"The gods take care of their own. Place your faith in them, and amazing things can happen. Remember that it's not anything I did. It was faith that healed you and faith that can make you strong. Strong of arm and strong of heart."
Now I'll indulge in a little shameless evangelism. Considering I was trained in evangelism by the UMC and worked prison ministry for six months, I do have some background in it.
Ah, yes, the United Methodist Church, once the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, nine million members no two of whom agreed on any point of doctrine....
Sorry. Been in a lot of churches, and I don't know if there's a denomination for which I do not have a characteristic joke.
Should we list you with a P0@1 Preaching skill, or just rely on your persuasion attribute? If the former, what SAL would you claim?
--M. J. Young
Yes, I think I do rate a 1@4 or 1@5 Preaching. Six months of prison ministry, eight months of teaching Sunday school, all under the guidance of a minister, I think I qualify (and the source of my training definitely shows in my choice of language, despite the repurposed skill reflecting a shift in the nature of my Religion skill since then).
They thank you for your ideas, in that sort of way that the unpersuaded will, and suggest that perhaps they should be heading home again--and after all, you've probably got more to do with this fire raging.
--M. J. Young
I thank them for their service, and turn to deal with the next round of wounded.
I really should have made these healing spells flashier. Dramatic words, preaching, and so forth. Subtle miracles aren't going to convince anyone in so agnostic a world.
At present, you have no more coming from the fire. People are still out there battling it. You've got your two men, one of whom has been debriefing people coming from the fire and the other treating minor injuries, but you've moved all the people form the evening shift either back to the job or home again.
The fire reportedly has attracted a bit of a crowd, but they're staying at a safe distance. No one from the fire fighters reported anything unusual, but then there's a rather large area your team patrols and it would be foolish for looters to steal within sight of the blaze. At the same time, it is not generally published which offices cover which blocks, so looters would be taking a chance if they were too far from the blaze, too.
--M. J. Young
I'll look around to see who is in charge here and ask what needs doing.
By "here" I presume you're headed out to the fire; you're pretty much in charge at the station, but you can leave someone else to watch things while you go.
The fire is "contained" but still burning. It is believed that anyone who could have been saved is out, but they need to pour more water on the fire to dowse it.
--M. J. Young
Who is pouring more water on the fire? Is it just the Watch? Have we organized citizens into a bucket brigade? Does this city even have a proper fire department as such?
Durnmist does not have a fire department; they've never heard of such a thing, and the watch has always handled it with help from volunteers. There are some people helping who are not part of the watch, but the fire struck sometime between nine and ten, so most businessmen had gone home for the night and most residents were asleep. People who live in the affected buildings have gotten medical attention; people who live in adjacent buildings were rousted and some are helping (most of the men, some of the women, a few of the children). There are several pumps in the area being used to provide water.
--M. J. Young
I'm going to try to organize people into a bucket brigade. Rather than everyone running about helter-skelter, get a couple of big strong guys working the pumps, and lay everyone else out in stations, so they can pass buckets from one person to the next. (We can even use the children for this, if we put them two to a station.) Get that water moving in a more constant stream, get the fire contained more quickly.
You find it very difficult to communicate your meaning to these people; the brigade works a bit, but then falls apart as impatient people leave the line to move more quickly leaving gaps in it, or empty buckets back up at the fire end because everyone is more interested in the full ones. You put a lot of effort into running back and forth trying to teach them this, but you've little skill as a teacher* and they're too unfocused to learn it.
The fire continues to burn, and there are a few times when quick effort is needed to prevent an adjacent building from catching, but by dawn it is dying. It will still require attention to keep it contained, but the day shift is coming in to replace those who have worked all night, most of whom are mentally and physically exhausted.
--M. J. Young
I curse under my breath as it breaks down, but trying to enforce things will only make it worse. However, I do have an idea now. Tomorrow I'm going to the highest ranking official I can find, and I'm going to invent the fire department.
