It figures – no one gets fired for Santa Ana College fire alarm fiasco

Just as I predicted, no one got fired over the fire alarm fiasco at Santa Ana College. You may recall that student reporters at SAC broke the story that their college president, Erlinda Martinez, was busy having a shower built for her in her office, while many of the fire alarms on campus did not work. Today the L.A. Times told us what happened after the Rancho Santiago Community College District investigated the incident.

The Times reported that “the investigation narrowed in on six officials. At the college: Bruce Bromberger, plant manager; and Noemi Kanouse, vice president of administrative services. At the district: James Wooley, safety and security supervisor; Al Chin, director of safety and security; Don Maus, environmental and safety services manager; and Bob Brown, director of construction and support services, who retired in 2006.”

Get this – the district authorities blacked out the names in the report indicating who did what. Hello – this ought to be public information. And HEADS SHOULD HAVE ROLLED! They certainly would have if this had happened at a business.

The district did suspend one of the guilty parties, but no one was fired.

Unbelievably, the guy in charge of “the fire alarm systems at the district and college and communications about safety,” WAS NOT FIRED! Are you kidding me? This is an outrage!

Another guy, who was “responsible for facilities maintenance at the college” got transferred to serve as vice chancellor at the district – and he got a pay cut. He SHOULD HAVE BEEN FIRED!

And “three other officials received letters of reprimand but kept their jobs.”

Finally, “in reaction to the fire alarm problem, Santa Ana College has reconvened its safety committee, and the district board has formed its own counterpart.”

District Trustee John Hanna’s quote is priceless, “Thank God no one was hurt and we didn’t have to pay the price,” Hanna said. “But there were mistakes made. Administrators have been chastised and will see more clearly now. The silver lining is that out of this will come a safer campus.” WRONG! Several people should have been fired John. You Trustees bungled this. What an embarrassment.

If this had happened in Irvine or Newport Beach do you think no one would have been fired?

About Admin

"Admin" is just editors Vern Nelson, Greg Diamond, or Ryan Cantor sharing something that they mostly didn't write themselves, but think you should see. Before December 2010, "Admin" may have been former blog owner Art Pedroza.