spin_the_wheel

Question..the 33 communities that have a #10 rating...no fire dept.....what does this really mean. Is it a fire protection district that gets rated with no physical FD or is there an organization that is a fire dept. in place.

Im speaking in general....this whole post is about what the public sees......the average person is not walking down the street looking in police or fire vehicle windows. Was the screen that glaring that it stood out? Maybe but most of the time the computer screens are not that big and are angled towards the driver..the Left side of the car...someone walking on the sidewalk..the right side..would have to be going out of his way to look for that, or care about whats on the screen. Most have screen savers as well..so it will go black in time. But as stated above close the screen and thats that.

Speaking of perception..... what looks worse the face book screen...or someone peeping in official vehicles car windows. Could get yourself stopped by a PO if they see you doing that.

I dont think facebook is a big deal. You see the facebook icon linked to almost every website nowadays. Many FD's have a facebook page as well as a regular website. I agree with Sage make it a practice to flip it down.

Ok just to clear some stuff up here it is not used at all as a response vehicle nor will any member of the FD be driving it...also it is not owned by the FD. The project was ok'd by the Mayor of Glen Cove and the City attorney to wear the Glen Cove FD name. It is a publicity stunt on part of the owner who is very supportive of the FD. It was created in part to be show cased in the FD's 175th anniversary parade this June. No money from the FD budget or the City of Glen Cove was used to create it. The owner is also a sponsor of the FD's car show and cruise nights it has been hosting. As for the use of the apparatus floor and model I guess this was ok'd by the city. It could be any firehouse. I guess the FD's that allow the female models to model in those fire girl calenders in gear and on the rigs are doing something very naughty as well. Shame on them also. Good God get over it. You see much worse then this just going to the beach nowadays or the front page of the Daily News!! Boy the new generation of....never mind.

Probably wont be many takers for this and it will go the way of Sutphens Tower-Tiller concept rig a decade or so ago. Pierce did have a rear wheel steer ladder years back Hewlett Ny has one.

My views on all regional "rants" or "forums" is that you cant take them to serious. They are what they are. Sometimes you can pick up some good info, other times not. This is not a training site like say... http://www.fireengineering.com/urbanfirefighter.html But you can pick up some good stuff from time to time. Personally I belong to many sites like this. In the past I have posted questions to various situations on various sites from all over the country about how "others' may do something and have gotten some good feedback and ideas that I brought back to my Dept.. I have also had some good back and forth heated debut on this site. I think I got banned for a short time as well but its all good. This site is actually one of my favorites. The best thing about sites like this is the networking possibilities. It's never been easier for the average firefighter to gather information about any subject without leaving their home, 24/7! I use Google to research many things as well as using sites like these. You can meet firefighters from all over the world and share info. Dont expect this site to be a training site. If you want that go to the many training themed sites like the one I posted above, or create your own library of fire service reference books. Most important of all participate in drills and take classes when offered, as many as you can. View it only as news and happenings from your region and another tool to use. Dont like what you see, something offends you... log out and come back in a week. No harm done.

It's very very hard to sustain a High angle/collapse/trench rescue team within a single volunteer fire Department. Not impossible but very hard to. Trying to create a county wide team made up of various volunteer Depts is a better choice, but even that is hard to do. These sort of teams, as has been stated by others, is dependent on constant training. Something hard to do when you are dealing with multiple Dept.s. Schedule a training and a few days before the training... this Dept cant attend because of this reason, this "key" guy has to work overtime, he's sick...very hard to do, again not imposible but hard to do. What you usually have is 2 or 3 people who start the teams up, who already have most of this training from career jobs. A bunch of young guys get on board who have all the time in the world to train. A few years pass, 2 of the 3 who started the team are no longer involved for various reasons. No one else steps up to be a driving force for the team. The younger kids who had all the time in the world now have jobs that they cant blow off any longer. Maybe are in relationships that take some of their "free time". Moved away or a host of other reasons. In the end you sell off all the stuff. I think one of the Depts in my county ended up selling off everything to Westchester County in fact. Bottom line, at the very least each department should have a SOP/SOG on Tech rescues. Chiefs and every member of the department should know who has the resources to get the job done and how to get them. Time is a major factor in these events, there should be NO delay in getting the right people and tools in place because you are trying to figure out things for the first time when you pull up. I would have no problem calling in the FDNY for an event in my district. They have the people and every resource available to get the job done. I am humble enough to know this is not my "thing". But I do know where to get what I need, and how to secure the scene and control the firefighters so we dont "screw" things up worse then they are. There is a lot to do while you are waiting for the tech stuff to arrive. Remove surfice victims if any, control of utilites, interview witnesses if you can and more. Take the basic structural collapse operations class given by the State office of fire prevention and control.A must for every Officer in my opinion.

In anticipation of a "bail out system" we will be getting we have encouraged our members to wear the radio so it is on the Left side. Our bail out system has the bag on the Right side, something to consider as many wear the radion on the Right side. It took some time to get used to doing this believe it or not as I always wore it to the Right side for 20 plus years. We have no SOP on how to wear but most wear it under the coat to the Left side on strap, mic on Right side sticking out of jacket or attached to collar. All portables for fireground are kept on a certain channel so there is no need to switch the channel. If a MAYDAY is called all firefighting switches to the last channel on the radio, in one motion you can turn the dial till it stops, no guesswork when doing this under the jacket if you are wearing it like this. Mayday stays on our original fireground. Takes some getting used to but we do this while drilling. We will do a Mayday, or just tell all members on fire ground switch to fire channel 2. Open to any other ideas you guys may have.

