Rookie patrolman Jeremy Zuber didn't have self-contained breathing apparatus, a helmet, or flame retardant clothes, just his training --- and his wits.
As the first person to respond to a fire call at Building 520 of the Hi View Gardens apartments on Coursin Street, Zuber sized up the situation and went to work.
It was just about 6:30 a.m. on a Friday morning in July. More than 50 people were asleep inside --- unaware of the fire raging on the third floor.
Zuber forced his way into 520 Coursin and began banging on the first-floor doors to wake up the tenants and get them to safety. Then he tried to make his way upstairs, but thick smoke forced him to retreat.
. . .
City fire crews were now arriving. Fire Captain Ed Drye Sr. brought a ladder and helped Zuber lead a woman and her son, trapped on the second floor, to safety. They were in the clear when the roof collapsed above their apartment.
In another part of the building, police Sgt. Connor Craig and Patrolman James Taylor were pushing their way through the smoke to kick in doors and lead residents to safety.
By now, more firefighters and suburban volunteers were rolling onto the scene. Driver Tom Perciavalle arrived and began rescuing residents trapped upstairs in 520; another driver, Eugene Esken, led city and volunteer crews inside to keep the fire from spreading to the neighboring buildings.
. . .
Trying to buy time so that all of the residents could get to safety, city Firefighter Kevin Kovach pulled a hose into 520 Coursin in an attempt to protect the rescuers. But the blaze was moving too fast; flames were devouring the second- and third-floor hallways, and the choking smoke had reduced visibility to zero.
At the opposite end of the hallway, Craig heard Kovach calling for help. Armed with just his flashlight, Craig directed Kovach to an exit.
Then men then pulled Kovach's firehose out of the building. Burned through in places, it was in tatters.
. . .
Fire Capt. James Shields was supposed to be off duty, but was called in for assistance. He arrived and was met by a woman who frantically told him that her son was trapped inside, and talking to him on her cell phone.
Shields took the phone and began talking to the panicked resident. He pulled enough information out of him to figure out where he was in the building, talked him out of jumping from a window, and directed him to an outside window, where firefighters pulled him to safety.
. . .
These are just a few of the stories recounted Wednesday night, when council and Mayor James Brewster honored six city firefighters and three police officers for bravery in the July 11 conflagration.
In all, 51 people got out of the apartment safely, including 15 people rescued by police and firefighters. Nine people, including two firefighters, suffered minor injuries.
An overflow crowd of family members and friends stood in the aisle of council chambers and lined the second-floor hallway of the old municipal building to see the ceremony.
. . .
Presented with commendations were Drye, Esken, Perciavalle, Kovach, Shields and part-time Firefighter Ed Drye Jr.
Receiving the McKeesport Police Medal of Valor were Craig, Taylor and Zuber, who joined the department as a cadet last year after paying his own way through the Allegheny County Police Academy.
"This was a chaotic event, and nobody had to give anyone any directions," Brewster said. "People wonder, 'Why do you go through all of this training? Why do you negotiate training into the contracts?'
"This is why," he said. "There's an awful lot that we take for granted that goes into the job ... it's routine work for these men and women, but it's not routine for the rest of us."
Brewster and city Police Chief Joe Pero said only a handful --- probably only two or three --- medals of valor have been presented in the last 20 years.
. . .
Fire Chief Kevin Lust thanked the seven suburban fire departments that responded, as well as McKeesport Ambulance Rescue Service.
After seeing the dramatic pictures of the blaze on the Internet and TV, firefighters from around the country called or emailed the department their congratulations, he said.
"I was very proud of these guys and what they did," Lust said. "I can't thank everybody enough --- our mutual aid companies, the police, the ambulance --- they just kept saying, 'Well, we just did our job.'
"It's unbelievable," he said. "They protected everyone's lives up there, and Hi View Gardens only lost three apartments. I'm proud of them, and I think the community should be, too."
. . .
Also honored with commendations were city fire Capt. Gerald Tedesco and Firefighter Jeffery Tomovcsik, who rescued a resident of a second-floor apartment above the Cafe Fifth Ave. restaurant in the East End, which burned on Aug. 2.
That blaze was reported by a city police sergeant on his way home after work, who spotted the flames and called for help.
