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Subscribe to RSSThe documentary 'Burn,' which premiered this week at the Tribeca Film Festival, follows Detroit firefighters facing a staggering problem: the city has three times as many structure fires as Los Angeles, a city more than five times its size. NBC's Kevin Tibbles reports.
Cash-strapped, arson-prone Detroit could let fires in vacant buildings and homes burn themselves out to save the city Fire Department money.
The fiery notion from Detroit’s Executive Fire Commissioner Donald Austin surfaced as the documentary “Burn,” chronicling a year of Motor City firefighters’ camaraderie in the face of declining budgets and increasing fire calls, made its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
“We are in no way looking to 'let the city' burn, this is about saving lives and money,” Austin said, according to a report Tuesday by NBC station WDIV in Detroit. “My department is strapped, the budget is strapped, and it’s time to look at a new way of doing things.”
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing is looking to trim $250 million and cut more than 2,500 jobs from the city’s 2012-13 budget. The cuts would lower the fire department budget below this fiscal year's $183 million.
Austin's proposal would allow vacant buildings to burn if they're more than 50 percent ablaze — as long as they're not a risk to inhabited structures and the weather is favorable.
Max Ortiz / The Detroit News via AP file
An arson investigator photographs a fire at a Detroit building complex at Sycamore and Grand River on March, 28 2012.
Bing’s office is not taking any position on Austin’s idea until he makes a formal proposal of his annual budget request, the mayor’s spokeswoman, Naomi Patton, told msnbc.com.
Detroit Fire Fighters Association President Daniel McNamara said he opposes Austin's idea of letting vacant homes burn, unless they're on a predetermined demolition list, WDIV reported.
“This is a long overdue idea, really,” Jo Robins Davis, a Detroit-area lawyer specializing in fire insurance claims, told msnbc.com. As long as they can keep the burns controlled, the idea would work for her, she said.
“They’re going to be torn down anyway,” she said of the vacant structures.
Austin has other ideas to save money, WDIV reported: Ask the U.S. Navy's construction division, the Seabees, to level 10,000 vacant and dilapidated homes; or create a demolition unit in the Fire Department to use heavy equipment to level the remnants of newly burned buildings.
Detroit has 80,000 abandoned structures, "Burn" filmmakers Tom Putnam and Brenna Sanchez say.
Film-makers Tom Putnam and Brenna Sanchez discuss the hardships facing Detroit's fire department, as documented in their upcoming film, "BURN."
Austin said 40 to 60 percent of the fires in Detroit are in vacant structures. Last year alone, the Fire Department fielded 30,000 fire calls. The city of 714,000 sees 30 structure fires a day. In contrast, Los Angeles, a city of nearly 4 million, faces just 11 structure fires a day.
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To illuminate the obstacles that Detroit firefighters face, filmmakers Putnam and Sanchez documented a year in the life of the men and women tasked with saving their beloved city. The film features video shot by the firefighters with cameras attached to their helmets.
“On our first two nights filming, we went to 21 structure fires with one engine company,” recalled Putnam, who said that he and Sanchez were inspired by the 2008 death of Detroit firefighter Walter Harris.
Burned on purpose
Arson in Detroit rose in 2010 to 1,082 incidents, up from 636 the year earlier, according to FBI crime statistics. Insurance companies paid $237.8 million for damage caused by arsons or suspicious blazes in 2010, the Detroit News reported.
Why is arson so frequent?
“I think Detroit's a place where people feel disenfranchised and there aren't a lot of ways to express themselves,” Putnam told NBC News. The filmmaker broke the reasons down into categories: arson for profit, homeowners who are upside down on their mortgages, and arson for revenge. Other times it’s just arson for kicks. “Like one of the firefighters says, ‘a gallon of gasoline is cheaper than a movie ticket,’” Putnam said.
