Read Markley's previous dispatch.
Jose Adrian Elvir Rodriguez is chief of the Roatan Fire and Rescue department. He's a career firefighter who started in 1972 at Roatan's airport and became its chief nine years later. He held that post until two and a half years ago when he was appointed chief of the municipal department.
He's decades older than his men. He has a slight frame and small potbelly. Thick-rimmed black glasses offset his close-cropped grey hair. At the fire station, he commands authority. When the station's buzzer sounds, the firefighters assemble in perfect military formation in the bay area. The buzzer may signal a fire or EMS call, or it may be that the chief wants to address them. Often, when the men are in formation, he has them do synchronized calisthenics, where they hop low to the ground while counting out the reps. Rodriguez will have a laugh with his men, but few would confuse him with a "players' coach."
Some have told me that before Rodriguez took over the municipal department, there was little discipline and order; it was Rodriguez who instituted the policy that there be written details for all of the department's calls.
During the training sessions, it is Rodriguez who asks the tough questions, mostly about how to correctly fight fire with severely limited resources. He has a department of 10 men that is broken up into two equal crews that work 24 on and 24 off. He has five firefighters to cover all of the fire and EMS calls for an island that is 40 miles long and 5 miles wide.
The island needs more stations and more firefighters.
As the International Fire Relief Mission's Ron Gruening and Barry Mossbarger train Roatan's firefighters, Rodriguez is one of the most engaged. He asks how can he protect his men from being struck by passing cars when he never knows if the police will show up at a fire or EMS call? He asks how can he control the crowd that forms or the frantic family members with only five firefighters on duty? He asks how he's supposed to allow his firefighters a 15- to 20-minute rehab after 10 minutes of interior firefighting with a crew of five?
The airport's fire department is run by a private company and is better funded. Yet Rodriguez tells me he likes Roatan Fire and Rescue better. There's more action, he says. At the airport, you wait for a plane to catch fire--as I'll be flying out of Roatan later, I don't ask him about the frequency or the odds of such fires.
Mossbarger is a retired St. Paul cop with no qualms about being blunt. He tells Rodriguez that he needs to get the cops to do their job and get more resources.
The belief in the room is that American fire departments are all flush with cash and have no problem getting what they need. Gruening and Mossbarger explain the conflicts and problems facing U.S. fire departments and that they have been working for decades at getting better resources. The only difference is that Roatan is at the start of that process.
On the morning IFRM taught extrication, the Honduran president was over from the mainland for the ceremonial opening of a new cruise ship dock. Rodriguez tells me that he was invited to the ceremony with the president, but says he's not going; it is not his scene; he'd rather be at the station with the men.
As we talk, the presidential motorcade with men in the back of pickups brandishing automatic weapons passes the fire station and I know with it passes an opportunity to put the Roatan Fire and Rescue problems before the man with the power to ease those troubles.
Read Markley's previous dispatch.
