wraftery

I think that lift assists should be handled only by people who realize that one day they might be old and need a lift. It doesn't matter if it's FD,PD, EMS or the local Boy Scout Troop. All should be able to recognize a more serious situation and notify the proper agency. The old lady you helped may be saying "What nice boys those firemen are" to her friends and family. You may want those people on your side when layoff time is near. Reading some of the posts, my conclusion is this: If I call, I would rather have guys like EFDCAPT115 take the call than alot of you guys who posted.

Unfortunately, the worth of a Firefighter depends no WHO you talk to and WHEN you talk to them.

I wonder where Poland Springs, Maine gets their hydrant water. Greenburgh flushes on a regular basis and still, some mains that don't get much domestic flow-thru still look like this . The nexr day is when the "brown underware" calls come in, even though flushing is well advertised. But go ahead and drink the hydrant or hoseline water. Like Barry said it is the same water as your tap. Plus it is chock full of iron and other minerals. Don' mock the picture. NY tap water is still the best, probably in the world.

YEP...WE'LL FILL YOUR POOL...IF THAT'S WHAT YOU REALLY WANT

Wow! That's a lot of resources. I think I just had a revelation! Maybe the reason for Westchester FD's not calling for all these resources is that we don't know how to organize all these people and apparatus into a proper fireground command system. I've been away from Westchester for a while now, so I have a question. Aside from Scarsdale and White Plains, who I know are using ICS as-written, who in the county is using ICS (not taking courses...I said using) on a regular basis? If you are not using ICS, what fireground command system are you using and why? Give me a little info, and maybe we will start another thread. This should prove interesting.

You must remember thet Typing is a work in progress by NIMS. It is by no means finished, and the final list will take a long, long time to get out to the "guy in the street." So far, it has taken maybe ten years to copy the types of only a few resources from the forestry fire service. Don't hold your breath on Typing.

Regarding bnechis's required resources count: This seems like a lot of resources, but it is not. The operational period for members on the initial assignment is 20 minutes because the SCBAs that are being used will last about 20 min. At that point they are going to have to be replaced with fresh troops. This means that the additional personnel that are responding on the Working Fire call would have to be at least double what you had on the initial assignment. And that's only to maintain an uninterrupted fire attack. In Westchester, is is rare to hear that Staging has been established. More often than not, incoming companies are being put to work immediately. Is this an indication that we are always "coming from behind, and rarely proactive?

We know how to correct these problems in Westchester. We simply choose not to.

Date:4/8/12 to 4/13/12 Time: Location:Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake Frequency: Units Operating: Weather Conditions:Fair Description Of Incident:Multiple Major Fires in one week Reporters:Wraftery Since Sunday: Va Beach:F-18 crash into garden apartment complex Norfolk: 9-story medical building membrane roof fire Chesapeake: 5 Single family homes burn in small conflagration Va Beach: 4-story frame condo double-fatal fire with collapse Hampton Roads departments mobilized for wild See Wavy.com "Fires keep Hampton Roads firefighters busy <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" id="video" width="400" height="340" data="http://www.wavy.com/dpp/news/local_news/fires-keep-hampton-roads-crews-busy?ref=scroller&categoryId=20000&status=true">Fires keep Hampton Roads crews busy: wavy.com</a></p>

WOW...I corrected a couple of errors and the big "THIS HAS BEEN EDITED" sign came up on the scoreboard. That;s a little harsh. Perhaps we could tone it down a might. See the typo semicolon in the last sentence? I was afraid to edit it out after the big sign came up. Thanks

After seeing other videos, I would agree with bnechis in that there was a fairly large fire in the building. It was obvious that the heavy fire conditions required vertical ventilation. I am confused, however, about how much fire there was at the point of roof collapse. There were quite a few places (stacks, ventialting fans, chimneys,etc) that did not show dark smoke and the smoke was not emanating under any real pressure like I would have expected. I will not pick apart a picture or video for minute details and say they were correct or incorrect in their tactics. What I will say is that there may... may... have been factors other than fire contact that caused roof member failure. With the amount of fire that is required to initiate collapse of the roof, I did not see any evidence of sufficient fire at the vent hole. I would have expected to see at least some red down in the vent hole if the fire alone was the cause of collapse. Not an aweful lot of smoke and fire showed after collapse. Did something else contribute to the collapse? That's the question in my mind. AS far as popping a ceiling tile, my only point was that you can expect to see evidence of many changes made to the building over the years with a building of this age. The time to do such investigation is during Company Inspections and to put it in your database. Dearborn, MI may have done this. I dont know. But I DO know that not enough Depts do such inspection or have such records on-scene. Thanks, Barry for pointing me towards the other videos. They were easy to find. But how in the name of Ray Rummery did you know the building was built in 1932? Is Dearborn's database in your CIDS too?

