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Letters
Fire district needs to provide answers
Why has the fire chief of Saratoga failed to disclose his annual salary?
Why did the fire chief of Saratoga not call for a second alarm on a working fire the other day? County fire has no problem calling more troops in, because you can send them home anytime, thus no delays in response.
Why does Saratoga Fire collect money for the alarm system? Is that a conflict of interest? Then is there an accountability of the money? I thought there are alarm companies that do that kind of work.
Then I heard, from a Saratoga firefighter, that at night, they take a firefighter off the fire engine and put him or her on the alarm desk. A trained firefighter to answer 911 calls? What a waste of a trained firefighter. There are trained dispatchers for that. Taking a firefighter off the engine at night is a decrease in the level of service.
Why are the fire commissioners and the fire chief of Saratoga so reluctant to contract fire service from the county when the facts show that the citizens of Saratoga will ultimately benefit from the county?
Why are the citizens of Saratoga subject to delayed responses, if their current equipment are tied up on calls?
Does Saratoga have anything for addressing emergencies for your non-English speaking citizens of your community? County fire does.
Why does Saratoga send six firefighters to a structure fire? Let me see, one firefighter to run the pump, one firefighter to run the operation, one firefighter waiting for another firefighter to arrive before going into a burning structure (time delay for a rescue), another firefighter arrives and goes in with another firefighter, so that's four, then there are two left.
Now who will do salvage operations?
Who will perform roof ventilations?
More important, who is going to perform rescue for a trapped person?
Who will be the two out back up team? (Requirement).
I see an OSHA violation, if two firefighters go inside, then you must have two firefighters outside waiting to back up the first two, if something goes wrong.
Is Saratoga going to wait for a tragedy to wake up?
Just expressing my concerns and I'd like to see these questions answered.
Tim Jew
San Jose
Linking deaths, drinking is 'TV-movie rationalizing'
Your article on March 28, raising the suggestion that six students ejected from a school event for drinking could somehow be tied in with the recent rash of tragedies at the high school disturbed me greatly with its dangerously cliché'd TV-movie rationalizing. While the article did make an attempt to quote both sides, the very fact that the idea was considered seriously to begin with cries out to me for strong response. To assert that high school drinking is in some way "aberrant" or "unusual" is an example of parental denial and the deadly disconnect that contributes so much to student violence in the first place.
And the fact that the PTA member you quoted actually went so far as to recast the incident into a compliment for how "academically challenging" the school is the most outrageous example of "spin" I've ever seen in a local paper. (After all, such an "alcohol to academia" comparison makes Chico State look like Harvard.)
In my time as a "Falcon," countless students were ejected from numerous functions (including classes) for "intoxication", and one even went so far as to throw up on stage at a school show in front of the assembled student body. (And this doesn't hold a candle to what happens daily at inner city schools.)
Nothing is new here. To blame the heavily precedented, absolutely common practice of underage drinking on the recent deaths at SHS does nothing, but cheapen the lives lost in those incidents, and divert attention from the real causes of alcohol abuse.
And just what do you think those "decent, well-behaved, well-mannered children" will be drinking in a couple of years, totally without stigma, at dorm parties and frat hazings their parents will be underwriting--or at future official high school reunions--skim milk? Is the problem-drinking which dominates universities on a national level suddenly to be taken as an indicator of increased collegiate student body deaths, or just an unfortunate side-effect of the greater "academic challenge" afforded by those institutions?
In addition, your inclusion of recent window-breaking and graffiti incidents struck me as laughable and totally out of place in your story. Only the most blind and rationalizing parent could possibly ascribe such traditional and common behavior to this most unusual series of catastrophes. People who scrawl "fag" in lipstick on a wall are bigoted homophobes to be exposed and counseled, not grieving "A" students trying to cope with overwhelming sadness.
Until parents can honestly recall how hard it really was to be in school, and communicate that fully to their children (indeed, to warn them), the cycle of denial and the perpetuation of the "school is the best time of your life" myth will continue to confuse and push students to the breaking point.
People who want to drink will find any excuse that suits them. People who pull pranks need no excuse. The deaths that have occurred in Saratoga have caused legitimate trauma to many, but the paper should not dramatize them as an excuse for those looking to transfer responsibility from unrelated incidents which can hardly be characterized as "ground-breaking." To do so will cause the quiet, subtle traumas to escape unnoticed--and that's where the real trouble always comes from.
William Lorton
Los Angeles SHS Alumni, 1988
Fear doctors more than gun owners
This letter is in regard to the recent article on distasteful gun ownership. I offer the following information:
* Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year--120,000
* Accidental deaths per physician--0.17 (U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services)
* Number of gun owners in the U.S.--80,000,000
* Number of accidental gun deaths per year--1,500
* Accidental deaths per gun owner--0.0000188 (U.S. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms)
You are approximately 9,000 times more likely to be killed by a doctor than a gun owner. Makes you wonder.
Franc G. Fallico, M.D.
Anchorage
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
