The firetruck sat at the curb near a Gaithersburg residential complex, its windows down, its radio quiet.
Inside the townhouse at Big Acre Square, firefighters assigned to the truck -- Montgomery County's Engine 33 -- appeared very busy. A reporter who stopped by one day last month observed bare floors, large rolls of carpeting, electrical cords snaking up the stairs, freshly installed and patched wall board and heaps of construction trash behind the dwelling.
Lt. Thomas Foster, a paid firefighter based at the Rockville station, popped his head out of an attic crawl space. Covered with pink insulation fibers, he climbed down a ladder. Asked what he was doing, Foster said: "This is a drill."
To his right stood another paid firefighter, Joe Wilt, holding a tool box. Wilt said he was an electrician who was helping with the house's wiring to advance his understanding of building construction.
Firefighter Dave Kennedy was there, too. Like the others, he is a paid firefighter, not a volunteer.
And like the others, he was on duty.
Foster said he owned the property and had been doing some work on the place for about a month. As he has with other properties, he said, he planned to fix up the townhouse and sell it.
Was this an improper use of the firefighters' on-duty time?
"That's not the case at all," said Foster, a $60,497-a-year member of the department.
He said he was training crew members in the intricacies of building construction so that they would become better firefighters. Foster said his supervisor, Capt. Tony Coleman, had approved the drill.
That was true, said Coleman, reached later by telephone.
"They told me they were going to do some electrical stuff to see how currents run," Coleman said, adding that the drill was similar to those in which firefighters examine Metro tunnels or set abandoned buildings ablaze and put them out. "We're always trying to be knowledgeable," Coleman said. "We drill a lot around here."
Neighbors saw things differently.
"It's definitely not a drill, if that's that what they told you," said Jennifer Muller, who lives across the street. She said one of the firefighters told her "they were working on the house across the street on company time, and he joked about it." She said the firetruck and crew had been showing up at the townhouse for a couple hours every other day for about two weeks.
Pete Piringer, spokesman for the Montgomery fire department, initially described the activity as "unusual" and "beyond reason."
Volunteer firefighters, of course, might be doing any number of things when they are not summoned to a call, Piringer said. But he said paid firefighters are expected to be doing work-related tasks while on the clock.
Later, however, Piringer said the department was satisfied that the three firefighters were conducting a bona fide drill.
"Everything was legit," he said. Piringer said that Foster photographed construction on his house to prepare a slide show on building construction.
However, Kevin Sanzenbacher, director of investigative services for the department, said recently that the activity was still being investigated.
Piringer said many firefighters conduct exercises that might not look like drills. For example, he said, firefighters might visit a local mall so the crew can examine the sprinkler system.
Piringer also said it was not unusual for paid and volunteer firefighters to take firetrucks when they go out to lunch because crews must remain close to their equipment while on duty. "It's like a leash. They have to be attached to their truck," he said. "It's perfectly acceptable to have an apparatus out and about."
Copyright 2003, Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and The Washington Post
