Raz

That's what I was getting at in my first post. IMO, NY would be a lot better off if it didn't have classes like scene support.

Is this a sarcastic post? I honestly can't tell.

First off, I'm not defending any of these probies with criminal pasts. They should've never been hired. Period. However, I do find it to be a double standard that the moderators came down with an edict stating "no discussion of problems or arrests involving firefighters who were off duty." I believe it was enforced after a firefighter was charged with arson, it may have also come down after another was charged with rape. The thread was quickly shut down, posts erased, etc. Yet here we are, on yet another thread discussing criminal issues and it's left to go on because it "relates to the job." It's a pretty blatant double standard, what's good for one side should be good for the other. I'm just saying, personally I feel it should all be fair game for discussion.

Actually, Chuck Schumer is already beating that drum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htD_-A7pDhw I'm not happy about Obama getting in, but there are some positives of this outcome. The Republican party can now retool itself and step away from the Bush's and Dole's. We can free ourselves of the evangelical nonsense that has choked the party for decades, in particular these last eight years. We can step back towards fiscal conservatism, instead of running trillion dollar deficits. Remember, we're the party of Lincoln, no matter how much Obama likes to compare himself to him. We'll have the chance in four years, if you want to know what Obama's presidency will be like, go read up on Jimmy Carter. Obama is already saying that his "plans" will take two terms, of course, he waited until after he was elected to admit that. I'm also ashamed that, while this election is supposed to be the great equalizer between races, I wake up today to see Jesse Jackson and Spike Lee gloating on the news. Not that it's a scientific poll or anything, but everyone should check out Sal from Howard Stern doing street interviews in Harlem. He asks people who they're voting for, and when they say Obama, he goes on list McCain's policies to see how people will support them. The catch is, he states that they're Obama's policies, and everyone ends up totally supporting them. Again, it's not exactly a gallup poll, but it's an interesting social experiment that shows how people are, in fact, voting for the person and not the policy. Since it's apparently racist to speak against this type of behavior and political policy, I'm going to let a black man do it for me. Google Thomas Sowell, or better yet, support him by buying any of his books. Why he never ran for president, I'll never know.

Activated as in "turned on", not going into alert mode.

No, we already took care of that with $840 billion in tax money.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps we've finally seen an end to the era of the Taj-Mahal firehouse. Not that I'm implying that this particular referendum was for such a house.

Yes, we all tend to forget things that aren't true. Career firefighters are by no means employees of a volunteer fire dept. That would be the very definition of a contradiction. They might be employees of the municipality that they work in, they might be employees of a district, but at no time do they work for the volunteer organization, although...wait for it, volunteers seem to sometimes forget that. You're absolutely right, but it's not due to the "paid guys beget more paid guys" argument that you're trying to make. It happens because the issues that convinced that municipality to hire a paid staff in the first place are ongoing and cumulative. If the population is growing while the number of volunteers is stagnant, causing a town to hire personnel, what happens 10 years after that? Barring some unforeseen circumstance, the town doesn't magically stop growing. Now you have an even larger population, with even less volunteers as some of the guys who came around 10 years ago have moved on due to age, family, or relocation. It's not due to the paid staff taking over, it's because the natural progression of that municipality warrants an increase in staffing. Everytime I hear somebody say "They just need to get more volunteers" I shake my head. That's like when John Madden says "To win right here, they just need to score more points than the other team." I'm sure that every town would love to snap it's fingers and create 100 more volunteers. That doesn't happen, and hope isn't a plan of action. I'm with 22 Truck on this one, adding paid personnel seems like the way to go. With such a small call volume, the career FF's can run EMS. I'm sure that if the fire service is wanting for volunteers, the ambulance service must be in even worse shape. If we're trying to come up with ways to fix it without hiring, why don't they lean on some of the reportedly solid districts surrounding them, and cut their district into duel response zones?

OK, I'm going to try and explain this without a flowchart... Any EMS call within the city limits will get you an ambulance from Peekskill VAC and an ALS flycar from either Cortlandt Regional Paramedics, or Peekskill Fire, depending on what units are available. Sometimes there's a full crew in the VAC quarters, sometimes there's not. If they have a crew, that's it, end of story. If they don't, a second page is sent out asking for a driver, EMT, or both; and the FD's BLS engine is sent to the scene. This helps to get another trained set of hands on the scene, but the FD EMT's aren't allowed to transport, since they would be abandoning the rig. If the VAC can't get a crew by this point, the call goes mutual aid. Note: A paid EMT is staffed at the VAC from the hours of 6 am to 6 pm. He will roll the rig on the first page, and only a driver or EMT is needed to complete the crew. Other than that, the call proceeds the same as above.

