FireMedic049

I had a similar thought when I read the story the other day. I want to say that I read somewhere that Toledo had a large retirement a few years ago that depleted a lot of their senior members and resulted in a large influx of new members and promotion of some others without significant time on the job. If I recall correctly, there was mention of something regarding crew make up in the NIOSH report from the double LODD he referred to. I don't think it was listed as a specific contributing factor in what occurred though. I think it was more of a making note of it and the obvious issues that can come with a less experienced crew.

Those are tough questions to answer in general since it's often impossible to pinpoint an exact cause for any specific cancer. Outside of something like 9/11, it's more likely that the cause of cancer is going to be the result of multiple minor exposures over a career rather than a specific exposure. Cancer doesn't show up until well down the road unlike the broken leg after falling thru a floor or off the building. This is why it is so imperative for firefighters to be covered by some sort of presumptive cancer legislation that acknowledges our significantly higher risk for certain types of cancer vs the general public, removes the burden from our shoulders to find the proverbial "needle in a haystack" to prove it's job related and provides us with the care and benefits due to us for an occupational illness. That said, it's imperative that we (individually or organizationally) actively work to reduce our risks by limiting exposures as much as possible and ideally not doing things that could potentially be used to disqualify oneself from that presumptive benefit, like tobacco usage for instance.

I wouldn't necessarily classify it as having "no regard for staffing standards" in the career departments that are "understaffed", at least not at the FD level. Typically the guys/gals on the street know that they are "understaffed" whether it be in terms of individual unit staffing, number/type of staffed apparatus and/or overall shift staffing. We often have to work with the hand we are dealt rather than the one we'd like to have. Very few firefighters in any career department have any real influence when it comes to setting staffing levels. The unions can only do so much to address the matter and sometimes it comes down to deciding what is the best of several bad options. A few years ago Gary, IN was having severe financial issues (not that they aren't now) and the decision was made to reduce staffing on all companies in order to save money. Pretty sure it was a reduction from 4 to 3 per unit. The contract called for minimum unit staffing of 4 and the union filed a grievance over the reduction. It eventually went to arbitration and the union won the grievance and the City was ordered to put the 4th FF back on all in service units. The City complied and immediately put the 4th FF went back, but at the same time they closed several more companies in order to do it and still save the money. The legal precedent regarding staffing is basically that unit staffing is enforceable in arbitration, but overall shift staffing and number/type of apparatus in service essentially fall to managerial prerogative and can't be imposed by an arbitrator. So, in this situation, the union technically prevailed and kept the 4th FF, but they ended up losing a few engine/truck companies. So, it begs the question in a situation like this, are you better off with 5 engines & 1 truck staffed with 4 FF each or with 6 engines & 2 trucks with 3 FF each? In my small career department, if we were to have to comply with a 4 FF per unit requirement, it would pretty much close our second unit (engine) and station almost every day. Right now, our first unit has 3 on it most of the time, occasionally 4 and the second has 3 probably around half the time. Being forced into a single unit would significantly impact our operational flexibility, increase response times to half of the city and in all honesty, not be any "safer" for us. We'd love to have more on-duty staffing, but that's just not in the cards anytime soon. This works for 90+% of our calls and we rely on our off-duty personnel and neighboring VFDs for the calls that need more.

In the real world these guys had the ability to utilize their respiratory PPE (aka SCBA) while working in close proximity to smoke and in some cases inside the smoke filled building and chose not to.Yes, there will be instances where you have to take immediate action and may take in some smoke doing it, but this was clearly not the case in this situation. With what we now know about the link between the products of combustion and firefighter cancer, there's pretty much no excuse to not use your SCBA these days.

Yes. It was stated in the Yonkers thread on firepics.net that it may have been reassigned to a busier company for a better opportunity to evaluate.

Maybe I'm missing something since I live in another state, but if another fire department has a working fire and needs more help, why wouldn't a department send whatever help was requested or what they could reasonably send? I can understand putting your foot down if the other department is abusing the system, like Mt. Vernon appears to be doing with not calling in their off-duty personnel, in order force the issue, but I've always been of the opinion that you shouldn't short a working incident in progress because another call might happen during it. If responding to the working incident leaves your area short, then call back off-duty personnel to staff reserve units or transfer units into the area to cover.

I can see maintaining the siren to use in a civil defense fashion or as a backup for times like you mention where power is out for an extended time period, but using it on a daily basis for all calls just isn't necessary. Additionally, if your means of notification goes down, you staff your station to ensure a response. The fact that some companies don't use sirens and some companies only blow the siren during certain hours shows that the siren simply isn't essential for member notification or for the public for that matter. If they were, every station would have them and use them every time there was a call.

Why does this just have to be an "unfortunate coincedence" and not the predictible result that comes from lowering (or ignoring) performance standards in order to achieve a diverse workforce regardless of fitness/ability to actually do the job?

If your takeaway from the research information is that "fire is best suppressed from the outside in", then you clearly didn't comprehend the information.

Yup, that's what I was referring to in one of my responses above.

Or at least the price.

Yes. Per, a Yonkers guy on another forum, possibly to evaluate it at a busier company.

If they aren't also stretching on the fire, are they really employing this tactic? I think you may be misinterpretting the information from the research. If doing it properly, the exterior line shouldn't be flowing long enough to really push the fire much at all. Additionally, the tactic requires coordination with the interior team so that you aren't putting water in the room while they are operating in that area. Considering that the exterior line will only flow for maybe minute at most, it's very likely that the line will be shut down before the interior team gets to that area and won't be working against it anyway. Fire really doesn't move if you are properly applying enough gpms to overwhelm it.

The tactic coming out of the research, as I understand it, is to apply water from the outside while another line is being advanced inside, with the possible exception of applying a quick hit if you can do so from your entry point.

I think this is a poorly framed poll question. The question asks for a one size fits all answer for something that has far too much variability for that type of answer to work. I think there will be times in which this tactic will be a wise option and there will be times in which it is the wimpy option.

I didn't miss your point, you failed to make the point you wanted to make. There is a difference.

You must not be paying attention really well because I've seen lots of people taking issue with the things you listed and they have been doing it for a long, long time.

Consolidation doesn't necessarily mean a reduction of resources. Sometimes the primary benefit of consolidation is a more efficient management of existing resources. In this situation, a consolidation between Yonkers and Mt. Vernon may not alter the number of stations and apparatus on the street. Aside from some economies of scale benefits in purchasing and eliminating some duplication in the administration side, the operational difference may only be that the units that are responding into Mt. Vernon from Yonkers right now as mutual aid would become units from the same department responding to help other units from that department. In this situation though, the reliance on mutual aid by Mt. Vernon seems to be more about not spending their own money to utilize their own resources and instead use somebody else's and let them foot the bill for it.

If you'd like to discuss this in more detail or whatever, feel free to PM me and we can discuss it there rather than hijacking this thread further.