The Eastsound Fire Department was performing an exercise with the Navy around 7 p.m. on Feb. 28. It was loud, and with the wind, it sounded like something terrible was happening, and it went on for quite a while. This exercise might have been deemed to be necessary to one day save someone’s life, but in my opinion, as a taxpayer and neighbor, their inconsiderate action in today’s world of fear, anxiety and not knowing what’s going to happen next, might have very well cost someone theirs – perhaps a senior living alone.

I went to the fire department on March 1 to find out what was going on, which is how I found out about this exercise. OPALCO puts a warning in the paper plus mails a notification of planned outages, and I believe sends emails. The Eastsound Fire Dept. did none of that! They did, however, apologize after smiling and talking about their exercise, but I found no humor about how inconsiderate, irresponsible and reckless their action was! And if someone would have had a heart attack, smiles could have easily become tears. If part of this exercise was to terrify neighbors while they were trying to relax through a wind storm, they succeeded.

As children, we are taught to think before we act, and one can only hope our fire department and all others involved in this exercise would live by those words of wisdom.

John Cook

Eastsound