A citizen journalist whose house was raided in October appears to be the victim of a dirty payback scheme by arson investigators and a top administration official in the Detroit Fire Department.
A serial arsonist appears to be responsible for setting fire to as many as dozens of vacant houses on Detroit’s east side over the past month, brazenly targeting multiple homes at a time.
An 8-month-old girl died after a Detroit EMT refused to respond to the emergency.
The city also is expected to being getting new ladder trucks, platforms, squads, ambulances and arson vehicles next year.
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.
“It’s ridiculous. We simply don’t have enough rigs to cover the city,” said Mike Nevin, president of the Detroit Fire Firefighters Association.
For the past three years, Motor City Muckraker photographed fires in Detroit as part of a project to reveal the widespread damage caused by the city’s arson epidemic.
Delivering on a pledge to fix Detroit’s long-beleaguered Fire Department, first-year Commissioner Eric Jones announced a major shakeup Wednesday.
The 75-foot Curtis Randolph is an impressive steel hull fireboat that is capable of pumping 11,000 gallons of water per minute and is a key resource for protecting high-rise and industrial buildings along the Detroit River.
Motor City Muckraker tracked every fire as part of a one-year project that led to reforms and the ousting of top fire officials.