FireMedic049

On the contrary, I very much have a clue about firefighting, however I'll admit that I do not have a clue about Westchester County, but was in no way specifically referring to it with my comments. I was also not discussing "big mansions surrounded by woods" with my comments. Agreed.

You're correct that the fire "in the burbs is just as real" as a fire in the city. However, a structure fire in the city can most definitely be different than one in the suburbs. If you build the exact same house in both locations with the exact same furnishings and set the exact same fire in both, then both houses should burn exactly the same. However, the reality is that you probably won't find the exact same houses in both. You also have to consider other factors, like the fact that a house in the suburbs is much more likely to not have a significant exposure issue to contend with. In the city, that isn't that common. So, that exact same fire in the burbs is held to that house with maybe some damaged siding to an exposure since the houses are not super close together, whereas the one in the city could easily have another building within 2-3 feet of it on both sides and a significant fire could quickly spread creating a much different fire to deal with. You're comments strike me as a person who feels "slighted" at the notion that your fires (the suburbs) aren't the same as the big city because it means that you, your fires, your department, etc. are somehow "inferior". I feel that those feelings are often misplaced in these types of discussions because "different" means "not the same" and not "inferior" or "superior".

I did read your posts first and I just re-read them and have concluded that whatever issue you have with what I posted is based on you poorly conveying your message. In post #7 you appear to be discussing two separate situations and then in post #9 you appear to be mixing the two situations and discussing them as one IMO. Because of this, it didn't seem as though the 2 posts were specifically connected and my post was specifically in response to the post I quoted, which appeared to be insinuating some sort of increased risk of heart attack among firefighters on disability vs those not on disability rather than clearly showing that your comment was in reference to a specific person who was "disabled" due to a significant heart condition and still operating as a firefighter.

I'm by no means an expert on the matter, but............. Being "disabled" for one job doesn't necessarily mean that you are "disabled" for another job. For example, Bill works in construction and is seriously injured on the job. We'll say a beam fell on his leg and damaged it enough that it had to be amputated (below the knee). Bill's employer "retires" him on a disability pension. Bill gets himself one of those prosthetic legs and after months of rehab is getting around pretty good. Is Bill too "disabled" to continue to serve in his VFD at full-duty? I'm going with "no" because I served with a person several years ago who had a below knee amputation and he was able to perform the tasks necessary to be an interior firefighter and earned his FF1 certification despite his "disability". I know another guy who lost an eye (non-job related), but continues to serve as a full-duty volunteer firefighter. Now, I would think that legally speaking, being labeled "disabled" and placed on pension for a specific occupation, like firefighting, would preclude you from performing the same job for another "employer" (i.e. VFD).

Since we're being "totally honest", who wants to be counting on a fellow FF who's not on disability and he/she drops because of a heart attack? You're kind of mixing issues here. Being on disability doesn't specifically increase the risk of heart attack. As already stated, the threshold for many volunteer departments is pretty low.

If you're referring to the Somers unit, the body appears to be by Reading. If you look closely on one of the side pictures, their "logo" is in front of the rear wheel well.

I'm pretty sure I read that they have enough vacancies that there would be no layoffs.

I think you're misunderstanding my point. I understand this isn't about specific individuals and I understand the legal aspect of what's going on. The inherent problem is that individuals from specific races aren't applying for the positions in large numbers and the ones that do aren't doing as well as compared to whites. The problem isn't the test, the problem is in large part probably due to the poor education that those groups have. Who's to blame for that? The fault is more than likely part system failure and part failure of the individual and their parents/guardians to put in sufficient effort to ensure the individual gets educated. It's certainly not the FD's fault.However, the remedy for segments of the population who are responsible for not obtaining the education available to them is to drop hiring standards and hand them jobs? I believe the initial claims were not that the test didn't accurately assess competency, but rather that the test were discriminatory because not enough minorities were passing and being hired. I'm pretty sure the assessment arguments come up later as an attempt to substantiate the discrimination claims. I believe this happened because there really was no proof that the tests were in fact discriminatory towards any group, so the argument shifted to that of proving a direct link between the testing and the job itself and subsequently that success in the testing phase is a direct predictor of success as a firefighter. Again, the issue isn't the test, it's the opinion that not enough minorities are being hired into the departments. I understand the legal aspect of what is required of the City regarding the litigation. I was commenting on the lunacy of the task. The City is being accused of intentional discrimination when clearly the testing process is not and being asked to prove their innocence by proving that the test has direct relevancy to the job itself. It's crazy because IMO, the intent of the test is not to find candidates who absolutely will be good firefighters, but to identify good candidates to train to be firefighters, yet they are being asked to prove the testing can do something it really wasn't designed to do.

