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.

Nearly 100 city fire hydrants were out of service as recently as Aug. 23, according to D.C. Water and Sewer Authority records. That represents more than 1 percent of the 8,700 city-owned hydrants.

One of them was involved in a fire two weeks ago in Stanton Park. On the afternoon of Aug. 12, firefighters responded to an electrical blaze on the 1300 block of Emerald Street NE. According to witnesses, when firefighters tried to tap the nearest fire hydrant, located just a few doors down, nothing came out. A second company of firefighters ran down the block, across 13th Street, and connected the hose to another hydrant about 600 feet away.

That the only mid-block fire hydrant on the street didn’t work came as no surprise to residents. Of the five hydrants in the vicinity, Lacey Bigelow, a resident since 1971, says he knew of only one that worked. “We used to joke that if there’s a fire, it’s gonna be hell,” he says.

The hydrant misstep didn’t prevent firefighters from successfully extinguishing the fire. Once the scene had calmed down, another neighbor asked a fire technician to test the hydrant. No water. The technician told her that it wasn’t uncommon for there to be dead hydrants in the city.

According to fire department spokesperson Alan Etter, WASA has sole responsibility of inspecting and maintaining the city’s hydrants. When WASA finds a hydrant in need or repair, it notifies the fire department’s communications division, which then relays the information over the radio. Firefighters at the affected stations typically write down the location of the hydrant on a chalkboard. The same process occurs then the hydrant comes back online.

“Obviously, we’d like to have all of them working, but it’s not a perfect world,” says Etter. “We understand that when you maintain 8,700 hydrants, some will go out of service. You do the best you can.”

But, as Lt. L.A. Matthews of Engine Company 21 in Adams Morgan says, “Even one [inoperable hydrant] is too many, especially if it’s in front of my house.”

WASA currently has a two dedicated crews repairing and replacing hydrants on a daily basis, supplemented by six crews that flush the water mains, which involves opening up fire hydrants. Last August, the agency embarked on a massive evaluation of the city’s hydrants, hiring an outside contractor to inspect and make minor repairs. The goal is to maintain over 99 percent operational.

After the fire, a WASA crew investigated the Emerald Street hydrant, along with hydrants at 13th and E, 14th and F, and 16th and E, and found all to be in good order. Spokesperson Michele Quander-Collins says she could find no record of any of them malfunctioning. “I just don’t know what they’re talking about,” she says. “We cannot find any inoperable hydrants in that area. We can’t explain why it was reported as not working. We didn’t get a call from fire department or a citizen, which is usually how we find out about these things. That’s not something we’d leave as a longstanding problem.”

Look for a detailed investigation into the city’s broken hydrants in next week’s City Paper.