Scrappers, who strip vacant buildings of valuable materials, are also a problem. After stripping away all metal piping, they can leave an exposed gas line to catch fire, which is what happened April 10, when fire destroyed two abandoned buildings and damaged the occupied family home of Tiffanie Alston, 31.
She grabbed her children — 9, 10 and 11 years old — and then headed to the basement to help her 61-year-old father.
"People go in there and scrap all the time, and it was just a matter of time till it got set on fire," she told The Detroit News.
In the 1980s, Detroit was known for Devil’s Night fires, which peaked in 1984 with more than 800 fires over Halloween. In 1985, an Angel’s Night campaign began to counter the arsons. Firefighters responded to only 94 calls Oct. 29-31, 2011, according to the mayor’s office.
'Katrina without the hurricane'
Wide swaths of Detroit consist of scattered occupied homes surrounded by boarded-up structures, burned-out buildings and weed-covered vacant lots, WDIV reported.
The city’s population, which peaked when the post-World War II auto industry boomed in the 1950s at nearly 2 million people, has dwindled. Now Detroit’s population has plummeted to 714,000, the Census reported last year.
As one firefighter in the film put it, “This has been Katrina without the hurricane.”
Now Bing’s planned budget cuts could make firefighters' jobs even tougher. With starting salaries at approximately $30,000 a year, most firefighters already have second jobs.
From their extensive time with the Fire Department, Putnam and Sanchez saw firsthand the real impact the city’s budget problems had on the firefighters. Many of their boots were secured with duct tape, some were missing gloves, and they were still cutting holes in roofs with axes, the filmmakers said.
“I think we think that's all being taken care of, and it's not being taken care of,” said Sanchez. “We need to be there for them because they're always there for us.”
Funding for the film came from corporate sponsors like General Motors and an outpouring of donations from supporters who saw preview clips online. To do their part, Putnam and Sanchez are donating portion of any proceeds from the film to the Leary Firefighters Foundation to help supply firefighters with equipment.
For Putnam, the story of this one city’s firefighters is symbolic of what the rest of the country’s fire departments may soon be facing, as budget are slashed in almost every state. And Putnam and Sanchez want people to remember that, as heroic as their work may be, firefighters are human after all.
“People tend to think of firefighters as being indestructible,” Putnam said. “They're not indestructible. If you don't give them the equipment they need and you send them into situations they shouldn't be going into, they can get hurt and they can get killed. And it's easy to forget that.”
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When I lived in Detroit I recall hearing that when the city and it's main manufacturing were being planned (remember the world wars?), since the US war machine was being built there, Detroit would likely be the very first place attacked. Most of Detroit lies right on top of Morton Salt Company and the idea was once destroyed, the remains would simply be bulldozed into the salt mines, leveled off and Detroit would be rebuilt on top of the wreckage. Not a bad plan really though a bit ruthless.
And now they are letting the buildings burn? The last time I was there, I have to admit that letting a lot of that place burn is not a terrible idea - IF they are going to put something else there to replace the lost buildings. IF not, it seems an awful waste. I've also heard of plans to house criminals in many of those places, walling off portions of the city with armed guards. At least that is a use for the real estate.
I hate to see my old city fry like this but I can not come up with a better plan myself. There is one place ripe for rehab should we ever manufacture anything again in this country. With the Chinese sending some work back our way, perhaps some re-thinking needs to take place? The machinery is still there and can be had real cheap. All we need is SOMETHING to make once again.
Sounds like the salt mines would make a better prison than the old buildings. Far easier to contain the bad boys as well.
And soon to be seen at the federal level. Cutbacks like these will be forced across the nation if we ever get on track and stop the spending.
