FireMedic049

I was a student athlete also and had homework most nights too, but I still managed to get to bed at a reasonable hour and get a decent nights sleep most of the time. What were you doing that kept you up until 1am?

I haven't read the actual agreement yet, but based on the content of the article, on the surface this agreement certainly seems to run counter to the single fire department, single fire chief model voted for in the charter revision. Allowing the volunteer organization to have control over the assignment and un-assignment of career personnel at their fire stations is mind-boggling when trying to create an integrated, city-wide combination fire department. The concept of the supposed top dog of the city-wide fire department's (Fire Chief Brown) decisions being subject to veto by his subordinates is simply ridiculous.

Your sense of humor is just fine. Some people just don't understand it.

I think your wheelbase number is off. The engine looks to be about the same size as the one I work on and it has a 165" wheelbase.

It's the same with the GM Type IIIs. The G3500 chassis is only available as a 139" WB and the G4500 chassis is only available as a 159" chassis.

It appears to be a 138" WB chassis to me, which would make it an E-350. The E-450 is only available as a 158" WB chassis.

I wouldn't categorize the article as being "against" raised roof cabs. The bulk of the article was about the lack of training in specific areas (riding in fire trucks and using the Q siren) for new firefighters and officers under the assumption that they just know what to do. It also touch on a primary factor in non usage of seatbelts being the non-user friendly aspects of older seatbelt designs and that newer designs have made them much easier to use when geared up. The only thing about raised roof cabs in it was the assertion that having them meant the department was sending the message that it was ok to be out of your seat dressing, even if your policy stated otherwise. Personally, I think that's a bunch of crap. If your policy states personnel are to be seated and belted when the vehicle is moving, then the department is sending the message that being out of your seat getting dressed is not OK. If your personnel are not following the policy and your officers are not enforcing the policy, then that would be sending a message in conflict with the stated policy of the department and none of that has anything to do with how much headroom is in the back of the cab.

Yeah, it's not a Seagrave.

I was standing in the hall waiting with classmates to get into my 10th grade social studies classroom following lunch when I heard about it. The girl who told us was a bit of a jokester, so we were kind of like "yeah, right". Found out a little later that she wasn't joking.

I agree. Definately a waste of space.

I can't say for sure, but I would imagine that in this specific incident, it may not be a case of the agency actually exempting a group from the law, but rather issuing a statement of finding regarding their interpretation of the law. The center of the issue falls to how much of an "employee" is a volunteer (firefighter or EMS provider) and to an extent, who's "employee" are they. The whole idea of thinking that volunteers could be enough of an employee to qualify for healthcare coverage under the ACA, but not enough of an employee to require payment of wages for time worked on behalf of the organization under federal wage law is mind boggling to me. So, it could simply be a case of determining that the law doesn't actually apply to the volunteers rather than determining that the law does apply to them and then deciding to actually exempt the volunteers from it. I believe that there was never any intention for the healthcare mandate to include people actually volunteering their time to an organization and that this was only an "issue" because people associated with the volunteer fire service made it an issue.

Actually, everything we do has risk, but not necessarily "high risk". Getting off apparatus in and of itself is not a very risky activity. What increases the level of risk into the "high" category would be the environment in which the low risk activity occurs. Getting off on a busy interstate is certainly far riskier than doing it in the station for obvious reasons, but that doesn't mean the activity itself is "high risk". I wasn't making any attempt to rank ice rescue comparatively to other technical rescue disciplines. I was simply offering an explanation for the question asked. Many departments lack training and equipment to provide all forms of technical rescue, so maybe ice rescue is one that departments in that area aren't prepared for. If you don't get many ice rescue calls, there's a good chance it may not be a priority for a department.

I can't speak to why the departments in your area don't have the equipment, but ice rescue is a form of technical rescue and many departments aren't adequately equipped and trained for technical rescue. Ice rescue can easily be a high risk event, but with the proper training, equipment and adequate personnel that risk can be minimized, just like firefighting. To do it properly requires more than just "basic training".

Don't have that problem in my area. We routinely divert to higher priority calls on a daily basis.

