Ok, as usual here- those are Bob “Crooksy” Brooks own words, right? Crooksy said recently that IAFF members who also serve as volunteer fire fighters and respond in areas where other IAFF members work are “scabs.” I talked about how ignorant of a thing this was for Crooksy to say here. Look, it was an ignorant statement, and Crooksy is an ignorant guy, but I do get it in theory. If IAFF members were undercutting other IAFF members by working for some sort of renegade department that went into their municipalities and worked for free, they would legitimately be “scabs.” That’s never how it works though. Basically, some IAFF members also serve as volunteers in their home communities, either out of civic duty or for the benefits Pennsylvania offers them to do so. Sometimes they get called in to towns with professional fire fighters, because there is a fire so big and awful that it requires a lot of extra, outside help. Even professional forces don’t always have enough guys. So they ask neighboring communities for help. You know, like during a six alarm fire in Allentown…

“Most of those homes are displaced, some of them sustained significant damage. Fire crews worked an offensive attack, as soon as the fire jumped the street, in order to save these homes. The homes are salvageable, but they are significantly damaged,” says Steed. 

One resident tells us they saw flames shoot up into the sky from several blocks away.

“I saw the flames, they were way beyond the building height right now, I felt the heat, and I’m like ‘Yo man, I hope they get this taken care of,” says Charles Shafer of Allentown.

Others say they smelled the fire before even seeing it.

Danitza Lopez of Allentown says, “It smelled like my house was on fire, I smelled the smoke, it was like engulfing my house, and then thankfully I looked around everywhere, and there was no fire, but then I came outside, and the whole building was engulfed in flames.”

For more than 7 hours, over a hundred firefighters from as far as Carbon County were entrenched, snuffing out the blaze inside the vacant industrial building.

Oh, yikes. I have no idea what Crooksy meant when he was spouting off online, and judging from the quality of his other posts, I doubt he knows what he meant either. I’m going to say that I hope he wasn’t talking about situations like this, because honestly, that would be brain dead. For the record, two juveniles have been charged with setting the fire. I’m going to take a guess that a lot of “scabs” were on site.

I suppose it’s possible that some volunteer force somewhere is trying to respond to calls in a town that has professional fire fighters, and in this hypothetical it would make sense for a union leader to make a statement against that. I have no idea what kind of ass backwards place that’s happening in, but I won’t say it’s impossible. I just will take a guess that it’s not happening in Allentown. So thank you to everyone who responded to the fire, both the professionals and those who were volunteering. Most folks appreciate you.