While other residents were able to escape the fire on their own, one man was trapped by smoke and flames; Tomovcsik and Tedesco put a ladder to the window and brought him down safely.
City officials said MARS personnel were unable to attend Wednesday's meeting; they will receive commendations for their efforts in the July 11 fire at a future council meeting.
They aren't quite the rabbits that city officials said they needed to pull out of their hats to stave off financial calamity.
But a new trash-collection contract and hard negotiations with the region's biggest Blue Cross/Blue Shield provider have apparently saved the city hundreds of thousands of dollars.
At last night's meeting, council approved a new garbage hauling contract that will save city taxpayers more than $1 million over the next three years.
In addition, city officials said that a nearly 84 percent increase in health insurance premiums for about 80 city employees has been knocked down to 38 percent.
. . .
Residential trash collection was being done for nearly 10,000 city households by Greenridge Waste Services of Scottdale, Westmoreland County, a subsidiary of Arizona-based Allied Waste Industries, at a cost of about $1.2 million annually.
The contract was set to automatically renew on Sept. 30.
Four companies bid on the collection agreement: Allied, Big's Trucking of Belle Vernon, Texas-based Waste Management Inc., and Nickolich Sanitation of Clairton. County Hauling of Belle Vernon was asked to bid but declined, according to city documents.
The city of Pittsburgh, which in June offered to provide services to McKeesport and other municipalities, also declined to bid.
"So much for inter-governmental cooperation," City Councilman Dale McCall quipped last night.
The $2.8 million, three-year deal offered by Nickolich is $321,000 less than was offered by the next lowest bidder, Big's. The contract was approved by a 6-0 vote; Councilman Paul Shelly was absent.
. . .
Renegotiating the health care agreement was less straightforward, Pittman said. The employees covered are members of Teamsters Local 205, and the city was bound by its collective-bargaining agreement to maintain the same level of coverage, he said.
In the end, only two carriers --- UPMC Health Plan and Highmark, which provides most Blue Cross/Blue Shield services in the Pittsburgh area --- bid on the contract, Pittman said.
Highmark was the pre-existing carrier for 205 members and had proposed increasing the city's premiums 83.6 percent.
The rate hike was sharply criticized by Local 205 business agent Carl Bailey and by Brewster, who went on Marty Griffin's KDKA (1020) radio talk show to blast Highmark and at one point threatened to launch a class-action lawsuit.
City officials carried out negotiations directly with Deborah Rice, Highmark senior vice president of regional accounts.
. . .
The deal was questioned by City Controller Ray Malinchak, who asked why the process was not opened to competitive bidding in the form of legal advertising in local newspapers.
City Solicitor J. Jason Elash said McKeesport's home-rule charter exempts insurance from being advertised for bids, because different plans aren't directly comparable.
"We went with all of the carriers that offered the products that the contract specifies," he said. "Only two companies were acceptable to the union. No one's hiding anything. It was completely transparent."
. . .
According to Brewster, the city is forming a committee to study ways to lower the cost of health insurance for all of its employees. Malinchak and representatives of city labor unions, including Local 205 and Firefighters Local 10, will be asked to participate, the mayor said.
"We want to add anyone we can who's knowledgeable about the issues," Brewster said.
Four city labor contracts are coming up for negotiation in the next 18 months.
"We want to work with council and the unions to find the best opportunities, and get some process in place so that we can stop the bleeding," Brewster said.
City officials have said they may try to roll all employees onto a single health plan, seek joint coverage with neighboring municipalities, or self-insure to lower the cost of premiums.
Donations have paid for replacement equipment that's currently stuck somewhere between the West Coast and McKeesport; if it doesn't arrive, she says, they'll borrow cameras to make sure that the show goes on.
Speaking of Lynn Cullen and 1360: Toward the end of my mediocre career at the Tribune-Review, I had irritated the upper management sufficiently so that I wasn't bringing any green bananas to work.
One incident in particular made me a marked man. In the midst of doing a hatchet job on the newspaper's publisher, a now-defunct journalism magazine named me in connection with an unpleasant incident.
I warned the managing editor that it was about to hit the fan. He called me into his office the next day to tell me "your employment status is being evaluated."
Translation: "Better find a cardboard box and pack your desk, dummy."
That afternoon, I got a call from a friend. "Holy crap," he said, "Lynn Cullen is talking about you on her show."