It is rather unusual in that there was very little evidence of fire below them. Smoke was white and not pushing out at all, and no visible fire below them before, during, or after the collapse. I looked at the video several times (which you can't do during the actual incident) and it is possible that the roof was sagging in the very first frame of the video. This building appears to have a slightly pitched roof th alow water to run off to one side of the building, usually the rear. In order to get this pitch, the roof support members are "built up" creating a void for fire travel. It is more or less a shallow cockloft. The roof appears to be covered by a membrane very recently, judging by the shiny vent stacks near the vent hole. If I had to guess, I would guess that the roof had been leaking for perhaps a very long time and the water coming through the old roof could have rotted the roof supports. It is quite possible that this was the cause of the collapse and not the fire. Just my two cents

Very doubtful it had any kind of trusses. They were not in use at the time of this building's construction (1920-1950?). Clues are the "step" on the parapet wall indicating a "flat roof" which has a slight pitch to one side, usually the rear to allow for runoff. Also note the tiles on top of the masonry walls, another clue to date of construction. The only trusses in any common use at that time were bowstrings, used a lot during WWII for gyms or other wide span buildings. Popping a ceiling tile, however is a good move. I would say that iof there are ceiling tiles, it is clue to possible renovations which may have weakened the structure such as cutting thru a rafter to run AC ducts. If you were to pop a ceiling tile in this building, it is very possible you would find that the next ceiling above the dropped ceiling is a 12"x12" interlocking tile ceiling on a wood frame. Above that, a tin ceiling. I would be remiss if I didn't add a pitch for doing Company Inspections. Then we wouldn't have to guess what the building contains. It's nice to know this info before the fire. If you get that info into your CIDS, then everyone will know before the fire.

You need another person to hump and connect the hose while you sit in front of this huge console. Chances are he's only supplying one line. That equals 1 throttle and 1 gate.

The answer to the bullying problem is Boxing Lessons

That city has lots of Truck Companies but no Engine Companies

We are Emergency services. We can't make the mistake of focusing on EITHER the big stuff or the little stuff. We have to be able to handle BOTH. That's what the public expects of us.

Open cabs were so you could look up and see the smoke was one reason. I'm not explaining it, but that's why. Some people like convertables, some ride motorcycles. MY car seats are heated. I like that better. With open cabs, on the other hand, snow was cold, rain sometimes hurt your face but we all loved the job. They didn't have heat, either. I have more than once put my hands in the exhaust (they had no mufflers, either) to get them warm. Why did firehouses have coal furnaces long after the oil burner became popular? It might be because the department rules said "The deskwatchman shall check the furnace hourly and fill and stoke it as needed. What would the desk watchman do if there was no coal to shovel. By the way the desk watchman had to stay up and at the desk all night.

We originally formed the Westchester Firefighters Emerald Society after a few of us who were attending Westchester Community College for Fire Science decided to go forward with the idea. What convinced me personnaly was a quote from DC Bob Curtin, FDMV Ret. which I still remember tpo this day. Bob said we should start our own society "Cause I'm sick of marching behind somebody else." Those words did it for me. I was in! The problem we have had with the NYC parade is that we always wanted to be early in the parade, somewhere behind FDNY. Well, nobody can just jump into that spot. There have been groups that have been in the Parade for 100 years and they don't want anyone jumping the line of march. That's it in a nutshell. The parade is hours long and we cannot simply jump into the line of march that has been decided by the parade committee, which, might I add, is one of the most powerful organizations in the City of New York.

I waited til the end to bring this up, but the last time I was in 310, many moons ago, they needed a new kitchen too. I would have been a Captain, covering YFD on mutual aid before 1989. I was wondering if 310 ever got a refurb in the last 20 years?

WOW! This thread is a job for NIMS. They might be working on these kinds of TYPING questions. The answer will come in about 5-10 years and will look like this: CFF-Career FF VFF-Volunteer FF POCFF-Paid on call FF VFFWGPAS-Volunteer FF who gets paid a stipend FFF-Forestry FF POCFFFWJOOP- Paid on call FFF who jumps out of planes ...And on and on

A Vacant is not a vacant once the Primary and Secondary searches are completed and negative. But be careful when operating in a possible vacant.

I started the job in 1971, and didn't have to Google Charlie McCarthy. On my interview, one of the questions was "I see you have 3 years of college. Do you plan on finishing college and leaving the FD for a real job?" Yes, things have changed. Before somebody adds a post saying how dumb those old guys were, let me explain how all those changes came about. We, the old guys made the changes that you are sometimes taking for granted. One of the first changes I recall was the great reliance on that red rubber booster line. After a few races to prove that it was faster and easiet to stretch 1 1/2" than it was to stretch the "red line," the old booster line became compartment space for something new. Then we decided that it was rather stupid to keep thoae SCBAs in a suitcase. So along came air pak brackets and more compartment space. and so on and so on. So, for the youth of the Fire service, remember that you aren't smarter than us old geezers. We gave you a lot of things to make the job easier and safer. So far, you may have contributed nothing, simply inherited it. Tradition is not a bad thing. It's your responsibility to keep up the tradition in the Fire Service to make the job better and safer as those before you have done. Those SCBAs didn't come out of the suitcases because the Commissioner said it was a good idea.

For loss recovery to pay for contaminated/unuseable equipment (Including apparatus, tools, PPE) I believe that one or more CFR's say that the spiller is responsible for all costs. Am I right, Barry? If so, keep it quiet, and don't let this information out. If word gets around, our elected officials will change the regulations and take all costs out of our pensions.

We used a TIC to collect a Police Officer's shell casings in big piles of leaves along the road. He had shot a wounded deer to put it out of its misery after it was hit by a car. Yes, I said casings. He missed 4 times from a range of 6ft. He was just new and nervous. It was the first time in his life that he was going to use his weapon to kill something. My job was to keep the firefighters from talking the cop into giving them his gun.