Dan Barry: SACRAMENTO
At 7:56:59 on a Sunday night in November, a citizen known only as Steve called 911 to report a fire in the Curtis Park neighborhood. Flames were rising from the back porch of a handsome old house, burning so hot that the tall bamboo shoots in the backyard were popping like warning shots.
The alarm abruptly ended the light after-dinner conversation inside Station 6, propelling its firefighters into another race against a voracious opponent that doubles in size every minute. But their race tonight would not include their best weapon, the station’s water-bearing fire engine. To save money, it would remain idle.
This would turn out to be a routine house fire, if there is such a thing; no deaths, no injuries. But the fire occurred in Sacramento, the budget-challenged capital of budget-challenged California, where city officials have been forced at times to test the boundaries of a particular factor in their fiscal calculations: risk.
Even a routine fire, then, becomes a study in the worth of seconds.
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