Barring anything eventful happening between the end of the fire and the start of normal business hours, I re-up my Remove Fatigue and then go to do exactly that.
It occurs to me that you met several high ranking officials at that meeting in relation to the plan to capture Captain Sparrow. Which one of them would you like to contact, or is there someone else (someone you either know or deduce exists) you would rather see instead?
--M. J. Young
Well, who would be in the best position to help?
Theoretically, going right to the very highest ranking person I know with a plan like this off the bat would probably not work. I should probably go to my immediate superior and his immediate superior, and present the idea to them. Once I have them on board, then it's three of us presenting a weird idea to the powers-that-be, rather than just one Junior Inspector with too much time on his hands.
So I'll do that. I'll go to my boss, and his boss, and get them on board.
Your boss would be Chief Thomas; his boss would be the Watch General, who is in charge of the entire watch, whom you met in connection with the Sparrow matter.
What exactly are you proposing to Chief Thomas, and are you doing this today or later?
--M. J. Young
Today, while the memory of this fire is still fresh in his mind.
I'm going to tell this to Chief Thomas. Once I get him on board he can help me convince the Watch General. Since I'm not trying to start a separate entity, but do this as a function of the Watch, chain of command is good.
"Think about it, Chief. A whole division of Watchmen whose job it is to handle fires. Specialists in firefighting techniques like bucket-brigades, architecture analysis, the physics of fire. All assisted by specialists in crowd control, looter deterrence, personnel organization. Guys who can move in on a moment's notice to keep a fire under control the instant it becomes known, without being a drain on the Watch at large. At first it wouldn't necessarily have to be all they did, but given time I think you'll see that practice and regular meetings will improve performance.
Look around - most of the buildings here are made entirely of wood. Fire can be a real problem. But with the right manpower and equipment, I know we can save lives, save more lives, and keep our own men safer in the process.
That all becomes doubly true if we're able to establish ourselves in the public consciousness. Make sure people know exactly who to turn to in case of a fire, and what they can do themselves to help, whether to help fight the fire directly or to help prevent fires from ever starting in the first place. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." (I'm starting the first fire department, why not quote Ben Franklin while I'm at it?)
At this point it bears noting that, while I am by no means a professional firefighter, I have had ten days of training at the Bergen County Fire Academy as part of my schooling. So while I am probably 1@1 at pretty much all the skills involved in fire-fighting that I haven't already established, I do know what most of those skills are and can therefore adjust for tech level.
Cool. I've been to the Bergen County Fire Academy; it's over by Campgaw, if I recall correctly, not far from where my parents still live.
In fact, you didn't say what you were studying, but my sister teaches EMT courses up that way, and John Mastick (John 4) took the course with her after he retired from the Glen Rock police force, so you may have crossed paths with people I know up there.
Chief Thomas thinks it's an excellent idea, and is eager to get you to the Watch General to explain it. He's not certain how it will be financed, but is eager to hear more about how it would operate. But he'll save you the trouble of repeating everything. He'll send a request for a meeting with the Watch General, outlining what you've already suggested of your proposal, and let you know as soon as there's an answer. He recommends, though, that you get your idea very clearly in order before then, as the Watch General will probably have a lot of questions and the better you can answer them the more likely he is to go with your idea.
--M. J. Young
I will spend my time between now and then doing exactly that: laying out my plan. This will, I suppose, call for a roll of my my English Writing skill, but overall it will look a bit like this:
Proposal for the Foundation of the First Durnmist Fire Department
Purpose:
To create and establish a division of the City Watch responsible for the handling of fires, which qualify as a category of block- and city-level emergency separate and distinct from crime and those specialties handled by already existing divisions.
Operation:
The Fire Department will be overseen by a Fire Marshall, subject to the authority of the Watch General but otherwise invested with similar power, to be applied only to members of the Fire Department - the holder of this office is otherwise treated as a Watch Chief of highest seniority.
