Remembering Jesse Atkins

There was a passing of a retired fire fighter earlier this month that should not go unreported to all the IAFF members in North Carolina.  Reading from an obituary of the Charlotte Observer; “Jesse Everett Atkins, age 81, of Charlotte, NC, left this world on April 14, 2010.”  

A majority of IAFF members in North Carolina were not born when Atkins vs. the City of Charlotte was ruled on by a three judge panel of a Federal Appeals Court declaring unconstitutional a 1959 North Carolina Law that outlawed public employees unions in the state.  According to a March–April 1969 edition of the Hose and Nozzle Magazine, the opinion resulted from a hearing in U.S. District Court when the Charlotte Firefighter Assembly and the International Association of Fire Fighters challenged the state law.

The November 1968 opinion called the antiunion law “void on its face as abridgement of freedom of association protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution of the United States.”

“The flaw is an intolerable overbreadth unnecessary to the protection of valid state interests,” said the opinion.

The judges said freedom of association is “an aspect of liberty protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and by the rights of free speech and by peaceful assembly explicitly set out in the First Amendment.”

“There is no valid state interest in denying the firemen the right to organize a labor union – whether local or national in scope.”

As the reader has surely guessed by now, Jesse was a Charlotte Fire Fighter. His obituary stated that he retired as Battalion Chief and was named President Emeritus of the Fire Fighters’ Union.  The Hose and Nozzle magazine listed him as the president of the Charlotte Firefighters Assembly during the period of time the challenge was filed in federal court.

Thank you Jesse Everett Atkins for helping to blaze the trail of labor history in North Carolina allowing us to be members of the IAFF.  May you rest in peace.

New Residential Fire Study Shows Effects of Crew Size on Fire Fighting Operations

April 28, 2010 -- A landmark study released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows that the size of fire fighting crews has a substantial effect on the fire service's ability to protect lives and property in residential fires. Click here to read the news release.

Conducted by a broad coalition in the scientific, fire fighting and public safety communities, the study results found that four-person fire fighting crews were able to complete 22 essential fire fighting and rescue tasks in a typical residential structure 30 percent faster than two-person crews and 25 percent faster than three-person crews.

The report is the first to quantify the effects of crew sizes and arrival times on the fire service's lifesaving and fire fighting operations.

This and other scientific data in the report will help educate public officials, fire chiefs and other decision-makers on the importance of adequate staffing and deployment with respect to fire fighter and public safety.

Study investigators from NIST and the IAFF announced the results of the study at a press conference at the Hilton Washington in Washington, DC, before the start of the annual Congressional Fire Services Institute meeting of top fire safety officials from the across the nation.

Click here for the full report.