffeine and nicotine run at the 7-Eleven on 14th Street and Columbia Road NW—and came back soaked in his own blood.

Apparently, after getting the coke and the Camels, a group of preteen girls down the block asked him for a buck. When he apologized and kept walking, they palmed a bottle from the street and rocketed it straight to the back of his head.

But as if a nasty head wound, a freshly crimson T-shirt, and the embarrassment of being roughed up by a bunch of girls wasn’t enough excitement for one night, my friend then got what was really coming to him: EMT sass.

As it turns out, a triple shooting had occurred a few blocks away around the same time. So when the ambulance came to send my friend out for a quick head-staple, the EMTs weren’t too happy to be dealing with such a low-level injury.

As my friend described it, they “treated me like they were pissed I didn’t get shot.”

Now, at least, my friend is starting to get a feel for his new neighborhood. The very next day, walking down Harvard, the bottle-chucking girls yelled out at him for a cigarette. He shook his stapled head and kept on walking.