Does the Mayor Have a Message for Baltimore’s Fire Chief?
Baltimore City Fire Department Photo A little more than 6 weeks ago I wrote some words on Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon’s comments about her fire chief, William Goodwin. I wondered how much longer Chief Goodwin could survive when a mayor was making rather pointed comments about the leadership of the Baltimore City Fire Department.
This afternoon, The Baltimore Sun’s Annie Linskey tells us Mayor Dixon has some even tougher talk. Here is the opening of her online report:
Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon said this morning that her “confidence level is very questionable” with regard to the fire chief and his command staff and with the decisions that were made by instructors during a live burn training exercise that killed a cadet in February.
It was the first time Dixon commented on the 121-page report that she commissioned about the deadly blaze on South Calverton Road. The details were reported in The Sun today and showed that the fire department failed to prepare recruit Racheal M. Wilson for the conditions that she would face in a live fire, and failed to outfit her with proper gear.
Of Fire Chief William J. Goodwin Jr., the mayor said: “I have real strong questions at every level. I’ll need to digest the report.”
The mayor has said all along she was waiting for the report from Howard County Deputy Fire Chief Chris Shimer before making decisions about fire department leadership. I had asked in my July 8th column, what did Mayor Dixon need to know about how bad the situation surrounding Racheal Wilson’s was, that wasn’t already made clear in earlier reports?
Now, apparently we have the answer. The new report indicates things were even worse than what had already been made public.
