abaduck

These are great shots, and I hope you don't think this comment churlish, but... could ya lose the watermark? It's *very* intrusive and really distracts from my appreciation of the shots, I find. Isn't possibly to digitally, invisibly, watermark the files in EXIF data these days?

Not yet Tom, but it is on my shopping list - I know people who have used it and speak highly of it. Mike

Nice shots guys, but if you're serious about trying to photograph lightning you might want to try one of these: http://www.lightningtrigger.com/ Mike

I think you're twisting things there mate. The 'flame fire heat' etc. is an exemption so you don't have to wear vests when wearing packs! If you're looking for 'excuses' not to wear vests, which it sounds like you might be angling at, then it's simple; you only need to wear the vests when exposed to traffic. Close the road. No traffic = no compulsory vests. At least that's my understanding of what the law says.

Tommy, 1. Yes the UK still use high-pressure hosereels - 500psi, 50gpm if I recall correctly (very much like our booster reels) for interior attack, where possible. Part of that is down to building construction, and part of that is down to the tactics which have already been alluded to, i.e. gas cooling. The UK also operate a 'quick water' SOP, which aims to have the first hoseline in the door within 30 seconds of the pump pulling up to the structure. Of course, they won't hesitate to get out the 1 3/4" equivalent if the volume of fire requires it - and as others have pointed out, whilst UK building construction may not have changed all that much, fire loads in those buildings ARE increasing, exactly as they are here. A couple of examples from brief fire reports: Fire in detached house. Kitchen 40 per cent destroyed by fire and 60 per cent by smoke. Flooring on ground floor 100 per cent destroyed by fire, 60 per cent smoke damage to flooring on first floor. Extinguished using 2 hosereel jets, 4 breathing apparatus sets in use. Mid Terraced 2 storey dwelling 90% destroyed by fire. Extinguished using 8 sets of breathing apparatus,a ground monitor, 2 main jets and 2 hosereel jets. (They lost one - went exterior. 'hosereel jet' = booster reel, 'main jet' = 1 3/4", 'ground monitor' = master stream. Was in my home town too.) 2. I don't know where this 'down the stairs on your butt' technique came from - who's been teaching it? Is it used outside the Northeast? Feet first on stomach, feet at the edges of stairs to put your weight on the strongest part is what I was unambiguously taught.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Back when I lived in England, I found myself following a clearly drunk driver. Called it in... fifteen minutes later a cop called me back. Yes, he was drunk as a skunk, he's going to jail, thanks for calling him in. Score one to the good guys.

I have used Pro-Techs for a year or two. I love their dexterity but they DO shrink - they're pretty tight to get on now. I don't know if it's the heat, or just a lot of wet/dry cycles, but something has shrunk them - just a little, but enough. Too much in my case, unlike sr71. I'd still buy another pair, but I'd go a size bigger and send them through the washer a couple of times before using them. Other thing to bear in mind is they're pretty short - don't think about using them without thumbhole cuffs, unless you want burned wrists!

I shoot in both - each shot is recorded as raw and jpg. So I have quick & dirty jpgs to throw on web, and raw images to process and bring out the best. The Nikon D3 comes with pretty decent software called ViewNX which allows a good deal of manipulation of raw images - and up to +- 2EV exposure adjustment. Other than that, software I use includes Photoshop, I also use ACDSee Pro 2.5, which is a great image indexer/browser and has some useful built-in editing functions for quick & dirty adjustments. It also groks Nikon raw format. I keep a copy of Imagenomic NoiseWare Pro around for rescue work with excessively noisy images. The critical thing for best low light / low noise performance is photosite size - the size of the individual pixels on the sensor chip. That's where & why the Nikon D3 excels in my opinion; it's a full-frame 35mm sensor, but 'only' 12.1MP resolution - which means that the individual photosites are, relatively speaking, huge. It's a tradeoff; if you really want the highest resolution (20MP+), the photosites are inevitably going to be smaller and you're going to lose out on low light / low noise performance - you may be able to get the resolution you want in your tight crops, but find that the noise levels are such as to make it unusable. And of course sensitivity is paramount; you can fix underexposure, to a degree, you can fix noise, to a degree - but you can't fix blur caused by handholding at too slow a shutter speed! If you want some sample shots, let me know and I'll dig them up.

