We’re nearing the one year anniversary of the Sofa Super Store fire in Charleston. I suspect that most of my readers, no matter where they live, have at least heard of the June 18th inferno at a furniture store in the West Ashley section of town. Nine city firefighters died in that fire, and we’ve spent the last eleven months in a near-constant state of finger pointing and name calling about who is to blame.

Yesterday, the city’s fire chief, Rusty Thomas, announced his retirement effective June 27th. Thomas has been the focus of the majority of the criticism. He is a 32-year veteran of the city’s fire department. His father was a firefighter. So he literally grew up knowing firefighting would be his life. Thomas is a nice guy who clearly cares about his men and felt the loss of his nine colleagues personally. He’s the kind of guy that most everyone — except his harshest critics — just wants to like.

Prior to his announcement yesterday, there were many mixed feelings among his supporters and critics alike. Some on both sides felt that he shouldn’t be held to blame for the deaths. Others on both sides felt that he should be fired immediately for the chain of problems that they say created the scenario in which the deaths occurred.

A detailed government report on the fire itself and the events of the evening was just released today, and as anticipated, it pulls no punches about a series of failures that night: an “overconfident approach” to attacking the fire, inadequate equipment, insufficient training in modern firefighting tactics, and an “unstructured and uncoordinated” response on the scene.

Since contents of the report began making their way to the media last week, the blame game has intensified. Some continue to blame Thomas and Thomas alone, since he’s the chief. Others blame Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, who has been in office for 32 years — he’s now in his ninth term as mayor — and who has critics that are extremely vocal, just not numerous enough or organized enough to have created any real challenge election after election.

Others are blaming city council (and the mayor) for inadequately funding the fire department. If the department was operating with obsolete equipment and couldn’t afford proper training, they argue, it was clearly the failure of the city’s leadership to provide funding.

There are some who are angry with the furniture store itself, which had a steel truss structure that presented a challenge to firefighting.  The report mentions fire code violations at the building. And apparently, neither the warehouse nor furniture showroom had sprinklers or fire walls. The report indicated that if these had been present, the fire, which began behind the building at a loading dock, would likely never have posed much of a threat.

The fire reportedly originated from a discarded cigarette in the loading area. The cigarette was tossed too close to combustible materials. The smoker should have use better discretion, but then the combustible materials should never have been there in the first place.

I read a post somewhere about blaming Gov. Mark Sanford for not mandating better standards for his state’s fire departments.

I have been somewhat surprised to have not encountered anyone putting all of the blame on President Bush, but I’m sure that’s coming soon, too.

I note with little surprise the absence of one particular group of people who seem to escaping unscathed. That would be the taxpayers. Us. We expect our fire departments and our police departments to be well-funded, well-staffed, well-trained and well-equiped. We demand their services at a moment’s notice. We expect them to put their lives on the line on a daily basis, and hope that they never suffer any form of harm.

Yet when presented with the fact that they need more money, all we hear is “tax increase,” so it’s automatically a bad idea.

Sure, we elect our leaders to take care of these things for us, so that we don’t have to think about such details. But at some point, no matter how many other people failed, if a systematic series of failures was operating for years before the Sofa Super Store went up in smoke, taking nine of our firefighters with it, one has to wonder how all of us missed signs that must have been there somewhere. If we ignored them or if we denied them, through our protests of tax increases, what they said they needed, why aren’t we to blame for our self-centered stinginess? And if we elected leaders who only mask real problem like this, having chosen people who clearly don’t have our community’s best interest at heart, why aren’t we to blame for putting them in office? If none of them thought to ask the right questions, why aren’t those of us who seem to be a wealth of questions now in the clarity of hindsight accepting any responsibility for what happened?

When disaster strikes, we need a scapegoat. Sometimes we need lots of scapegoats. Hell, let’s blame half of the city.

We want someone’s head on a silver platter. We want someone to pay. And this time, we mean it.

As long as it isn’t us.