abaduck

Did he? When and where? If he did he'll have me to deal with... (FF with ASD son) As for the show, from what little I've seen it sucks fairly hard - 'Sex And The City, With Rigs' seemed to about sum it up..

I hear you bro but even then... we respond to EMS calls 8am-6pm. And your (round numbers) 24,000++ pop., 4000 calls, that's still significantly less than they run per head. Guess there must be a lot of sick people in Joshua!... or maybe they get a lot of brush fires. Demographics, as you say. Agreed 100%... it's called remembering who you serve, and why you exist, and putting that ahead of politics and personal agendas.

Is it just me or doesn't that quite add up? Population 4500, 1100 calls per year... that's a call for every fourth person, every year! That seems an extraordinary call volume... we run about 650 a year for a population of 12,000.

As others have posted, in practice, it appears you have to be a resident of the *city* in question to stand any real chance of getting appointed.

"Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541) " Excuse me, perhaps I'm missing something here, but when did the Federal government acquire the right to regulate and penalize doctors?

1. Bloody hell! 2. The Brothers in Beijing will have a story to tell their kids! 3. I wouldn't be in the shoes of the firework company boss for all the tea in... China 4. I'll be interested to read the reports of how the structure handled the fire. There didn't appear to be any significant collapse.

At the risk of proving some career vs. vollie comments (which I do NOT want to do; those who know me know I have deep respect for both) perhaps it might be helpful to break out this topic into 'career FFs' and 'vollie FFs'. Speaking as a vollie, from what I've heard (and I'm still pretty new to the fire service) I think there has been a change in attitude (at least in the more forward-thinking departments); with no disrespect to those who have gone before, the 'vibe' I'm picking up is that we're more proficient and professional these days. I know I take what I do very seriously, and I think that goes for most of the rest of us.. but yes, we're less experienced too; we don't perhaps get the number of working fires of years gone by. Although this last year has made me wonder about that...! I'd also like to chip in one of my favorite sayings: "Good judgment is the result of experience; 'experience' is the result of bad judgment!"

That's very clear... thanks. Might be worth taking the tests just for practice, as was suggested, in case anyone does fancy hiring the Oldest Probie In Town

Just curious, what does that mean in practice? That, given two 'equal' candidates, the WP resident gets the job? Or, they won't even bother looking at non-WP residents if they find enough qualified candidates from WP?

Date: 08/02/09 Time: 09.35 Location: Victoria, South Australia Departments: Fire Service, army Description: Worst wildfires in Australian history Links: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7877178.stm Writer:abaduck BBC reporting nearly 100 confirmed dead so far, more fatalities expected. Entire towns burned to the ground.

I don't have any problem with the cops checking up on the photographer. They were doing their jobs, and acting in good faith at that point. But that incident should (IMHO, and I'm not a cop) have ended one of two ways - amicably, perhaps with the officers wishing him luck in the photo contest, once they had determined he posed no threat. Or with him, and his photos, being handed over to the FBI for investigation as a suspected terrorist, if that's what they really believed, with his car, home, and workplace searched etc. etc. I stand by my original point. The photos are either evidence, or perfectly legal. Either way, attempting to procure their destruction is just plain dumb at best, and yes technically criminal at worst. It might be stretching a point to call it criminal, but let's face it, when the police arrest someone there does occasionally seem to be a 'find something, anything, some technicality, to charge him with' mentality - as witnessed by the preposterous (IF the account is correct) trespassing charge in this very case! I don't disagree, and yes it is a sensitive situation. I've read of so many similar cases that I'm rather troubled. And it's not just a US problem, it's even worse elsewhere: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7351252.stm Back in the UK, they have the 'Official Secrets Act' which contains the concept of 'prohibited places' where photography is forbidden - mostly defense establishments. But such places have to have signs posted, by law. None of this affects the original case; as I've said more than once, trying to have the photos deleted serves *no one*, whether the photographer is guilty or innocent.

Of course not on the *runway*, any more than you have the right to walk on the *tracks* and take pictures of a train. But from public areas... sure, why not? I've never had any problem: (Travelling 'light' with kids... fires are less hard work!)

