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Letter to the editor

Tribute to fallen leads to rebuke

A firefighter's gesture of solidarity at the site of a fatal blaze doesn't go over well at work.

By THOMAS LAKE
Published July 21, 2007

Capt. David Garofalo of Pasco County Fire Rescue leaves his department-issued polo shirt June 22 at the site of the fire that killed nine firefighters in Charleston S.C. A supervisor reprimanded Garofalo for leaving the shirt.
	[Special to the Times]

He drove all night and by dawn he had reached the old city where nine fellow firefighters died in a tower of flame.

Outside the warehouse in Charleston, S.C., as the smell of smoke lingered, they were building a shrine to the dead.

Capt. David Garofalo works for Pasco County Fire Rescue, and he had come to pay tribute. He took a department-issued polo shirt from his duffel bag and scrawled a message in black.

"God bless you ..."

And he walked away, leaving his shirt by the fresh-cut flowers.

Garofalo hoped his superiors would appreciate the gesture.

Instead he got a reprimand.

"Equipment is not theirs to give away," acting Assistant Chief Mike Ciccarello told the St. Petersburg Times on Friday. "They need to know that."

- - -

The polo shirt is gray, with Garofalo's name embroidered in gold. Its retail value is $23.95. The agency bought him five of them to wear at work. Suddenly he had just four.

Garofalo is 30 years old. After nearly 10 years with the department, he has only one prior disciplinary action in his personnel file: counseling, for denting the bumper of a fire truck. He did not initiate contact with the Times for this story. He says he loves the department and doesn't want to make it look bad.

He gave away the shirt June 22, four days after America's worst loss of firefighters since Sept. 11. He says he meant to replace it with his own cash. But he didn't do it right away. A week passed. Word got around. A few days later, his boss told him he was under investigation.

The problem, Ciccarello said, is that Garofalo didn't immediately tell an administrator what he had done.

"The department would have been more than happy to work with him if he had called us," Ciccarello said.

In his colleague's defense, Capt. Kenneth Urbuteit, a union steward, said the administration made something out of nothing.

"It wasn't like he went up there and left a fire engine," he said.

But to Ciccarello, that's irrelevant. "It could have been a dollar. It doesn't matter. It's not his to give away."

The shirt's cost is less than one-tenth of the $246.71 in gasoline the agency's honor guard billed the county for their trip to the same memorial service.

Garofalo and his fellow travelers, who are not part of the honor guard, paid for their own gas.

On Tuesday, Ciccarello gave Garofalo a "Written Verbal Caution" for the incident. The document will stay on file for a year and then be destroyed.

"It's really not a story," Ciccarello said.

- - -

Garofalo was afraid the outcome would be much worse. Because he was accused of a Class 3 offense, he thought he might be fired.

And so, despite his embarrassment, he e-mailed the fire chief in Charleston, asking him to send the shirt back.

By then the memorabilia was stored in a station in Charleston, according to Pam Blevins, the chief's secretary. A firefighter had to sift through it, find Garofalo's shirt and send it to headquarters. From there, Blevins put it in an envelope and mailed it to Garofalo. It arrived Friday.

"That's just kind of petty," Blevins said of the investigation.

In the meantime, Garofalo called the shirt vendor, DesignLab, whose headquarters happen to be in South Carolina, to place an order. But when he explained the situation, the company sent him two free shirts.

Now he has seven gray polo shirts.

He will soon have six.

He said he plans to mail the original shirt back to Charleston, along with a check: some for the dead firefighters' families, and some to cover postage for the needless shipment.

One of his five department-issued shirts still has the tag on it. He gets by on a rotation of three.

Thomas Lake can be reached at tlake@sptimes.com or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6245.

[Last modified July 20, 2007, 23:44:24]