"Why me?" I said. During my brief (like 15 minutes) stint as the Trib's radio-TV writer, I was a guest on her show, but I hadn't talked to Lynn for at least two years.
"She says you got in trouble because you're named in some magazine article, and it's really unfair, and now they want to fire you," he said.
Great. It wasn't bad enough to be the office outcast. Now, everyone listening to 1360 also knew I was a pain-in-the-neck. (Luckily, that wasn't many people.)
But a funny thing happened. They didn't fire me (unfortunately, because I could have used the unemployment).
I heard that the publisher's attorneys had talked him out of canning me, for fear of the bad publicity and possibility of a wrongful-termination suit. I eventually left under my own steam.
Fast-forward a few months. Cullen was a guest on a PCNC talk show and said of one of the Tribune-Review's editors, "I'd like to punch that guy in the nose."
The Trib, showing the sense of comedy for which it's duly famed, sent PCNC a letter demanding a copy of the videotape and threatening criminal or civil charges against Cullen.
I was in the car the next day when Cullen began talking about the cartooney threat from the Trib, so I pulled over and called the station during a commercial break. "If you need a character witness, I'm available," I said. She got a good laugh out of that.
Thanks, Lynn, for keeping me off the unemployment line, and while you don't need my recommendation for any other jobs, I'm still available as a character witness.
. . .
In Other Business: If you still haven't ordered those Terry Lee CDs, and you're a McKeesporter or a radio buff, well ... what are you waiting for?
They're full of choice morsels, like this jingle, which I haven't heard in 30 years, and thought I'd never hear again:
One of McKeesport's two radio stations is sinking beneath the waves --- again --- leaving barely an oil slick or a bubble on the surface of the water.
The last local host left on WPTT (1360), Lynn Cullen, did her final show today. On Monday, the station switches to an "all-business" format as "WMNY."*
I'll leave you to decide whether it's appropriate to switch to an "all-business" format on Labor Day, but the likelihood of any radio station switching to an "all-labor" format is about as likely as John McCain french-kissing Rosie O'Donnell.
(Urp. I just threw up in my mouth a little.)
Fun fact: Chicago's WCFL was once owned by the Chicago Federation of Labor, and did program a lot of shows about labor, but that was about a million years ago.
. . .
Now, back to 1360, originally called WMCK and located in the Elks' Temple on Market Street, then known as WIXZ and located in the Wilson Baum building on Long Run Road, and later on Route 30 in East McKeesport. If ever there was a station in need of a reason for existence, it's been 1360 for the last 30 years.
I don't envy anyone trying to run a small business in McKeesport. First, you have to get people from Pittsburgh to not regard McKeesport as somewhere on the far side of the moon.
Then you have to get them past the idea that we're all shooting at each other as we smoke crack and lock 14-year-old girls in our basements and warm up Whizzinators in the microwave at GetGo.
I'm not saying we've got an image problem, but, well, you know.
. . .
But 1360 hasn't made any serious effort to serve McKeesport in many years. The studios moved to Green Tree more than a decade ago. The daytime transmitter moved to Pittsburgh; only the nighttime transmitter remains in Lincoln Borough, near Dead Man's Hollow.
There's only one teensy problem: You can't hear 1360 in Pittsburgh at night. You were never meant to. It was designed, back in 1947, as a radio station to serve McKeesport --- admittedly, McKeesport was a larger, wealthier community then.
Somewhere along the line, the ownership got stars in its eyes and decided it wanted to run with the big dogs in Pittsburgh.
Unfortunately, there are about two dozen other radio stations serving Pittsburgh, and no one was clamoring for another static-filled signal on the AM band, especially one that sounds like a shortwave broadcast from Russia every time the sun goes down.
. . .
If that wasn't bad enough, 1360 never seemed capable of holding together a format for very long. It was country for a while. Then it was country during the day, talk in the afternoons, and oldies on the weekend. Then it was all-sports. Then it went all-talk.
Through all of the format changes, shows have come and gone with little or no promotion, and when hosts left, they were replaced with crap.
Elizabeth Township's Jerry Bowyer was the morning man for a while. He had an erudite, smart talk show that wasn't advertised at all. When he left, management plugged in an audio feed of WTAE-TV's morning news, and Laura Ingraham, who's at best, a third-rate syndicated host.
