RITRobotoX

^^^I believe that Port Chester FD is a village municipal fire department and not a fire district. Thus there are no fire commissioners, only the village board of trustees. We have the same setup in Croton-on-Hudson, just on a smaller scale with no career FFs yet. It's a system that has pros and cons over a fire district. There's generally more local accountability and oversight of a municipal department than a district. However, it means that less knowledgeable politicians are making the budget priorities. Back in the day, the volunteer membership was a huge voting bloc, so the FD was taken care of. Recently, not so much.

Croton FD does not have any antique apparatus. Croton is a municipal department, not a fire district, so all funding, equipment and firehouses are through the village government, run by the board of trustees. Apparatus are managed by the DPW fleet mechanics. FD just makes sure that they're ready for calls, DPW handles actual maintenance. The village fought the addition of U14 to the fleet and keeps pushing back the replacement of R18 and E118, both over 23 years old. There's no money for an antique apparatus, no where to put it and there are higher priorities. I'd love to get the '63 Mack R18 back as an antique or the '84 Mack CF E119. Unfortunately, it isn't feasible at this time.

Ex-2171 has 156,255 miles on it in 13 years. I'm guessing that's a pretty hard 12,000 miles a year. Those local roads ain't exactly smooth riding...

As the current engineer for Croton FD's Rescue 18, I would appreciate it if anyone had contact info for the current owner of our old 1963 Mack could give it to me. We have an idea for something special when our 1993 International goes out and would like to get in touch with this gentleman to discuss it. Thanks. --Josh Karpoff

Watching the video, it looks like the house might have been under renovation and it looks like this happened during overhaul (look at the number of guys just standing around in that back part of the building with no wall sheathing). That's a lot of guys to be on a roof that's just had its structure weakened by a fire, especially if some of the underlying structure wasn't put back together yet. On an sort of related note, what's up with that ladder on the A side of that house? Not trying to "day-after IC" this, just thinking out loud about what we can learn from this close-call.

Both the new Ford and Ram commercial vans are part of the move by global automotive manufacturers to have one global product line. You will see less and less vehicles developed just for one country or market. The new Ram ProMaster Van is just a rebranded FIAT Ducato, which makes sense that FIAT now owns Chrysler and not Mercedes-Benz (which is why the Sprinter van was a re-badge of the M-B van). The new Ford Transit, that replaces the North America-only Econoline, is based on the same platform that Ford has been selling everywhere else for many decades. As far as conversion goes, Europeans have been converting Ford Transits since they first appeared in the 1950's. I don't think that this is ending anytime soon, its just that the conversion builders will have to do some R&D and re-tooling around the new models. One might just not want to be the first customer to buy one... M-B still sells their van under the M-B brand in the US as well as under the Freightliner brand (a M-B Subsidiary). Nissan now has their NV series commercial van in the US market, which is also more of a global market style van (based on a Renault design, which has a global partnership with Nissan). Toyota has been floating the idea of also bringing a commercial van to the US market. The only truly NA-only commercial van left in the US is the Chevrolet/ GMC van, which is based on a platform that is decades old and hasn't seen much in the way of updating in quite some time. One might expect to see a GM Europe design commercial van showing up in North America in the not too distant future if Ford, Ram, et al, eat away at GM's market share with their newer designs. So if your department/ agency really prefers the current GM van chassis, now might be the time to start getting your specs together.

Where is Marine 2's home port?

PS My aunt is doing much better, she's awake and alert. Her color has returned and most of her vitals are good. She's still on a ventilator in the Trauma ICU, but she's definitely doing a lot better than she was yesterday.

Everyone, thank you for your efforts, it is very much appreciated. I found out that the responding police agency was Yorktown PD. Again, thank you so much for your help. --Josh Karpoff

