Firefighters Fiddled, Mall Burned

Steven Greenhut: Check out my latest piece on lewrockwell.com regarding the firefighter response to the Roseville mall fire. In it, I argue:

I hear endlessly from firefighters who typically earn pay and benefit packages of $175,000 a year here in California that they are heroes who put their lives on the line to keep us and our property safe. Yet, so often when tragedy strikes, these heroes act in ways that certainly are not heroic.

For instance, on Thursday a major fire consumed a good part of the Roseville Galleria, one of the largest malls in northern California, while firefighters basically waited outside to allow the fire sprinklers to do the job.

As the Sacramento Bee reported, a “troubled” 23-year-old man walked into a game store, claimed he had a gun, ordered everyone out and set fire to the store. Everyone was evacuated from the mall without incident, according to the Bee, “But because he left a backpack behind, and because no one knew if it contained explosives, firefighters waited outside while a bomb squad went in looking for the back pack.”

Read the rest here.