Below him the standard ranks will apply. At first, this experimental program will have no need of officers above the level of Chief. Eventually, each district will have their own Fire Department, overseen by a Fire Captain, and so forth down the chain of command.
At the squad level, there will be two specializations of training.
Primary Specialists will be those trained to deal with fires directly. They will be trained in the use of specialized tools to include an entry axe, fire-retardant clothing, and so forth. They will be trained in the safe and effective penetration of buildings affected by fire; in the rescue of those trapped or injured therein; and in the proper techniques to protect each other while on the scene.
Secondary Specialists will be those trained to deal with the periphery of a fire. They will be trained in crowd control, the detection and apprehension of looters, the organization of bucket brigades and other civilian-involved support.
Funding:
Aside from the usual sources of funding available to divisions of the Watch, which may not be sufficient to support such a large expansion, the Fire Department will be responsible for internal fund-raising, to be conducted as deemed fit and necessary by individual fire departments. These sources may be additional requests for tax money or private grants. All fire departments are expressly banned from accepting any sort of corporate sponsorship and from accepting any private donations of such sum as might be seen to compromise their public integrity. Eventually it is hoped that additional taxes might be levied in order to support this division, once it is seen to be a vital and integral public service.
Additional Programs and Expansions:
In addition to core functionality, it is hoped that the Fire Department will be able to undertake programs of public education, in order to present fire safety information to the people at large. By making it a part of the culture to understand and minimize the dangers of fire, we hope to eventually see fewer and less damaging fires in the city, with fewer losses of lives. We would eventually liaison with area schools and hospitals to the same ends.
It is also hoped that we will be able to develop a working relationship with area smiths and factory owners, in order to have produced specialized equipment, all the better to improve overall job performance and efficiency.
Three days later you receive word that you have an appointment with the Watch General the next day, and that you will be permitted time off the night before so you will be rested for the mid-morning session.
You present your written explanation, which is very well prepared and persuasive. The Watch General reads it.
"I understand you were a navigator before you came here. You write very well.
"Questions.
"How many men would be committed to the fire department, and what would they be doing when they were not fighting a fire?
"How large an area, in terms of city blocks, do you foresee being one department's territory? I'm assuming that a fire brigade would cover a larger area than our present thirty-six block police units.
"Assuming we start with one centrally-located office, how would you be alerted to fires that were not immediately in your area?
"You indicate that offices should not have corporate or private sponsorship, so that there would be less chance of favoritism. Would you object, though, to factories, offices, and private individuals donating facilities near their own properties, provided it is understood that they do not get special treatment? That would seem to be one of the best ways to get a significant number of such facilities built, given the price of real estate particularly in business areas, and I can see an incentive to a businessman or wealthy homeowner to contribute a place for a fire department near to his own property--even without favoritism, response time would be improved. What is the downside of this?
"In terms of crowd control and looting, at least initially would it make sense to leave those in the care of the regular watch? It would reduce your manpower needs, and since a fire in a district now means that the watch is busy fighting the fire, having this new unit to fight the fire frees them to do the regular watchwork.
"How many men do you need per shift to man your fire department? I'm guessing that you probably need an initial crew on site and a secondary crew on call at all times, but if you're using three shifts it's simple enough for one crew to be on call on the off shift. It cuts into a man's private life, but then we don't have so many fires that there would be that much to do most days.
"Would you also take over investigation of suspicious fires?"
--M. J. Young
I thank the General for his compliment, then set out to answer his questions thusly:
"For a city as big as Durnmist, I would say around 500-700 (OOCly I am imagining Durnmist being somewhat larger than Louisville which uses 500 and somewhat smaller than NYC, whose statistics I can't find right now), but that's for the whole city. While they were not fighting fires they would be either off duty, same as any other watchman, training, or maintaining their buildings and equipment. Off-duty hours are also when they would put in volunteer time for things like fundraising and education.
