Raz

Care to elaborate? I'm really interested in your thoughts. I'm going to assume they echo The Marquis De Lafayette's summary of the American Fire Service, "Overall, too much fun is had."

Damn, I'm all for supporting regional services as opposed to individual town departments...but 70 miles with one station? Unless the area you cover has more moose than people, that seems like asking for trouble.

It looks like I got beat to the punch in debating some of your points. In addition to what others have said, I also know that there are VACs that receive tax money from the town, bill patients, and staff a paid EMT or crew to cover their calls during certain hours. If that's the case, wouldn't you agree that it takes balls to send out a letter asking for donations while claiming to be volunteers that provide a free service to the community?

This is definitely true, but let's also add that some IC's are only IC's because nobody ran against them. I've said a million times that electing officers is wrong, but can you even call it an "election" when there's only one name on the ballot?

Why not go for your Paramedic cert? It's the only way you're going to make halfway decent money, and you'll be much more in demand.

I always love how Volunteer EMS services will bill you, but still send you letters in the mail asking for donations and claiming "we provide a vital service to our community for free!"

Come on, tell me I wasn't the only one who clicked on this thread expecting pics of fire trucks with hair photoshopped onto them...

-Tillers allow for longer aerial devices to have better manueverability in tight spots. Though advances in techonology have made them further and further obsolete, larger cities with narrow streets still field a few of them. -Tower Ladders allow for safer rescues and ventilation efforts by giving firefighters a platform to work off of. It's much easier transporting a victim in a bucket than it is carrying them down 30-90 feet of ladder rungs. The bucket also can be tilted to allow roof cuts to be made from the relative safe haven of the bucket, compared to climbing out onto a roof ladder that's dependant on the structure's integrity. -Straight sticks offer greater dexterity than tower ladders, as the ladder requires less clearence at the tip. -Mid-Mounts require less thought when positioning the apparatus on the street. The fact that the aerial can operate in any direction equally, means that it doesn't matter if you nose in or back into a spot. That said, a Rear-Mount will give you more ladder for your buck if you can position it properly (which is impossible in some spots, despite how good your operator is). As for the response, I'm just a firefighter, so that's above my paygrade.

Excellent post, Truck

Well said, about everything.

Moose and DaRock, I see what you're saying, but those are just examples of how your department runs things. There are some FD's in Westchester, that if you listened to a call, you'd hear something like this: 60 Control to Engine 1, Engine 2, and Ladder 1; (type of call) Engine 1 responding Engine 2 responding Ladder 1 responding Car 0001 responding Car 0002 responding Car 0004 responding Car 0007 responding Engine 1 on location Car 0011 responding Car 0013 responding Engine 2 on location etc... Like I said, it gets ridiculous.

That's basically what I was getting at. Guys love to hear themselves talk sometimes.

I'm going to abstain from commenting on chief's cars at the moment, but I believe Westchester has too many chiefs in general. Seriously, some departments have over ten car numbers assigned to them. It's bordering on being asinine.

Hey guys, thanks for the replies. You get so used to the seemingly endless fighting and rhetoric, and it's nice to have people (especially those that share an opposing viewpoint 95% of the time) share a kind word.

This is probably going to run long, I apologize. My opinions are a little different from a lot of people on this site. I think it's because I didn't "grow up" in the firehouse, or because I'm relatively new to this career, or whatever. As such, I tend to look at things not from a "fire department" perspective, but from a "real world" perspective. In the world outside of the firehouse, sayings like "it's tradition!!!" or "that's just the way it's always been" have no weight. If you can't justify your outdated methods, you'll either be jobless or out of business in no time at all. In a capitalist system, there's no room for those with poor responses to problems that have arisen. Yet, because of public ignorance of our profession, or an "out of sight, out of mind" mentality, the fire service is constantly given a free pass. Thus, I'm going to put forth this possibly controversial idea: Career officers everywhere (within reason). If you want to fix a problem, you start at the top. The equipment your department uses, the type of fires you fight, even manpower itself, all of them aren't as important as who's in charge. It's not an opinion, it's a fact. Military doctrine dating as far back as 2,500 years ago states this, and it has been continually echoed by every successful military outfit in history. From China, to Rome, to West Point. If you want an example, look no further than our own Civil War. One side had double the manpower, better industry and far superior equipment in comparison to the other, and still managed to lose for two to three years before finally turning things around to win what should have been an easy victory. History is littered with similar stories, and what do they all have in common? Brilliant leaders on the side of the underdog. Some were great tactitians, some had good heads for logistics. A great fire officer doesn't get the luxury of choosing to be one or the other, he needs to be both. We can all agree that a fire department is a paramilitary organization, so the relevance of these examples should be undeniable. When people look at a department and say it has X amount of problems, I say that it has one. If you place a properly schooled officer in charge of an ailing situation, many problems begin to disappear. Equipment isn't up to snuff? Training is a joke? You now have somebody personally responisble for rectifying those situations. They might not be able to fix your manpower issue (although you'll gain a strong voice for your cause), but they can maximize both the output and safety of your current staff. I'm sure many of you would agree that a small, well managed and cohesive unit is preferable to a mob with good intentions. Why do they have to be career officers? A simple one word answer: time. Starting with the amount of time it takes to educate an officer, to the amount of time it takes weekly to run a fire department, there just aren't enough hours in the day to expect someone to be able to volunteer to do the job. It's not a slight against anyone, it's just a mathematical impossibility. If you're thinking that being an officer begins with the alarm sounding and ends when your company returns, you're sorely mistaken. An officer is also responsible for scheduling, maintaining reports, drilling, basically anything that gets taken for granted when you just expect your department to magically run itself. Even if it wasn't an impossibility for someone to devote the required time, a person with a college level education (which a true fire officer is) shouldn't be expected to do their job for free. Just as we don't expect doctors or lawyers to render their services free of charge, we shouldn't expect any different from our fire officers. Another few reasons for all career officers? Standards, and freedom to do what's right. All of you saying that the state needs to set black and white requirements to be a firefighter are 100% right, but before we worry about the rank and file, let's worry about those who can do the most damage by not being qualified. Furthermore, let's not elect officers, it's just bad on all counts. The military doesn't have their rank and file get together to decide who should run things for the next few years, why should we? It makes no sense. It also opens up the fire service to politics, two things that should never coincide. Good officers have to make hard decisions, and hard decisions hurt feelings and burn bridges. A fire officer should never have to weigh doing what's right against getting reelected. This very reason is why Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life. I await the flames, or the thread getting locked, whichever comes first.

