spin_the_wheel

"This Guy" geeez....come on, you got offended when someone referred to you as "flynn". I have to admit this has gotten out of hand a bit, we are both passionate about each side we stand on. I wont apologize for that, and I would expect no less from any member of my Dept. if they are standing up for what they believe in, and in this case the Volunteer service. I just felt some of your comments in post # 27 were uncalled for. I am not trying to slander you, but at the end of the day my comments are not the ones that will have the "impressionable young guys" out their questioning the Brotherhood they have all heard about. Or when they approach their Officer at the house one day saying "Wow Cap, I busted my a** at that fire, I cant believe there are other firefighters out there who think what we do...what I'm doing is a Hobby." I think it's wrong to say those things, but that's just me maybe. In the end we both have a job to do, wherever we are. Be safe.

Chief, Let's talk about the impressionable young guys out there, my beef with you is your obvious disdain for the Volunteer firefighter. Post after post, whenever you get the chance to knock the service you do. Now you are arguing the word "professional" and that a true Volunteer does not ask for anything. Come on now give it a rest. The only thing the "silent majority" realize is how you go out of your way to knock whatever you can. Again I know the whole qtip thing, but it's the way you feel you need to bring up certain things when you argue your case. The way you use the term "Hobby" or bring up Volunteer firefighters as arsonists. If you really felt you had to do bring that up, you should have at least mentioned the Nations worst serial arsonist was a career firefighter from Ca. Just so the impressionable young guys know the facts. You could have argued your point without bringing that up. What YOU DO convey is that you have no use for Volunteer firefighters. Hey if this is your way to "grab" the reader so be it. How do you think some of these young guys will feel if they ever had to take a class you were teaching? Sure you can give a line of "malarkey" at the start of the class about how you view all firefighters equal, but as someone else here noted what you say here can come back to haunt you. The younger guys here see how you go out of your way to knock THEM, because most of the impressionable younger guys are Volunteers. Be safe. 7011 out.

And your a moderator? You really think this is the reason?

This will be my last post on this as well, the hell with the bill, like it or not we do the same thing, ON THE FIREGROUND. I never said career standards are wrong, but maybe for many Volunteer Depts.s the Volunteer standards work, and most of these do alot more training on their own. There are many great Volunteer Depts out there. You are just one of those career guys who cannot stand the fact that Volunteers exsist. That there are volunteers in most of this coumtry doing what you do as a career for free...and will still be donig long after you retire. Be safe.

I'm not saying career standards are unnecessary...but fact is there are many great all volunteer Fire Depts out there who are DOING it with the Volunteer standards the fires go out, rescues are made, alarms are answered...are they not? Like it or not it DOES get done. Are there Volunteer Depts that have problems, sure, but not every career Dept is on the same level. It aint rocket science. There are many Volunteer Depts that see much more REAL TIME work then career depts. I think real time experience means alot. FDNY Commissioner....stop with the nonsense.

While you may have some points on hiring process, training .....we PERFORM the same duties when the bell goes off. Please teach me your magic career ways to stretch lines, force entry, VES and all the other fireground duties that are performed the SAME way and taught the SAME way at fire schools. It's not marlarkey when someone comes to the door of the "wives and girlfriends" when their is a LOD. You are so anti Volunteer it's sickening. Some of us do not look at it as a "hobby", by grouping us as a whole its BS.

Way to bring down the topic, you must be a ball at parties!

Could they be decon trailers? In Nassau we have a few spread about the County. 4 are run by various departments in 4 Battalions and the remaining trailers are run by the Nassau County Fire Marshals office, which mans a hazmat team 24/7.

Really brother I get the whole qtip thing...BUT, like it or not when the bell rings the members who ride the rigs face the EXACT same challenges weather Volunteer or Career. Don't you think these folks deserve this? As for trying to compare a Volunteer firefighter or EMT to other Volunteer work, I think it's Apples and Oranges. I don't know what you do in your Volunteer work, but I can't think of to many Volunteer organizations where, it's a given, that somewhere in this country members will die in the line of duty every year. Maybe I am taking this "qtip" but it's rather insulting to do this. Be safe all.

Well said.

Chief, Another reason for a need to have a dispatcher in Hartsdale..to read he boxes? I guess its a digital read out? No more punch tapes? back in the day did the box number sound with the horns and sirens? In Nassau County New Hyde Park is the only dept with a fully functional gamewell system. Horns and sirens. Each house still has the tape reel they count. When you pull a street box it begines the audible horns and sirens, the diaphone horn blows the box number location. The county dispatch has a digital reader...hey were thiiiiiissss close to getting the tape reel installed due to many maintenance problems with the digital reader. My Dept. had over 200 Gmewell street boxes untill they were pulled in late 1986, for the Kingfisher radio boxes, which were instaled only on main roads and in schools. We cover Belmont Race Track and they have a system as well but it is now the radio boxes. Security monitors the boxes, County dispatch did untill mid 2009. One of the classic punch tape stories is that the dispatch center who dispatched us in the 70's and 80's had the tape reel in the office. No bell indicator, so on the night shifts if the dispatcher wanted to get some "shut eye" so to speak, he would place 2 soda cans on the tape, leaning them against the wall, on the top of the tape, as the tape reader was up agains the wall. Also he would postion the key that was used to "wind" the tape, inside the reel just enough to hold it there. When a box would come in the cans and key would fall onto the console waking him!!!!