"At first I would say let's start off with the same 36-block police units, since we know that works for the Watch, and adjust as needed. If some areas are more prone to fires, or more vulnerable to them, we can put more men there, and less hazardous areas, less. We'll have to keep track of statistics fairly closely in the first few years.
"We would be alerted by watchmen whistles, and we could set up a system of public alarms. Bells, or something. Make it a crime to bell in a false alarm.
"I would have no problem with that, if factories and such wanted to donate property with the understanding that we don't give favoritism. We need facilities in those areas most of all, and they would get the quicker response time they need. That goes along with what I was saying about more men in vulnerable areas.
"I agree, leaving the looters and crowd control in the hands of the regular Watch does make more sense, at least initially. I would be fine with that.
"Three shifts is what I was planning for. It's the easiest way to make sure we're always covered, and a lot easier than trying to coordinate a four-shift day.
"As for arson investigation... That's tricky. It's Fire, so it's a fire department matter, but it's also a crime, which makes it a Watch matter. I think it's better to say we would liaison with the Watch and assist in the investigation of suspicious fires, rather than taking over, that way the public can be assured that the same rules and regulations that regulate the Watch are still in effect, while you can still benefit from specialist-trained eyes. Your show, our chorus, if you follow my meaning."
"For a city as big as Durnmist, I would say around 500-700 (OOCly I am imagining Durnmist being somewhat larger than Louisville which uses 500 and somewhat smaller than NYC, whose statistics I can't find right now), but that's for the whole city. While they were not fighting fires they would be either off duty, same as any other watchman, training, or maintaining their buildings and equipment. Off-duty hours are also when they would put in volunteer time for things like fundraising and education.
I don't know the size of Louiseville; I would like to think more in terms of Atlantic City, but I don't have numbers at my fingertips for that, either. In thinking about it, though, I'm inclined to think that the city is roughly a hundred blocks along the coast, fifty blocks deep inland. Doing the math, that comes to just under one hundred thirty-nine precincts, so we'll call it 140 police stations of thirty-six blocks each, five thousand forty blocks to cover. There would be a central point that would be fifty blocks from each end (which I take to be north and south) and twenty-five blocks from each side, but that still makes it seventy-five blocks to travel to get to the farthest points. I'm not sure how that fits with your numbers, but my interest is primarily to get a sense of number of firemen per block. For example, the watch offices have a total of fifty-six people (40 watchmen, 5 supervisors, 4 commanders, 1 captain/chief, 2 senior investigators, 4 junior investigators) for a thirty-six block area, on three shifts. For what it's worth, the entire city watch not counting the central administration (the Watch General and his staff) comes to 7,840 men.
"I'm not certain we can sell the idea of one fire brigade per thirty-six blocks. That's a hundred forty departments, and I can't see you responding to a fire with fewer than four men on duty--which for a forty hour week means you'd need seventeen men at each station, which is very nearly a third the size of the current watch."
"Sir," the chief injects, "there are other ways we can do this. For one thing, it seems to me that what matters most here is that there be teams that can respond quickly to an emergency. You could cut the teams down to three, with the expectation that when there is a fire teams respond from the surrounding areas. Or perhaps instead of setting up one for every watch district, you combine the watch districts so that there are four watch districts in a fire district. Then you could increase the number of men on duty to six, covering a hundred forty-four blocks, and still have them close enough together that they could call for help from adjacent units."
The General looks at you for some comment on this.
"As far as interference between the fire brigade and the watch, since fires are the responsibility of the watch as it stands now, I see no conflict with making arson investigation part of the responsibility of those members of the watch who specialize in fire."
"What's more problematic is manpower. If we're talking about six men around the clock, we're looking at about twenty-five assigned to the office; if I tell four watch captains they must each surrender eight men to a new unit, I'm going to get a lot of objections from the ranks. On the other hand, if I ask each of them to surrender three men--a number they might accept--you've got barely enough for three-man staffing for a one hundred forty-four block facility."
