As much as I hate to admit it, this could happen to me. The time I did take a wrong turn, I was lucky that it was during a low-priority run with other units en route.
The excuses came easy: it was 2 a.m. and I didn’t grow up in this town and so didn’t have that intuitive sense of where everything is. But excuses aren’t reasons. The reason I took a wrong turn is that I didn’t fully know my response area.
For the firefighters in Frederick, Md., I’d lay money that adrenaline was also a factor. In fact, a report on the incident said they fell into tunnel vision.
The incident in Frederick involved one apparatus taking a different route to the fire, attempting to turn around and getting stuck. The other rig turned down a similar, but wrong, street; the ambulance followed it down the wrong street.
The unit that was stuck was out of commission for more than an hour. The unit that was almost on the right street hit a hydrant before realizing the mistake.
Two children died in the fire; and that’s tragic. However, they probably would have died even if the response had gone as it was supposed to. And the rig that was a street off was still on scene within 8 minutes of being toned out — that’s not too bad for a volunteer department.
I admire the department officials for taking a hard look at their current system and laying out ways to improve it. I admire them more for not making excuses about the botched response and going public with their story.
Letting the world see your warts is a difficult thing to do. But in opening themselves up to criticism and ridicule, they’ve given us all a chance to learn from their mistakes and, hopefully, avoid repeating them.
I, for one, will be spending more quality time with our town map in the near future.