Right and that's pretty much what has been in place along with a mechanism to "rank" the candidates for potential hiring to the academy. The problem isn't the testing. Call it semantics, but I disagree that it was the City's "job to prove that the test was a good assessment for future success". The City's "job" was to identify candidates for hire in a fashion that was "equal" for all that applied. Let's be honest, if a test could account for every "weakness" of the applicants, then there wouldn't be much point to having a test. One could easily argue that physical agility tests are "intentionally" discriminatory towards people who are not physically fit. One could easily argue that academic tests are "intentionally" discriminatory towards people who are not smart. The City was tasked (by the legal system) with the burden to disprove one thing (intentional discrimination, specifically towards blacks) by proving something arguably unrelated (that test scores specifically predict success). The problem is not the test.

I disagree that there is no additional cost. There is a real world cost to send a candidate to the Fire Academy. If a candidate fails, then another candidate will be needed to replace them in the next class. If more lower quality candidates are sent to the Fire Academy, which would likely happen in a pass/fail testing process, then it's highly likely that the "failure rate" at the Fire Academy will go up. If the failure rate goes up, then that amounts to an increased cost for training candidates since you will have had to attempt to train more candidates to fill a specific number of vacancies than you would have at the previous "failure rate". Why?Why does a pre-employment testing process have to "make up" for a potential failure of the educational system or what could arguably be seen as a personal/family failure regarding elementary and secondary education? If children can go to the same schools and graduate with decent grades, then why does an employer have to "account for" the ones that didn't do so well in their hiring practices in order to potentially hire these "lesser qualified" applicants? Why does there seem to be such a blatant double standard for civil service related employment? Why do individual departments within a single employer (the municipality) have to reflect the overall racial balance of the residents of the entire municipality? If these departments need to be individually racially balanced to reflect the entire community, then shouldn't the neighborhoods be racially balanced too instead of being as segregated as some are? What about other employers in the community? What's the racial balance of Best Buy's consumers or Subway's or Target's or whomever? Shouldn't their employee make up reflect the racial balance of their consumers too?

Just to be clear, I'm not advocating for pass/fail testing. There are points in the process were it is applicable, like in the physical agility test (i.e. you can either drag the dummy 100 feet or you can't.) or psychological testing or background checks. However, I strongly believe that written testing should not be simply pass/fail.If the entire process is "pass/fail" then it creates a situation where you will have to randomly select people to hire among those that "passed" rather than selecting those that performed the best. I just don't believe "random" hiring is the way to achieve the highest quality workforce. What was the gap on those test scores? A co-worker of mine has taken the FDNY test once or twice. If I'm not mistaken, he scored in the low 90s, but ended up being pretty far down on the list. Far enough that based on previous hiring trends, he would likely not get hired before the list expired. If you're talking about only a 10-15 point difference between the highest scoring person hired and the last person hired from that same list, to me, that could easily explain why there wasn't a "provable" difference on outcome - the gap itself wasn't "significant". A 10 percentage point difference on a 200 question test is only 20 incorrect answers. Now if the gap was more like 30-40 points between first and last hired, then you should be able to prove much more definitively, one way or the other, the impact list number has on the quality of the firefighter they become.

I agree with M'ave, the issue isn't so much the tests themselves, but that the results give the appearance of some sort of bias towards minorities, specifically blacks. I know in several instances, the perception created is that minorities as a whole did poorly, when the reality was that many did pass the exam, but may not have scored high enough in relation to other applicants to get hired. I also think the argument about written tests' inability to determine who would make a good firefighter is misplaced, particularly in a large department like Chicago and FDNY. Firefighting requires two things: brains & brawn. I believe the intent of the written exam is to provide an initial assessment of the "brains" part. Basic competency in reading, comprehension, math, writing and such is necessary to successfully complete the training academy. I believe the intent of the physical agility test is to provide an initial assessment of the "brawns" part. A certain level of physical strength, endurance and athletic ability is necessary to successfully complete the training academy. To me, the testing process is about weeding out candidates that do not have a sufficient level of both, not determining who will or will not make a good firefighter - the start of that determination begins at the Fire Academy. Considering the cost aspect of training a recruit, it makes perfect sense to select candidates who performed the best on both parts and realistically have the best shot at completing the training. From an efficiency aspect, in terms of both cost and time, it also makes perfect sense to administer a written test to "thin" the applicant pool before giving a physical agility test. Considering some of the tests in question that I've seen, I don't think the problem is the test or an institutional basis towards minorities, but rather factors external to the FD and the desire for "special" rather than "equal" treatment by some people and organizations.

