skme318

Regional EMS=Hudson Valley Paramedics=Care 1 EMS

My mistake. Corrected.

Kudos to a fire department having some Type III's. It is so incredibly rare that anything but commercials have Type II's and, let's be honest, they do the trick for at least 90% of EMS patients and cost sometimes as much as half as much. I'd be interested in the financials of such a department.. i.e. where the $ from transports goes and if it effects the $ received from the municipalities served etc.. It sounds interesting nonetheless considering so many Fire/EMS combinations are very much a Fire Department who also "happens" to run EMS.

I'm not so sure I entirely agree with the sentiment that more lights can't really hurt anything. Perhaps it is because I work exclusively at night time or perhaps simply because I have had this happen to me several times over the past month or so, but I find that excessive lighting (emergency lighting, that is) can make it very difficult to see. Especially in the instance of some of the very fast LED flash patterns that seem to have become very popular, going from using relative night vision while driving to a scene to, all of a sudden, having to cope with extremely bright flashing lights can be very difficult--so much as to potentially make initially assessing a scene nearly impossible. I actually had an experience recently where, upon arriving at a call, was literally blinded by several flashing LED lightbars to the extent that my partner and I actually entered the driveway next to the one of our patient's (they were directly next to each other) because we simply could not see. While I feel LED's are fantastic for the daytime where traditional warning lights are very easy for people to not notice, I'm still not convinced that they are the best option outright. Perhaps more old-fashioned options or a combination of them with some LED's is worth considering?

Just curious: What is the purpose of the Ham radio?