In posting these comments that Jeff and I have been exchanging, I see that I have gotten a little long-winded, so I will try to summarize briefly some things I have learned in our conversation.
1. I have learned our brother professional firefighters in District 8 believe that many of their colleagues in the city, look down upon their capabilities.
A. I was unaware of these feelings of bias, other than when there is a working fire in District 8, many of us believe they might not, intrinsically, have enough staffing for adequate fire suppression.
i) Having now learned of already existing hurt feelings, I can see how my comments were seen, by some firefighters in District 8, as "another slam" against District 8 firefighters. Again, I apologize.
2. Even though Local29.blogspot.com is for Local 29 members, it is a website that many others view.
A. I already knew this, but I realize that I made a mistake by not taking into consideration the feelings of folks not affiliated with Local 29 who might be reading the website.
i) Upon reflection, I can also see how members of the media who are reading the blog (and they do), might feel slighted by comments made by me and Jeff during our discussion. I apologize to any members of the media who may have been offended.
I would like to move beyond apologies and state what I will do:
1. I will write and/or post entries that take into account the feelings of others, not just Local 29 members.
2. I invite media members to contact me on ways that we can help them get the word out on what we do as Spokane Firefighters. Would it help if we put together a weekly fire blotter, featuring how many runs we went on, broken down into categories, with a couple of stories highlighted and expanded?
3. I will rewrite the offending blog entry and post it as a new entry soon.
4. I won't post entries immediately after being up all night at work!
Thanks for reading, John