Yes, the same could probably be said of SFRD. I don't believe I've said that the volunteers were "wrong", however I do disagree with a lot of what I've seen from that side (looking in from the outside) on this matter. I agree that both sides need to step up in order to achieve any true solution to the situation and agree that neither side has a monopoly on the needed insight to achieve resolution. The reason I asked about being the "bigger person" in the matter is because somebody has to take the first step and your comments struck me as though some things in the past are the obstacle for the volunteers from doing so. Additionally, it would seem to me that the VFDs have a pretty big bargaining chip in the matter in that given their autonomous legal status, each has the ability to influence the outcome in a way that the City, SFRD and the Union can't. However, despite this and from the outside, it definitely looks like the VFDs are not seriously interested in definitively solving the matter. I (and others) strongly believe that the best solution for the entire City is to have a single FD with a single Fire Chief, yet that doesn't seem to be of any interest to the volunteer side or the Mayor. Let's be honest, the "the charter would have to be changed" excuse put forth so far in resistance to a single department is a somewhat lame one considering that it's not impossible to do so and that the Mayor's proposal also includes similar legal hurdles. "Control" and having a substantial "role" appear to be two very important concerns for the volunteer side moving forward. So, it would seem to me that the VFDs would have some leverage to work towards a reasonable solution within the single department model (or other models) if both sides can sit down at the table. At the same time, there must be compromise.

I wasn't referring to any specific example. You stated that you felt that "volunteer bashing" was essentially one of two obstacles in the quest for unity. I was simply pointing out that although there may be actions and comments that could be viewed as "bashing" the volunteers and hindering the dialogue, it is pretty evident that there are a significant number of actions and comments that could be viewed as "career bashing". As such, the implication that one side is specifically responsible for the disconnect is wrong. So what you are saying is that the VFDs aren't willing to be the "bigger person" and work towards the best solution for the community?

Two thoughts regarding this statement and where the "problem" lies. 1) There also seems to be a significant amount of "career" bashing going on too. 2) Why does the integration have to be "under the conditions and legal framework that exist" - which I assume refers to each VFDs autonomy via the Charter currently? It is my understanding that creating the proposed new "volunteer" department in the north requires a bit of legal revision and the individual VFDs giving up at least some of that autonomy granted by the Charter. So, if that's the case, then why is integration "under the conditions and legal framework that exist" the only option? Why would negotiating a single, fully-integrated department not be an option too?

I can agree that there may be different "participation" levels envisioned among the plans presented. However, each plan does appear to incorporate volunteers into the equation and would thus be an "asset" (at least in theory). The poster's comments that I was referring to, clearly can be seen as implying that the volunteers would be an "asset" in only one plan which does not appear to be the truth. If the intent was to comment on what type of "asset" the volunteers would be in relation to the other plans, then the comments should have instead reflected that point. Basically, if the feeling is that the volunteer role isn't substantial enough in a plan to feel like an "asset", then say that rather than implying that there is no role at all. Call it semantics, knit-picky or whatever, but saying one thing when you meant something different is a bit of a pet peive of mine.

I was of the impression that the volunteers would be an asset in all of the plans put forth.

Why is that line officer not able to be the driver? Seems kind of odd that a person would have enough time in the department to be put into that role, but not have become a driver.

While there's a certain logic to that, this hosebed appears to be the same one that they have been using on their front-line quints for the past 10 years or so. I'd think that if they'd been having problems with it, they wouldn't be including it on the pumper order. @FFBlaser: All of the intakes and discharges in the pump house are on the right hand side in order to keep them away from the pump operator. Also something that was incorporated into the last order of "engine" quints.

I don't know if it necessarily means that, but from what I've heard, St. Louis is switching some of the Quint Engine Companies back to "regular" pumpers. If I recall correctly, the companies getting switched will be the busier "Engine" Companies and the move appeared to be more financially driven than a change in philosophy regarding the TQC.

Yes, but NFPA is not "law" unless adopted as such by the AHJ. The apparatus manufacturers build in compliance with the standard anyway, but will build "non-compliant" apparatus if the purchasing department signs a "waiver". It is my understanding that at least some FDNY apparatus is non-compliant due to some items in the standard that conflict with their operational needs. Also, currently there is no NFPA standard for ambulances, however one is on the way.

None of their fire apparatus being delivered is coming with chevrons, so why would it be surprising that the ambulances didn't have them either?

Actually I have seen that and not too long ago, but forget what city it was from. I think it was in the northeast area.

There have been Wheeled Coach units roaming the streets of NYC in the past. They supplied some ambulances to NYC prior to the FD/EMS merger. Not sure of the number though.

Per unit or overall bid?