Read this fascinating story from The New York Times on the D.C. Fire Department’s Engine Company 10, by all accounts the busiest firehouse in the country. These Trinidad firefighters at the “House of Pain” spend most of their time not fighting fires, but rather serving as emergency medical responders.

About 80 percent of the calls handled by Engine Company 10 are medical emergencies because the firehouse serves one of the city’s poorest areas, where few residents have health insurance, doctors’ checkups are rare, and medical problems are left to fester until someone dials 911.

The story also makes the point that due to a trending decrease in the number of fires nationwide, many fire departments rely on these medical calls to keep their firefighters employed. Still, it’s hard not to see the underlying truths of the current health-care reform debate: our poorer residents don’t get good, regular medical care, and the burden of that broken system ends up in the laps of our emergency responders and emergency rooms.

I also had never heard this term for the corner of 14th and H Streets NE: ‘The corner is known by the firefighters as the “vortex of sickness” because the dispatcher sends them there five or six times per shift.’