Sounds like the way our state goverment is being run!! Wasteful spending and poor cooperation.

"State government"? There was nothing in the story to indicate the state had anything to do with this. This is about a bunch of small town people acting like grade schoolers, which might be an insult to grade schoolers. When you have an assistant chief who calls for help 5 miles away instead of a rival dept. nearby, then claims he had to make a split second decision, you have a person in charge with no business in that position. And the chief asks, "when do you have enough experience that people will stop watching you?" Maybe when you can put out at least one simple fire, Chief. This is an embarrassment to all the hardworking and honest firefighters who do their job without considering the local politics. What a disgusting shame.

farmerx, I just reread your post and now realize you were comparing this to how the state does its business, not that the state was involved. Sorry, my bad.

I have seen the feuding that happens between government entities. I looked deeper into this situation. Both should have compromised better. There would have been no need for the new department. As far the shed goes, I dont think it would have been saved from the amount of smoke was involved. I have been on hundreds of fire calls to make that call. This guy is mad about his loss. He looks to blame someone. Yes they should have called for help sooner. But i doubt the outcome would have changed much. This article was very one sided. Didnt give them benefit of the doubt. Just much 2nd guessing.

There is nothing simple about a structure fire ronf528. There are alot of things you need to account for such as flamable liquids, any propane tanks in building that can explode. Buildings like this go up in a blaze quickly and as a person who has fought numerous of these types of structure fires, this building wasn't going to be saved unless the volunteer department was there when it started. They contained the fire to this one building and no one got hurt. As a fireman, I am not embarrassed with Chain of Lakes department.

This is classic local political bickering between cities and townships. My rural northern Minn area almost lost an ambulance charter because one township's leadership, out of 6 in the district, was ego based. Taxpayers have to pay attention. Foley and Nowthen are current examples of such bad behavior by locally elected officials. The problem is us.....not "Washington..".

Interesting that they leave out that Mr Terhaar was sleeping at the time and that his neighbor had to come over to tell him the building was smoking. He ran over to the building after being awaken and burned his hand on the knob because the fire was so hot already. Building had gas cans and oxygen/acetylene tanks in it. They also leave out that there wasn't a mutual aid agreement in place with Richmond at the time of the fire. Richmond has already shown reason to believe that they will sabotage anything to do with the Chain of Lakes Department and unfortunately it's going to be at the cost of the community before too long! If the City of Richmond continues with these antics this won't be the last you see of this Department. Someone is going to end up dead over these games. Leave the politics out of it and let these departments just do their jobs.

ronf528, to say that these guys are dishonest and not hardworking is the real embarrassment. These are people that give up there time to train countless hours, and to serve the community only to be called an embarrassment!!! Hats off to All firefighters!!!

So I see a few things in this article that are poor judgment, but other than that I see a lot of allegations with out facts to support them i.e. a lot of armchair quarterbacking going on. -Yes when a department has a working structure fire you will always need manpower and mutual aid should have been requested, with that said I see no reference to CAD times from dispatch to really give a timeline so we may not be seeing the full picture. (Ones persons fast response may be slow to another) -Yes towns/counties/states play funny games at the expense of its constituents it’s becoming an increasing part of life it seems. Last year I know of a county in the metro that would not allow trucks on its road to carry dirt to flooding town causing time delays. Its part of the game, however a judgment call should have been made that the repercussions of using a hydrant vs. a longer water shuttle operation (requiring more manpower), If the hydrant was even in service, again we don’t know)) -Drop Tank location do we know what the scene looked like? Was there a limiting factor that forced the issue or was it bad judgment, we don’t know but the article sets the tone for the reader doesn’t it? -Pump failed, was this due to mechanical failure? It’s sure implied that it was the dummy working the pump was at fault. -The guy with experience was out of the area, well with 71% of the nation’s fire protection service, coming from volunteers’ we all have our “day jobs” and it can happen. -Do we know what was fire load was like in that shop, for it to go in an hour is fast but the contents can have a big impact to that. Don’t get me wrong there are some poor judgment calls but not having the details all this is doing is playing armchair quarterback. No one was injured and hopefully the towns and the responders have learned the hard lessons, and will hopefully not make the same mistakes again. That would be the biggest mistake..

This is unbelievable. How was it a split-second decision to decide who to call for help? Shouldn't a fire department have a plan in place for requesting assistance? It's not like requesting assistance is completely out of the realm of possible firefighting situations. Also, with the amount of fire hose on board the truck, why chance it and pull to close to the structure fire? I'm surprised they didn't pull the fire truck into the building that was ablaze and then call the non-rival department for help.