FireMedic049

Yeah, but our municipal leaders and in some cases, fire chiefs, are not very good at heeding those lessons learned. This type of stuff keeps happening over and over and for the most part, nobody pays a price for it expect the employee and the taxpayer.

I disagree that the best analogy would be volunteer compared to career EMT. In fact, I don't think it's even a correct one for the point I think he was trying to make. All EMTs receive the same minimum training, have the same scope of practice and hold the same certification regardless of being paid or volunteer. A better comparison for the point would have been EMT vs Paramedic. Both may work side by side on an ambulance and save lives, but one has a larger volume of training and larger skill set prior to stepping into that ambulance. Both are important and contribute to the success of the team, but there is a distinct difference between the two and what they are able to contribute. By comparison, the person who attends a full-time fire academy for initial training is going to possess a larger volume of training than the person who just attends a basic FF1 class. Typically a career recruit academy includes more than just basic FF training and usually more hands on training. Recruits for the large metro department in my area obtain certifications for FF1, FF2, BVR, Hazmat, Rope Rescue, EMT and a number of others before graduating and responding to their first call. By contrast, a new member in many of the VFDs in the area can get on the truck without any formal training or certification. Many require their members to attend the entry level training course (about 166 hours), which prepares one for the FF1 test, but doesn't not include testing for the certification. They may not be required to achieve additional certification other than the federally mandated, minimal Hazmat training. Both are considered "firefighters" and both are valuable to their departments. Both may even work side by side routinely or on occasion. Over time, the "gap" in training, certification, experience, ability, etc. between the two may disappear, but there is clearly a difference between the two at the start and I think that was at the heart of the point being made.

So are we discussing the country or a specific county? Your message seems inconsistent.

Please forgive me for being "off base". I didn't realize that you were only referring to small communities when you stated the "country as a whole".

Actually, the majority of the population is served by career or mostly career departments. The majority of the country (land wise) is served by volunteer or mostly volunteer departments. Volunteerism is declining and many all volunteer departments are now combination and many more probably should be. Love for the community is not exclusive to the volunteers, which for some reason is something people like you are unable to grasp. What's your stance on volunteer grandstanding?

You know who else has rights too? Employees, even non-union ones. I agree that the whole story needs to be told. I read an article that stated the department had 150 interior and 150 non-interior members, but it failed to mention what the average volunteer turnout is for calls. That number is more important than the first two. You don't have to like the "union rhetoric", but the reality is the public does have a higher risk now. When you eliminate on-duty, in-station staffing, the dispatch to arrival on scene time increases by at least a few minutes on average. Minutes matter when your house is on fire.

Actually, the presence of the volunteers is a significant factor in situations like this. Their presence "on paper" can lead to the perception that a small staff of career personnel are expendable and not really needed. Particularly in tough financial times. The volunteers themselves may not be directly responsible for the decision, but they essentially become accomplices by allowing themselves to be used as pawns in the process by not speaking out against the cuts. For the most part, the career staff in a primarily volunteer department are there for a reason. They serve to suppliment an inherent deficiency in the volunteer staffing model, inconsisent availability to respond in a timely fashion 24/7. If you eliminate the career staff without resolving the reason they existed, then there will be negative consequences on the response end of things. That's not a scare tactic, that's reality.

I also disagree. I've seen a number of examples in which a career firefighter was caught doing/saying something inappropriate and plenty have called for their termination, even if the infraction didn't really warrant termination. Several have resigned as a result of these situations and the reaction to them.

I don't think the headline necessarily needs to be changed. Whether or not this is actually a career vs volunteer issue, the term "professional" was used correctly in the headline. A professional firefighter is a person who is paid to be a firefighter just like a professional athlete is a person that is paid to play a sport. Acting in a professional manner and displaying professionalism is a different animal.

My comments were specific to my area and in response to a question asked. With very few exceptions, fire investigation is handled at the County level, not department or municipality level. The Fire Marshall's responsibility is the investigation. They aren't used for suppression in this county and departments know that they need to hold the scene until the Fire Marshall arrives. Therefore, from our perspective, they really don't need to respond emergency to incidents. If they feel the need to do otherwise, that's their call. But let's be clear, there's a distinct difference between a dedicated fire investigator (what I was talking about) and a person who responds to mitigate incidents, but is also responsible for the investigation of that incident (what you described). As such, the criteria to determine the rate of response for each is not the same.

Well, they aren't needed for suppression purposes and we always maintain control of the scene until they arrive, so that pretty much eliminates the need for the emergent response. So other than probably arriving sooner to start the investigation, there's not much to be gained from the emergent response.

My thought is that you should consult with your investigators and see when THEY want to be notified. Our investigations are performed by the County's Fire Marshall office. Their investigators have told us to call for them as soon as we think they may be needed. I can't see much need for them to respond in any manner other than non-emergency.

Actually, the political logic is pretty easy to understand. The community has a "small" number of incidents and few "serious" calls, so they see the money spent on career personnel as unnecessary since they supposedly have so many volunteers in the department. Therefore, eliminating the paid firefighters doesn't really hurt anything and spending that money elsewhere helps whatever agenda they have. Since most politicians have little clue about public safety, they tend to be oblivious to the reality of the impact of something like this, like no longer keeping some incidents small since the immediate response is no longer there. Penny wise, pound foolish.

It absolutely can be viewed as "competition", but the thing is (based on comments in this thread) the VACs created this situation. If they had consistently and reliably gotten their BLS units on the street in a timely manner, then the hospital probably wouldn't have looked at making this change. A SUV is a lot cheaper to operate as a fly car than an ambulance.

