Barefoot residents react to news of edited wildfire tapes

I guess next time a mob should take over the fire department’s trucks and place them between our homes and the fire, because no trust can be given to the directors to handle their responsibilities.  Are you serious?  Do we live in a society that puts people in place to handle a man-made fire that burns for 3 days, or does mob run around taking care of themselves?  We should get in the way of firemen and police who are trained and equipped to handle the situation?  The fire trucks WERE on Water Tower road between the huge neighborhood and woods, but they were sent home by some “brilliant” leader.  Instead of chaos with thousands of people spitting on a fire, how about the leaders stay up with their men and do their damn job that we pay them to do!  Our mayor has helicoptors at her disposal and our Safety Director had fire trucks and men at his disposal.  Why were they asleep?  Why did they “cross their fingers and hope nothing bad happened” instead of doing EVERYTHING POSSIBLE?!

all you people on pointing your fingers at someone else if you want to know who is the blame look in the mirrow.did you people not keep up with where the fires were and where they were going?i live 70 miles away but i kept up with what the fires were doing and i had nothing to worry about.so don’t blame someone else blame your slef.why was he sleeping you ask maybe he was tired how many hours can a person work in a day he couldn’t stay awake the entire time the fires were burning i think some of you just see dollar signs.

Here we go again. 

Ms Aiello in now explaining away the tape editing with an EDITED phone
record of Mr Bailey’s calls on NMB letterhead.  This is clearly not a cell phone bill.  See the video of the edited bill on channel 10’s website.

Why would you not produce an unedited version of his phone bill in order to prove your point?  Why did calls to both his cell and home go unanswered?  Why was Mr. Bailey so hard to contact during this crisis?

I am Cathryn Cushman’s sister in Minnesota. I lived that night of the wildfires with them. I was on the phone with them half the night after the fires blew into Barefoot and they evacuated themselves. One thing I will never forget is my sister hysterically crying and coughing up smoke saying to me, “Why, why, when we left there was a police car and 2 fire engines sitting right outside the neighborhood doing nothing, why? I don’t understand. Why weren’t they evacuating people?“ I could not believe what she was telling me. She also told me that her husband, Joshua Cushman, was banging on the neighbor’s doors yelling to evacuate. These are comments made while the wildfires were raging through Barefoot. First hand accounts of what was happening or not happening. Someone has to be responsible for this fiasco. I cannot believe that Director Chief Bailey was sleeping when a tragedy was brewing in Horrey County. Any person, in his position, that can sleep while people’s lives and property are at risk should be fired. He should have been up, monitoring the fires, so he could properly “direct” all emergency personnel. I cannot believe he would use a cell phone that has spotty reception as the mode of communication to reach him in emergencies.
It makes me sick when I think of all that my family, and other Barefoot residents, lost when they could have been evacuated sooner. Someone needs to be responsible.

“Moving on” requires a thorough, public examination of how things were done or not done, as the case may be. This is simply good practice. It would seem to me that state, county and city authorities would have such protocols in place.