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NYS Law allows Towns to have fire districts or Fire Protection districts (see article 11). Villages and cities generally have "Departments" that belong to the municipality (though some villages can be part of a fire district see article 11A). I believe the technicality between a District and a Fire Protection District is the Protection District will generally contract for fire protection with an independant fire company or another fire department as opposed to a Fire District that actually owns the apparatus and equipment. I have belonged to an independant fire company that would negoatiate a contract for fire services with the Fire Protection District Board (Town Board). Town of Harrison has four districts Purchase, West HArrison, Harrison and I believe one that is partially covered by Rye Unincorporated Town of Greenburgh has three districts -Greeneville, Hartsdale, Fairview) Town of Mamaroneck has one. - TMFD Town of Eastchester has one (that encompasses Bronville & Tuckahoe as well) There are many others throughout westchester that are part of Districts and Fire Protection Districts. Scarsdale is a co-terminous Town/Village that operates under a Village style Government and thus probably has a municipal department.

When departments consolidate, paid or volunteer, Chiefs positions would get eliminated. In the 9 departments Bob is talking about there are several career chiefs that could not all stay as chief of department. There are also career departments with known staffing issues that have been pointed out in these forums. The same applies to the Volunteer side which has the same issues. Consolidaton is key to both the Career and Volunteer sides and it will be driven by taxes and response time/staffing. The area Counties seem to be reaching a tipping point in taxes as evidenced by the school budgets being defeated, bonds being defeated (school & fire districts) and the backlash against the County Legislature over their pay hike proposal. I would interested to see how the 9 Department proposal plays out in detail since it involves career and combination departments. It could be a model for going forward if all sides (politicians, unions, volunteers) can agree to it.

That was the article in today's Journal News. Considering Greenburgh is looking at consolidating some police functions, would it make sense to look at the three Fire Districts (Greenville, Fairview & Hartsdale) as well?? Ultimately the voters of each of the districts would have to approve it.

noen were consolidating. Dobbs Ferry & Greenburgh were looking at sharing services. see the article http://lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID...364/1018/NEWS02

The question came to mind while reading the article. Greenburgh has a Townwide (outside of the Villages) Police Department so why not a Townwide Fire District?? Not in favor of it one way or another. Just a thought.

Article in today's Journal News on the SOuth Bronx during the "War Years" Yonkers author recalls the fires that swept the South Bronx in his new novel http://lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID...356/1018/NEWS02

Unfortunately, E-one's problems have been well chronicled over the last couple of years. Here is an article from Fire Apparatus and Equipment magazine detailing how E-One shelved plans to build a new plant. That was done when the Florida was giving them $26 million in incentives to build a $50 million plant. Here is an article from May

NYS does participate in Wildland Firefighting Mutual Aid. Wildland fireifghting in NYS is provided by the local fire department and supported/coordinated through NYS DEC Forest Rangers. NYS DEC also coordinates fire crews made up from some of the lower security correctional facilities. I have worked fire lines with the Forest Rangers and Correctional Team. The Forest Rangers have and do get called out to support other wildland units. If the need is great enough, Volunteers that have taken thre required courses, can also be called upon to "work the line" out west or where needed. Most of the mmebers are from Upstate. Here is some info from NYS DEC website. National Wildfire Response In 2006, the Division mobilized three 20-person firefighting crews to western wildfires as part of its cooperative agreement with the US Forest Service. Each crew was staffed with a forest ranger as its crew boss plus three other rangers as squad bosses. The other 16 members were forest rangers, other DEC employees and department volunteer firefighters. New York State Crew One was sent to the Los Padres National Forest in California in late July. Crew #2 was sent to Salmon- Challis National Forest near Landmark, Idaho in mid-August while Crew #3 went to Boise National Forest, also in Idaho, in late August. This was one of the busiest years rangers have had supporting western or southern wildland firefighting efforts since 1979 when New York sent its first crews.

Hi Bob, From my understanding, the bailout rope and carabiner are OK as long as they are NFPA compliant. No system, or harness is favored over another. If anyone wanted to buy the FDNY Petzl EXO system, the buyer is first required to attend a MANDATORY training class before they can get it. The class is currently taught in Rockland County by Fireground Tech which is an independant training company that is run by some FDNY members. Everyone needs to remember that OSHA (NY follows OSHA through PESH) requires that a department cannot put a firefighter into a situation that they are not trained for. So if you are a Chief and are handing out ropes to your members, you better make sure they are trained on the proper use to avoid liability. I find it hard to believe that so few people signed up for the Survival class in light of the current requirement to fit everyone with ropes.

October 1st is two weeks away. What are the departments doing to be curernt with the Law?

Section 2 adds a new paragraph © to subdivision 4, which provides that public employers provide firefighters with safety ropes and system components that meet the standards, codes and recommended practices established by the most recent edition of the NFPA 1983, Standard for Fire Service Life Safety Ropes and System Components. NYS left the training and type of rope system to be used up to the NFPA 1983 standard on Life Safety Rope systems. This way, if the standard changes, NYS does not have to change the law. It is up to the Department to stay current with the standard. They purposely left the technical details to those that know them.

