Update on DC fire engine, ambulance giveaway: Report that apparatus chief took trip to Dominican Republic at taxpayer’s expense.

Click here and then scroll down for the latest fire and EMS news from STATter911.com

Deputy Chief Ronald Gill Jr., Fleet Management Director, District of Columbia Fire & EMS Department from IABFF.org.

For five days the story of a surplus fire engine and a surplus ambulance from the District of Columbia Fire & EMS Department has been making news. The details are leaking out a little bit at a time about an unusual arrangement allowing a group known for working to stop violence among the city’s youth to broker a donation to a beach resort town in the Dominican Republic.

Since Friday we have been asking officials of the DC Fire & EMS Department what the top brass knew about this deal. Even though DC Examiner’s Michael Neibauer reported on Friday that Peacoholic’s co-founder Ron Moten said he “approached the D.C. government about the donation through an assistant fire chief”, the word back from public information officers and others in the fire department is that all of the assistant chiefs and everyone else denies knowing anything about the donation.

The fire department also told us it knew nothing about the report we discovered in a Dominican Republic newspaper saying on January 29 “a delegation from the Washington DC arrived in Sosúa to officially hand over an ambulance and fire truck to the town’s Mayor”.

Instead the fire department consistently told us that this issue was not its problem because surplus equipment is handled by the Office of Contracting and Procurement.

Now tonight, Michael Neibauer reports that someone high up in the DC Fire & EMS Department did know about this deal. That man is in charge of the apparatus division for the DC Fire & EMS Department. From Neibauer’s story:

Deputy Fire Chief Ronald Gill Jr. was in the Dominican resort town of Sosua, from Jan. 29 (originally reported due to a misprint by the Examiner as Jan. 26) through Feb. 4, spending $135 per day for a total cost of $810, according to documents provided to the D.C. Council’s public safety and judiciary committee. The travel information was submitted March 4, in response to questions from the council panel ahead of the fiscal 2008 oversight hearing.

The Examiner’s article prompted a new round of questions this evening for the DC Fire & EMS Department. They all surrounded the theme of how could a deputy fire chief spend 7 days in the Dominican Republic at taxpayers expense and Chief Dennis Rubin, or Gill’s boss, Assistant Chief Alfred Jeffery, not know about it?

As they have been doing since Friday, the DC Fire & EMS Department referred us to Mayor Adrian Fenty’s press office for answers to our questions. The mayor’s communications people have not gotten back to us.

We are told by sources in the DC government the fire engine and ambulance in question made it as far as Miami and have now been turned around for a return trip to Washington.

Since this story broke on Friday STATter911.com has been questioning the $340,000 price tag put on this donation. If this is truly surplus equipment, it isn’t likely to have a value that high.

We have been told by sources familiar with the deal that the pumper is a 1996 or 1997 model and the ambulance was made in 2001. Each has in excess of 100,000 miles. Industry sources familiar with DC’s equipment, estimate the combined maximum value at less than $35,000.

So, the questions continue about this deal. We are told to expect more questions on Wednesday. This time they won’t be coming just from reporters. Chief Dennis Rubin has a scheduled 10:00 AM budget hearing before the DC Council’s Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary chaired by Phil Mendelson.

One final note on this for the evening, check the picture below that accompanied the latest article in the Examiner. My guess is that Acting Montgomery County Fire & Rescue Services Chief Richard Bowers is ready to provide Chief Rubin all of the mutual aid the city needs, but would rather not see his fire trucks used to illustrate a controversial DC story.