Quote:. . . However, whether or not they still use it as a measure of success or failure has to be tempered by the facts of why they are moving away from it.
And why, exactly, was that? If it was because it didn't save money or improve fire protection, then it was a failure. Let's not over analyze this . . . Believe me, I have been in enough command staff meetings wrestling with the budgetary constraints of running a city fire department to understand the issues, as complex as they are. All the apologists in the world for using quints in city fire departments cannot overcome the fact that it has never provided the answer to a city's problems. A good case can sometimes be made for quints in smaller departments, but for larger municipalities, ask the cities that have tried it. We did. The sad fact is that with very, very few exceptions, the initiation of a quint concept in a big-city fire department is a politically motivated move to eventually reduce both manpower and fire stations. Sometimes the manpower reductions are done through attrition so no one gets laid off or fired, but at the end of the day you have a smaller, less effective fire department. I cannot be a fan of that. Debating the meaning of the terms "success" and "failure" may be an interesting exercise, but it is only that. At the end of the day, it isn't the apparatus that puts the fires out - be they engines, trucks or quints - it's the firefighters who ride them . . . And I've never seen quints do anything good for them. Just my opinion, of course.
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