Nearly 100 first responders and other protesters showed up at Monday’s Beaufort County Commissioners meeting after a commissioner called firemen who provide on-scene medical services “bubbas.”
The controversial comments were made by Beaufort County Commissioner Hood Richardson during January’s meeting.
Back in January, Richardson referred to firemen providing medical services as “bubbas,” which he used to describe an uneducated population rendering services they weren’t qualified to do.
“We feel like we may have been stereotyped and I think it is a derogatory term,” said Capt. Ray Harris of the Bunyon Fire Department.
During the meeting on Monday, many people had on name tags that they had written “Bubba” as their name.
Richardson said on Monday that “bubba” could be a term of endearment like “brother.”
“What I was concerned about was the training that people had in order to be able to provide these medical services,” Richardson said. One of the services he was concerned about was a service called “Pit Crew CPR,” which essentially brings in the closest first responders to work as a team to perform CPR on a victim.