04/01/2023
Haverhill Mayor Fiorentini announced today that the Haverhill Fire department will immediately begin transitioning away from a traditional human-based fire department model to a robotic one.
When the city leader was questioned on how these tank-like robots equipped with water cannons would replace all of the duties that a firefighter performs other than fighting fire, duties like; water rescues, fire rescues, motor vehicle accidents, overdoses, hazardous material incidents, shootings, CPR, stabbings, and the everyday picking-grandma-off-the-ground-after-she-fell incident the 2 decade mayor said that “these robots can shoot water at 2,500 gallons per minute, so I’m sure the dozens of highly-paid robot operators now on city payroll will figure it out”. Among many other concerns, when questioned on the cost of the robots, Fiorentini would only say that the devices will cost significantly less than it costs to hire a firefighter for a hundred years. According the the mayor’s and auditor’s office, the cost of a single Haverhill Firefighter over a hundred years costs the city roughly $30 million dollars each whereas “these robots use significantly less consumables like toilet paper that the city has to pay for while human firefighters are on duty”.
The statement today coming only weeks after another lost battle between the local 1011 and the mayor, when union staffing claims where vindicated using a study funded by the mayor intended to prove the firefighters wrong and backfired. Feeling as though that this event is more of a political one than a realistic solution, Haverhill Firefighter Local 1011 President Tim “Tim” Carroll only commented that “this doesn’t make any sense” while looking up momentarily from his union issued iPad which was streaming the popular early-2000s show BattleBots.
The 20 year mayor was also asked whether he had any other innovative ideas for reducing the number of city employees. He would not get into specifics but provided us with photos of prototypes being considered to replace Haverhill police officers and teachers, refusing to clarify which ones would be used where (pictured below).
When pressed for more information regarding this very strange turn of events, the long-time head of the city only kept repeating “I’m just getting started, I’m just getting started, I’m just getting started” over and over again before we were rushed out of his office by a group wearing Cyberdyne badges.
More on this and other Haverhill news and views below…