FireMedic049

What doesn't make sense?

Did you even read the article or at least the portion posted? Even if "the roads will still be congested", the fact that a fly car is closer to a call than an ambulance means that ALS equipped EMS personnel will likely reach the patient sooner. It clearly states that response times in that area are down in conjunction with this program. That certainly seems like a good thing and it's literally change.

I'm pretty sure this is actually an E-450 since it has the longer 158" wheelbase. I believe Ford stopped offering the longer wheelbase E-350 chassis when they introduced the E-450 chassis. Which was at least 10+ years ago.

The reason for the residency credit is pretty simple. It gives the NYC residents a "small" edge over the out of towners. I suspect that historically the non-resident applicant pool is predominantly white & male. The city is trying to inject diversity into the department. The city has a large non-white population and a lot of females. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out.

They aren't talking about equality between residents/non-residents. It's pretty much strictly about race and maybe some gender.

You have to keep in mind what's typically driving this. Many municipalities are making significant changes as a result of the various lawsuits regarding hiring practices. They are trying to avoid being the next one to be sued. They are more worried about making it appear that they are trying to diversify than making sure they have quality recruits.

Oh, there's absolutely an agenda in play with the FDNY testing. It's blatantly apparent to anyone who's been following the litigation referenced in the article and other recent actions, like the female that was allowed to graduate despite not passing a required physical test.

Considering their recruit training program and probationary process, prior firefighting knowledge while likely beneficial, isn't specifically necessary for a recruit to succeed in that system. To some extent, entry level civil service exams aren't specifically for testing job specific knowledge, but rather to evaluate a person's general knowledge, reading comprehension, ability to follow directions, ability to solve problems, etc. Personally, I don't see a problem with this as long as the test is adequately assessing a candidate's mental aptitude for what is needed to complete recruit school and perform the job vs dumbing down the exam in order to achieve diversity at the expense of quality.

It's my understanding that...... 1) Fire service within the City of Norwich is provided by a multi-station career department and 5 independent volunteer departments. All have their own primary response area within the city and all have control of who responds to incidents within those individual districts. 2) None of the volunteer departments utilize the career department units with any sort of regularity. 3) When the volunteer departments need help with an incident, they routinely request mutual aid units from outside of the city even though career staffed units within the city are closer and available to respond. 4) It's possible that there may be a training issue within the volunteer departments, but I'm not positive that is the case. 5) The career department utilizes the city's volunteer departments when needed. 6) The safety issue for the residents and for that matter, the other firefighters is that it is common practice in some parts of the city to not utilize units that are staffed, trained and CLOSER to incidents in favor of other units that are not staffed and further away.

Here's a thought, if the noise bothers you so much, maybe don't live in the most populated city in the country?

Thanks, just wanted to confirm we were talking about the same thing. Right and that's what I was talking about. While checking my equipment the day after a fire, it's not uncommon to find some cylinders that have settled and need topped off. That may be what you are used to, but in my area it's pretty common for cylinders to be filled on scene and not just for them to be reused at that incident. Most departments don't have air trucks either, but there are enough that one typically responds to most working fires. Many departments around here also don't have fill stations in the firehouse, which is part of the reason an air truck is usually requested at some point, even if you won't need to reuse them right away. I would agree a 700psi drop is not good, but there generally isn't a build up of heat on the fill station end. At least nothing I've ever experienced. The heat is primarily generated by the air under pressure being pushed into the cylinder. The friction of the air passing thru the cylinder valve raises the temp of the air going in. The faster the flow, the hotter the air gets and that heat is transferred to the cylinder body.

Which valve, the cylinder valve or the valve on the fill station? But that's only if it's an incident of an extended duration in which you are using a lot of cylinders. It's pretty common for us to only need to fill most cylinders once while on scene. When that's the case, depending on who's doing the filling, it's not uncommon to see a drop in the pressure the next day necessitating topping them off.

Only the top half of the link posted is showing and when I click on it, it disappears altogether from the post and doesn't take me to the article. If I go back to the main menu and re-enter the thread it reappears, but the same thing happens. Anyone else having an issue?

Yeah, those have been on the streets for a little while now.

I get your concern, but will point out that NFPA 1710 has been around for a number of years now. Many departments continue to staff less than 4 on each apparatus and not put the full 15-17 FFs on scene within the 8 minute time frame in the standard. I'm sure there are already cases in which people have been killed/injured and "non-compliant" staffing/response was or could be reasonably argued to be a factor in the outcome, but the fire service isn't exactly awash in lawsuits because of it. It's too complicated to explain legal aftermath here, in part because of variables in each situation, but there's a degree of sovereign immunity that can be involved with government agencies and gross negligence by the fire department typically has to be proven in order to prevail.

