New Orleans' Fire Department sounding its own alarm

Nearly a year after Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Fire Department is in bad shape and getting worse, the City Council was told Thursday.

The department has "a rapidly deteriorating morale problem" and post-Katrina personnel losses are undermining its ability to do its job, District Chief Tim McConnell said.

"I am here in a crisis mode," Fire Fighters Association Local 632 President Nick Felton told the council, pointing to what he said was firefighters' anger about the city's failure to include most of them in recently announced raises for police officers.

from the Times Picayune