It's hard to imagine that a 1700 member career department never learned some of the mistakes that were made in the Lairdsville incident. After reading through this it's crazy that BCFD criticzed the FireHouse Expo instructors for having one of thier training fires get away from them in 2006. At least they had qualified instructors and followed NFPA Live burn regulations.

I think there are too many questions to make this feasible. For example does every fire department run Scott ?? If they do, do they run with steel bottles or carbon fiber? If you turn in a carbon fiber, do you get a carbon fiber back? Does anyone still have 2250s instead of 4500s? How do you prorportion the cost of the bottles and MSU among municipalities that are different in size? I agree redundancy among neighboring FDs should be eliminated and resources better allocated. If your mutual aid dept has a tower ladder should you have one too? Maybe you should have a straight stick to compliment it. Does every department need a heavy rescue, definitely not. I am hopeful that more "sharing" and cooperation among the battalions happens as it would make everyone better off. An example of this is the Special Ops section that DES has started under Chief Pitocco (HazMat and Tech Rescue).

If everyone had to take the same horrible questions, doesn't that put everyone on equal footing? If you are assuming you would have close to a 100 then you are in the higher level of the test takers and lower level people probbly did worse. So why bother complaining?

DC Pells, Unforutnately, nothing has ever worked as well as the Minitor IIs as far as reliability and reception. The IIIs and IVs were not as reliable with worse reception. The jury is still out on the Vs. Anytime we have gone away from Motorola either for pagers or radios we have never been happy and always came back. Not much help but I have not seen a better alternative.

Bunkers, The Rockland Flashover class is MUCH different the FF Survival. This deals striclty with Flashover and how it occurs. There is a classroom session followed by going into the simulator where you see how flashover occurs and how to avoid it. It is highly recommended.

Another overlooked spot but also linked to training. How many departments are not fully compliant with OSHA (PESH here in NY)? This is law and every department is mandated to comply with it.

This is a leadership issue more than anything. We explain to prospective members what we EXPECT of them. FF1 is the first course they will take followed by FF Survival HAzMat Ops, FF2, AVET, Truck Co Ops etc, when they are available. Obviously, they will not be taken back to back because of course availability and personal issues. The expectation has to be there from the top down that this training is important to their safety and the other firefighters. This process has worked well for several years and members are taking the classes.

Stat, I wear mine inside my gear as I feel the radio is more protected. What would it take to melt the mike cord?? Almost every dept that I know wears them insde, including FDNY. They make an anti-sway strap that you can clip to a belt loop to keep the radio from swinging around. See the attached link. http://www.thefirestore.com/store/product....nti_sway_strap/

Like FireCapt32 says, as more people take the training everyone gets better. A FF without FF1 or its equivalent, is about as useful as a haligan with no FF to use it. FF1 is just a minimum and as others have said, FF2 and other courses would be preferred. IMO, if you are going mutual aid, you need to be interior qualified and ready to work. What does the IC do when he asks the officer and his men to do a job and the officers says FF "x" is only exterior? Exterior is OK if you are going for tanker ops or cascade duty. Going to work or even to standby, you need trained people to do the job.

Capt, Your points about cancer are true enough but shouldn't that be a personal decision made by the firefighter? Does the Union/Employer have the right to tell the firefighter he is not allowed to smoke cigarettes? What about firefihgters that are overweight who have a higher chance of being one of the 50 heart attacks each year?

The posts about training are the best ones. Everyone needs to be trained and trained properly. A dept that allows its guys to operate when they have not taken the State training are not doing anyone any favors and are only opening themselves up to a huge OSHA/PESH problem. ON the flip side there is still career members in combo depts that have not been thru ANY academy training. The Westchester Career academy only started in the early to mid eighties and depending on the department you only did in-house training. What it comes down to is the attitude of every volunteer/combo/career dept that training is the only thing that can give you the tools to do the job. Experience makes you better. a paycheck just means its your occupation.

The consolidation of disticts makes sense for a lot of the area departments. It might help if some of the villages and town governments consolidated as well. Unfortunately, we have not gotten to the point where enough people are calling for it. I believe the Pelham Manor local election had a trustee candidate calling for consolidation with Pelham and he lost. Witht he way taxes keep increasing, at some point this issue will be forced into discussion.

Firetruck Bar This could go down as the biggest buff ever. The guy took a 1963 engine and converted it into a bar in his house!!

When someone leaves as a volunteer it may be called "burnout" but usually there is a another reason that brought about the final decision to leave. There may be a conflict witihin the department that is caused by one group vs another. Sometimes people get upset if they lose an election and feel unappreciated. It can also be outside factors as working more hours in a new job or just having had a baby. We all have 24 hours in a day and no matter how big a buff you may be, those 24 hours have to split between work, family, sleep and being a volunteer. This is where department officers need to treat there members as "people" and not just firemen. If you see a member is around less, give him a call or take to the side and ask if everything is OK. Let them know you care about the person not just his attendance. To answer Jason, its not a career issue because your not trying attend training/calls/meetings on top of you job because it is your job. It would only be an issue if you were still volunteering in addition to your career job. Then you are dividing your 24 hours between work/family and being a volunteer.