ltjay157

I've reread the article 5 times. All it says is that the woman was in the ER waiting room & people said the nurses were ignoring her. It never said if she was triaged or not. So everyone is jumping to conclussions on whether she is a patient or not. But from my experience in walking into the ER to get stitches a few times, you have to go to the sign in desk, fill out forms & insurance forms then get put on a list based on the severity. So for arguments sake, say this woman did all of that. Isn't that technically being triaged since you talk to a nurse at the desk when you describe what your problem is? I'm sorry if this questions seems off the wall. I've only been involved as a first responder & never actually transported someone to the hospital.

Yea, didn't you know? You're suppossed to treat the cameras gently, keep them clean & don't expose them to heat & water

All I can say is wow. Stupid is as stupid does. In the first video, who in their right mind puts flammable objects in a doorway? To top it off, some Einstein decides to walk, not crawl, into an IDLH atmosphere w/o a charged handline with brand new turnouts. Watching the video, you can see fire rolling across the ceiling & then the whole doorway lights up. Then you see the Einstein come walking out of the the building with fire from floor to ceiling & his gear smoking. Talk about making your gear "salty". In the second video, DAMN!!! what did they fill the house with? I guess they used a little too much gasoline in the basement & it was the right vapor mixture. We just burned our training house down on Sunday. We used hay bales, pallets, and a little diesel fuel. The house went up no problem & the guys that lit the fire were wearing full PPE with SCBA's. We are our own worst enemies. But the kicker in video 2 is the cameraman is calm after the explosion & tells kids to kick the wood with nails in it out of the roadway. Am I missing something? One of your guys just blew his a$$ up & leveled a house in an explosion.

When I took Pump Operator years ago, I was taught to have the intake on the pump panel side for two reasons. Reason 1 was that you can feel if the intake was going slack if you're running off the the hydrant or another engine/tanker, you can shut the intake quickly & go to tank water if guys are inside. 2nd reason was so you could keep an eye on the hard suction & see if there were any problems while drafting. In a perfect world, this happens. But if I can only hook up to the passenger side for an operation, I make sure to walk around the rig checking everything to make sure it's working properly. Even if i'm hooked up on the drivers side, I still to circle checks periodically. It all comes down to how each individual dept's SOG's are written & your training. It scares me to see some of the guys we have qualified as drivers when they have to ask how to put the truck into pump.

Well, the officers at the police dept I dispatch for carry tasers. I know in order to be qualified to carry one, you must be tased (they tape the probes to you). Also for them to carry pepper spray, they must be sprayed with it to see what it's like to try to do your duties while disoriented (if you spray it, not only the suspect gets it, so do your fellow officers). So if you feel like going for a 50,000 volt ride, be my guest. But on a side note, they teach you in EMT class scene safe(ty) and to keep a way out just in case things go to sh*t. Tasing someone seems a bit out of your scope of duties as an EMT.

yes, on newer ariel/tower ladders, there is a foot pedal on the turntable. it's called a dead mans switch so the ariel device can be moved only when someone is on the turntable. on older ariel devices, there is just a on/off button on the control panel. so just pull it on and leave the turntable. the ariel device can now be operated from the bucket w/o someone spotting on the turntable. to raise the outriggers with the tower up was very risky. the chief had to engage the override switch to move the outriggers. he was lucky he didn't topple the truck. worse comes to worse, he could've just moved the tower away from the flames or worst case scenerio, retracted the ladder & just blow out the ladder pipe. from the pics i saw, it didn't look like much of an interior attack was going on at the time so venting the roof was pointless since it was a surround & drown. no point in putting people at risk to not accomplish anything positive.

ok, i should hope that the operator of the truck knows where all the controls are for that piece of apparatuss for when the dookie does hit the fan. granted, the chief's ballsy move saved the guys. but what would happen if he wound up killing the guys instead? my feeling has been as long as you learn something from each incident/critique, you've gained valuable knowledge for the next one.

