‘Insignificant’: Fire dept. responds to ‘embellished’ Biden blaze tale
House on fire, Joe … or pants on fire?
The Delaware fire department that extinguished a minor 2004 blaze at President Biden’s house on Friday responded to scrutiny of Biden’s recent spate of exaggerations — saying that for firefighters, it was an “insignificant fire,” but that the event understandably was traumatic for Biden.
The Cranston Heights Fire Company weighed in three days after Biden claimed that firefighters nearly died in his kitchen, shortly after a New York Times article highlighted two prior Biden accounts of the fire as “example[s] of embellishment.”
“For the fire service, this could be considered an insignificant fire as it did not lead to multiple alarms and did not need a widespread incident response throughout the county,” the department said in a statement.
“However, in the case for any homeowner, it was obviously significant at the time and was quickly responded to by the local firefighters.”
The department delicately avoided criticizing Biden, who still spends much of his time in Delaware, and explained that fires can worsen rapidly.
“There are types of fires that involve structural issues of homes that can be very dangerous. These issues can cause collapse that can happen quickly and, sometimes, without warning,” the department said.
“Any fire that firefighters encounter is inherently dangerous and can put their lives at risk, as they attempt to save lives and property. In this case, the fire was contained in 20 minutes and avoided significant extension into the rest of the home. However, it still caused damage to the home.
“The traumatic experience, as recollected by President Joe Biden and any victim of a home fire, is recognized by the fire service,” the statement went on.
“We appreciate the concern and support of the President for the fire company that protects his home and his family, both at the time of the fire and today. The fire company and its members also truly appreciate his concern for the safety of the responders as they sought to protect life and property at the time.”
At the time of the fire, which was caused by a lightning strike, then-Fire Chief George Lamborn told the Associated Press, “Luckily, we got it pretty early. The fire was under control in 20 minutes.”
Lamborn could not be reached for comment and the fire department’s spokesman Vincent Miller said in a Friday email that it wasn’t possible to release further information on Biden’s house fire “due to records maintenance time limitations.”
Biden has given a variety of accounts of the fire. In his latest telling on Tuesday, Biden said at a fire prevention event that “we almost lost a couple firefighters, they tell me, because the kitchen floor was — the burning between the beams and in the house in addition to, it almost collapsed into the basement.”
Last week, Biden told Floridians who lost their homes in Hurricane Ian that he and first lady Jill Biden “know the feeling” because “we didn’t lose our home, but lightning struck and we lost an awful lot of it about 15 years ago.”
Biden said in November 2021, “I know, having had a house burn down with my wife in it — she got out safely, God willing — that having a significant portion of it burn, I can tell: 10 minutes makes a hell of a difference.”
The local department used focus on Biden’s stories as an opportunity to promote fire safety.
“Fires in the home can often spread quickly and can vary in levels of intensity. These fires can spread exponentially and even more quickly now than compared to 2004, with the materials of modern homes and its contents,” the department’s Friday statement said.
“A quick response by the local Fire Company ultimately extinguished this fire, prior to a devastating result. Fire prevention is a very important topic of discussion that pertains to American homes that includes having systems in place for early warning, having home escape plans, and extinguishment equipment available or systems installed.”
Biden, who turns 80 next month, is the oldest-ever president, leading to questions about his mental fitness for office. But he also has a reputation dating to the 1980s of telling inaccurate stories about his own biography.
In a recent case of confusion, Biden searched for the late Rep. Jackie Waloriski (R-Ind.) at an Oct. 3 event, despite publicly mourning her death eight weeks earlier.
But other Biden accounts appear to be factual stretches told to establish a personal connection to audiences.
Biden said in Puerto Rico last week that “I was sort of raised in the Puerto Rican community at home, politically.” Only about 2,000 Puerto Ricans lived in Delaware when he was launching his career and his books contain no information about interacting with the small community.
Biden last September told Jewish leaders that he remembered “spending time at” and “going to” Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018 after the worst anti-Semitic attack in US history, in which 11 people were murdered. The synagogue said he never visited and the White House later said he was thinking about a 2019 phone call to the synagogue’s rabbi.
Later that month, Biden told an Idaho audience that his “first job offer” came from local lumber and wood products business Boise Cascade. The company said it was news to them.
In January, Biden told students at historically black colleges in Atlanta that he was arrested multiple times while protesting in favor of civil rights — another claim for which there is no evidence.
Biden said at the Naval Academy’s graduation ceremony in May that he was appointed to the military school in 1965 by the late Sen. J. Caleb Boggs (R-Del.). A search of Boggs’ archives failed to turn up evidence of the appointment.
And Biden has told at least eight times as president a chronologically impossible tale involving a former Amtrak conductor to underscore his love of passenger rail — most recently last month while hosting union negotiators in the Oval Office to celebrate the aversion of a major rail strike.
Biden admitted last month to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa that “I wasn’t arrested” trying to visit Nelson Mandela during the apartheid era, despite saying so at least three times in 2020.
Biden dropped out of his first presidential campaign in 1987 due to a scandal involving plagiarism of speeches and a law school paper. Biden infamously borrowed British politician Neil Kinnock’s family history — with Biden changing geographic details to falsely claim in speeches that “my ancestors … worked in the coal mines of northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football for four hours.” Unlike Kinnock, who had used the line to describe his own family, Biden’s ancestors did not mine coal.
Before he dropped out of the 1988 presidential primary, Biden also falsely claimed that he “graduated with three degrees from college,” was named “the outstanding student in the political science department,” “went to law school on a full academic scholarship — the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship” and ”ended up in the top half” of his class. None of those claims was true.
