Vancouver Fire Chief says sorry to US colleagues
Posted June 20, 2011 12:45 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Vancouver’s Fire Chief says he apologized to his East Coast colleagues after rioters smashed the downtown core Wednesday night.
“It was difficult to go into class, I just feared going into class,” says Chief John McKearney. He’s working on his master’s degree in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was surrounded by fellow fire chiefs, police chiefs and other emergency leaders the day after the riot.
“I represent our city, and our city has let the citizens of the United States down. But they to a person said, ‘Look, this does happen, don’t take it on that way.'”
He adds Boston and other large cities nearby had some riot control ideas for him.
“What we did just the other night [during the riot], but what they do, they do it more on the planning side of it, they create strike teams,” says McKearney. “When events erupt such as car fires, the [water] pumper is integrated right into the police strike teams. Police will then secure the area and the pumper [and] just get right in there, extinguish the fire quickly and back out of there.”
“They’ve found it tends to de-escalate some of the activity and provides some measure of protection to the police if things are thrown at them as well,” he adds.
McKearney says he will take more ideas home and work on combining emergency resources.