"I'm also concerned about the workload. Figure if we get four fires in a month through the entire city, that's a bad month. So let's suppose that we have an entire year of bad months, that's forty-eight fires; let's assume they're evenly spread through our one hundred forty districts, and we have about one fire for every three districts. That means two-thirds of the men had nothing to do all year except--what was it, train, maintain equipment, and raise funds? I think there's a real danger here that a division of the watch will be perceived as shiftless beggars. We're going to have to give a lot more thought to what the fire watch does when it is not fighting fires, and that's going to be tricky. On the one hand, they'll be part of the watch, and so could supplement watch activities in the surrounding districts; on the other hand, they would presumably have their own command structure, and it would be complicated to have overlapping commands for the same tasks. I don't say that these matters are unanswerable, but I think we ought to have some idea of the answer before we're asked."
--M. J. Young
"I like the idea of four-district fire districts. That seems like a decent balance to me.
"For manpower, why don't we ask each watch captain to give up three men, and then recruit three new men for each squad? Then we have the manpower we need, and the watch captains don't get their rosters gutted for an experiment.
"Also remember I would only be asking one or two fire districts to do this at the beginning. I'm not trying to establish the whole city all at once.
"As for what they do all year... You're right. We have to work that out. One thing I've seen done is that they also double as emergency medics, or in our case backup watchmen.
"The idea of making them a different command structure is more for organization and quick deployment. I don't want to see firemen serving as watchmen and then all of a sudden getting a fire call and leaving a watch area unwatched, that's all. We do have to come up with more for them to do, though, you're right."
The Watch General nods.
"Captain, how do you feel about giving up John and two other men to start a fire unit? If you're comfortable with that, I'll see about placing it near you. I'll talk to the captains of the regions surrounding yours, and have a look at a map--it would make sense to place the first one somewhere that's not going to need to be moved later to make the others fit. We'll also have to find a captain for this unit, probably a commander in one of the units we're tapping whom we can promote, but we'll make John here a commander--that's a big promotion, but we need someone who understands the assignment to pull it together. I can squeeze three more men out of the budget, so the only question that remains is getting a property for the office. We'll collect such equipment as already is kept at the watch offices, and see what we can do to supplement it."
The captain is comfortable with it.
"What about you, John? Are you willing to take the position of number two man at the first fire watch office?"
--M. J. Young
"Absolutely," I answer. And it's true: being Fire Marshal would mean being involved in the high levels of bureaucracy, which is exactly what I don't want.
"By the way, I know it's not ideal, but I do happen to have half a house I'm not using right now, if you'd like to hold some preliminary meetings there."
The general asks where your house is; It turns out that your house is not far from the central office, and so it doesn't really matter which you use. There are plenty of rooms here at the central office that could be used for such a meeting, and in any case the top priority is to get a building near the central point of the four districts you will be covering, at which point it will be simplest to have the organizational meetings there.
If there are no other questions, the meeting will be adjourned.
On the way out, the captain asks if there are any men in his command whom you would like to have for your new squad. He's supposed to contribute three, and you're one of them, but he's got to pick two more.
--M. J. Young
Alas, I didn't realize I was so close to home! Comes from being new to the neighborhood, I suppose.
If the Captain is really offering me to hand-pick my team, I'll take Matt and Tarah, the two who worked with me on that frantic business with the murder and the docks and the running around like crazy people. If they're up for it.
Why not? They're the two I've worked with the most, and probably socialized with the most although we haven't really covered that. So I'll ask for them, if they're up for taking part in my crazy little experiment.
For what it's worth, I didn't "realize" it either--the dice said that having it at your house or at this office came to about equal, and that seemed the best way to capture that result.
"I'll talk to them. They might have had other career ideas, but then, if this works it will probably mean most of the people we put in the first unit will become officers in future units, as they'll have the experience. You'll probably be a captain within the year, if this works.