You missed my point. I was addressing your question regarding the standard's personnel recommendation. It would be irresponsible for them to recommend an initial response that would be less than what they determined is needed. Whether or not that is a reasonable response to an AFA or the department can achieve that response themselves is a different issue. If I'm not mistaken, 1710 recommendations are based on actual fires in a specific building type and not AFAs and other non-fire responses. So not sending 43 upfront to an AFA wouldn't necessarily be non-compliant.

Because the science/research says that's what's needed to address the tasks that may need to be immediately performed. While it may be true that sending 43 each and every time, everywhere is unrealistic, that in and of itself doesn't translate into not needing 43 when there's an actual fire. Expanding on your line of thinking, the standard also calls for a minimum of 4 per apparatus and up to 6 for "high hazard" areas, yet many cities are staffing 2 or 3 on a piece. Although it may be unrealistic for many cities to staff 4 per piece, 4 is what it takes for a unit operating by itself to initiate interior operations under OSHA 2in/2out, unless there is an immediate life safety issue. As such, it would be irresponsible for an industry standard to recommend staffing that would require a unit to wait for another unit to arrive in order to get the first line in operation. It would be equally irresponsible for an industry standard to recommend less firefighters than what the science/research says are needed overall, just because most cities are unable to commit that many on each response.

I could support that idea.

Yeah, the MSA salesman did a good job of explaining/showing their features and why they are better than what the competition offers without really being derogatory about them. The Scott salesman's presentation was pretty much "We're Scott, most major cities have been using Scott for a long time so obviously we're the best, everybody else sucks, so you should buy Scott."

Yes, it's supposed to, but some designs are better at it than others. As for weight and ergonomic differences between Scott and MSA....... My department evaluated SCBAs a couple years ago, right before the G1 was introduced. The brand we'd been using for a long time was no longer available, so we had to look into other brands and do a complete switch out. Personally, I thought that the Scott model that we demo'd (the next one down from the NxG7) felt noticeably heavier and less comfortable when wearing it compared to the MSA model we demo'd (M7 Firehawk). I've always been a fan of Scott from my initial experience with the 2.2 model many moons ago and brief encounters since. I've used a couple different MSA models previously and they did the job well. However, IMO, the MSA was a far superior product in that comparison in almost every way. Not that the Scott was awful, but MSA was clearly better and giving them a run for their money. Ultimately, Scott was selected and that's a different story. We've been using them for a little over 2 years now. They get the job done, but their ergonomics are not good in my opinion.

That's not a 2016 model. That's at least 5 years old.

I can't put a number to it and it's not always the doctor themselves saying it, but in my experience it is a very, very, very common thing for a person to call their doctor and be told to go to the ER and oftentimes that includes calling 911 for an ambulance to take them.

No rustled feathers here, but I think you're kind of on the wrong page. Given the significantly different operating conditions, you can't directly apply all of the concepts to the fire service. You are correct, there is an inherent level of risk to the job that just can't be completely eliminated without eliminating the ability to do the job we are expected to perform. I don't think the "lessons" to be learned from the aviation industry are about elimination of risk, but rather following sound practices that can help reduce risk where we can reasonably do so. As you pointed out, if something is mechanically wrong with the plane, the plane doesn't fly until it's fixed. In the fire service, we routinely respond with apparatus that is known to not be 100% mechanically sound. Aircraft have somewhat strict maintenance requirements and many parts are serviced or replaced after a specific number of flights or hours in order to prevent "critical failures". In the fire service, many departments lack proper preventative maintenance programs and repairs are typically reactive rather than proactive. Every person on the crew of the aircraft is fully trained in their duties before stepping foot on a plane to perform those duties with real passengers, each person has a specific role and sticks to that role (under normal conditions). As such, you don't see flight attendants flying the planes and the pilots passing out pillows and beverages. In the fire service, we have many departments that routinely allow personnel to respond to incidents before completing initial training and allow personnel to actively perform tasks that they are not trained to perform. The aviation industry has checklists for performing routine tasks, like a pre-flight check and for situations that may arise. The checklists serve to help guide personnel thru the situation and ensure that important tasks are not overlooked. In the fire service, checklists can help to ensure nothing is overlooked during the apparatus check and can do the same thing for the IC during an incident to ensure that essential tasks and notifications are not missed and are performed in a timely manner. They can particularly help when dealing with a low frequency incident like a true hazmat situation, technical rescues, etc. I see these types of things as where we can apply lessons learned rather than on scene decision making about strategy & tactics.