Firefighters needed
Suppose you had a house fire tonight and no one came to help.
On Nov. 22, a house burned on Clearcreek near Kooskia about 9 p.m. and the Ridge Runner Fire Department was paged. After two pages with no response, the Kooskia Fire Department was called out for mutual aid. We responded with three personnel (all who answered the page) and two trucks.
One of our trucks was first on scene followed shortly by a Ridge Runner truck and the second Kooskia truck. Two more pages brought more Ridge Runner people and equipment.
The slow response didn't matter in this case as the fire was well underway before it was noticed and reported, and the outcome would have been the same anyway.
The point here is all local volunteer fire departments need more help. We do the best we can with the people we have but the time seems to be coming when no one will respond to someone's fire.
More property damage will result and lives may even be lost for lack of volunteers. Just a few volunteers can't be available 24/7.
Please consider becoming a firefighter. Young or old, male or female, you are needed.
Training will be provided. Help your neighbors and yourself. Ask around and contact your local fire department.
Lucky Brandt
Assistant chief, Kooskia Fire Department
Kooskia
Pants on fire
Robert Mason didn't do his homework on the most outrageous liar in modern political history.
Politifact.org has thoroughly examined 475 of Donald Trump's statements and has found 329 (69 percent) to be mostly false, false or "Pants on Fire." He now has 73 of these whoppers, a record that will never be broken, and far more than Mitt Romney's 19.
In stark contrast, Barack Obama's statements were true, mostly true or half-true 76 percent of the time. Hillary Clinton's percentage in the truth categories is 74 percent. Obama has nine "Pants on Fire" and Hillary has seven.
Trump has boasted that he has created 45,000 new coal mining jobs. When Trump took office, there were 50,300 miners and by the end of October, there were just 51,900, a paltry 3 percent increase.
Trump says that the tax bill "is going to cost me a fortune, this thing - believe me." We still have not seen his tax returns, but given the nature of his businesses, he will make out like a bandit.
His statement - "For years, they have not been able to get tax cuts, many, many years, since Reagan"- is of course false.
One-third of Obama's stimulus was tax cuts and that saved Americans $43 billion. He also cut payroll taxes by 2 percent.
I challenge Mason to be as thorough and careful as Politifact in winnowing truth from fiction, but his own sloppy methods do not give much hope.
Nick Gier
Moscow
