No harm in trying, Noah thought. “Nothing in particular. Wanted to check in on how you settled in for your first day.”
“It’s been ten hours, Chief. I can’t say I’ve settled in yet but give it time.”
“They’re a good crew, despite an occasional lapse.”
“Nobody filled the saltshaker,” Williams said.
Noah gritted his teeth at the euphemism. That was a common firefighter reference that if a team couldn’t be relied on to fill the saltshaker, they also skimped on their safety checks. “Only the saltshaker?”
“It’s their smallest problem. One of my lieutenants called an all-hands evac without my permission during a scene today.”
The tone of his voice indicated he wasn’t thrilled his officer freelanced mid-incident.
“Did you reprimand her?”
“How did you know it was a ‘her?’”
“Math,” Noah responded. He didn’t discuss his impressions of the team dynamics with Williams. Especially since he wasn’t the most objective person when it came to Hudgens.
“Clarke might be adequate, Knight is untried, and Rodriguez oversteps,” Williams confirmed his suspicions.
“Her instincts are sound, even if she makes snap judgments sometimes.” Baker felt compelled to defend her, even if he hadn’t selected her for captain because of exactly those qualities.
“They need real leadership,” Williams said.
“Other than when I was captain for two weeks?” Noah reminded Williams that Rodriguez wasn’t the only one who could overstep.
“I wasn’t referring to you. Your recent officer assessments are articulate and detailed. I was referring to the past year, as it appears drilling became as inconsistent as their leadership,” he argued.
“Yet their response times continued to improve. They’ve got good hearts and lots of guts.” Noah pointed out the positives, avoiding the garage crash incident and the illicit lieutenant-on-lieutenant relationship.
“They’re undisciplined.”
“They’ve been through a lot this year. You’ve got to treat them—”
“Like the grown men and women they are. They need to be a cohesive unit that knows how to live, work, and fight together. I’ve pulled plenty of teams together who had no training. It’s what you brought me here for, isn’t it?”
Noah chewed on the side of his cheek. Williams was no more ready to forgive than he had been when he’d left four years ago. “I brought you in because I thought you’d like a chance to start over, put down roots, and rebuild the department with me. I trust in your skills and your judgment.”
“Then trust I know how to run a firehouse, Chief,” Williams rebuffed him.
“Any other judgments you need to pass from today’s incident?” The battalion chief’s report wasn’t available yet and he wanted Williams’s impressions.
“Firehouse 19 doesn’t know squat about command or fundamentals. They did a fast attack without establishing water and almost brought the entire house down on themselves.”
“Duly noted.” Firehouse 19 was another site that needed some serious shake-ups. “Anyone injured?”
“No, luckily. The evac wasn’t completely unwarranted. Unnecessary if I’d had a shift at full strength, though.”
“I assure you that B, C, and D-shifts each have ten members,” Noah reassured him.
“What’s wrong with A-shift? Couldn’t you have transferred people, or did no one want to come to them?” Williams wasn’t mincing words.
Might as well get everything out there, so Noah stated, “There’s nothing wrong with A-shift. While it isn’t your main concern, this recruitment push is key because… the fact is, our recruitment is at an all-time low. We were struggling when you were captain of 33, and it didn’t improve with the merger. A-shift is one of my few shifts that got replacements in the past year. Since their response time kept improving, replacing their people was a lower priority.”
“And now it’s an emergency,” Williams concluded. “Seven people is too few, and it encourages freelancing. Worse, you have three officers, and one of them has been doing nothing for six months. Whose brilliant idea was it to allow three officers on one shift?”
“Originally, we thought Clarke was going to be captain,” Noah conceded truthfully. “McClunis and I couldn’t split the women unless they requested it or we had a better place to move them to.”