Detroit is the poster boy for what happens to a city when the middle class moves out. The unions have sucked the city dry and the political leaders in office are incompetent with the city begging the state to bail it out. When the middle class leaves there is no anchor to a city, the gangs move in, taxes go up with fewer people paying, stores close due to violence, and capable leaders slowly give up trying to get elected because those left vote ethnic or color. An example of incompetence is the mayor of NJ's capitol, Trenton, his brother was named supervisor of the water dept. and was arrested for falsifying his timecard and using city trucks to do private repairs. The city water filtration plant was not operated properly with no one able to drink the water for a week. The mayor also had his house in repossession proceedings. One third of the police dept was laid off and the city functions only via state aid. In Camden, NJ the state took control with that city some 67 million in debt. The simple point is when the middle class no longer feels safe, they leave. What is left behind, the poor and the elderly, take the brunt of crime and poor services, like the fire dept unable to put out fires in Detroit. New York City was the same until Rudy was elected and law and order returned. Philadelphia under Rizzo years ago was one of the safest cities in the US, now it is one of the most dangerous cities. Add Baltimore to the danger list, Newark, Atlanta, etc...
The Union workers did leave and they are prospering in the new cities that support the "AUTO Industry". The people who are left, have no Unions, no jobs and get no mercy from the BANKS.
The BANKS own the houses....LET "EM BURN!!! They Older factories were replaced by modern factories in other cities in the South, Canada and Mexico. "Motor City" is no more. Time to find a new industry so the City will rise from the Ashes and soar again. The people of Detroit are ready to work. Is America big enough to re-invent itself? Romney would have let a Dozen Cities, who depend on the Auto Industry, Fail. Do you want a Quitter and a Flip-Flop, like Romney, to run this great country or a tried and willing to help America President like President Obama? Four More Years ! Lets re-build America.
Sounds like a great plot line for a futuristic scifi flick where; an advanced civilization rises to a unsustainable future and begins to jettison and abandon the parts of its own body that allowed it to rise to being in the first place in a valiant attempt to forestall it's demise. Screen call!
Just let Detroit burn. The unions won't lift a finger to help, either.
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The Unions support the workers who pay their dues. The Government supports it's citizens who pay their taxes. Detroit is a city with few unions left and few taxpayers left. RIP Detroit.
Let's face it Detroit is a black city.....and well.....honestly....I would be welling to bet since most whites have got the h3ll out....it has the highest welfare and food stamp rate of any major city in the US....I would also predict the community leaders (elected not based on ability but because they are black) are in it for self gain and are stealing from the city every chance they get....I would alos predict the IQ of the city is 90 or lower....I would also bet walking down town at night is very unsafe for a white person...I would also predict high crime rate.....hight drop out rate.....low property values...hight teen age pregnacy rate....I did not check these predictions but am sure I am close on most..... my last prediction is most people that live in detroit have the common "I am a victim complex"...or think it's somehow whitey's fault....
Let all the homes and buildings burn down and send all the inner city Detroiters back to Africa. Think how much we'll save in welfare, prison charges, police salaries, and money saved on homicides, robberies and rape charges!! It is a jungle and the people all animals!
"Back to Africa" would imply they came from there in the first place. Not. Their fore fathers maybe, but not the curent residents.
I say let the place burn, and plant crops instead.
Well, let's see--my kid lived downtown for five years over by Wayne State U. Do we send him back to Ireland or Germany?
The race riots of the 1960's and the predictable white flight resulted in huge areas of vacant homes, and the trend only got worse from there, but that's what happened before the article here picks up the history. They had a number of issues with mayoral corruption over the decades that only made matters much worse as streets etc deteriorated. Now who would buy any of those houses from downtown to Southfield?
I agree with those who think they should demolish the vacant and abandoned structures. As the article states the population has dropped considerably, its unlikely to recover, and nobody will ever repair those houses. I know that it's expensive and that all that lead and asbestos filled rubble will have to go somewhere, but until those buildings are demolished, all that land remains useless.
re read.....same @!$%#......
