Online Myths Gone Wild

I don't mean to pick on John Derbyshire (well, maybe a little), but did it not cross his mind to be at least a little skeptical of this:

Well, there is an urgent need for firefighters in the West to battle about two dozen major wildfires. The Denver channel dot-com [?] reports that many of the new recruits are Hispanics who speak only Spanish, and in Oregon that means that some of the supervisors who speak only English are being laid off or demoted, because in Oregon a crew boss is required to be able to speak the language of the firefighters, even if it's only one worker on a twenty-person crew.

The state says the rule is necessary for safety reasons. So why not require the workers to speak English? The state has no clear answer on that.

Five minutes poking around brought me this, from the Oregon Department of Forestry:

The old saying, “Rumor can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on,” is borne out in information circulating on the web and elsewhere that claims the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) is firing and demoting fire crew bosses that do not speak Spanish.

This is not the case. Here are the facts:

• ODF has no requirement that its employees speak Spanish, and does not demote or fire anyone because they don’t speak Spanish. And to our knowledge, no crew boss on the private contract fire crews we use has ever been fired because of inability to speak Spanish.
• ODF and its partner agencies contract with private companies to supply fire crews for frontline firefighting work. The crews work under the guidance of incident management teams fielded by ODF and other agencies to manage large firefighting operations.
• Because English is the language of firefighting in the United States, we must have the ability to communicate with all crews. Accordingly, the contract requires that the leaders of contract crews speak English. This requirement covers the crew boss and the three squad bosses on a typical 20-person crew.
• Companies may choose whom they hire for their crews. If a company elects to hire employees who do not speak English, then the supervisors of that crew must speak English as well as the language of any crew members who don’t speak English. This is a matter of good communication, safety, and effectiveness for the agencies that hire crews under the contract. Over the years, this system has established a record of solid firefighting performance and safety.

Keep on tilting, Derb.