I believe in CT that you may not be a firefighter once you turn 65. I'm not 100% certain on this but I will check on it. The one pet peeve of mine is how we coddle some people. There is a 20 yr old in my fire dept that has been through 2 sets of gear because he got too big for them. to me, the Chief should have told him lose the weight or you can't be an active firefighter. Granted, i'm a big guy myself, and have been through 3 sets of gear over the past 15 years, not once did i have to get remeasured for a new set of gear because I gained weight. We spent close to 4K on this one guy. I'm not trying to pick on the kid, but when do we say enough is enough? The yearly physicals by the town are a joke. They check your vision, hearing, blood, BP, urine, weight (joke), and the blow in the machine thingy to see if you can wear SCBA. The fit test we do every year is also a joke. I won't even get into that one. As I recall, FDNY has lost probies before 911 due to heart attacks & they were in their early 20's!. I know that the fire service will never fully solve this problem but this should be a major concern for all Chiefs. The one thing that puzzles me though is when I read Firehouse or Fire Engineering magazines, you see 70+ yr old dieing on the fire scene pulling hoses, directing traffic, or even just climbing into the cab of fire apparutus. When do you tell someone it's time to quit?

Ok, i wasn't there & don't know the whole story, but do you think the race card is being played too much nowadays? what if it was a white lieutenant that pushed a white captain? would they make a big deal out of it? how about this for a spin, what if the captain was white & was pushed by a minority lieutenant? would it be made out to be racial? granted tempers can run high on a fireground, why can't things ever be simple as it was a disagreement? i'm quite curious to see how the CT post spins this article.

I know that FDNY issues vests to it's EMS personel. Granted, you're not suppossed to be in a dangerous situation, but going into some of those tennaments you don't always have the police on scene for the cardiac arrest etc... Some people just don't care if you're EMS or a cop. The see a uniform and see an authority figure and will shoot at you for no reason at all. I know medics in Bridgeport CT that wear a vest because the junkies will try to rob them of the meds they carry. It's a sad world that EMS personell have to wear them. Society is just going down the pooper.

In my dept, we have some tools in the cab ie can, irons, hooks, but they are secured by either cabinets or straps designed to hold them. The one item that ticks me off is we don't use the retensions straps on the seats to hold the SCBA. Their reasoning is if it's strapped, the firefighters can't get it on quick. It takes 2 seconds to undo when you pull up on scene. I've had on SCBA fall out of the bracket after a hard stop. Go figure

Wow, I get these calls at the PD for a cat in a tree & people expect the FD to climb 60ft into a tree because their cat is up there. Cats have been climbing things for thousands of years. I wouldn't risk my life for an animal that does not need to be rescued. When the cat feels it's safe to do so, it will climb down on his own. The article said that the cat was near the cable lines 2 ft from the power lines. If I recall correctly, you're not suppossed to use an arial device closer than 10 ft from power lines because electricity can jump to it (electricity likes the path of least resistance to ground, electricity 101). Those officers should be demoted & have a CAT scan (no pun intende) to see if the had any brains. I can see the headline now. Firefighter electrocuted saving a cat. I know I wouldn't like to have to tell the widow that her husband made the ultimate sacrifice for an animal that was not in danger. Don't get me wrong, I love animals. I just want to go home to my family at the end of the day.

Only time and the investigation will reveal the truth. If it turns out to be true, they should be forced to face the families of the 9-11 victims and tell them of their misdeeds. This will be one hell of a bLack eye for all fire depts if it is true.