They didn't even run Ingraham's shows live. They were tape-delayed from the previous afternoon. Sorry to be so crude, but playing 18-hour-old political talk shows is like looking at porn after you have an orgasm. I might as well read last week's newspapers.
Not surprisingly, WPTT has habitually hovered near the bottom of the Pittsburgh ratings.
. . .
A few years ago, WPTT started running on-air announcements that it was going to change format, with a new slogan promising "A Revolution in Talk Radio."
Since WPTT's management didn't invest a nickel in billboards, TV commercials or bumper stickers, only radio junkies knew about it. We tuned in, expecting to hear some exciting new lineup.
It turned out that they were, um, just unveiling a new slogan.
It was enough to give you the distinct impression that no one at WPTT knew what the hell they were doing. (Neither do I, but I admit it.) Or at the very least, that they were too cheap to invest any real money.
Longtime Pittsburgh radio fixture Doug Hoerth lost his afternoon drive slot several months ago --- reportedly the victim of budget cuts --- and everyone assumed that Cullen would be the next to go.
. . .
A few people have speculated that because Cullen is a vocal, outspoken Democrat, WPTT's failure proves that people in Pittsburgh won't listen to liberal talk radio.
Maybe, but Hoerth is a moderate, small-L libertarian, and Laura Ingraham is to the right of Marie Antoinette. On the weekends, WPTT carries NASCAR and high-school football. WPTT wasn't "liberal talk radio."
However, WPTT's failure to score any ratings does prove that people won't listen to a radio station that they've never heard of, that they can't pick up at night, and that has a lineup full of idiotic programming choices.
Seriously, audio from Channel 4 was the best WPTT could do in morning drive? It sure was a thrill to listen to WTAE's anchors describe pictures you couldn't see ... because they were on the damned radio.
. . .
McKeesport's 1360 is not the only local radio station that's gone down the drain because of stupid decisions like this. Did you know Braddock has a radio station on 1550? Or that Carnegie has one on 1590, and Monroeville has one on 1510?
I didn't think so. They're "forgotten, but not gone," wasting electricity and bandwidth, turning their backs to the towns they're supposed to be serving, and broadcasting to no one.
The all-business format is only going to be worse. The daily 3 to 6 p.m. slot is going to be filled by a financial advice program that's paid for by the host. Here's a tip: Generally speaking (but not always) people pay for radio time if they're not good enough to get a show on their own merits. A few people who pay for their own radio time are entrepreneurs and have real radio talent, but a lot of others are done as vanity projects, and it shows.
. . .
Now, about WPTT being technically a "McKeesport" station. As I said, McKeesport has a perception problem, and it would be hard to sustain a radio station that only targeted the Mon Valley.
Yet there are towns in Pennsylvania that are smaller than McKeesport which sustain their own radio stations. You have to carve out a niche and program the station hyper-locally ... local news, local high-school sports, local talk shows, lost dog reports, parade coverage, and all of that other hokum.
Big, Important Radio Professionals sneer at stations that still program that kind of stuff. And yet those stations make money.
Could it be done in McKeesport? It would be a tough slog. You'd have to get people from McKeesport running 1360 --- just like back in the WMCK days. They'd have to get involved in the community, just like Bob Cox and Sam Vidnovic were.
And it'll never happen. After all, McKeesport's other radio station, WEDO, is for sale ... for $1.75 million. I guess that makes WPTT worth $5 million.
So, good luck with your all-business format, 1360 --- your slogan can be, "talk you don't need from a station you don't want."
. . .
Here's another thought: Radio listening across the country is declining. Advertising revenue is plummeting. FM radio is sick, and AM radio is practically at death's door.
If radio stations start dying, remember that they weren't murdered by the Internet and iPods. They committed suicide.
And when the autopsy reports are written, they'll look a lot like the history of 1360 in McKeesport over the last 20 years.
At least Barack Obama had the good sense to delay his speech until after the Steelers game was over.
If only he can fix the Pirates, then by God, he's got my vote.
Nah, that's too much to ask anyone.
:: :: ::
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Don't buy some piece of plastic junk. Support the troops by helping the USO instead:
:: :: ::
"Hell, I'm an old man and it's early in the morning. I'm just gathering my thoughts here." (circa 2004, attributed to Donald Rumsfield, U.S. Secretary of Defense)
:: :: ::
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