I swear by my Nikon D3. The D3X is higher resolution still; you trade more resolution for poorer low light performance. Superb glass, not a bad thing to say about anything to do with them.

There's also a very good and insightful piece on Iran by the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8111290.stm

It's not quite so simple... the reports I've been reading, from people in our own intelligence community, suggest that Ahmadinejad DID actually win the election by a small margin (or would have, if it had been free & fair) - his current problems stem from the fact that they completely overdid it when trying to stuff the ballot boxes...

I think North Korea should remember the fate of the last militarist state to attack Hawai'i...

No, no... I'm talking about the first physical contact, when the trooper assaults (not arrests, assaults) the paramedic as he's explaining he has a patient aboard at 03:05 in the *dashcam* video. At that point the trooper loses all authority. At that point the trooper arguably commits the crime of assaulting a paramedic in the performance of their duty - which, as the paramedic reminds him later, IS a crime (felony or misdemeanor, I don't know) in that state. The paramedic would (very) arguably even have been justified in performing a citizens arrest on the trooper at that point (although he would have been an integral idiot to try). He's certainly justified in defending himself against further aggression, whether under the colour of arrest or not. I'm sorry but the more I see, the worse it looks for the blue team; I didn't see a trooper there, I saw a jerk in a uniform as the aggressor in a road rage incident. And again, I have no axe to grind, I don't take any pleasure from saying it - I just call it as I see it.

Hmmmm. I'm not a cop, or an EMT - so I have no expertise, just common sense, but also no axe to grind. A few points occur to me: 1. There was allegedly an assault on the officer by the paramedic; I saw none in this clip. I did see the officer assault the paramedic. 2. Everything the cop did after he was informed there was a patient transport in progress was wrong. The professional thing to do would have been to say 'take care of your patient and get the hell out of here now; we can take this up at the hospital'. 3. Everything the paramedic did after he had informed the cop there was a patient transport in progress was wrong. The professional thing to do would have been to say 'I have a patient, their needs come first, period. I'm leaving NOW. Take this up at the hospital if you like'. Just left, and not got into a useless argument with a cop. 4. There was some discussion earlier in this thread about 'resisting arrest'. Sometimes 'resisting arrest' is resisting arrest, and sometimes it's legitimate self-defence against an unprovoked assault. Calling the assault an 'arrest' doesn't make it less of an assault. 5. The fact that we're even having this discussion about a scene involving a cop, a paramedic, and a patient *sucks*. It appears everyone in uniform on the scene forgot who the most important person was - only the civilians remembered that little detail. What does that say about professionalism?

I've made my views on absolute age requirements clear. It's simply not credible to me that a guy is past his sell-by date at... what was it? 32? 34? That's just wrong. But I agree with the view that, if you have rules, it's best to stick by them - by law, they may not have any choice in the matter anyway. Which brings me to the possible solution; law. I hope I'm not imagining it, but isn't there such a thing a 'legislative appointment'? If the guy has the record of service to his country you describe, wouldn't it be possible for him to get support enough to convince a politician to tack a one-line clause onto some other bill making him legislatively eligible? That's the kind of thing that can make politicos look good with the votes... good for a spot on the 6pm news maybe. Doesn't fix the system, but might fix this one problem.

There's some truth in that... I'm 45 and... perhaps very mildly pear-shaped, as Chief Flynn put it so delicately! Although I can still swing on the monkey bars with my kids. But on a recent FAST class I was standing firm when some (not all, not most, but some) guys half my age and less pear-shaped were getting a little wobbly in the legs. Old age and cunning has a lot going for it - as has knowledge of your own limits, and what you're really capable of when pushed. Which is more than the youngsters realize, I think - it comes with experience. Not even fire service experience, just the school of hard knocks.

As an immigrant to these shores, I'd go further and question why the heck people seem to feel having a cutoff age is necessary, let alone permissible? You hire the best people to do the job, period. It's that simple. Doing anything else is failing in your fiduciary duty to the taxpayers, and I don't understand why it hasn't been litigated against successfully. Who gives a damn what age an applicant is, if they have everything you're looking for? The practice of having a cutoff age is simply unheard of in the UK, and they seem to manage just fine, so I'm not prepared to accept it as a given. (Disclaimer: personal interest. I'm 45, and if I was a few years younger, and/or the cutoff ages were a few years older, I would be trying to get hired myself!)

