SWARTZ CREEK and CLAYTON TOWNSHIP – The discussion about the time Swartz Creek Area firefighters spend on certain calls returned to the fire board table.

At the Monday, Dec. 16, fire board meeting, the debate centered on the department’s response to the downed wires in the 6000 block of Miller Road the night before Thanksgiving, a couple of calls for carbon monoxide detector activation, and a series of calls that turned out to be false alarms or minor incidents.

Board member Ken Engel, who represents Clayton Township, questioned why the fire department spent 53 minutes on a carbon monoxide alarm Nov. 15 on Springbrook Drive in the city, and an hour and 14 minutes on a carbon monoxide call Nov. 3 on McEnrue Road in the township.

“Once you get everyone out, you can vent the house, but you can’t fix the cause,” Engel said. “Once there’s no longer any people at risk, why not clear the scene?”

Fire Chief Dave Plumb said the occupant of the home on Springbrook “needed a little extra assistance.”

“She was a little frantic, so we wanted to spend a little extra time with her,” he said.

On the McEnrue Road call, firefighters remained on scene until a repair person determined the cause of the alarm, which turned out to be a false reading provoked by a faulty battery on a sump pump.

“It was a little baffling,” the chief said. “We were digging up information, at least to educate our firefighters.”

“That’s not our job,” said Engel. “Our job is to make sure everyone is safe. They can call a repair person.”

Plumb said the firefighters sometimes stay a little longer because they’re “trying to put (the resident’s) mind at ease when they’re in a panic.”

“When you’re dealing with the public, sometimes you need to take a little extra time to ease their minds,” Plumb said.

“That’s not our job,” Engel responded, adding that the fire department could be liable if they attempted to diagnose and correct the problem and it “went haywire.”

Plumb said the firefighters did neither at the incident in question; they left that to the repair person.

“We’re public servants,” he said. “We wanted to do our due diligence. If there’s something extra we can do for the public, I think that’s fine.”

Engel disagreed, saying it’s fine if it takes an hour to evacuate and vent the house, but waiting an hour for a repair person is not fine.

“Vent the house, then get back on the big, red truck and go back to the (station),” he said.

Engel also was adamant that the firefighters should not have spent six hours and 27 minutes “babysitting” a damaged power pole Nov. 27.

“We keep having the same conversation and it never goes anyplace,” Engel said.

Plumb said the pole had caught fire and the wires, which still had currents running through them, were across the road. Fire rigs blocked the road to protect the public from driving over the hot wires until Consumers Energy crews arrived.

With the city and township each paying the costs for fire department activations in their own communities, the incident cost the city about $2,000, Plumb said.

Engel said firefighters should have called the city’s Department of Public Services to bring out barricades to free up the fire equipment and personnel in case of another emergency.

“There’s no reason to tie up (fire department) vehicles with that,” he said.

He added that the city should bill the power company, or take them to small claims court, to recoup their costs.

Plumb said he’s working on recovering the costs from Consumers Energy.

Regarding the use of barricades, Plumb said because of the severity of the threat the downed wires posed, he felt it was the right call for the fire department to block the road.

“People will go around barricades,” he said, adding that with no lights in the vicinity, drivers would not have seen the charged wires, which could have resulted in fatalities.

“That’s called natural selection,” Engel commented.