Burn (2012) or The Fate of the Twentieth Century Motor Company

    This week we saw Burn,  a fascinating documentary about the Detroit Fire Department and the almost fantastical obstacles with which they must struggle on a daily basis. This film is an excellent snapshot of the consequences of our current system of American politics, and is something that everyone should see.
     This film brings to the surface one particular issue; What can and  must be done about the city of Detroit and similar cities such as Chicago Il., Honolulu, Hi., and Cincinnati, Oh., that are also on the edge of bankruptcy?  One of my favorite things about this documentary is that the filmmakers follow people on both sides of the issue, allowing the audience to understand the viewpoints of all sides, to sympathize with the struggles of all, and most importantly to make an informed decision for themselves. According to the documentary, in the city of Detroit, with a population of 713,000 there were 30,000 fire calls in the year 2011. That's almost 100 a day. To put this in perspective, all of Los Angeles County,  with a population of almost 10 million, had 7,549 fire calls in 2011. The reason there were so many fires is because of arson. The citizens of Detroit are literally burning down their own city. There were approximately 5100 fires that were intentionally set in the city of Detroit in 2011. That is almost 9 times the national average. To make matters worse the number of firefighters has halved. In 1954 there were 1900 firefighters in the city, in 2010 there were 919, meanwhile fires per capita has risen 300%.
     The firefighters in this film seem to have a sense of defeat before they even get the call. Their trucks don't run, their safety equipment is shoddy at best and every year they are laying off more employees and closing more stations.
 
These closures are correlated with the population decline of the city. In 1950, Detroit had a population of 1.8 million. In 2010, the population is down to 713,000. This exodus is leaving over 50,000 abandoned homes in the city, homes which quickly become fuel for arson and other kinds of crime.

Things have become so bad that the Fire Commissioner, Donald Austin (who is featured in the documentary but afterwards resigned in 2013 due to "changes in City administration") created a very controversial policy that said that abandoned homes that posed no threat to nearby structures would be monitored by the FD but would be otherwise allowed to burn. This policy was put in place to prevent firefighter injury or death battling conflagrations in unwanted structures.

     A thinking person would ask, why nothing is being done to help these departments. On the surface the answer turns out to be very simple. The city of Detroit needs to budget more money for the Fire Department. The answer becomes much more complicated when we see that Detroit and many other American cities for that matter, are dying, both financially and spiritually. The American people are losing a confidence in their own nation.

   It used to be that people took pride in their work and created products that were valuable when compared to those created by competitors, as a result Americans were paid well for their hard work. Americans bought American products. The world strove to equal our economic prowess. Since that time, in which Detroit had its highest population and was thriving economically (That's probably a coincidence right?)  we, the American people, quite literally you and I, have become complacent with what we are and what we have and as a result are no longer leaders in the world. We are no longer satisfied with well paying jobs like plumbing, or roofing and are instead doing anything to get rich quick by any means necessary. As a millennial, I must unfortunately admit that this is most true of my generation.  As a result our work ethic has become almost non-existent, the quality of our products has become terrible and our wages have decreased and our whole economy has declined. We have become the laughing stock of the world and ourselves to the point that we quite literally burn down our own cities.
    Now, that is a very dim picture of the United States, but it is not the whole picture. The truth is that many people have begun to see the problem and are trying to become part of the solution. Specifically the Technology sector, the hated and reviled, Silicon Valley, is still trying to create the best products and are largely succeeding. People are again taking pride in their work and are reaping the massive financial benefits. As a result Silicon Valley is one of the most economically thriving areas of the United States, and it's success is slowly beginning to expand to other areas. Everyone wants to work for those companies but very few people are willing to do the hard work required to get the jobs that are desperate to be filled.
    Only when Americans again have a pride in their own work, in the fruits of their own labor, in their own communities, in America and American products will Detroit and other cities like it  be able to survive.