"Of course, there's more than just whether it works. It will matter whether we can sell it to the public, too. It is an increase in man power, and also in real estate, and people are going to be asked to pay for it. We'll be working short in the four divisions in which this is being tried, but hopefully they'll replace our men when they reach a point at which the public is behind this. So we're all counting on you doing this well, making it work."
My reading of my notes suggests that Matt and Tarah are both watchmen, that is, neither of them officers; if I'm mistaken, then they might not be from his unit (unless they were other officers that joined the effort, but they're not on my short list of investigators), and he wouldn't know who they are. You did work with a few people from the units where some of the other events occurred, but the first people involved would have been your own watchmen.
It will be a few days before you hear anything else on the subject, during which time work proceeds as usual.
--M. J. Young
"I'll do the best I can, sir. It's all I can promise, but it's been good enough so far, no?" I give him a grin, in that trying-not-to-look-nervous sort of way. Nothing like the 'we're all counting on you' speech to make you feel like you've just had a target painted on your hindquarters...
Business proceeds as usual. During the down-time, I will spend some time drafting presentation documents.
Does Durnmist have anything akin to...
a Community Chest project?
a Better Business Bureau?
a Chamber of Commerce?
a major news outlet or media source (including a system of town criers)?
a public school system?
a public library?
a city hall? a city council with public meetings?
Basically I am looking for an outlet for something akin to a major press conference, to try to generate some good publicity for this project and start calling for volunteers.
There is a city government office building, not too far from the watch central office. There is also a courthouse for trying criminal and civil actions. Although it is possible to run town criers, it's not done as often as once a year; most news is carried by minstrels and sailors, spread by entertainment or word of mouth.
--M. J. Young
Well then I guess I'll ask the Captain just how public he wants this to be right from the get-go, and how he thinks I ought to go about spreading the word, if there is to be word spread.
Other than that, business as usual until the time comes to relocate and begin training.
In the meantime, I will begin writing down and editing everything I can remember from home about firefighting in general.
Among other things:
1: The three main components of a fire - fuel, heat, and oxygen, and how to deny it these.
2: Rules of handling a burning building - proper entry, searching for survivors, etc.
3: Tools of the trade - fire axe (similar to a boarding axe), Halligan bar, helmet (mining helmets would work well initially)
4: Proper organization of civilians, including how to corral a bucket brigade as not to wind up with a backlog of empty buckets, as happened at the previous fire.
5: Active fire protection - plaster/sheetrock/non-flammable walls, etc. Building codes are something to think about for the future.
6: Education - Fire safety, stop-drop-and-roll, how to contact the fire department, etc.
7: Fundraising - Firemen Dinners, community support
8: Volunteerism - Many firemen are volunteers, thus requiring less upkeep. This could also serve as a form of community service sentence for certain nonviolent offenders deemed suitable by the court...
9: Types of Fire - Fires involving standard combustibles (Class A), fires involving flammable liquids or gasses (Class B), fires involving flammable metals (this becomes Class C since there is no electricity here, and thus no electrical fires, which would normally be Class C), and... that's it. There are no electrical fires in a city with no electricity, and they haven't discovered radiation yet so there are no Class E fires. The American system treats cooking oils as a separate class, but given the range of suppression materials available in this setting I imagine it makes little difference.
The captain smiles at you.
"John, you don't work for me anymore, you know--or at least, you won't in a couple weeks. They're going to name a captain for your new division, probably one of the commanders from one of the local offices, and promote someone else to take over as commander there. I think whoever takes the job as captain of the new company is the person to make those decisions, unless the Watch General thinks otherwise."
The next couple of weeks move by uneventfully. A property is found about a block from the center of the area you're expected to cover, and you've got your men--fifteen total, including yourself, the new captain, Matt, Tarah, eight others drawn from the four watch districts that comprise your territory, and three green recruits.
