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Grass will also receive an undisclosed amount from a deferred compensation fund. She is also eligible for Social Security, but I do not know if she has applied for it yet.

After all, she is only 63.

She was making $117,000 a year as director of the system. She made no investment decisions. She was hired as a payroll clerk in 1986.

Part of her cash payout came from unused vacation days. Office workers in the Firemen’s Retirement System get up to 12 weeks of vacation a year. That fact was in a story this newspaper published in March 2013 about the generous benefits the office workers receive. They get the most generous benefits in the city, the story said.

A year before that story, this newspaper published a story about the fire pension board, and the fact that 48 percent of retired ºüÀêÊÓƵ firefighters retired on disability. The average age of these firefighters when they retired was 42. Their benefits were generous — 75 percent of the department’s maximum salaries, tax free, for life, with annual raises. The story also raised questions about some of the disability claims.

What is this obsession with firefighters?

Maybe it’s a form of nostalgia. Some of us remember when there used to be lots of fires. In fact, fires were the stuff of nightmares. When I was a kid in Chicago, a fire killed 92 children and three nuns in a Roman Catholic school, Our Lady of the Angels.

In even earlier times, entire cities — or at least big chunks of them — went up in flames. Rome burned in 64 A.D. while Nero fiddled. London burned in 1212. More recently, there was the Great ºüÀêÊÓƵ Fire of 1849 and the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Fires were once as common as crime. Our whole public safety model was geared to two facts — people misbehave, and stuff burns. We needed cops and firefighters.

People still misbehave, but happily, stuff doesn’t burn so much these days. Part of it is codes — Our Lady of the Angels wouldn’t pass muster now — and part of it has to do with sprinkler systems and smoke alarms and fire-resistant material.

Oddly enough, considering our interest in ºüÀêÊÓƵ firefighters, there are still fires in ºüÀêÊÓƵ. That’s because the city has some old buildings and some poor people. Poor people do things like use space heaters to heat a room. So there are fires. Fatalities, too.

Fires consume things rapidly. By the time a fire becomes evident enough for somebody to call the fire department, it is often too late. Firefighters are still willing to charge into burning buildings, but their efforts are often in vain. You might remember that iconic photograph of ºüÀêÊÓƵ firefighter Adam Long — now fire chief in University City — carrying a child out of a fire. The photo won a Pulitzer Prize for Ronald Olshwanger. Sadly, the child died.

But at least the city firefighters occasionally charge into burning buildings. Their suburban counterparts don’t get much opportunity. In fact, if you think about all the stories that come out of the Monarch Fire Protection District — pink shirts, big salaries, bulletproof vests, battles between the union and the board — there’s scarcely ever a mention of a fire. Lots of heat, but no smoke, no flames.

We still need police. People misbehave more than ever! We need ambulances and EMT crews. But few of us will ever need a fire engine.

That does not mean we won’t get one. In some municipalities and districts, fire engines accompany ambulances on emergency calls. Cynics claim that’s done so the fire department can log a service call for its truck, but I’ve been told the concern is the EMT guys might need a hand with the stretcher. That seems an inefficient way to provide help, but who knows?

For the most part, though, firefighters are an anachronism. Heroic figures from the past who are willing to run into burning buildings, but seldom get the chance to do so.

They still remain a political force. In the fire protection districts, their supporters sometimes run the boards. In the municipalities, few elected officials want to take them on. So the firefighters get handsome pensions, and they make sure that the people who work for them get the same. Why wouldn’t they?

“I’m honored to have worked for the firefighters who risk their lives every day,� Grass told reporter Nick Pistor.

The politicians go along with it. So if you want to be upset with the pensions or the benefits, just remember who deserves the blame. It’s not the people who would run into burning buildings, if only stuff still burned.