FIREFIGHTERS NO HABLE?

After viewing this particular piece, and not knowing the particulars surrounding this,my initial reaction was that this was a poor piece of "journalism" meant to incite a particular audience's xenophobia. They failed to mention why only spanish speaking persons were hired for the position, why no english speakers were hired for the position or the economics involved with this type of work. Nor did they mention any opposing viewpoints. Thus, leaving the viewer to fill in the blanks. If this were an essay or thesis of a college student, they would've received no credit for it.

My opinion:
As an OSHA certified safety trainer, I know the importance of effective communications as they relate to safety and unit cohesion. Firefighting is inherently dangerous and I don't care if they speak Russian, Scandinavian, Chinese or Spanish; if they're protecting people and property and doing a good job at it, more power to them. And if I'm in need of a firefighter to put out a blaze in my back yard or rescue me from a burning high rise, I could care less what language they speak.
A little known fact about the military, and I'm not sure if this is a law or just an un-spoken fact of life, but the non-native speaking service members were usually placed together in the same fire team, squad or platoon in order to maintain safety, unit cohesion and communications at all times.
As for the economics of this type of work, these firefighters apparently make little more than minimum wage. I can't think of too many white guys who'd pick veggies or put out fires for these wages.

I took the liberty of doing a simple Google search and below is what I came up with. The 1st 3 links are from a conservative blogger and he appears to somewhat be eating crow on this topic after his initial post about the news clip. I did another quick search of the names used in the posts and they appear to be the real people (albeit, I did not telephone them or do any personal background searches).


1st post with video clip and transcripts:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=N2EyN2VkNTU2NDE1MDFlOTg5NWIyMjg4ZWIzZDEzYzk=
2nd post informing of rebuttal
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjFkYTUyMzQyNmNmZmQxZDU1NWFiYzRhYmFkMzQ0NjI=
Link from 2nd post to "right thinking, conservative thought and commentary" blog where he posts rebuttal from Department of Forestry Fire managers. Below that, he posts letter, presumably from the person who got fired.
http://r-thinking.blogspot.com/2006/07/response-from-bill-lafferty.html

background article from the NY Times
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9400E7D71E3EF93BA15756C0A9609C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

On Aug 19, 2009, at 4:42 PM, Xxx & Xxxxx Xxxxxx wrote:

What say you on this topic Robert. Old news now, but still very pertinent considering we are at the height of the fire season. - XXX