Captain Peter meets you on the first day. The building is an old storefront with an apartment above. "We've got a lot to cover," he says, "starting with figuring out how to make sure there are enough men on duty at any given time to respond to a fire while at the same time making sure that our men have appropriate free time. We've also got to gather such equipment as the local watch offices already have, and figure out how to organize it and get it to a fire; and we've got to figure out how best to use the facilities here. I'm told you're the visionary here. I realize that doesn't mean you've got all the answers, but let's start with what answers you do have."
--M. J. Young
"Most of how I've seen this done uses a lot of specialized equipment, which I realize we don't have access to. The first thing we need to do is figure out what we have access to, not only in terms of equipment but also in terms of manpower and skills.
"Counting all of us, I see fifteen people here - that's three watches of five to my eyes. Three supervisors and four watchmen to a shift. Five men on active, five men on reserve, five men sleeping, eight hours a day each.
"Now we get back to what I was saying about manpower. We need to know what we're good at. Does anyone have skills at things this department will find useful? Anyone have any experience in blacksmithing, carpentry, architecture, haggling or merchanting, engineering of any kind? You don't have to be good but anything is better than nothing.
"Once we have that compiled - we can go around and discuss it soon - we'll need to see what equipment we do have access to. Like I said, they use a lot of specialized stuff back home, but for the most part we can make do. Boarding axes are surprisingly handy - the big two-handed kind with the balancing spike, I mean - and so are mining helmets. We need a cart and some mules to pull it - mules rather than horses because they're less skittish. We also need buckets, because until we can afford a pump truck we'll need to work on bucket brigades. Which reminds me, anyone here good at driving a team of animals, or have experience with crowd control...?"
I'll try to write things down as quickly as I can, including the outline of what a manually-pumped pump truck looks like. I'm no engineer but I took enough physics to know how a hydraulic piston system works.
"As for the facilities, it helps if the people who are off duty remain on-site as much as they are able. If you're on active, you're here if you're not on a call. If you're on reserve, you're here unless you have somewhere better to be. If you're off duty, you can go home if you like. Most people I know who choose this line of work sleep on site unless they have families to go home to. I myself can afford to be on site pretty well constantly. The ground floor - the former shopfront - we can convert into a garage-cum-warehouse for our equipment, provided we can secure it. Is there room down there for some office space? Personnel records? Payroll ledgers? A desk or two? Some street-level maps of the city? Those would all come in handy."
Sooner or later I will have to ask Captain Peter what he thinks of the idea of public relations - how much to do, how best to get the word out, etc. etc. And so sooner or later I will.
"The top floor we convert into living space. Beds, dressers. Basically a barracks for anyone who wants to sleep here while they're Off or Reserve. If we feel really ambitious we can put a water tower on the roof and I can rig us up a shower..."
And... that's pretty much all I've got all at once, trying to remember on the fly how a fire department works.
"You've not accounted for weekends. That is, we're already asking a lot of these men to tell them that they're on call eight hours for every eight hours they work, but we can't also tell them that they're working seven-day weeks.
"If we make it three watches of four with four on call--let's start with three watches of four. That means that we've got five extra man days per shift, but we need eight to maintain consistent staffing.
"What if we we come up with some sort of rotating schedule." He scratches out some ideas on paper, and then continues.
"Let's suppose that each person works one shift on and two shifts off, five days in a row; but we'll start each person on a different shift and on a different day in the sequence. So if I start midnight Sunday morning and you start at eight A.M., then I'm back at midnight Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and you're back at eight on those days, too. Now it gets tricky: we each get four shifts off. That means I went home from working midnight to eight on Thursday morning, took off the rest of Thursday and most of the day Friday, and then came back at four Friday afternoon to work until midnight, and you come back at midnight Saturday morning after having off the evening shift Thursday and all day Friday. That means we don't really get weekends, but we get thirty two hours off in a row. It also means we would rotate between day, evening, and midnight shifts. The watchmen are pretty used to that already, so it shouldn't be a problem; and we can get pay authorization for an extra shift each week for each person.
