FireMedic049

Yes, that is correct. Yes, there is a defacto minimum number of FT personnel on-duty each day. Our PT personnel are not permitted to function as apparatus drivers or serve as officers. As such, there must be one FT person serving as the shift OIC (Deputy Chief, Captain or a FF qualified to act) and 2 FT personnel serving as apparatus drivers. The shift Captain will be one of the drivers as needed, provided they aren't needed to cover the Deputy Chief's position. If the number of FT personnel for the day drops below 3, then off-duty personnel will be called in on OT to cover. On rare occasion, OT may get called in even if there are 3 FT personnel working. This only happens if none of the FT working are eligible to act up as the shift OIC, if those working decline the opportunity to act up or if one of the FT personnel has not been cleared to drive yet (someone newly promoted to full-time that hasn't completed driver training).

Although not in the area asked about, here's what we do. We are a 2 station career FD (down from 4 stations 30+ years ago) with 21 full-time and 12 part-time firefighters split between 4 shifts. We staff 5 as a minimum and up to 8. Full-time personnel must live in the City. Part-time can live anywhere, but must move in once hired full-time. Most of them live close enough to respond for incident callbacks. Whenever we have a working fire, a 2nd Alarm is struck, which is more of a "working fire upgrade" than a true 2nd Alarm. It alerts our off-duty personnel along with adding mutual companies for RIT and an additional engine. Off-duty personnel are notified using a series of notification mediums. Most personnel are issued Minitor pagers and the primary notification for an incident callback is via the County 911 center. Each shift has their own "tone" and there is also an "All Call" tone for a full department callback. In addition to that, a text notification is sent out to all member's cell phones when a callback is in progress. On top of that, most members are utilizing the Active 911 app on their phones. We get notifications for all incidents, but get additional notifications when a callback is initiated. So far, the redundancy of this has been working favorably as we've had problems with our County dispatch consistently making the proper notifications. Sometimes they hit the tones and forget the texts. Sometimes they've sent the texts, but forgot to hit the tones. Among other issues. We typically don't do callbacks to fill the stations on most calls. Occasionally there will be a callback for a limited number of personnel to help with an incident or staff a reserve unit during it if units won't be able to leave for a subsequent call. If a unit responds to a call outside of the city and will be committed to that incident, then we will do a callback by shift using the same notification process described above until we reach minimum staffing. We also provide river rescue services in our area. So, anytime the boat leaves the dock, a callback by shift occurs to re-staff the on-duty units up to minimum staffing levels. Response to callbacks is not mandatory and there is no official "time requirement" on them, but personnel know that they are expected to arrive within a reasonable amount of time. So, guys outside of the immediate area (either by residence or physical location at the time), don't typically call in for the non-All Call situations if they can't be there within about 10-15 minutes.

It's also important to remember that the union is there to protect the process. If you don't protect the process when an employee is disciplined, particularly when the employee may very well deserve the discipline or termination, then you set a dangerous precedent whereby someone in the future who doesn't deserve to be disciplined or terminated is harmed. It may not be easy or popular to represent an employee who may deserve the discipline or termination, but they have the right to representation and the union has an obligation to do so. It's not the union's fault if the employer fails to follow proper procedure and the discipline or termination is overturned. It's all no different than a person accused of a crime having the right to an attorney, the defense attorney having the obligation to represent them to the best of their ability and the police and DA having to follow the proper procedures in building and trying their case in order to avoid it being thrown out on a technicality.

That hasn't exactly been what I've seen from the large city near me. They've had several employees across different city departments that have been reinstated, largely due to violations of due process, in some cases, rushing into terminating the employee.

You gotta love what passes for journalism these days.

Provided the fire has extended from the garage. Hyperbole aside, you are correct that that there can be more than one way to handle a situation. However, it's incumbent that we do our best to choose the best option rather than just any option. As such, departments and their leaders have an obligation to be adequately trained and prepared for the situations that they will likely see based on those things you mention in order to not limit their available options for mitigation. This particular department didn't seem to be adequately prepared for the task at hand shown in the videos.

I disagree with the conclusion that "the whole lower level is well involved" based on the fire showing from the garage and that the handline should have gone thru the garage first. If you look at the beginning of the first video, just before and after that engine arrives, there is fire burning around the garage doors, but there is no fire at the front door and no visible fire and limited smoke from the downstairs window to the right. The whole lower level is clearly not what I'd consider to be "well involved". To me, based on that assessment, the area of origin is more than likely the garage and actual fire does not appear to spread much yet. Smoke yes, fire not so much. Conditions on the upper floor seem like they could still be survivable for any occupants (not sure what the occupancy information they had was). Looking at the videos a few times, it kind of looked like the fire spread to the front door area may have been an exterior spread from the garage rather than the interior burning thru. While the garage certainly needs addressed, getting thru the garage doors is likely going to take a few minutes to do anything other than flow water from the driveway. As such, my first line would be hitting the visible fire from the garage and then attempting to make entry thru the front door in attempt to cut off the fire spread and protect the stairs for a quick search of the bedrooms over the garage. As manpower would allow, other personnel would simultaneously get to work on removal of the garage doors while the 2nd line supports that work (Ideally, you create an opening large enough to flow water thru in the one door to hold the fire in check some while working on removal of the other door.). Given how choppy the video editing is, it's hard to get a good sense of the timing of the obvious fire spread that occurs. So, it's hard to tell for sure if conditions would allow for sustained interior operations, but it might be long enough to at least make a quick search.

I agree that there are times in which using the deck gun for a quick knockdown in order to perform interior operations is appropriate however, I don't think that tactic was appropriate for this particular fire being discussed. Based on the initial view shown in these videos, the amount of fire showing on arrival appears to be manageable with a handline giving no true advantage to the use of the deck gun. As the video progresses, one could make the argument for hitting it with the deck gun, but that need appears to be the direct result of what looks like insufficient action by the initial crews that allowed the fire to progress to that point.

Why? Because far too many continue to think that as long as the fire trucks show up and the fire (eventually) goes out, it's a "win". I freely admit that I'm making a judgement without the "full story", but based on what these videos show, I'm pretty comfortable in saying that this is what a fire department that isn't adequately prepared to perform its core function looks like. Fire departments that know what to do don't have a large group of personnel dressed for the occasion standing around doing nothing in front of a house while it burns!

It's hard to say for sure given the limitations of the video, but this incident doesn't appear to be an "A" effort.

Yeah, that was already covered.

In that situation, the decision to not respond was clearly the correct one as your Captain was aware that the incident was already being handled and adding yourself to the party could certainly be considered freelancing. In this case, I'd be curious to know some more details to help determine if this was freelancing or just a good faith effort to perform their duties and the incident just happened to be across the borderline.

There are places in which calls are dispatched to the closest units regardless of response district boundaries, but in a lot of areas in which that happens, the departments have all signed off on doing so and are all dispatched by the same dispatch agency and may even be sharing a common dispatch channel. As for this particular incident, there seems to be insufficient information presented on here to determine if what happened was or wasn't "ok".

Leaving your (100' ladder) tiller behind and taking the much smaller squirt because you lack a tillerman is not what I'd consider to be an "excellent plan B".

If I'm not mistaken, the feature that you are describing allows the rear steer axle to be locked and this allows the vehicle to be operated with a single driver, but it's more like driving a tractor-trailer than a straight ladder.