I had wanted to take a ride up but other forces prevented this. Congrats on the first 200!

Holy C#%P thats alot of guys in the line of march for Ossining!

The Department may not get the fine money, but they end up saving money because they are not running out the door as much, a back door savings effect. As for the Alzheimer patient, you would have to deal with that situation and respond. But you use a point of something that may effect 1 out of 50 Departments. Yet the manager not enforcing the rules about cig smokingwith his employees that causes you to respond 6 times a month may effect 10 out of 50 departments and is a problem and can be enforced.

After looking at this again IM not sure who posted what, if its a few multi quotes in one but IM responding to the post starting with "maybe Im wrong.... Now here is something thats not been pointed out before, if your Department, Company whatever only goes to 25 calls a month and 20 are automatic alarms, including 6 to the same place every month...well maybe everyone wants to keep running back and forth, otherwise the said Department would be only doing 10 calls a month. But if your doing 100 calls a month and 60 are automatic alarms with 20 to the same place for BS reasons that CAN BE FIXED that is a problem. As others have stated, so whos getting their moneys worth in taxes the owner who keeps the Dept. coming to their location disregarding fire officials explaining to them how to correct the problem OR the person with the real emergency, but gets a delayed response because we are accross town at the cronic alarm we have been to 7 times this month. I guess in the long run we will agree to disagree. Be safe.

I see nothing wrong with a fine after say the third time when conditions warrant under set guidelines as to what is a cronic system error on the owners part as opposed to an honest mistake...steam from shower because the bathroom door was left open, food on the stove, when you've never been to that address before, 17 year old daughter setting off alarm when coming home from school because she does not know how to cancel or forgot the "passcode". These are honest false alarms, that for the most part are always corrected. But when there is a short in the system or construction work has altered something, hi-lows that always hit low hanging smoke heads that should be moved or managers dont give a crap when an employee keeps smoking in the bathroom when they should not and the owners disregard whats going on, time after time, then give them a fine. bet it will be fixed. When are people going to have some accountability for there actions?

So your fine with your dept going to the same restaurant for the 4th time in the month and the rig "maybe" getting into an accident and "maybe" a civillian or MOS getting injured or worse as a result? Your fine with a store owner who has been told over and over to have his alarm company send someone out so they can move the smoke head away from the new oven they just put in that keeps setting the alarm off? We are talking about cronic probelms from the same location due to the same problems over and over.

I think the point of the article is the repeat offenders and what can be done to them. The ones you go to a few times a month. The ones you warn and tell them what they shouldnt be doing or how to solve the problem and they just ignore you or the advice. Thats the BS ones. It always seems to be commercial establishments that are the worst at this. The only way they get "motivated" to act is when you can slap them with a fine.

No this particular model was from Signature models. Corgi also did a version with non opening doors and it was done in the later Sleepy Hollow FD version. Did this rig ever see the Sleepy Hollow paint, or did Corgi just take artistic liberties with the project?

While doing my weekly rounds on ebay I came upon this old ad featuring the Hartsdale FD and an old ALF.

At least the scale model will live forever!!

Bucks County Pa. an all Volunteer county (with the exception of one station I think that has paid staff Mon-Fri 7-7pm) has been operating a box system for decades where the closest stations and apparatus get dispatched no matter district lines. The whole county is dispatched by 1 center, which solves alot of problems. Here is the link to their box system, which explains how much of what gets dispatched county wide depending on the callers info. http://www.buckscoun.../fp_phantom.asp if u click on the "back to manual" link you can read other info on their system...like "dispatch of apparatus" the dispatcher has alot of control to do whats needed.

RIP and condolences to your Family, Friends and Brothers from FDNY, Farmingville LIFD and Suffolk County Fire Academy.

RIP

Is Westchester really this screwed up? If not give some credit to the up and coming young Officers rising the ranks today. I know my County has come a LOOONG way from that sort of thinking.

I hate using FDNY as a comparison on any fire service topic. NOBODY has the resources FDNY has nor the manpower on each rig. I think they may be the onlypaid Dept. in the country running a 6 man ladder company. If there are others you can count them on 1 hand probably. Even NY state when they do their end of year data review on the fire service do not include FDNY with the other data. FDNY has their own category. That said maybe using a more realistic agency to compare to the rest of Westchester or the country for that matter would be better. Yonkers, White Plains or New Rochelle are the big 3 Departments I would guess to compare everyone else to. BUT your point is well taken. Each Chief needs to access their own district and what they can provide. Im not from Westchester and only know the goings on from a few friends and reading this site from time to time. Do many Depts have a automatic mutual aid procedure in place for alarms? Would a system like this, county wide help bring the numbers up to what is needed?

Nassau County sent 1 Stump Jumper (the heavy duty military looking rigs, there are only 2 in Nassau 1 was OOS) to Deer Park prior to the Ridge mutual aid call. Sent to Ridge (staging at Suffolk County Fire Academy) were 6 brush trucks (all the brush trucks in Nassau) 2 tankers and 5 Engine companies from a total of 12 different Dept.s.