DETROIT, MI - Shane Klug doesn't want to hear ill-informed smack talk about Detroit.

The city is far from fixed, and the 40-year-old Detroit firefighter is in a unique spot to document the city's most obvious struggles; he has no reservations about showing the world the parts of Detroit that haven't been touched by redevelopment, but those who aren't from the city are better off keeping their mouths shut, he thinks.

"Detroit's like your sibling, like your crazy sister, and you know she's crazy, but no one else better say that about her," Klug said over breakfast at Zeff's Coney Island in Eastern Market.

Klug has been fighting fires -- countless fires -- since 2002 in Detroit, a city that's fascinated him since the first time he drove through it with his dad in the '80s.

"I'd never seen ruins like this," he said. "I'd never seen a city in decline like this, and it was something that enamored me."

Detroit fire fighter Shane Klug started an Instagram account in 2012, focussing mainly on Detroit's blighted and abandoned buildings.

Now that he works in the city that's in largely the same condition that originally captivated him, Klug wants to show other people.

He snapped his first shot of an abandoned house in Detroit's Brightmoor neighborhood on Oct. 27, 2012, and posted it to Instagram with the hashtag "#DeathoftheMotorCity" in the caption.

To date, Klug has posted 1,126 photographs to the account. He has over 5,000 followers.

But the account isn't about Klug (he only appears in a handful of reposts), and it's not even really about photography.

He only wants to tell a story.

"I'm not a photographer," said Klug, who uses the Instagram handle @dfdlad26. "I wouldn't claim to be a photographer ... I just know how to pull the trigger on the camera."

The idea came from a firefighter in Camden, N.J., a friend of Klug's, who has over 6,000 Instagram followers.

Another firefighter from Gary, Ind. has an account, too.

The firefighters were exchanging photos among themselves anyway, Klug said, so throwing them online made sense.

People love to see what firefighters -- especially Detroit firefighters -- see every day, "stuff you kinda only see in a tough town," Klug said.

It's quick work, too.

Klug uses a small digital camera. He turns the flash off, and keeps the exposure set where he wants it.

"If I'm driving down the road, I can just turn this thing on and shoot."

While a few coworkers have given Klug weird looks, specifically when he's shooting burned out, abandoned and blighted buildings, Klug said people have gotten used to it, and he doesn't believe he's breaking any rules.

The job comes first, Klug said. He's never taken out his camera in the middle of a firefight, or on the way to an active fire, and there is plenty of downtime in a firefighter's day. He snaps photos while standing around at the station, getting lunch or recuperating after a fire.

And if the fire can't be put out, he'll take a few pictures while he and his ladder company wait for the blaze to fizzle out.

"It's not taking away from the job," Klug said. "There's a lot of downtime."

Buildings, blight and all the lives lost

If Klug puts a picture of a big red Detroit Fire Department truck online, it gets hundreds of likes.

That's great, he said, but it's not his story.

He's all about the crumbling buildings, street memorials and fires set ablaze in likely arsons. He doesn't want people to numb to the city's decay.

"It's just amazing," Klug said. "How did this happen?"

He said he's not shooting ruin porn, either.

Klug has captured only a handful of images from Detroit's infamous Packard Plant, a popular destination of the wayward Detroit denizens and hipsters looking to photograph a breathtakingly abandoned and neglected industrial mansion. Most of what he shoots are burned-out bungalows, boarded-up front doors and buildings that were targeted for overnight destruction.

Reports within the last few years indicate that there could be around 80,000 abandoned structures within Detroit's city limits. The city has been trying to steer millions of dollars in federal grants and money saved through bankruptcy toward demolishing the blighted buildings. It's a slow process, though.

Last year around this time, an online effort was started to get rid of a small chunk of the buildings.

The City of Detroit razed 3,500 abandoned buildings in 2014. There were 3,839 cases of suspicious fires in the city last year, according to a report from The Detroit News.

Then there are the memorials.

Every couple of photos, Klug posts a shot from another collection of flowers, teddy bears and votive candles found on the curb in any of Detroit's neighborhoods. They're profound, Klug said, though his followers don't typically like them.

"People get killed here every day," he said. "Here's this epic memorial ... This gun battle happened right here, two people got killed right where I'm standing, and I'll get a couple hundred people to like it. A static photo of a fire truck, and people are going to go crazy over it."

Shane Klug has been fascinated with the memorials peppering the city's curbs and intersections, though most of his Instagram followers disagree.

Still, Klug doesn't say much in the comments, and he hardly offers context in the photo captions.

"I let people use their own imaginations sometimes," he said.

Most of the comments on Klug's photo are supportive. Everyone likes firefights, he said.

One user, @wetzecam, bought Klug's ladder company two chainsaws after seeing a caption on one of Klug's post.

Others offer words of encouragement.

"Thank god for you," user @picturedetroit commented.

Another user, @nskumar00 commended Klug's tenacity. "You guys keep it real," the user commented on a photo of a vacant house.

Even though the following has grown and the page's theme changed, not everyone appreciates Klug's profile.

"I got called an (expletive) just the other day," Klug said. "People are defensive and think there's nothing wrong with the city."

Instagram user @detroit_baklava commented on Klug's photo of a pile of discarded tires, tagged with #Deathofthemotorcity "Detroit isn't dead (expletive)"

Another user, @courtneyfats, commented on a photo of a vacancy notice: "Bruh you have the most depressing insta feed."

