ny10570

Two days ago here in Pleasantville we had an AFA turn into food on the stove with PD rescuing the occupant. No AFA, and best case we would have had a good kitchen fire with a seriously injured pt before a neighbor would have noticed. Worst case, a dead occupant and extension to bad scenario garden apartment style building. Like every where else AFA's don't get nearly the attention structure fires or smoke in the residence calls get. Luckily once in a while an AFA turns into something real and guys pay attention for a while. As for those guys who slack off just keep on doing what you do and remind them that one time it will be something. Sadly eventually you'll be right and at least you'll be ready to go to work.

The EMS gloves are the ProFlex X-Factor 734WP gloves. Partyrock is right, most of us just keep the gloves stashed with the rest of the Banana suit. The biggest problem with gloves is every time they get contaminated you have to clean them. Stick with the latex and save yourself a few bucks.

First time I had one go off on me was a few months ago in Manhattan. An elderly male called saying he was locked in a store with 20 other people, catch was he was alone with his wife in their apartment. He was caring for his demented wife and according to the door man he was usually A&O. So we can't get any history or info out of these two. Medic and I decided to just forget it and transport the two of them to what we think is their normal hospital. As we're going to get him ready to go he's walking across the the middle of the room and suddenly gets this shocked look on his face asking us why we shocked him. Take a quick look at his chest and see the battery pack so I take him by his arm to sit him down and bam we both caught it. On my end it felt like a poorly grounded light switch. Medic caught it too trying to hook-up the 12 lead. In the ED we were told a story of a guy who was getting shocked between 12 and 20 times a day. He refused medication or further surgery and decided to move to Brazil to die. Last the Doc heard the guy was still going after 2 years and still getting shocked, but more frequently.

How are you notified of an ER on diversion? If they're diverted due to volume its not such a big deal, but if the nearest stroke center's CT is down or maybe the whole ER is without power how do you know before you get there? I've got my little MDT that tells me everything, including when to go home. I did my short stint as a volley in westchester, and unless you happened to notice the fax from DES we wouldn't know what was going on. I'm assuming 60 would up date a unit if they were about to transport to a diverted ER, but what about the PD dispatched units. How reliable are they with that info?

The Porsche Cayanne has an FD package available in Europe for chiefs cars. A few years ago Porsche made a small push to test the waters for PD, Fire and EMS but got no serious takers. Once in a while a photo of the demos pops up, but I haven't seen any pressed into service.

The hospital calls all of the stations?? when did this start.

What happens when that bumper gets bumped? I hope its not the chaufers fault, cause thats gonne be expensive and going to piss off the check writters.

Look at why your rigs have grown. In pleasantville we replaced a sports car sized Peirce with a very big Ferrara. 259 was packed with equipment. We had a half dozen cones, master stream, and manifold strapped to the top that were a b!tch to get down. At one time were were dependent on massive hose lays for a few parts of our district. With the new engine we have more equipment (redundancy for when some rigs can't get out), 1000 gallons of water and a 2000gpm pump (switching to tanker based ops from hose lays for our dry areas). To keep the engine going up all the hills and around all the corners means they had to add the space somewhere. Up is the only place to go.

4 million in buildings that start in the hundreds of millions is chump change. Such a poor f-ing excuse. I'm not so sure if the extra stairwell will make that much of a difference, but the others are long overdue.

I've never heard about it being standard equipment, but I know they are becoming increasingly popular.

So pretty much unless you're centrally dispatched its hope for the best. Thats AWESOME. I brought this up because a family friend was recently taken to an ER after experiancing a CVA. Recieving ER's CT was down. Crew took her out of the ER and took her to another hospital where she was successfully treated with TPA and is looking at a full recovery with some PT. Her son wants to effect a change in the system and was all set to sue when it became clear that the only people who did anything wrong were the EMTs who abducted her from the first ER during triage. This is frustrating because an MDT is a relatively innexpensive addition to an ambulance, especially in a system all ready to integrate. Centralized dispatch is even more cost effective, but has the imeasurable price of bruised egos. Sadly, had she died a little publicity could have gone a long way towards effecting change. Its hard to motivate people when an apparently healthy person goes up there and says I could be crippled or dead because of this, but I'm not.

