Australia’s Rat Pack: What may be the pinnacle of firefighter bad behavior.

Here’s one for The Fire Pio. Work on this image problem for Australia’s New South Wales Fire Brigades. If the details from an internal review and a consultant are accurate, a very small group of firefighters appears to have received an advanced copy of the recent report on firefighter misbehavior by the Cumberland Valley Volunteer Fireman’s Association and used it as a blueprint.

The five firefighters were known as the Rat Pack. The report indicates they threatened to burn down homes, ran naked down streets, drove the rigs while they were drunk and intimidated a whistleblower.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, the group was found to be responsible for a campaign of harassment and intimidation. But despite that, two of the Rat Pack were promoted to leadership roles.

The paper has a copy of the investigation report from last year by Superintendent Warwick Isemonger. Marlin Audit and Investigation Services was hired to look at how NSWFB handled all of this. Here are excerpts from the article:

The report reveals incidents such as getting drunk at local pubs in uniform and driving the fire truck at dangerous speeds “to see what it could do”.

Other complaints included a drunken, uniformed officer running “pants-down naked” along the town’s main street before flagging down a car containing two women “to chat”, and urinating on the front of a shop that was open for business.

The report says they engaged in a campaign of intimidation against a female colleague and their captain who subsequently left the service.

It says that at a caravan-park fire in 2007, a group of firefighters refused to follow the captain’s orders and said: “Get f*****, I’m not going on that roof for any bastard.”

Other firefighters, who asked not to be named, said such refusals were frequent and led to avoidable damage.

“(The captain) would be trying to tell them to do something and they’d just stand there taking the p*** out of him … it meant that fires were causing more damage because they were burning longer,” one said. “They’re lucky no one died.”

In 2004, the captain received permission to have his home phone tapped after receiving “nuisance calls” from a number matching the local fire station and, later, private numbers.The station is staffed by more than a dozen firefighters who work other jobs but are on call 24 hours a day. There were no complaints against the majority.

The report says one rogue firefighter phoned two superiors at their day jobs and left a voice-mail threat to burn down their houses if they “persisted in reprimanding him for poor work ethics”. Other firefighters were told their cars would be burned.

Residents of the town, current and former firefighters, live in fear of the five. Last week, The Sunday Telegraph approached several people connected with the station who refused to speak out for fear of reprisals.

“If I said something, my house would probably be burned down and I’d hate to have to call the fire brigade,” one local said.

Last week, one person was allegedly threatened at home by a man connected with the group who said he had learned of The Sunday Telegraph’s enquiries.

Superintendent Isemonger reported: “There is sufficient evidence to support these allegations and that there is a prima facie case of misconduct by all five firefighters.”

He recommended two of them be sacked while the others be cautioned or “subject to remedial action as determined by the Commissioner”.

Instead, two later became the station’s captain and deputy captain, to the anger of locals. 

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