As Buster Snow watched flames jump from his burning SUV to the back of his and his neighbor's adjoining home, the 42-year-old Wilmington man wondered where the fire department was.
He remembers seeing ambulance workers and police officers watching the fire that afternoon, but Engine No. 3, the Wilmington Fire Department pumper engine stationed less than five blocks from his home, was nowhere in sight.
Engine No. 3 had been idled at its station that day, Sept. 1, part of the city's conditional company closures or "rolling bypass," a contentious practice that places a fire truck out of service on a rotating basis for 24 hours in order to save on overtime.