Just days after Motor City Muckraker reported that the purchase of the rigs had become entangled in bureaucratic delays, the city gave the Fire Department the green light to begin accepting bids for new rigs this month.
When firefighters arrived, a vacant house was engulfed in flames on a block tightly packed with houses in southwest Detroit this weekend.
Firefighters are forced to rely on noncompliant hoses, engine pumps, air bottles, self-contained respirators, pressurized extinguishers and aerial and ground ladders.
Less than a day before hitting the streets for the first time, Detroit’s fire engine was taken out of service and sent to the repair shop.
So many fires broke out that Detroit ran out of trucks to respond, leaving the city dangerously unprotected.
Perhaps most eye-opening wasn’t the number of fires but the fallouts from budget cuts.