I started that thread as well years back..I actually found it as I was going to post again on i to see if anyone else had taken them out, but thread was closed due to being to old!!!!

In case anyone was wondering about this story, the District removed the logo. The Chiefs office has had some very good dialogue with certain members of the community, we were even invited (the FD) to lead the pledge of allegiance during the Black History Month community awards ceremony this month, which we did. Another Dept. has contacted us, they to have a company known as the "Rebels". After seeing what we went through they are removing anything that could be deemed offensive from their rig/quarters. So some good has come from this incident. Some lessons learned...be prepared for anything, think before you speak to the media especially if you are confronted without warning, never use the term "no comment" and have a Public Information Officer ready to release a statement as soon as possible. Be safe all!

Greetings all. I have been member on this site for a long time, and at the moment I am also an assistant Chief with the Elmont FD. I will not get into specifics at this point, but just wanted to say a few things. First, the Elmont FD is in no way racist, nor is the company in question trying to incite a racist point of view. Like it or not the nickname "rebels" and the use of the confederate flag has been a somewhat popular choice of fire companies for decades. Im sure you all know of a company somewhere called the "rebels". Hell just google "fire Dept. maltese cross rebel flag sticker" and you will see a dozen designs for your helmet and other applications from many fire service stores. Second, the company was organized in 1924, and at the time was the only company on the East End of the district, away from the other then 3 existing companies in the West all a few blocks from each other. Back in the day the competition between fire companies was probably more fierce then it is today. The other companies did not want them to be located at that end of the district and "beat" them to the fires in that part of town. They got the nickname of the rebels because they went against the grain from day 1. The nickname rebels was born for being "different" not being racist. This all said, the flag does bring about some strong feelings from many folks, and in the end we exsist to serve the public not offend them. I will leave it at that for now. Be safe all.

Hey, he singled out a certain group of firefighters. A simple "bad PR for that Dept." would have been enough....not dragging the whole Long Island fire service into it as a whole. Besides any firefighter worth his/her salt would defend the fire service they are involved in. To much back stabbing goes on enough all over. To make a blanket statement like that is wrong, and I have a right to comment on it. Trust me I take my lumps on this site, but stay here because I like the back and forth. It's what makes a good website in my opinion. But it is what it is, take a jab at my fire service without reason I will do the same. Be safe all!!!!

Who replaces rigs every 5 years? Dont go there I could find a bunch of bad PR about the FDNY as well the last year or so.

I dont think anyone said this is ACCEPTABLE, but the man got 30 days, will probably have the nickname "nuts" attached to him forever, is probably embarrassed and regrets this incident, PLUS he missed a working fire in an apt. building Freeport had yesterday!!!! Live and Learn Brother ...be safe.

Again we will agree to disagree you know nothing about this person but the article about this incident, we will leave it at that. Be safe.

This calls into question his ability to function as an officer...on the fireground? We will disagree on this one.

The village is now making upgrades to the 911, cad system......gee is that all it took a tragedy like this. I'd bet the changes being made now, have been sugested by the dispatchers working the system day after day in the past. As is the case many times the suggestions fall on deaf ears and disregarded for various reasons. Then something lke this happens and all of a sudden the money is found, or the past suggestions are now deemed worthy, and it gets done. Damn shame.

Hey Chief, looking at your age, you were part of the true old skool days......the unedited stories I have heard of things that went on, from relatives and other old timers back in the day, from my place to FDNY there was all kinds of crazy stuff going on, some worse then this. Maybe in your neck of the woods it was mellow, but "berzerkity" went on back in the day, not just the "new generation" of firefighter.

It was not on the Chiefs car...it was on one of the Trucks. Not for nothin' I wouldn't want to be driving the rig with a set of those things flapping around me!!!! It was wrong not to take them off, but I hope all the guys here asking for him to be removed or tossed out, have never done anything stupid in their careers. The 30 days and embarrassment I think are enough. There may be something more to it with the mayor that we dont know about.

Again I'm not trying to Monday morning this thing, as stated above it happens all over. We learn from these things.... asking for cross streets is very important, even if you think you know the location, there may be 3 or 4 of the same address, but I doubt they will have the same cross streets. Also don't hang up the phone until you have the right address in front of you. I have seen where a dispatcher hangs up the phone then enters into a computer and gets 4 hits of a similar address...oh oh, if you did not ask the correct questions, you may run into a problem, like trying to call the caller back and having it go to voice mail. If you bring this info up with the caller still on the phone, you can try and get better info for the correct hit. But, if a dispatcher "picks" the wrong choice of the 4, thinking he picked the right one and sends it on its way, there is no way of knowing of the mistake until its to late....or if he/she is lucky they can hear the units being dispatched, if they are not doing the radio as well, and realize.... "wait that's not the town/address I thought I picked" and can correct it right away. Never underestimate the concentration level demanded and needed for a dispatcher. Unfortunately mistakes happen, there is no way to prevent this from happening, every so often.

http://cgi.ebay.com/1965-Fire-Engineering-Article-Westchester-NY-Dispatch-/300480405579?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item45f607204b telephone group alerting

This may be true in this day and age with all the other sources out there to get your news from, but such a large "action" like this would generate news just by the act of it appearing in almost all the states papers.. I'm sure if done right TV news casts in some places would pick up this story, as well as it being a story on the net, like on yahoo etc... Hey all the negative stuff about PD and FD gets press, and it seems is read by everyone, it's worth a shot.