KFIYL2000

 
I know that this is a played out/sore subject with many on EMTBravo.net, but I will again say, if the "Powers to Be" (Politicians) would all get together, abolish the "Home Rule" permanently, and develop and implement a 100% County Run EMS and Fire Operation, with every county tax payer being held responsible for the costs of running such operation, you would stop such comments, as "The City of Mount Vernon doesn't even have enough firefighters to do their primary job of fighting fires". If you take the LOCAL BULL-DINKY POLITICS (both Governmental and Unions) out of the equation and put it in the hands of a Group of EMS and Fire Professionals throughout the county (such as say 5 to 7 "Leaders" coming out of say Yonkers, New Rochelle, White Plains, Mount Vernon, Eastchester, and possibly 1 or 2 Northern Westchester County Towns/Villages) to oversee the day to day operation of such a "Consolidated County Run EMS/Fire Service" you would never have to worry about Private Companies going bankrupt. 
 
When will people wake up and say "This is Enough" ?????

This is all the time. It's a shame the people of Sleepy Hollow do not get the care that they should get. Tarrytown VAC is up there all the time. They should get shut down at best.Peoples lives our on the line.

So, by your argument, county run systems like those in Maryland, Virginia, Florida and California are failures due to costs and subsidies of smaller communities. Hmmm. Really?
You wouldn't be paying for larchmont to have fire protection equal to that of Yonkers, you would be paying to have your fire protection. All pay the same for the same coverage. That's like saying one neighborhood in Boston should pull out of the BFD because they don't like that from time to time their engine leaves to cover calls in another district.
That's why the mess that exists now, exists. If you consolidate all the resources, the system becomes more efficient. Is it THAT hard to see? It's managed and run as a SYSTEM, not a bunch of independent entities.
If you live on the border of say Yonkers and what used to be a volunteer town, you may just get your second engine or ladder WAY faster than you used to, because it's not coming from the other side of Yonkers, but from the next CLOSEST fire house.
How exactly is this bad? Uniform training, uniform standards and staffed fire stations. None of those are bad.

The "SMART MOVE" would be to do what a very large percentage of COUNTIES do throughout this country. And that is to have a COUNTY RUN EMS and FIRE SERVICE (Consolidated) and everything run by the County, with the Operations 100% controlled out of Valhalla (60 Control) and the heck with all of the City/Town/Village Run Fire and EMS Services. Until such time as everyone in Westchester County wakes up and realizes that the HOME RUN and BACK ROOM POLITICS (tied to individual UNIONS) are causing 99.99% of the headaches in each and every municipality here in Westchester County, all of this "Yo-Yo'ing" of quality of service, complaints about Mutual Aid and other nonsense, will continue to happen.
ONE SYSTEM, ONE OPERATION, ONE EMERGENCY SERVICE OPERATION (County Run), ONE SET OF UNIFORM TRAINING REQUIREMENTS FOR ALL FIREFIGHTERS, EMT's and PARAMEDICS, AND ONE COUNTY RUN OPERATION (with one 'set' of Officers and Command Personnel, overseeing all Fire and EMS Operations throughout the County)
Until then, this county will continue to be in CHAOS

Picture quality isn't the best, but here's the latest apparatus update from Morningside VFD down here in Prince George's County, MD.
The refurb of the new-to-us Engine 827 is almost complete. Lettering was completed a few days ago. Still needs the Roto-Ray and the 27 on the grille, but so far she's looking pretty good.

Also, the new-to-us Ambulance 827 has arrived at a shop in Maryland. Its going to need a few months of TLC before its ready for the streets, but we're looking forward to placing this unit in service. Once it's completed, it will be the first time in many years that all of the apparatus in the station are owned by the company.

Lets take it one step farther. The town of Pelham is 2.2 square miles. Approximately 1/2 is the village of Pelham and the other half is the village of Pelham Manor. They have an elected town supervisor and four Town Board members. plus Assistant to the Supervisor, Comptroller and ten departments: Town Clerk, Receiver of Taxes, Assessor, Courts, Town Engineer, Buildings, Senior Advocate, Historian, and Controller/Bookkeeper all in one town hall,
Then the villages have 2 of everything:
2 village managers
2 village clerks
2 village Police Departments
2 village Fire Departments
2 village Department of public works,
2 village Building Inspectors.
2 village attorneys
2 village Mayors and Boards
1 ALS flycar
AND is the only community in Westchester county with NO AMBULANCES.

A lot goes into duplication of services.
We have more engines than the city of New York and they protect 8x the population.
And 90% of them are understaffed or can not get on the road.

Put a Bar in there and it'll be standing room only! LOL

Actually what the run numbers mean is we have way to many rigs in Westchester covering 1 - 2 calls a day. And since most depts. can't properly many the rigs they have, all we are doing is fooling ourselves and the public.

Fork and Hose Co. strives to provide inspiration for firefighters in the kitchen. We try to feature as many healthy meals as possible because as we all know, the biggest killer in the fire service is cardiac related incidents. We recently filmed a couple episodes of Firehouse Kitchen with my good friends at 555 Fitness, in which we featured health-conscious recipes as well as workouts that require only equipment commonly found in firehouses such as apartment-packs, foam pails, hose and a stokes basket. I am curious to know if any departments in the area implement any fitness and health programs. If so could you explain the details and if not has anyone ever tried to and failed? The statistics do not lie and the fire service is ridden with mindset "it's not going to happen to me", which is something to be concerned about because WE are the only ones who can change that. You must think not only about yourselves but your brothers and sisters backing you up and your family.
Stay safe!
AJ
Fork and Hose Co.
Founder
Find us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @forkandhoseco !