Obviously there was a reason they "supplimented" their volunteer force with career positions. I doubt that that reason no longer exists. Unless the volunteers are going to staff (in station) every single minute each career guy worked, then any claim that this isn't a substantial change in coverage is blatantly false.

That's a false comparison. Many police departments don't have auxiliary officers, unlike many many fire departments that do have volunteers or only volunteers in many cases. Although they may be volunteer, auxiliary police officers are not typically used for front-line policing. They tend to be used in more of a "security" role for events rather than responding to 911 calls.

I didn't get the vibe that the city was unprepared from the article. It struck me more as they are having difficulty managing the situation without "enough" resources mixed with a touch of the fear mongering that seems to be standard for the media these days. It also had a healthy dose of the typical misguided belief that declining working fires and increasing EMS calls means that fire resources should be redirected towards EMS responses. Sure, on the surface it seems reasonable that the area that makes up 70-80% of your department's responses should get the lion's share of funding, but it ignores some very important factors and usually one undeniable truth: 1) While fires are "down", incident responses aren't. FDNY (as do all FDs) responds to much more than just working fires. 2) Fires do still occur (quite frequently in NYC) and when they do, they still require the same number of personnel arriving quickly. In fact, recent scientific studies suggest that today's fire may require more personnel arriving even more quickly. 3) There are fundamental differences in necesssary staffing and apparatus/equipment costs between fire and EMS that impact how the funding pie is divided. A single EMS unit in FDNY is significantly cheaper to acquire, equip and staff 24/7/365 than a single fire unit. 4) The problem may not be that too many resources are directed towards fire response. Maybe the problem is just that too few resources are directed towards EMS response?

I wouldn't exactly call this situation a "public health emergency" in the terms that you seem to be insinuating. No doubt this caused some pain, but in the grand scheme of things, 81 tours is a small portion of the daily staffing in NYC. The civil service system is there for a reason and you simply don't just ignore it because you need to hire a bunch of people all of a sudden. In a city the size of NYC, I would imagine that they pretty much always have an active civil service eligibility list and routinely run new recruit academies. So, I would expect that they would be well positioned to immediately hire and train the personnel they need in a timely manner while utilizing overtime coverage in the short-term. Not sure why you seem to be insinuating that there was no plan in place to deal with this situation. I've read from more than one source that FDNY did have a contingency plan in case this situation happened. As I understand it, the short-term plan included immediately putting additional FDNY units on the streets with existing personnel working overtime and that's exactly what they did. So, yes, it was necessary for existing crews to work extra hours, but what constitutes actually being "overworked" is a subjective thing. Working an extra tour or two per week isn't the same thing as having to work a double every day. They also made an emergency acquisition of several "in-stock" ambulances to help ensure they had enough units available for use while awaiting delivery of the numerous units already under construction and any add-ons necessary due to this. Yes, the uncertainty of Transcare's viability was known, but you can't start hiring additional people in that quantity because something might happen. Additionally, I would imagine that the hospitals have some sort of contract with FDNY to provide units for the 911 system that prevents FDNY from removing their units from the system based on rumor. Why would the hospitals commits the financial resources to running their own EMS units if FDNY could just decide one day to immediately eliminate them? So, I'm fairly sure that FDNY didn't have the legal ability to conduct a mass hiring, put additional units on the road and eliminate Transcare's units.

Mt. Oliver is the only one small town that is completely surrounded by Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh provides their EMS, but they have their own VFD and I think police too. I'm not sure of the exact reasons, but Pittsburgh Fire is not on any of their responses and vice versa. They utilize a few other VFDs on their 1st alarm. I think it's more their choice than the city not being willing to do so. I believe they didn't like the city's terms for providing them the aid. Due to our geography and odd border configurations, several other smaller towns border the city similar to Ingram, but aren't completely surrounded like Mt. Oliver. To the best of my knowledge, Pittsburgh hasn't annexed any areas in at least 2 decades.

They utilized the other VFDs in that area and as far as I know, their 1st alarm included mutual aid units. I've seen Crafton mentioned several times. I'm not up on all of their details since they are on the opposite side of the county and in a different dispatch/radio zone.

Pittsburgh did not respond into their district prior to this and Ingram didn't respond into Pittsburgh. With the exception of border calls where there is confusion, misidentification of the location for the call, etc., Pittsburgh Fire generally doesn't respond into other communities (that they don't cover) and they don't respond into the city.

Well, the reality is that underfunding is at the heart of some problems. So, there's not much you can do to fix those problems if you don't put up the money. In this case, the "problem" appears to be that the all volunteer ambulance services are having a hard time maintaining adequate membership to reliably respond to their calls. This isn't a new or unique situation. Many other places have faced this exact problem and have pretty much solved it. Their solution wasn't to lobby for lower training standards. Instead they started hiring people to staff the units on a consistent basis allowing them to maintain or improve the level of service they provide. I can certainly understand the reluctance to increased taxes if one is already paying $20K in property taxes. However, it's kind of ridiculous to already be paying that much, yet not have adequate public safety services.

An actual fly car is a non-transport capable vehicle, typically an SUV or pick up based vehicle and may be staffed with only one Paramedic. The ambulance obviously would be transport capable and be staffed by at least an EMT and Paramedic. There may be some minor differences in the quantities of some equipment carried. Other than that, there's not much of a functional difference when intercepting a BLS ambulance. However, if the BLS unit fails to respond, you would be able to transport the patient if using an ambulance.