Does it list a 1st alarm assignment? In other places I've seen the two listed seperately eventhough they are one in the same.

Way to go Trooper Reif. Great job and get well soon.

So now you have the same McDonalds but you have mulitple reports of one person missing. You would be gearing up for a fight. What I was trying to say before is that there is a way to attack these fires and be agressive. You just have to be more careful and more concious of your surroundings. If I have a fully involved celing space in a wood truss structure, there could be a dozen people inside I'm not sending anyone in till I get some water into there.

Be careful about buying off the floor. Ask a few members here in Pleasantville about how much the like their ladder. I've heard gripes from a few other depts as well about rigs that are either problem plagued or just don't work for their dept.

I agree to a point. When a building is reported to be unoccupied you definately should not be as agressive as you would be with people trapped, but then there's the whole what if game. Just recently there was a fire in a bronx supermarket where the cleaning crew had been locked inside. Then there's the squatters and vagrants inside abandoned buildings. If I remember that fire correctly, there were a few mistakes made that might have changed everything. Hoseline selection and inspection holes in the celing are the two that cometo mind now.

They'll gt it through. Updating the AED's can be done in a matter of weeks. A tech comes out to the station and it takes about 5 minutes for each AED. As for the training, they'll make it on paper, since every EMT and Medic who recieves new gear supposedly recieved the new trainig. However many have not actually gone through, and others got the gear before the training changed.

while Dr. Gonzalez will hammer you for RMA's with intox pt's, the same does not apply to just because the person had been drinking. He gently explained it in the way only he can the practice of RMAing an intox because they are home and not sick or injured is not allowed. If they are drunk enough to that someone felt the need to call 911 then they are to be transported. If the call is not related their level of intoxication (ie: injury, MVA, etc) and their RMA is not AMA they can be bombed out of their tree and still RMA. The catch is most of those events could be covered under 10-90 or 10-91 (unfounded).

Sorry bro, hospitals cannot and will never (I hope) be able to turn anyone away based on their financial status. Education combined with making them wait is the only solution I see. We have the wait, now we just need the education.

I have a couple questions. Did the pt go with protest or were they forcibly taken against their will? Did PD go with the Pt? If the person was taken against their will you must have PD present assume decision making responsibility. The whole idea being you are protecting the pt from themselves. The pt is placed into the custody of PD and transported with PD's consent. Campus security does not count unless they are a police agency.

Thats absolutely correct. Sadly, short of some sweeping change in the legal system holding people responsible for at least some of their actions, we have to continue to spoon feed the public info and keep everything very simple. Thats why we can't treat and leave pt's and ER's will continue to be our nations primary care physician, etc etc. In stead of going on, I'm just going ot stare at the window while I try and forget about the pt I just took to the ER because his cast was irritating his thumb.

For advancement in the fire service, it really doesn't matter what you take. take something you enjoy and that you are good at. Yrs down the road when you are looking to advance they are not going to care what you took when you were 18 - 22 yrs old. they're going to care that you have an advanced degree and that you have continued furthering your education throughout your career. Like ALS said focus on something you would enjoy doing while waiting to get on the job or if you could no longer work the job. This focus on fire science degrees is only beneficial to a small number of job titles most of which don't even require the a degree in fire science.

Most of the people clogging ER's with simple problems are there because they do not have private health insurance or primary care physicians. Medicaid allways pays out for ambulance transports and ER visits. The public needs to be educated about their options.

Cops need more stopping power. He's one video I found. How mnay rounds do you think this guy took before he dropped. And when he dropped, he dropped because he was stone dead. Watch carefully too, there are rounds exchanged through out the entire video. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4...+shooting&hl=en

I think this is whats known as semantics.