Great link thanks, I hadn't seen that before. I hadn't seen these H.U.D windows before either, but to me... KISS. It has 2x4s and plywood. It looks a bit like a roof, treat it like one - chainsaw. Worry about getting fancy if the saw won't start, or is needed elsewhere. Can I drift the topic slightly? Once upon a time I saw some *great* FDNY forcible entry training videos. But I was told they weren't even allowed to leave the building, far less give out copies or share them online. I got the impression that, technically, I shouldn't even have been allowed to watch them. Anyone know why FDNY have this strict policy? There was nothing 'secret' about them, it was just conventional FE, done very professionally, and it would be good to share...

Read the story; he was a *passenger* who had just got off a train, which he had paid to ride. He had an incontestable right to be there!

Quite. For Metro North and LIRR, there's a helpful 'permit' you can carry: http://www.lirrhistory.com/photog.pdf (scroll down to the bottom) For anywhere else, there's a more general permit that can be used: As to the Amtrak cops in this... IF the account given is true, what were they thinking? IF the account is true, they should go to jail. Period. Either the photos were legal, in which case they sought the criminal destruction of property, or the photos were illegal, in which case they sought the deliberate destruction of evidence. I'm not a cop - perhaps our LEO colleagues can chip in here with their thoughts - but everything I've ever read on the subject tells me that a cop should *never* seek the destruction of a photograph? Apart from anything else, it's pointless; it can always be undeleted later. The only way to ensure the photographer doesn't recover the photograph is to arrest the photographer and seize the memory card as evidence. I wouldn't be surprised to see a flash mob of people taking photographs in Penn in response to this, in the near future!

You clearly haven't seen London traffic! And don't forget, in the British system, the fire service do NOT do EMS calls - the ambulance service is a totally separate outfit. The NHS isn't exactly bursting at the seams with cash... they wouldn't do it if they couldn't make a case for it.

Not from me. Now I'm not very experienced, but the more experience I get, the more I'm coming to the conclusion that "courtesy" lights are a barely-useful neither-fish-nor-fowl compromise. I wouldn't miss them. I believe I've heard of some states allowing POVs to use full lights and sirens, and operating as authorised emergency vehicles, with authority to exceed posted limits, stop-and-proceed at red lights etc. It seems to me that we should go one way or the other - either allow POVs *with properly trained and certified drivers* to operate as emergency vehicles (as Chiefs cars do now), or abolish all lights for POVs. Disclaimer: I operate in a geographically-compact dense suburban district. I'm prepared to believe that FFs operating in large rural districts might find "courtesy" lights less useless. I think the 'impersonating an officer' angle is a red herring; people who are prepared to do *that* with evil intentions aren't going to be deterred by having lights that contravene the V&T laws...

I definitely need more sleep. Thanks!

They ask people to state the name and contact address for their VFD. The implication is that they may/will be checked.

That's interesting. I'd heard it said previously that it didn't apply to members of combination departments. But looking at the language on the form: "Active volunteer firefighter means a person who has been approved by the authorities in control of a duly organized New York State volunteer fire company or New York State volunteer fire department as an active volunteer firefighter of the fire company or department and who is faithfully and actually performing service in the protection of life and property from fire or other emergency, accident or calamity in connection with which the services of the fire company or fire department are required" There's nothing to exclude members of combination departments. Which makes is only fair - quite a few of our guys go on a bloody lot of calls, a lot more than a quiet 'all volunteer' department.

Crooks, indeed... be careful, Seth. I seriously hope you're not lumping my wife in with 'these crooks'. She's a Wall St. junk bond portfolio manager, and the kindest, most honorable person I've ever met. She's as honest as the day is long, and worth every cent of her bonus. In my unbiased opinion.

Yea, more: "He is currently on a special form of probation called accelerated rehabilitation, which wipes one's record clean if he or she stays out of trouble, until May 22. Now that McDougal is facing new criminal charges, he could be tried in the larceny case. " Ooops. Not the sharpest tool. In fact, he sounds about as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike.

A 33 post thread on lights... yep, must be EMTBravo!

Firefox here too: Secure Connection Failed fdphotounit.smugmug.com uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is only valid for a248.e.akamai.net (Error code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain) * This could be a problem with the server's configuration, or it could be someone trying to impersonate the server. * If you have connected to this server successfully in the past, the error may be temporary, and you can try again later.

Very sharp. Good luck with the new rig! Clearly a lot of thought has gone into it... it does remind me of another rig which got a lot of thought, our own new E51: KME vs. Pierce, but some similar thought processes