TUCKERTON, N.J. (AP) -- In the culture of firefighting, there is no greater insult.
The hand-painted message named a current and former fire chief, terming them ``Makers Of Fine Charcoal.'' That fact that it was scrawled onto the side of an old red fire truck made it even more visible.
Lee Eggert, a former fire chief who has battled with the department and the borough for years, used the truck to make his public protest following a Nov. 8 fire in which a three-story house burned to the ground as firefighters struggled to open a nearby hydrant.
"It was a little slap at them,'' said Eggert, who runs a business repairing fire engines and other emergency vehicles.
The painted truck was parked outside his shop on a heavily traveled stretch of Route 9 in Tuckerton's business district.
His beef with the department and the town goes back at least a decade; Eggert says his criticism of how a fatal fire in the early 1990s was handled led to his suspension from the fire company, leading him to sue to get reinstated.
Since then, he also has accused local officials of incompetence and worse.
During the Nov. 8 fire, firefighters tried to open the hydrant nearest the burning home, but could not budge it. That's because it was reverse-threaded, meaning it had to be opened by turning a wrench in the opposite direction than most hydrants, Eggert said.
Firefighters lost 15 precious minutes connecting to a different hydrant, allowing the blaze to spread. No one was injured, but the house and an adjacent garage were total losses, and two other nearby homes also sustained damage.
As an added tweak, Eggert painted a line on the old fire engine's door that read ``Tuckerton No. 2. We Know How To Open Hydrants.''
Elsewhere, the truck also bore the slogan "Tuckerton Mayor & Council _ Proud Supporters of Incompetence.''
Fire company officials and Mayor Kevin Quinlan did not return phone messages seeking comment. But in an interview with The Press of Atlantic City, Fire Chief Tom McAndrew, who was one of the fire officials whose named were painted on the truck, brushed off Eggert's protest.
"He has his side of the story and we have ours,'' he told the newspaper. ``It is easy to Monday morning quarterback. We have a long-standing policy that states we don't comment on the man.''
At a recent Borough Council meeting, Quinlan called Eggert a ``coward'' for not coming to the meeting in person to voice his criticisms.
Eggert said he's unfazed by comments like that, and said he has not suffered any repercussions for painting the old engine, which he said was soon to be towed away as scrap metal.