The city is making a good attempt to help with an ugly problem....But, it is not that simple. Many of these will be arson fires and there is a criminal involved who is looking to get rewarded. Every abandoned building must be recorded(and how do you know for sure that they are completely agandoned?) and it must be noted that there is no insurance on the building. The owner must sign off on the policy so as to guarantee that he would not sue the city...There are a lot of ugly possibilities...such as the fact that it has to be a controled fire and that other buildings or people would not be at danger...How do you know that there are no dead people inside and would you be destroying evidence if you let the building burn?? Perhaps a better solution would be to declare as worthless and dangerous the abandoned properties that are past the point of being rehabitated and leveling whole neighborhoods...then auctioning off the land to devlopers...
Unions killed Detroit, because of course when workers legally group together and demand fair wages and to share in the profit for their work rather than profits mostly turning into bonuses and tens of millions of dollars for white collar criminals, it's an inevitable consequence that you just have to move the operations to communist and third world slave labor countries. And there can be no possible consequence to these corporate scum for doing this. Know why? Rednecks can't be expected to think and reason for themselves and understand that they could actually make a law that restricts corporations in the US from doing this, and penalize them with tariffs, etc. if they move offshore. No, that would be a decent, rational use of their brain, and next you'd be expecting them to understand and know history, like the historical fact that the strongest economical times for this country are when the middle class was the largest and most prosperous, and just about every recession is characterized by the middle class shrinking and more money moving to the top. Then you'd be expecting them to react to unions by thinking that other working-class people making good wages and having standards would eventually benefit them, rather than just being bitter and jealous of the guy next to them making more. Next thing you know you'd be expecting them to understand that this corporate-whoring, right wing philosophy was responsible for building up countries like China and India into actual competition for the US.
Unions made Detroit a middle class city. Companies, relocating the factories in other cities in the South, Canada and Mexico, killed "Motor City". Time to find a new industry so the City will rise from the Ashes and soar again.
The people of Detroit are ready to work. Is America big enough to re-invent itself? Romney would have let a Dozen Cities, Like Detroit, who depend on the Auto Industry, Fail. Do you want a Quitter and a Flip-Flop, like Romney, to run this great country or a tried and willing to help America President like President Obama? Four More Years ! Lets re-build America.
I thought the US State Department has been dumping immigrants there for 30 years. Big islamic population.
This is all because of the Mortgage crisis. Property taxes pay for Fire Departments and houses are vacant, people are not paying tax...
Bill Clinton might have been a Democrat, but he acted like a Republican when he deregulated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He also signed the North American Free Trade Agreement. These two separate acts took down Detroit. Now Detroit deals with the mortgage crisis, and the lost jobs to Mexico in the Auto Manufacturing business.
The ironic thing, they will keep voting for Democrats... It makes no sense at all...
Mexicans took our jobs? If so, it's because they can build a vehicle of equal quality, for much less money. Thank your unions for that. The populace of the United States as a whole cannot afford products built by union workers. Too expensive. Maybe they could start building solar panels and green products.
Go Boom! Right on! That's what I want for America. A society where business owners and executives prosper, and everyone employed has a Mexican standard of living! This is the right wing philosophy in a nutshell. Thanks for summing it up with complete accuracy.
Letting structures burn is a valid strategy at times and is nothing new.
bet if we romoved the current population from detroit...and filled it up with can do people.....we could have that city up and running in a year....the problem is who wants the current helpless can't do any thing population.....I take that back they can reproduce like rabbits,,,,and suck all money out of any social system....I wonder if Uganda wants them....
Sounds like many of them start fires quite well. Is that a marketable skill?
Burn baby burn. Sounds like a valid response to diminishing revenue. To demolish and cart the refuse away would be prohibitively expensive. Burn it up, less structures for the squatters to live in.
Why Not? A cesspool is a cesspool. Shreveport LA, Memphis,TN, Pine Bluff, AR are not too far behind.
(Robert in Oregon)
I think the 'people in Michigan' would not appreciate the connection to the 'people in Detroit', it's kind of like "the people in Chicago' and the other citizens of Illinois wishing they could fence off that part of the state... our country is now experiencing the Chicago corruption and style on a national level...