"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived." - General George Smith Patton, Jr.

I have pride in our department. I have little pride in the organisation and politics that results in us having to get in our rigs, drive for several minutes, drive PAST the firehouse of another department, then drive for a couple of minutes more to reach one of the more distant corners of our district. *of course* the other department should be first due. But apparently that's not possible due to ancient political boundaries; the homeowners pay taxes to 'us', not 'them', and no-one seems to be prepared to try and fix it. That's nothing less than brain-damaged stupid. I don't pretend to know what the answer is - maybe it IS the Westchester Fire Department. But, pride in department or company notwithstanding, we shouldn't lose sight of who we're paid - or volunteer - to serve! And if we haven't managed to fix the kind of idiocy I described in the last fifty years, then maybe the system could use a shakeup.

I've never been known to keep my mouth shut, even when that might be the best course, so: 1. It's patently obvious to me that there should be one department, Westchester Fire & Rescue Service, for the entire county, staffed by an appropriate combination of career, retained, and volunteer FFs. Will it ever happen? When pigs fly... too many vested interests. 2. What the heck have FASNY got to do with property taxes? 3. If you seriously want to make 'New York State more affordable for people who own real property' as FASNY claim to want, then the answer is obvious: abolish or virtually abolish property tax, and pay for services out of income and/or sales tax instead. It's a much fairer system. That's the system in the UK, and much of Europe. Property taxes still exist in the UK, but they're capped at no more than... maybe $3,000? $4,000? per year for the very largest property. Much less for average property, and even that is mostly waived if you're sick, retired, or on welfare. Why are property taxes - as a concept - sacrosanct? They're not ordained by God you know! Those who advocate piecemeal reform - a merger or consolidation here, a scheme to shave a little off property taxes there - are trying to fix a fundamentally ill-designed machine by applying some random duct tape. IMHO.

THAT is the most constructive idea to come out of this thread. Perhaps I've been a bit outspoken at times on this thread, I admit - one thing I think we would all agree on, *no-one* in that video was looking particularly professional, and anything that can help us get a better insight into each others jobs can only be a good thing.

You tell me (or even speculate sensibly) what business the cops had that was more important than transporting a patient to the ER, and I'll concede that point. Otherwise...

The video shows a trooper interfering with patient care/transport. Like it or not, for any reason (short of perhaps a warrant for arrest for murder being out for the EMT!) that is wrong. What's the priority at any incident scene - LE, EMS, or fire? Life! Have you read the sworn statement? The EMT swears the trooper assaulted *him*, and he reminded the trooper that assaulting an EMT in the course of their duties was a felony. And apparently he has independent witnesses. Those troopers should, and hopefully will, go to jail. The EMT was quite proper to resist. Until we see some statements from the troopers about that, I have to wonder about the nature and extent of the alleged 'assault'. I have been threatened with arrest precisely once in my life, by an Amtrak rent-a-cop. I accidently brushed my sleeve very gently against him in a crowd; he informed me in no uncertain terms that ANY physical contact with an LEO, no matter how gentle and absent of any malice was a crime of assault, and he could take me to jail. At that point we weren't dealing with a cop arresting a criminal, we were dealing with someone interfering with patient care. Resisting them was appropriate. Calling a real cop (or at least a cop with a correct set of priorities) and having them removed from the scene would have been even more appropriate. I would condemn the cops for pulling over an ambulance engaged in an emergency transport for essentially trivial reasons, irrespective of what happened later. On that we are in full agreement.

I too wondered about that... the new nominee having previously given a judgment on the case, would they have to recuse themselves from the case if they were sitting on the SC when it came up? That would leave a clear 'conservative' SC majority...

Obviously she was parked in the collapse zone. Would she have preferred the department NOT fight the fire, and have the whole building come down on her car?! By my lights, the FD were doing exactly what they're sworn to do - *minimize* property loss, including her car! I think there's a cast-iron defence, even absent the Tort Claims laws.