@ange_261 commented on the same photograph: "I prefer most informative."

People get distracted by development downtown, which, though welcomed with open arms, isn't fixing the neighborhoods like Brightmoor, Trinity and Santa Clara, Klug said.

"This is what I see," he said. "I never got over it, to see this many vacant houses, to see neighborhoods with this much destruction, I'm not over it. I'm still in awe, I'm still shocked every day with the level of destruction, because I don't have to live with that in the suburbs, but for some reason it's acceptable here.

"I guess a small part of me just wonders why is that accepted here? Why is the city of Detroit OK with that? I don't know whose fault it is and I don't have an answer... It's just not right. It's not acceptable."

Why Detroit, why these photos?

The city saw some 3,000 suspicious fires per year between 2010 and 2013, according to a recent report from The Detroit News.

There are just 10 arson investigators in Detroit, a city spanning around 142 square miles. They were able to investigate a third of the suspicious fires in Detroit last year.

According to Klug, suspects are convicted in about one percent of fires determined to be arsons.

"Arson is a weapon in this town," he said. "It's a modern day drive-by."

So, why stay?

Klug, who lives in Waterford, has transferred between multiple firehouses all over the city since he started in 2002, but his entire firefighting career has been in Detroit. He's currently on ladder 26 on the city's northwest side.

"It's the city," he said. "It's the big fire department, it's the major leagues, per se. I'm in the big leagues here, you know. It's the New York, the Chicagos, the Detroit."

Even if he wanted to, Klug couldn't jump ship to the suburbs, because he isn't a paramedic. He only fights fires.

"I'm invested. That's why when people say 'Oh, you bash the city,' or 'You don't care about the city,' well, that's not true, because my career is dependent on the city.

"The constant arson and self destruction of the city isn't something that's self-sustaining," Klug said.

Detroit firefighter Shane Klug said fighting fires in Detroit is like the major leagues. No other American city does what the DFD does.

Through all of that, Klug finds his job rewarding.

"I like the idea of when I go out the door, it's for something real, somebody actually needs this, whereas maybe in other places the urgency isn't quite there. It's not dire."

While the number of fires have declined slightly in recent years, the volume is still pretty high.

According to Klug, there were 71 companies staffed when he started in 2002. The number has since fallen to 40.

Edsel Jenkins, executive fire commissioner with the DFD, released incident summary reports for 2012, 2013 and 2014, which detail the number of fires fought in the city. According to the report, DFD responded to a total of 6,628 fires in 2014.

That's an average of 18 fires per day across the city.

In 2013, DFD responded to an average of close to 24 fires a day, according to the same report. In 2012, an average of 29 fires a day.

Klug said that's a higher average than fires fought per day in New York City and Chicago.

"There's no city in America that fights as many fires as we do," Klug said, "no other city in America that's doing what we're doing."

People need to be shocked into the realization that the city has a long way to go before it's inhabitable, according to Klug.

"I know Detroit has problems," he said. "I hate when people think that 'Oh everything's great, look at downtown.' Yeah, that's great, but the rest of the city's a mess still, so don't think it's fixed."

The shock value of his pictures should shake the rose-tinted glasses off of some people, he said.

"It bothers me when people think that Detroit is fixed because they're building a new stadium. Does this look fixed to you? Does this look normal?"

He wants people to realize how far Detroit has left to go, that the neighborhoods have so much larger of a need for redevelopment than anywhere else in the city.

"It's not like in my mind I think singlehandedly that I'm going to fix this, but it's my one voice saying 'Hey, look at what's going on here.'"

The Instagram posts should get people angry and fired up to do something to fix the city, he said.

The goal is for people to start talking about better ways to fix every part of the city, not just downtown and Midtown. And he isn't blaming anyone, but said he only wants to spark questions.

"Whose fault is it?" Klug asked. "Somebody did this."

But everyone better watch their mouths.

"Don't go bashing Detroit unless you know," Klug said. "If you only know where Woodward and John R and Jefferson are, they you don't really know Detroit."

Will the city come back?

Though Klug doesn't live in the city (he said he likes to have some space to stretch his legs), he said the flood of young people and investors in Detroit is good.

"Just because you didn't grow up in the hood or live the street life doesn't mean you aren't welcome here," he said. "We need people here. We need good people with money to move here, and that's going to rebuild the city."

Once upon a time, Detroit had to have been beautiful, and while there's going to be some type of comeback in the city, it's not going to be the Motor City, he said.

The Motor City, according to Klug, is dead.

"I wish I could've seen what this place looked like," Klug said. "That doesn't exist anymore ... there is no Motor City."

If the city comes back completely, it's going to look different, and Detroit's "comeback" might be more of a facelift, he said.

"The Motor City as a motor city is done," he said. "It's gone, and Detroit is a dying town still. You're trying to undo 50 years of neglect."

Once the crimes rate is controlled and taxes start rolling in, Klug figured, then the entire city, not just downtown, will see revitalization. Until then, he holds an allegiance to the city, even if it's ugly, even if it's rough.

"If I was an alien dropped here, I would say 'No, I don't want to be here. This isn't a place I want to be,'" he said.

But he's not going anywhere. He's going to keep taking pictures, and he'll keep sharing them, and he'll keep trying to get people to ask "Why is Detroit like this, and how can we fix it?"

Ian Thibodeau is the entertainment and business reporter for MLive Media Group in Detroit. He can be reached at ithibode@mlive.com, or follow him on Twitter.