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At last, I've heard it all. The Oregon Department of Forestry is now enforcing a law, enacted in 2003, that requires firefighting crew leaders to speak the languages of each member of their crew. The Department of Forestry's Jim Walker states that "85% of the crew makeup is of Spanish descent." Because of this, if even one member of a firefighting crew cannot speak English, a crew boss is required to learn Spanish.

The enforcement of this rule means that many crew leaders are being demoted to squad bosses, who are responsible for fewer firefighters and they, therefore, receive less pay. In worst case scenarios, when no English speaking firefighters make up a crew, the crew leaders are losing their jobs altogether.

The state has said that the safety of the firefighters is the reason for the law. They are concerned that crew leaders may not be able to communicate quickly to Spanish speaking firefighters if a fire were to make a sudden turn or if other dangers immediately threaten the crew. "Our main concern is that they are safe, and they are in a safe environment, and a lot of that deals with communication," Walker said.

Manuel Franco, a contractor for firefighting crews, believes the rule is necessary for firefighter safety as well, stating "I think the (rule) is good, because that's for safety purpose." When asked if the rule was fair to crew chiefs who only speak English, he added "We're living here. We should speak the language."

Amen! Leave it to the ultra-liberal, tree-hugging state of Oregon to come up with a law that promotes the dilution of English as this country's national language. State officials claim the law became necessary when the wildfires of 2002 brought in a huge influx of immigrant workers to help fight the infernos. Another massive breakout of fires across the Southwestern United States in 2006 forced the state of Oregon to scramble for any workers they could get and, therefore, enforce the laws, enacted three years earlier.

Asked why the crew bosses were being required to learn Spanish, rather than the firefighters having to learn English, Jim Walker stated "If it comes down to a safety issue, and [having them learn English is] the only way we can have people safely on an incident, then yes [we would be forced to hire English speaking firefighters]." The implication here is that it is far easier to fire one guy, than to hire a whole crew. I imagine it may be less expensive to hire non-English speaking firefighters as well. I can only wonder

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