Yesterday morning, on her morning commute, my aunt, ***********, was involved in a head-on MVA, somewhere between her home in Carmel, NY and her job as a state pysch nurse*****************. She was unconscious when she was transported to Westchester Medical Center and hasn't been conscious since. No one contacted the family until many hours later, after several surgeries and she's still in the Trauma ICU on a ventilator. My uncle and cousin are obviously pre-occupied, at her bedside. I however am stuck at work. I'm trying to help them out by finding out which agency has the incident report. I just want to find out which agency HAS the report, to save my very pre-occupied uncle some leg work. No one at the hospital has been able to tell them the details of the accident and my family doesn't even know exactly where it happened. They haven't even been able to tell anyone which EMS agency brought her in. Apparently, that's not on any form or computer database that ANYONE at Westchester Medical Center that either I, my uncle or my cousin has been able to ask. Trust me, I spent an hour on the phone following her paperwork through the system. Here's where I could really use your help: I just need to know of any serious MVAs w/ transport to Westchester Medical Center, yesterday, Wednesday, May 8th between 6 and 10AM, somewhere between Carmel, NY and Peekskill, NY. She usually takes Route 301 to Peekskill Hollow Road to Oregon Road to Route 6. She works in an office right on Route 6 in Peekskill. So far, I've talked to: *Nearly everyone at Westchester Medical Center *Putnam County Sherriffs Office (can't help further without name of EMS Agency) *NY State Police - Troop K Zone 3 - Mohegan Lake *Peekskill Police Department *Her car insurance company None of them has any record of an MVA as I described. Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you, --Josh Karpoff RES18CUE Member of Croton Fire Patrol Co, No. 1 Croton Fire Department

I was R18-3 on this call. We used EVERY airbag and EVERY piece of cribbing on our rig. We had pretty much everything from the airbag compartment under that locomotive. Metro-North's yard employees used a forklift to bring us an additional pallet load of scrap railroad ties to use as cribbing, which is what really helped us get the needed height for the lift. I can't remember what size each of the airbags is off-hand, but there are 6 of them on the rig. Five are various sized squares, while one is a long rectangle. In the photo on YHFD's page, you can see that the pilot (aka "The Cow Catcher") on the locomotive had to be bent upwards to make the extrication. The patient had been run over by the pilot and was pinned in the section under those steps, right in front of those wheels. He had been dragged under the locomotive for a little while before the engineer realized he was under there (when running in that direction, the engineer is on the other side of the locomotive and can't see that side at all).

I was formerly employed as a contract employee to provide Electrical Design services to the NYS Office of General Services - Design & Construction Group, who's biggest client was the NYS Dept. of Correctional Services. I was based out of Albany but I did A LOT of work for Sing Sing CF and can say that it needed a whole lot more work then what we were already working on. As the second oldest facility in the state, it has some of the oldest wiring you can find still in use. On top of that, all of this wiring was done over the years by lowest bidder contractors or poorly paid/ overworked maintenance staff. What was of decent quality at installation, can be guaranteed to be deteriorating due to lack of maintenance over more than a century. I am a little surprised that there aren't more electrical fires there. As far as the safety of the Firefighters from injury by inmates, I'd guess that the C.O.'s marched their evacuated inmates well away from the building in question before the facility let the fire department inside the inner perimeter. They would never let the safety of civilian volunteer firefighters be at risk from inmates, nor do I think that the vast majority of inmates really have any animosity toward volunteer firefighters. I don't think the facility would have significantly delayed the fire department's response that much, probably just collected ID's, got a head count and gave everyone a hand stamp. With the solid construction of those buildings (they may be slowly falling down due to age, but they are all pretty much solid masonry, steel and concrete, nor do they have a heavy fireload from their contents), I don't think the gate delays would be that big a deal. I would however guess that accounting for every person and EVERY tool or piece of equipment after the fire has been extinguished would take a lot longer than normal. In all of my site visits I never saw a Sing Sing CF fire truck, like the one that Bedford Hills CF has (my group supervised the construction of the new storage structure for BHCF's fire truck), but it could also be stored in the old boiler plant, which I never got to visit. Many facilities do have vans full of their fire brigade's gear, which in combination with pre-connected lines and standpipes throughout the facility can help the fire brigade get a handle on most fires until mutual aid can get on scene.

Someone screwed up one of the exterior decals on box. In the photo that shows the rear passenger side of the box, there's a URL for the FDNY, except that the URL is wrong. It says "www.nyc.gov.fdny" which doesn't work, but should say "www.nyc.gov/fdny". I hope the FDNY can get the manufacturer to pay for that screwup.

Here's video of uniformed members of IAFF Local 311 (Dane County, WI, aka Madison), marching into the rotunda of the State Capitol, with bagpipes and drums, to thunderous applause from the protesting union workers. Public Safety employee unions are currently exempted from the revocation of collective bargaining rights, under the proposed bill. Even so, Madison firefighters have had a sustained presence at the demonstrations all week, standing in solidarity with their union brothers and sisters. As Local 311's president said, "If this passes, its only a matter of time before they come back looking for the same from us."