The Austin Firefighter’s Association has voted ‘no confidence’ on its Chief, Joel Baker.
It brings the Austin Firefighters no pleasure to report to the community that the Austin Fire Chief DENIED the deployment of Austin firefighters to Kerrville until very late into the event (so today!), with the exception of only 3 AFD rescue swimmers who helped staff helo teams (which still were NOT deployed until the afternoon of the 4th).
The Austin Firefighter Special Operations teams are specially trained for Hill Country swift water rescue and are some of the best, if not the best, swift water boat teams in the State of Texas.
It is absolutely outrageous that the Austin Fire Chief, Joel G. Baker, would not allow highly trained firefighters from Austin to respond to Kerrville. Because of this egregious dereliction of duty, LIVES WERE VERY LIKELY LOST BECAUSE OF CHIEF BAKER’S DECISION!
Deployment orders came down from the State of Texas on July 2. We would’ve been pre-deployed before the waters even began to rise!
He refused to allow their specialized teams to deploy to Kerrville and it seems it is because he didn’t understand what it meant to be reimbursed for the cost of the deployment.
The firefighters also asked rhetorically: “Why would Fire Chief Joel G. Baker do this, you may ask? It was a misguided attempt to save money. I say “misguided” because the fire department is fully reimbursed by the state to deploy. I explained the reimbursement process to Chief Baker last week, and he failed to understand this very simple concept.”
The criticism came after the Austin Fire Department announced it would not deploy personnel outside of Austin because of a budget shortfall, including “something like $800,000 in outstanding reimbursements owed to AFD by the State of Texas,” according to local station KXAN-TV.
The TV station also reported that Baker said he issued the pause on deployments due to “internal issues” over the state’s ability to reimburse the department, insisting that budget constraints had “nothing” to do with his decision-making.
Since taking the position with AFD, Baker, touted as Austin’s “first African-American fire chief,” has prioritized diversity and increasing the number of “minority applicants.”
There’s still “a whole lot of room for improvement,” he said in an interview with KTBC in 2020.
“We had an increase of … minority applicants who had applied. … I have not really seen an increase of [applicants who have] been hired. So now we got to find out — we getting people applying, but what’s the barrier of getting them hired? You know, are they not able to pass the written exam or the oral exam or the background checks? You know, what’s out there? What’s barriers are out there that prevent them to get hired?”
Charlie Kirk lays it out here.
Firefighters came from all over the place–even from Mexico. But yet Austin, with all of the specialized teams and manpower was forced to stand down. How many lives could have been saved if they were there is an unknowable. If even one of those little girls could have been rescued by a team from Austin, it would have been a win.
The city of Austin is covering their asses with platitudes and double speak, but they’ve screwed the pooch and it’s pretty clear why. When leadership is focused on one thing: DEI, then the actual job–saving lives–is sidelined. We’ve seen it elsewhere–LA comes to mind as well.
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