Here's something that has boggled my mind since I moved to Westchester....WHY are all the cities self dispatching, the county dispatching most of the county, and towns and villages operating on separate non-trunk frequencies?!?!?!? I've more than noticed that the communication structure of this county is extremely over-complicated. WHY? (I'm going to start a new thread to try to figure this one out)

Did anyone catch it? Airs Thursday Nights at 10 on A&E.
Replays tonight (Saturday) at 5PM EST, 2AM, Sunday at noon, and is available On Demand.
http://www.jems.com/article/news/ae-premieres-new-orleans-ems-television

NYC EMS 1,600,000

Westchester EMS 45 Medics: 5202, a record.

I know I'm not in the greater NYC area anymore, so just to be safe Jon, I'll officially take us out of the running for that trophy you're giving out...
Morningside Volunteer Fire Department
Prince George's County, MD Station 827
Engine 827: 1,056
Rescue-Engine 827: 977
Rescue Squad 827: 1,853
Ambulance 827: 2,824
Total: 6,709*
That's with minimum staffing of 3 interior on the Engine, 4 on the Rescue Squad, and 3 or 4 on the Rescue Engine depending on if its responding as an Engine Company or a Special Service. Ambulance is with 2 EMTs minimum, obviously. Though most of the time we run heavier than the minimum. As I've mentioned before we're staffed 24/7 with volunteers.
*Note: Some of those responses are incidents in which 2 or 3 pieces responded to the same call. I don't have the ability to break down how many unique incident numbers we went on, that kind of thing has to come from Communications, these are the numbers from our logbook. Some of those calls that suppression pieces went on are to assist EMS, but again I can't separate that data.

This is why NFPA 1901 requires AED's on all apparatus even if you do not provide EMS 1st Response. This is why all firefighters should have CPR and even CFR or EMT as a minimum.

Just rely on Mutual Aid like many other Depts.! After all aren't we there to help each other out? That's the "Brotherly" thing to do these days right? Jump on a rig and play in each others sandboxes no big deal!

Can you say "CONSOLIDATED COUNTYWIDE FIRE and EMS SERVICES" ? (and get rid of that ridiculous HOME RULE that is in place within New York State)

Same reason I wouldn't want to call County Tech Rescue Team. Nice trucks for a parade can't get out the door when volunteers are coming from all directions in the county. My first call is NR, YO, WP. (In no particular order) for jobs a small town can't handle. County MERV or METU whatever it is, is no different. Not volly bashing and I'm no career guy either but how long are you going to wait? Look no more then a Rye incident a few months back. Not Monday morning QB, just based on time reaponse posted and listening. You can't depend on people having to come from 15-20 min assemble a crew and then respond 20min away. That's 40-45 min. Maybe the MERV will stil be needed that long into operation. Most likely but just insane.

More bandaids...

Given Armonk is a relatively slow system, how experienced are WEMS EMT's as opposed to EMT's of Transcare and Empress? How was WEMS picked for this, and how does Armonk compensate them?
Does Armonk have a say in which WEMS EMT's will be assigned there?

One EMT ? So what does he do, sit and wait for another EMT to show up ?

So some of you know I've moved down to Virginia for a new job, and I've started volunteering with Company 27 in Prince George's County, MD. I just wanted to share an "interesting" rescue we had yesterday. Probably not a big deal to a lot of the more experienced people on here, but for me, as someone very inexperienced in technical rescue, I thought it might be worth sharing.
Engine 829 (Silver Hills), Rescue-Engine 827 (Morningside), Medic 829, Ambulance 829, Battalion Chief 883 and the Southern EMS Duty Officer were dispatched to the 3400 block of Curtis drive for a reported PIA with entrapment. E829 was first due and confirmed that a minivan had driven into a guard shack and that the security guard was pinned under the van. RE-827 arrived as the first due special service. Rescue Squad 842 was also requested as part of the County Technical Rescue Team.
Our initial plan (not being able to see the scene) was to use a Hurst spreader plate to lift the car off the guard and drag him out (this worked for the company a few months ago when a PGPD Officer was trapped under a car on the highway.) Upon arriving we realized the security guard was not completely pinned by the car, an air conditioning unit and filing cabinet had created a small void space that held the car up and protected him from being completely crushed. We also realized we had no room to use the spreaders and our plan became to turn the windows into doors on the "B" and "D" sides of the shack (assuming the van entered in side "A") and then use airbags to lift the vehicle off the patient and let the medics drag him out of the "C" side that was non-load bearing. RS442 arrived and shored the "D" side with the Rescue-42 jack system, and then ultimately it was decided to use another Rescue-42 jack to lift the car off the patient. Patient transported with serious but non-life threatening injuries.
Again, for those of you more well versed in technical rescue, this is probably a pretty minor incident, but for for it was a pretty interesting experience and a good intro to how things are done in PG County. Despite all the company rivalry that's present down here, when things like this happen everyone (career, volunteer, PD, different companies, etc) all worked and communicated extremely well together. The way it should be.
Some photos from the scene:
(Note: All photos are from the Morningside Volunteer Fire Department and/or the Prince George's County Police PIO's social media pages)
View from the D-Side

View from the C-Side

View of the void space created by the A/C unit and the filing cabinet.

NBC Washington: Security Guard Rescued After Van Plows into Booth

Finally!
http://www.wjla.com/articles/2014/06/kenneth-ellerbe-d-c-fire-chief-will-step-down-next-month-103812.html
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/5/embattled-dc-fire-chief-announces-retirement/
No doubt there are many smiles today at the DCFEMS DCFD!!

@1;29 .. when you hit mute, looks like he says"CDs for not being 89"