A couple of points (and not fully directed to you): 1) Statistically speaking, the 19 Arizona LODDs are an anomoly since we typically don't see single events with that many deaths. Subtracting them from the 2013 total you listed of 101, last year is on par with 2011 and 2012 in terms of total LODDs and the 5th year in a row under 100. This is kind of significant considering we spent 19 of the 22 years prior to that over 100 annually and that for many of those years post-incident onset deaths where not counted like they are now. 2) I agree, our LODD total is too high. 3) Although I wouldn't describe the discussion about Ellenville as "ranting and raving", we can discuss that situation and numerous others while also working to reduce LODDs. It's called multi-tasking and a lot of firefighters are pretty good at it. 4) Before we can truly make any progress on reducing LODDs, we have to identify and understand what is causing them. I repeatedly see posts in forums and comment sections trying to insinuate that what they perceive to be "unsafe" fireground operations (including non-LODD incidents) as the reason the annual LODD total is what it is. Looking over the USFA stats for 2011 and 2012 and as best as I could decifer some of their coding, the 2 year averages for LODDs are as follows: * During training - 8 * Vehicle related - 12.5 * On scene medical related - 10.5 * Post incident - 17 * Other, non-fire related - 21 (Includes on-duty medical related and on scene, non-fire related trauma) * Traumatic fire related - 15 (These are the ones in which the fire or building kills us) 5) What that data tells me is that the "problem" is not predominately related to how we (collectively) fight fires. This doesn't mean we don't have stuff to learn and practice to keep this number down. To me, it means that the areas in which we need to be more focused are our health and apparatus operations. If we can get fitter (which should include keeping our most vulnerable members off the scene) and stop crashing our apparatus in the same ways over and over again, we should be able to make a sizable dent in LODDs and OTJ injuries.

OK.

I'm glad it worked out, but I feel like you missed my point. In your case, you can't let your members think that he was suspended for turning the license plate upside down when it was actually a "final straw" situation. They don't need to know all of the specifics, just that it involved multiple rule violations (and lying about the license plate incident). A suspension for what appears to be a harmless prank is BS and allowing your members to think that's the situation is wrong to all involved and deserves questioning by the membership.

I can't answer for their particular situation, but it's actually a pretty easy thing the explain. Sometimes you have to make a judgement call in a situation like that and take the second call if it seems like it's more of a priority. In my area, our calls are assigned a priority category by 911. I work for a paid service that only responds with on-duty staffed units. If we have only 1 unit available and get 2 calls close together like this, we will typically take the higher priority call (unless the mutual aid unit will be a lot closer) and refer the other to mutual aid regardless of what order they came in. We do the same thing within our units. If a unit is on the way to a low priority call and a high priority call comes in that they will be a lot closer to than one of our other units, they will divert to that call and one of the other units will pick up their call.

You are correct that a child with a seizure and an elderly man with a cut arm are two different calls. I'll preface this with the fact that I don't have the details provided at the time of the dispatches, the priority between the two calls seams clear based on these simplistic descriptions however, that may not be the case. Does the child have a history of seizures? Has the child been running a fever? How bad is the cut on the elderly male? How bad is he bleeding? Is he on a blood thinner? Given the info presented, it appears that the VAC would be sending BLS units to these calls. As such, in general, the only thing that the crew would provide for the child is oxygen and transport to the hospital. On the other hand, if the eldely male's "cut arm" was actually a serious laceration with uncontrolled bleeding and on a blood thinner, then it could be argued that he could be the higher priority call since the BLS unit could provide a definitive intervention on the scene for his condition, but not for the child. Regardless, the bigger issue appears to be an inadequate EMS system.

A lot of the reason why people question decisions is often due to a lack of information being available to them or poorly communicated information that is available. IMO, you just did this in your post above about the member you suspended. You state that you and the Captain suspended a member for turning a license plate upside down. You then insinuate that some issues with his driving and lying about the license plate incident may have influenced the suspension decision. By itself, turning a license plate upside down is a BS reason to suspend somebody. Factoring in the driving issues to justify a suspension following a non-driving incident is suspect IMO. It might be reasonable to do so if the driving issues were a pattern of rule violations and the appropriate corrective measures where taken and documented. Suspending him for lying about turning the license plate upside down and you have definitive evidence that it's a lie, that's another story. So what was the actual reason for the suspension, the license plate, a cummulative behavior issue or something else? If you suspended him for lying about the incident, but told or allowed your members to think that it was because of the license plate, then you deserve any grief you got over it.

IMO, this thing is nothing more than some people in the volunteer fire service creating a problem where a problem doesn't actually exist.