It’s only the truly embarrassing stories that get local D.C. affairs bumped up to the stuff of national attention. So this was sort of inevitable. CNN yesterday picked up on the D.C. Fire Department response last weekend to a resident’s request to fill up an above-ground pool amid a blackout caused by last Friday’s derecho storm.
As a quick refresher, the pool story began Saturday when a resident of Grant Park in Northeast D.C. called Fire and EMS and asked that an engine be dispatched to fill the pool at the home on the 300 block of 55th Street NE. Of course, firefighters are not supposed to double as swimming-pool maintenance workers, especially when power outages and storm damage lead to a higher-than-usual number of 911 calls, a fact that was first picked up by The Washington Times:
“It’s a highly unusual request even on a normal day,” said D.C. Firefighters Association President Ed Smith, who confirmed the pool-filling. Several other officials with knowledge of the incident discussed it with The Washington Times on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about it publicly.
The story made its way up to CNN yesterday. Freda Brooks, a neighbor of the lucky pool owner, was incredulous in describing the scene. “I was more in shock,” she told CNN. “I couldn’t believe it, because I didn’t know they could come and do that.” Brooks added that she “kind of figured” that filling swimming pools does not fall under the fire department’s purview.
CNN also approached a very sheepish D.C. Fire Chief Kenneth Ellerbe, who repeated his earlier insistence that the request for pool service was shot down at upper levels of the department. Still, somewhere along the chain of command, the message got lost, and someone authorized the Engine 30 company to replenish the pool.
CNN also reported that a battalion chief is being “reprimanded” for the pool job, and Ellerbe is now in the position of having to promise grimly to D.C. residents that any future requests for District firefighters to service private swimming pools will be denied. The pool at the heart of this case, by the way, is empty once again.
