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Good Morning Apopka Union.

Thank you for your response to my inquiries, and I sincerely hope things improve for your brother fire fighter (I have -0- knowledge of the situation). Please know that I am coming from the position of concerned citizen of Apopka, and for our EMS personnel serving our community. THEY are the most important factor here. Their safety and well being is my primary concern in my commenting on these articles, and I have the utmost respect for each and every one of them.

Hence my reaction when I perceive lies are being told in relation to their safety, and this incident. I'm sure we can agree that if that's the case, we have a serious problem we should all be concerned about.

You are correct in stating you did not use the term "never" in your written statement regarding your vote of no confidence. I went back and re-read it, and the term does not appear. However, your first 6 bullet points are worded in such a way that any reasonable person reading it would come to this conclusion. You may recall that my first reaction was, "Well presented argument," and "the fire chief needs to go." Only now do I realize just how well it actually is worded. In any case, my apologies for reading words in your statement that were not there. My mistake.

Please note I am strictly referencing your written, published statement, and information that was provided to me after I wrote my comment, and have not listened carefully to any meetings or YouTube videos. I have read some articles, but I can't recite any word-for word statements by Austin's family. I appreciate your advice regarding this, but I never brought them into this discussion, and I don't know why you felt the need to do so. But I don't think that was a proper thing to do to be honest. I'm sure they are still in terrible pain, and my position is to let them heal as best they can.

It is obvious that the department is still very upset about Austin, as you should be, because to my original point, there are still far too many unanswered questions. As a union I would think this would be your main concern. It seems easy to identify all the problems (Gannon report), and easier to just blame the Chief, but so far the only answers I'm seeing are "It's the Chiefs fault," or "It's the Mayor's fault." That simply does not wash.

For example, based on what I've read the sand truck was universally deemed unsafe to use or maintain. Where are the vehicle maintenance records on this? Who was the supervisor charged with the condition of this vehicle? Was the Chief provided this information by the people charged with using and maintaining this vehicle? Why was this vehicle not removed from service? What are the unions standards with regards to operating unsafe equipment? Or equipment you lack training to operate? At what point can a union member say "That's not safe to do and I'm not doing it," and why didn't that happen? Who is responsible for that CRITICAL training? When to say no? Again, I'm not trying to blame you or anyone else. But we need to understand a problem to fix a problem right? These are hard questions, but they need answers.

We need to STOP the finger wagging and the witch hunt and determine the true underlying causes of this tragedy. It's become a political football, and I find that offensive, as should you.

This is a tragic tragic accident, and there my not be a single person we can all point to and say "It's his/her fault!" Unfortunately the desire for this is human nature. I suspect when someone finally looks deep into this we will find systematic, ongoing training failures from top to bottom. We will find documentation errors (I hope) that do not reflect true conditions. And once we have the sense and courage to do this, we can look at corrective measures to prevent this from happening in future. I would think the union would want to lead this effort, but instead it appears you are taking the position of least resistance, blaming the chief solely.

I truly hope that in the very near future we can stop "seeing red" and get to the bottom of this. Maybe it's already been done and I'm not privy to it? I kind of hope so.

Again, thank you for your response. No need for a scheduled sit down. This is not for me specifically. This is for our EMS personnel, and our entire community. I don't want or need private answers, we want and need public ones.

Respectfully,

Jim

From: Wylam responds to no-confidence vote by Apopka Firefighters Association

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