"The math says we would always have four or five men in the station. We want a second shift to be on call, so the question is whether you are on call the eight hours before your shift, the eight hours after, or some split like four and four or two and six. The split probably works better, since we'll all have to sleep sometime and we're not going to get to bed instantly upon getting home. On the other hand, the problem with the split is knowing who is on call when--if I hear the whistle, I'm not necessarily going to know if my shift just ended or just started.
"So, have you got a better idea?"
In response to your question about skills, most of these people are professional watch. A couple people helped out sweeping bars and stores and such, and serving customers in such places, and you've got some that know their way around animals including horses, but no one who ever apprenticed to a profession.
You round up nearly fifty buckets ranging from about a gallon to about three gallons, plus a dozen axes and four hand-pushed carts that were used to move the stuff to fires before.
Most of the watch has managed crowd control at one time or another.
They do have water pumps which are used to draw water from wells in the ground; the idea of adapting such a thing to a fire truck is new, though.
Captain Peter's view is that you want the thing working before you start telling people about it--if there's a successful response to a fire, that's good publicity, but if there's publicity and then there's a fire that doesn't go well, that would hurt.
Your crew expect to be able to leave the premises when they are not on their eight-hour duty shifts. They understand about being called in for emergencies, but they have no intention of living in the building.
--M. J. Young
"Considering I doubt any watchman who heard a whistle would choose not to respond, I think your idea of a rotating schedule is just fine. We can go with that more or less as-is, and adjust as necessary. If it becomes a problem, we can fix it."
The hand carts and such will work fine. I'll explain about the idea of pump trucks and hoses if anyone is interested - basically a horse-drawn cart with a giant water barrel on it, and a high-pressure pump for delivering that water quickly, to supplement the bucket brigade.
I agree with his assessment on publicity.
Not using the place as a proper fire house gives us more space to work with. Downside, our guys on call are a bit farther removed than is perhaps handy. Upside, plenty of office space.
Lets get those carts organized for now. That seems easy. Lets divide our stuff evenly between the four carts, with anything left over being kept in reserve as replacements.
Can we come up with any ladders?
Such ladders as are in use in Durnmist are either rope or wood, mostly used in ship building and sometimes in construction. They're usually built on the spot for the purpose and then broken down when done--the ladders built while working on the hull of the ship become the ladders between the decks inside, and those used in building homes are more like scaffolding than ladders. They'll have to be special-ordered--and then you have the problem that any ladder that would be much use for a building fire would be too long to negotiate easily through the streets or carry in the hand carts. Even a twelve-foot ladder would be a bit awkward, although that could be managed.
--M. J. Young
Lucky for me I know how an adjustable ladder works well enough to describe it to a carpenter. Considering most fire house ladders are vehicle-mounted anyway, I'm not overly concerned about maneuverability.
The bigger problem is, wood is flammable. I don't suppose any blacksmiths in town are working in aluminum yet? I don't relish the thought of having to explain a vehicle-mounted steel ladder (and the bite that's going to take out of our budget) to the Captain.
No one knows what aluminum is, and your efforts to describe it make them think it's another name for tin, which they do have but don't know whether it would be strong enough for a ladder.
--M. J. Young
I'm not enough of a metallurgist to explain the concept of aluminium.
Alright, wood it is. I'll find me a carpenter and contract some extendable ladders. Let's say two, to start.
I'm assuming that in addition to the wooden ladders you need metal parts and rope to make it extendable.
It's going to take a month for you to get a ladder; the carpenters in town happen to be very busy this season. The second ladder will take another month. Also, because of the intricacy of the work and the fact that you need some non-wooden parts (I presume) they're going to be fifteen diktar each.
You'll have to explain to the captain why you want ladders.
--M. J. Young