My grandfather used to drink a good amount of Schaeffer's. I still think it's what eventually did him in.

I can see why everyone would say this, but to me "America" is defined by two things: a representative government and an unregulated free market. From a certain standpoint, this selloff is very representative of the American way. Not for nothing, but I'm sure most of the people I've seen on the news complaining about this purchase are going to go to Wal-Mart in the next few weeks and spend some of their money on Chinese and Malaysian made products. t's more than a little hypocritical. It's globalization, and it hasn't been forced upon us by anyone but ourselves. To quote Warren Ellis..."This is the future. This is what we built. This is what we wanted. It must have been. Because we all had the choice, didn't we? It is only our money that allows commercial culture to flower. If we didn't want to live like this, we could have changed it at any time, by not paying for it. So let's celebrate by all going out and buying the same burger."

So they sold, and the media is having a field day. I really don't see how this effects anyone in anyway, seriously.

John, trust me on this one. Their fire chief said he had 60 interior FF's in March. In May, he said he had 90. Don't you find it funny that while every other department in the country is down on volunteers, Peekskill apparently had a hell of a recruitment drive in one month and pulled 30 out of their a**? I mean, regardless of your thoughts on the matter, increasing your numbers by 50% in a span of under 40 days should raise a few red flags in anyone with half a brain. Meanwhile, I believe they only fit tested 60 something firefighters for masks. Subtract the paid staff from that number, and all of a sudden you have a TRUE (there's a funny word) number of interior qualified volunteer firefighters. Now, if you still find that VERY hard to believe, by all means, present your evidence to the contary.

That sums it up nicely. Congrats guys.

As a firefighter, you can't just show up and refuse to work one day, that'd could be seen as a violation of Taylor law. You have to give the municipality a chance to provide a workplace for you at another location. If the municipality is dragging it's feet, that's when things get ugly.

I don't know what standards you're using, but 40 interior rated volunteers isn't what I'd call a "strong volunteer membership", considering that Peekskill FD serves a population of roughly 25,000.

That's easy to say when firefighting and EMS aren't your main sources of income. In today's downturned economy, "fighting for safety" shouldn't exclude financial safety for one's family. Would I like to see an extra guy on my rig? Sure. Should I have to choose between him being there and feeding my kids? Ah, I'm sorry to hear that. Exclusivity is one of those rare things that benefits both the city and the union. If that's the case, what's stopping you from consolidating (I'm assuming resistance from the volunteer companies, it's got to be one side or the other)? Not that that would solve your manpower issue. It's a shame that that point was lost on the media. Having a well run fire dept is much more important than simply having a larger one.

The unfortunate truth behind not putting them all on a single engine is probably that they'd have to give up exclusivity when it comes to operating the rigs. It's a business decision, not a safety issue. It's sad, but you can't blame it on the union. In many combo departments, the moment exclusivity is given up, some idiot politician or anti-career volunteer will advocate cutting staffing levels to save money. Remember, we take pride in our job and love helping the community, but this is how we put food on the table and we can't jeopardize that. We all want to be safe, but we shouldn't have to risk our jobs to make a point. Not to mention that you'd still have the same amount of men showing up to an alarm as before the consolidation, not exactly what I'd call an increase in safety.

That's still not as bad as die-hard union guys that retire, take the sticker off, and then go back to promoting anti-union attitudes. Yes, I've seen this happen. Yes, he's a scumbag.