Portland Marathon: what a mess!

While it's certainly on the marathon officials to maintain a good relationship with their local FD, from the outside this seems more indicative of officials being overzealous than it does the Portland Marathon being "a mess."

Agreed. Fire officials have too much sway in community events. The city not issuing permits until the eleventh hour because the fire bureau treats everything like it's September 11th is a farce.

Yes, OP was obviously referring to the situation, not the event.

No wind, no rain, no protests in the news, morning 50s. Perfect conditions for Portland AND Chicago runners this weekend.

Race director:

We've had a medical plan for 27 years," Smith said. "It's a great medical plan, and it's been adopted for about 35 (other) events in the United States."

Portland fire department:

We feel that it's important that this medical plan be followed," Chatman said, "and we have informed them that there can be nothing added or removed."

Better promote this huge scandal as front-page click-bait

The changes for the Emergency Medical Plan identified in the article are all pretty reasonable.

- Use networked radios vice walkie-talkies and cell phones. Cell networks are likely to get overwhelmed if there is a mass casualty, require everyone to know everyone else's number, and batteries often die. Walkie-talkies have a limited range and poor multi-point functionality. This measure ensures that the entire race staff can communicate with each other and possible integrate with municipal resources.

- Place a trained emergency fire representative with the race staff, fire department, and transportation officials. Seems like a good idea- all organizations should be able to deconflict their actions in an emergency.

On a whole, it seems like your typical personality driven pissing match. RD says "you cant tell me what to do" and the FD say "oh yeah, lets see you race without a permit. RESPECT MY AUTHORITY!"

Why does the fire department need to issue a permit for them to have a race?

why fire wrote:

Why does the fire department need to issue a permit for them to have a race?

In case someone runs so fast the town catches fire.

Nothing unreasonable... wrote:

The changes for the Emergency Medical Plan identified in the article are all pretty reasonable.

- Use networked radios vice walkie-talkies and cell phones. Cell networks are likely to get overwhelmed if there is a mass casualty, require everyone to know everyone else's number, and batteries often die. Walkie-talkies have a limited range and poor multi-point functionality. This measure ensures that the entire race staff can communicate with each other and possible integrate with municipal resources.

- Place a trained emergency fire representative with the race staff, fire department, and transportation officials. Seems like a good idea- all organizations should be able to deconflict their actions in an emergency.

On a whole, it seems like your typical personality driven pissing match. RD says "you cant tell me what to do" and the FD say "oh yeah, lets see you race without a permit. RESPECT MY AUTHORITY!"

Other fire departments in other cities believe the RD's medical plan is fine.

The fire department is free to place their employees wherever they want. The fire department wants the RD to pay for additional personal.

why fire wrote:

Why does the fire department need to issue a permit for them to have a race?

You haven't noticed when there is a minor fender bender, it requires the local police, state highway patrol, two ambulances, and four fire trucks to take care of the situation?

Otherwise most fire depts. would just sit around eating cookies all day and be too fat to fight a real fire when one does break out. (unlike yesteryear when they were volunteer and came from their real job to fight the fire)

You don't understand. A pinky ringed dues paying member needs to be at every corner. Don't you know you can't run a marathon without 30 locals staffing your event. It would not be "safe" if you know what I mean. There could be an "accident" and we wouldn't want that would we?

Wow, that's a lot of vitriol directed at the guys who risk their lives to save our butts. Times have changed in 27 years. Emergency communication has gotten a lot better and large event safety is evolving due to new threats. The first consideration of any public event is safety. We need to support PF&R in their efforts to bring local event producers into the modern age. 27 year old plan? Sounds obsolete.

Sounds like someone is/was a bitter volunteer whose role got eliminated from the department because it became paid guys only. Why don't you go become a paid guy if you are that passionate about it?!

Really?!?!?!? wrote:

Sounds like someone is/was a bitter volunteer whose role got eliminated from the department because it became paid guys only. Why don't you go become a paid guy if you are that passionate about it?!

Even most paid depts.have some volunteers. Those are the ones who go set stuff on fire just so they can have some fun actually fighting a fire.

I'm not a fire fighter, I'm a taxpayer.