fireguy43

One of the more ridiculous posts I've seen on here in a long time. Many others have beaten the horse to death- if you are relying on a bunch of high school kids for your first alarm assignment, you have big problems. I started back in the day as an 18 year old with 6 months of high school left to go. My department had no "junior" members and therefore no special rules. Small town, everyone knew me for many years, it was left to my discretion, my parents didn't put any limitations on me, and I graduated with high honors from high school. Fast forward 35+ years, I have my own son who is a 17 year old junior member where we live now. Just finishing FF1 this week. Given the chance, he'd be running on every call he could grab. I as his father have placed limitations on what he is allowed to respond to, and that generally means he goes to NOTHING on school nights once he goes toes up in bed (I still go, but without him). No one in previous posts has mentioned the parental element in this discussion. As a parent of a minor, I make the decisions for my son, not the fire district and not the school when it comes to this topic. He can make all the weekend calls he wants, but if I find out he left school for an alarm, or took his pager to school, that's the end of it.

First of all, you are so wrong on so many aspects of this post that I don't even know where to start. How would you know the debt structure of a privately owned company? How do you know what their financial statements look like, and what they own vs. what they don't own? And if you are running an EMS service, shouldn't you try to have vehicles that are "nice and new" as opposed to old rust buckets that are unreliable? When did that become wrong and reason to criticize? Running an EMS agency with a fleet of vehicles, each equipped with the standard load of equipment, eats up a lot of cash. That means that an EMS provider usually has a fair amount of debt. How much debt is really none of your business, has nothing to do with the level of service provided, and has zero impact on response times. Your earlier post that this happened because the Chief was a female was laughable, but now you crossed the line to an uninformed rant.

This is irresponsible and obviously you have some sort of ax to grind against MLSS. Whiskey and cigars? You state that there was no recent relationship between the town and MLSS, but don't they cover Monroe and Goshen? If I'm the Town Supervisor, the logical first call would be the service that covers the towns on either side of me. What a novel thought......the articles in the press allude to slow response times, complaints by town residents, fiscal problems, and a lack of communication with the town board. To represent that this was all a scheme by MLSS or the Town is just ridiculous and apparently baseless. Unbelieveable....

Amazing...... someone notices that four calls went unanswered in Croton, and asks, very innocently enough, if anyone knows why. Two pages of thread later, people are coming out of the woodwork to declare that Croton EMS needs fixing, when not one fact was shared as to what the real, factual reason was for the lack of response in the first post. Not only does Croton apparently need paid EMT's, but we really ought to be talking about consolidation and regionalization! Maybe all Croton needed today was a good mechanic, but we don't know that, do we? Perfect example of the rush to judgement and advancing one's own personal agenda without bothering to learn the facts. I have no affiliation to Croton EMS, but I hope someone from that agency speaks up and at least puts on record what the real situation was today.

Nice try with the picture, but unless two people drove separate cars from Alaska to Beacon and parked them next to each other yesterday, that ain't it.

Was water supply an issue here? Doesn't look like too much water is being used in these photos...

SUNDAY September 12th, not Saturday

Rant is about the most appropriate name for this thread you could think of.....

Perhaps before we draw conclusions, we should try to ascertain the facts of a situation, especially when we have no first hand knowledge of what happened. The company that went four dispatches was mine. We did not go to Lake George, so the entire premise of the comment is invalid. For the record, there were four members geared up an ready to go at the firehouse, but a driver did not respond. A response was eventually put together with an officer and an engine from another company of the same department. That same company responded at 12:30 am to a mutual aid structure fire in Lagrange, but no one was awake to hear that one....... why a driver did not respond is a separate issue and has nothing to do with parades. As to the Orange County MVA, I cannot comment as I don't know what happened. I know, isn't that a novel idea.

Tommy- Two words- Spell Check

Ah.... memories. My first run was M/A to Chelsea, cold winter day in '76. Fire in a bar on 9D. They still had the Howe back then. What year did the Seagrave arrive? Couldn't have been too much after that. Herb Muller, Jim Tompkins and Mike Cabrerra were the primary drivers.....

Tommy- You can't just post other people's pictures as if they were your own with no attribution or credit. That's just not right.

Let's be careful with the sterotyping and broad brush statements. Someone your age would consider me old, and if you knew me, you'd probably agree to "crusty" as well. However, I've been doing this for 34 years plus, and I still turn out whenever I am home. Perhaps you are confusing older guys with guys who have more responsibilities, like a wife, kids, baseball coaching, soccer, school projects, etc....... It ain't the same as when you're young, unattached and carefree. You miss more alarms, more drills, more everything because you have other obligations as well. Not complaining about it, just a fact of life. What really makes me chuckle about your post is that just as recently as last Friday morning (about 1:15 am), I was sitting in the cab of the engine, ready to respond to an attic fire in my district. There I was, 50+ years old, out of the house, down the road, and ready to roll. Where were all the "young guys"? Tucked into bed in their jammies. All of those Monday night warriors never seem to be around when it's time to act. Let's be careful about beating on the old guys, and be cognizant of the fact that there are plenty of "young guys" who don't show up all the time either.

My bad, you're right. Thanks for the info