I'm from Central Illiniois, Robert, and there are good people there...unfortunately the bad ones got in office. But hey, at least they put some of 'em in jail!
@Robert in Oregon... Me myself being from Detroit.. born and raised, i thank you for the encouraging words.
The suggestion to let the buildings burn makes perfect sense. Why on earth would any city allow a firefighter to risk their lives fighting a fire when the building is abandoned or already slated to be knocked down.
Yup, the republican's solution is to let the poor and homeless burn so that the rich that perpetrate scams (banking scandal of 07 for instance) can keep every single penny of their ill gotten gains, because we all know that corrupt ceos are WAY more important than people living from paycheck to paycheck.
I left that place 26 years ago. My biggest regret about leaving Detroit is that I didn't do it sooner. There are plenty of reasons for the demise of this place. One of the biggest was the election of Coleman A. Young as mayor. An outspoken avowed racist, scammer, carpetbagger con man who sought to drive every person from the city who was not African American. He didn't know what he was doing and was constantly in D.C. begging for money. What wealth didn't go down the drain went into his offshore bank accounts. He and his lackeys stripped the place to the walls and blamed whitey. The parade of clowns he brought into his administration made it extremely difficult to impossible to keep anyone with a conscience who knew what they were doing on the job.
Let it burn, then bulldoze the pathetic mess into the trenched out freeways and cover it over.
I say burn most but I think some of those buildings could easily become housing for some homeless people.. Any roof is better than no roof..
I do agree with the burning they would eradicate more problems than it would cause.. Crack houses, gang hang outs, chop shops.. you name it is happening in those empty buildings.. Maybe they will get lucky and take put a few bad guys too.. In a dream world it could possibly put quite a damper on crime..
Man they should just set a controled burn all at once!
Two important questions. First, how many of those abandoned/boarded up buildings are bank-owned? And, how many bank-owned properties went up in smoke?
I can think of two reasons for bank-owned properties to go up in smoke. One is the former owner either having someone torch the property or do the job themselves to get even with the bank. The other is banks hiring people to torch the properties and collect on insurance. There's plenty of incentive for banks to do this. They're holding the bag on properties they can't move and are most likely paying to insure these properties while they sit on their books. Banks are also not in the property rental/management business. And there are plenty of bank execs who enjoy three-martini lunches at strip clubs, where they won't have to look very far or wide to find someone who knows how to torch a building.
As far as fire department policy goes, letting abandoned buildings burn themselves out is the best of a slate of bad options. You can not commit firefighters to buildings which are death-traps (abandoned mill/factory buildings, where you usually have roof collapse); all you can do is put a perimeter around the fire zone to keep it from spreading. It also makes no sense to commit firefighters to abandoned houses when you know there's no one in there to rescue and there's no occupied property in the immediate area at risk; once again, setting up the perimeter, if necessary, is the more sensible option. Considering the number of fires involved, with the majority caused by squatters, scrappers, and fire bugs, Detroit may very well be better served if these people are left to fend for themselves when a fire they cause overwhelms them.
Fire protection along with most municipal functions should be privatized (parks, recreation, trash collection, animal control, water/sewer, etc.) that is the only way it can be determined what level of service people are really willing to pay for. Go back to the way it was about 100 years ago when this country had not fallen under the control of communists and socialists.
sma1948: 100 years ago, meat packers refused to retreive bodies of workers who fell into rendering vats. Do you really want to return to that? Google Upton Sinclair, for the rest of the story!
Upton Sinclair / The Jungle.
"Bubbly Creek" is still alive and well after almost 100 years. This would have been a EPA Superfund site, and certain political factions think the the EPA should be abolished
The EPA was started by republicans and was doing an excellent job. But like all bureaucracies over time, they became power hungry and have gone way beyond their original purpose, to find an reduce pollution.
Once bureaucracies are infected with power they need to be torn down and reformulated. The GSA. is another excellent example.