THE DIFFERENCE 06/23/2016 By Michael Morse “Attention, Engine 3 and Rescue 1: Respond to 647 Broad Street for an MVA involving an unresponsive 10- year-old.†That will get you going. We flew out of the station toward the incident. Engine 3 arrived on scene first and radioed the findings. “Engine 3 to Fire Alarm: Advise […]
The Providence Fire Department  has been systematically destroyed since the day I started in 1991. A succession of mayoral administrations have nickel and dimed the members, raided our pension system to fund the general fund that has been depleted with raises for city hall employees and various programs. Our fire stations are rat infested, dilapidated […]
06/15/2016 http://06/fire-ems-dedicated-compartment.html By Michael Morse Firefighting is a dirty job: we get dirty, our gear gets dirty, and our equipment gets dirty. Keeping our firefighting equipment clean and operational is second nature. Most good engine companies periodically dump the hose beds and scrub the feeders and attack lines, do a systematic check of the nozzles, […]
I found them at the bus station, all of their belongings stuffed into five backpacks, the seams strained, worn, cheap things, filled with cheap clothes and all the little treasures that they could fit, and there wasn’t much room for those. Their lives were in those packs, dirt covered, plastic containers holding the remnants of […]
Somebody has to check bodies for signs of life. Somebody has to wade through blood and gore, check pulses, shine lights in dead eyes, attach leads to bullet riddled chests and document their findings. Somebody has to ignore incessant cell phone rings, Somebody went to work yesterday, fully expecting business as usual, and instead found […]
 Somewhere in my career between thinking I knew everything and realizing I didn’t I found myself working for Captain Michael Day at Engine 10, the Broad Street Bullies. I had just been shacked from my previous spot, shacking being the equivalent of being traded to a different team because you didn’t fit in with your […]
I’ve been battling The City of Providence for years, finally, the Supreme Court of Rhode Island reached a decision. The question was simple, did the Providence Retirement Board act properly in denying a disability pension to me because one out of six doctors opined that I was actually not injured as a result of my […]