I was thinking this is what you meant, and ALS beat me to the punch with most of my discussion points. Yes, taking the engine on a BLS run will allow for faster turnaround when going from an EMS call to a fire call. However, once patient contact is made, it doesn't matter what vehicle you have parked outside, you are not going to legally leave that patient unless a few conditions are met. Peekskill has enough rigs that it would be an extremely rare circumstance where nothing would be available to answer a call. You take things as they happen, withholding resources because you're playing out worst case scenarios in your head is a way I'd run my department at a call, but not day to day. Also, there's the fact that a fly car is able to be secured and left on scene, which would allow the FD EMT to complete the crew and ride a call in.

I think if every agency could snap their fingers and "get more vollies" they would, however, that's not a reasonable plan of action. Like you, I'll give them credit, Peekskill is a pretty dense population to rely on volunteer EMS service, but they've been strained to their limits. You say that the BLS engine is a good concept, so how is that different from sending a utility? I have my own opinions, but I'm curious to hear yours first. Why not use the ambulance as the on duty emt car?

I'll state that I know next to nothing in regards to trunked radios vs. the conventional kind, but communications seem so much clearer and more reliable whenever I use the trunking system. I don't know why department hasn't adopted it.

How tall are the aerials?

I don't think there's any sort of precedent for a water rescue, but in any case I can think of, PD has command almost always. Just the way it is.

Careful, you don't want to be labeled anti-volunteer for thinking rationally. (I made the same post as you, almost verbatim.)

I understand the reasoning for this, and I know that many of us in the profession are religious, but I don't think this is the proper way to go about this at all.

They are, but they don't operate in a comparable fashion to any other fire apparatus. I brought it up because tankers were the obvious exception to the rule. There's a limit to how many engines, trucks, rescues, etc. that you can have operating in an efficient manner at a scene. There's no such limit with tankers, because they operate away from a scene, or at least at the very outskirts of one. There's also no "duplication of services", since they're more of a water source than they are a piece of fire suppresion equipment. I've rarely worked with tankers, only on a few mutual aid calls, so somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

I've already chimed in with the list of what I feel is wrong with this response system, but let me ask...Did that structure fire required every single piece of equipment Croton had at their disposal? Even in mutual aid happy areas, how many times can you actually use 8 pieces of apparatus (tankers excluded)? A hospital might be an exception, but you're saying that every call should get that response. Think about it, how many engines can hit hydrants before you start seriously dropping the water pressure of the first due unit? How many aerials can be put to use before you start overlapping their operational area? How the hell would you use a brush truck at a structure fire? It creates a logistical and operational nightmare, and yes, I've seen this happen.

Go for the unpainted, anodized aluminum. Less to worry about in the long run. I don't think the paint effects how the doors move over a period of time, as much as improper maintenance (i.e. using something like wd40 to lubricate the doors, instead of dry silicon).

Hey, good for them. But... And actually, I take back that whole "good for them" part. If you make your district pay for two tiller ladders, you damn well better be able to get them out whenever they're needed (for example: a situation that doesn't involve the words "brush fire"). That's like the whole Chris Rock joke about expecting to be rewarded for things they should be doing anyway. "I aint never been to jail." "That's great, want a cookie?"

Actually, it's a terrible set up. 1. Putting that many pieces of apparatus on the road at one time is asking for trouble 2. Assuming that they all arrive at the same time, any cohesive rig placement goes out the window. 3. It's an flagrant waste of fuel. 4. It encourages men to respond with the rig immediately, without waiting for a crew. 5. It encourages races to the scene. 6. It allows men from one company to acclimate themselves only to their own rig, making them far less useful when working off of other rigs. 7. There's absolutely no reason to do it, outside of the idiotic "PRIDE!" argument.

Knowing nothing about what spurred the editorial to be written, the man has some good points.

It's funny to see all of the people pushing for regional EMS in this thread, when so many people shriek when they hear the words "regional fire service"

As someone who lives in Zone 7, I know that my a** is calling a taxi if I have an MI. They'll get me to the hospital quicker, and charge me less than the VACs. A fly car won't do anything but put another useless body/vehicle combination on the scene. Now I'll have a paramedic in a fly car, Police Officer in a cruiser, EMT in a fly car, and possibly a Firefighter in a firetruck. None of those are going to get me to the hospital. If it's not a bus, I don't need to see it.

Turn enough in, and you can get your merit badge.