A few months after New York

City's darkest hour, I caught a news clip of then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani

addressing the latest graduates from NYC's public safety academy. It was

just a few seconds long, and I spent many hours afterwards searching ­

in vain ­ for a transcript.

The gist of his remarks was

that the fire service is one of the few careers people seek today out

of love for their community.

It sure doesn't pay that well.

Unless you're on one of those hunky firefighter calendars, there's not

much glamour involved. The incidence of job-related injury and mortality

is among the highest of any profession. Yet except for reasons ofhealth,

it's rare for a veteran firefighter toquit for a civilian job.

On a call, you work hard and

get dirty. Between calls, you still work hard on equipment, training,

and reports. And your emotions go from one extreme to the other, depending

on how successful the outcome of your efforts.

If you haven't already, you'll

soon receive "On Call," the newsletter the Peachtree City Volunteer

Firefighters Association occasionally publishes. I hope you'll read the

whole thing, but at least, please ­ please ­ read the front

and back pages.

Things have changed a lot since

Dave and I were on the roster, 25-30 years ago. For instance, if we ran

five or six calls a week, whew! Boy! What a week this has been.

In 2002, PCFD ran 542 fire

calls and 1,610 emergency medical service calls ­ a far cry from

the 250 or so, total, that we ran per year in the 1970s.

In the "olden days,"

for example, on a residential call, we sent whatever apparatus seemed

appropriate and called for more if needed. There was only one fire station

in town, and only one paid person to stay there all day. His (or her)

job was to make sure equipment was clean and ready. When there was a call

he (or she) opened the bay doors, cranked whichever trucks were going

to run, and had them on the apron before the volunteers arrived. For all

that, we had remarkably quick response times.

Today, to meet standards required

should have a minimum of 17-18 people on a residential fire in the first

five minutes, whether it turns out to be a smoking frying pan or an inferno

through the roof.

And today, Peachtree City can't

reach the level of response national standards require even if all four

stations are emptied ­ which, of course, leaves the city unprotected

should another incident occur.

It also means that highways

and parkways all over Peachtree City are at risk for large trucks responding

to a section of town that is not normally theirs to protect. As I've frequently

heard around the station, "This is the luckiest d---d city I've ever

seen, never to have had a fatality or even a serious injury in an emergency

response! It's just a matter of time."

And it's just a matter of time,

they add, that the city is open to liability for refusing to staff and

equip the department up to national standards.

While we're on the subject

of personnel, the U.S. Fire Administration recently completed a needs-assessment

survey of departments nationwide, and reports that the national average

for communities the size of Peachtree City is 18.8 firefighters on duty

per 24-hour shift.

Did I mention that, at present,

only 12 and sometimes 11 full-time firefighters (all of whom have EMT

or paramedic certification), plus command officers, are available for

daytime calls in Peachtree City?

But what about volunteers?

According to Assistant Chief Ed Eiswerth, the 35-40 volunteers currently

serving alongside the career firefighters are the best ­ and best-trained

­ volunteers we've had in years. After six months of "Rookie

School," they must take 10 hours of ongoing training a month. Just

like the career people. On a recent Saturday, 31 volunteer and career

firefighters turned out for training in the new burn building.

If you scan the list in On

Call's last page, you'll see that this is a well-educated coalition ­

both career and volunteer ­ that boasts doctorates, master's degrees,

college degrees, and numerous technical certifications.

On any given call, however,

Eiswerth says he can't be sure how many volunteers will be available.

They have jobs, in Atlanta or in the air, reflecting their education.

The paid staffers have part-time jobs or are self-employed between shifts,

and cannot leave to help out with a major incident.

It's not like it was in "my"

day. We had a fraction of the calls today's department answers, most of

us worked within the city limits, and we had civic-minded employers who

let us leave our jobs to respond. We did well under the circumstances,

believe me when I say that. But it was a different world. And even then,

there was always an ISO rating dangling before us as an incentive.

The Insurance Service Organization

has an unbelievably complex point system for determining rates for fire

insurance, and I don't intend to try to explain it. As if I could.

The short take is to say that

the amount you must pay for home, business, or industrial insurance is

based on a number, 1 through 10.

No fire protection of any kind

is Class 10. A rural home with, say, a volunteer fire department 20 minutes

away and no hydrants would be lucky to get Class 9.

I remember when Peachtree City's

ISO rating was Class 9. But as we acquired equipment or rebuilt it (did

you know Chief Leach built us a tanker on a school bus chassis?) and as

we recruited and trained personnel, and as we added stations in other

parts of town, gradually the numbers improved.

Why does this matter? Your

fire insurance premiums go down as ISO ratings go down. There are only

a few Class 1 departments in the nation: Macon/Bibb County is one. Peachtree

City has been an ISO Class 4 for several years.

Now let's be clear. I'd like

to tell you that going to Class 3 ­ our goal ever since we got Class

4 ­ would whack X-dollars from the insurance premiums of a $200,000

house. But the way one insurance company calculates premiums is different

from another, and one family's insurance needs differ from another's,

hence the cost is not across-the-board consistent. Only your own insurance

provider can tell you exactly how much lower your premiums will be. But

they very likely will go down.

Also, be clear that we're not

talking about huge sums of money. Improved ratings tell me more about

how much better, quicker, and more effectively the fire department can

protect me and my neighbors.

I have correspondence between

Chief Stony Lohr and Kevin Gimeno of the ISO about a year and a half ago.

They'd been going back and forth as to how many points we'd get by bringing

equipment and stations into compliance. They'd gone as far as they could

go, and still couldn't rate Peachtree City an ISO Class 3 without more

people on the roster.

So Lohr tackled the personnel

issue despite the fact that the city had told department heads that they

were getting no more employees and may even be facing layoffs.

He wrote to Gimeno, "If

we were to place three additional people on each shift ... would [the

rating change] be immediate or on a time duration based formula?"

Gimeno: "The credit would

be immediate, as long as we had some solid proof that the people were

hired and on the roster."

Say that again? Peachtree City

could achieve a Class 3 rating, lower insurance premiums, and a more effective

fire department almost instantly by hiring nine firefighter/EMTs ­

and we haven't done it?

Did I mention that of seven

Georgia cities approximately the size of Peachtree City, six have at least

15 career firefighters on duty per shift (to our 11-to-12), and five have

a Class 3 rating?

We are the only one of those

cities that also provides emergency medical service through the fire department,

and three-quarters of the 2,152 calls we served in 2002 were medical.

And we did it all with fewer

responders.

The fire department needs to

hire 10 more people now: three firefighter/EMTs or paramedics per shift,

plus an assistant to the fire marshal.

Last year, when this request

was made, the department was denied additional personnel. It appears this

will happen again in the upcoming budget. Money is tight in this failing

economy, but there are some things we can't let slide, among them the

safety of our families.

In these troublous times, the

fire department is our first line of defense.

If there were another attack

on our soil, or you were involved in an accident, or your dad had a heart

attack, or your dirty chimney caught fire, whom will you call?

[Sallie Satterthwaite is

the only newspaper columnist we know about who has a fire station named

for her.]