A good majority of the problem is the abuse of the 911 system. I've recieved calls on 911 asking for the number for a local agency to the dog running loose in a yard. How hard is it to dial 411? But back to the abuse of 911 for EMS. There is a assisted living facility in our jurisdiction that i dispatch for. They are only suppossed to call 911 for true emergencie ie cardiac arrest, dif breather, etc... They're suppossed to call one of the commercial agencies for routine transport (either Danbury or Norwalk) ie, stubbed toe, general not feeling well. But they call 911 because it doesn't cost them a dime. I've sent an ambulance there only to have them call back 5 min later for another one for a different patient with a true emergency. But because they called 911 for the first patient, unless they refuse to go to the hospital, they have to transport. And it's always at 2-3 a.m. they call even though they complaimed of the hurt toe since noon. there has to be a better way to educate people. I don't want to start a paid vs volly war but how feasible would it be for departments that have low or no turnout for calls during the day to have a paid fire/ems staff augmented by volunteers from say 6am-4pm? It's getting bad when there's no response after 3 tones. all the volunteers i talk to say they do it to help people. But how much help are we giving when they call & no one shows up? Our first priority should be the best interest of the people we serve.

I'm tired of how parents don't take responsibilities for their childs action. It's always find someone else to blame. At work when we get 911 open/abandoned lines & the officer gets to the house, turns out it's little Jimmy or Sussie playing with the phone. The parents don't understand or seem to grasp the concept of teaching their kids from right & wrong. There is only one school I'd blame for false alarms & that's one of the big daycare's in my town. We go there repeatedly for activated pullstations. I've told the manager of the daycare to install covers over the pull stations to help eliminate the false alarms but it's fallen on deaf ears. Has our society gotten soo bad that nobody has any sense of right or wrong?

Yea, EMS work isn't dangerous. That's why my brother wore a vest when working for FDNY as an EMT. How about the medics that work for AMR in Bridgeport Ct that went out and bought their own vests because people used to try to rob them of their drug box. I've been in the fire service 14 years and only involved in EMS doing patient care at car accidents/fire scenes. Nothing is more fun trying to take a patient out of a car on a long board in the middle of a major road with cars zipping by not more than 2 ft away at times. EMS is grossly underpaid in a good majority of the US. I make more money as a new dispatcher than a new medic which is deplorable. But back to the topic at hand. I feel that the re-toning of a VAC for a call is a problem. The same happens in my town everyday. M-F we have a paid crew from 6am-4pm. If the go out on a call and a second one comes in, there's nobody around when it's the BS nose bleed, back pain etc. But if there's an MVA w/extrication right after that BS call, you have 6 or 7 EMT's around. I'm just hate the glory hounds that show up for the good calls (FF's included), it makes me wonder what they are here for. When I'm home I go to every fire call no matter how dumb it may sound. It doesn't matter if it's 3am or 3pm. Somebody calls you for help, you shouldn't have to think twice about going. We are here to help people, not egos.

I've talked to insurance agents in CT for my dept because we are working on insurance billing for fire calls. We mostly were going to bill for MVA's, pumpouts, structure fires etc. because sometimes our equipment gets broken or damaged during theses operations. We're not making a profit off of this because the money will be going strictly to replacing the items used, broken, damaged. The insurance agents were surprised when they found out that we didn't already bill for these services. They told us that when they write up your home/car insurance policy, it's included. So I don't feel it's unethical to bill for services because we'll come whether you can pay or not. It's not like doctors who may refuse to treat you because of the inebility to pay? On a side note, I find it not right that an illegal immigrant can recieve free healthcare at the hospital ER because he can't pay, but an American has to pay. Guess who foots the illegal immigrants tab? WE the AMERICAN PEOPLE do. So tell me if that's fair?

Personally, I feel FFI is not enough alone to become interior certified. If i knew back in the day what I know now, I'd push for more training. I got my FFI back in 1996 after being a junior for 4 years, i felt I knew my s***. I went to my first fire as an "interior ff" in Oct and it was nothing like I expected. It was hoter and I seemed to lose my way because of all the furniture in the house disoriented me (in training, we had only 1 or 2 pieces of furniture in a room). It seemed like I was moving forever in there. I kept pushing the line in and next thing you know, i was swimming in a waterbed that had melted. After the fire was out & I got to see the layout of the house, I was shocked to see that I had only gone in like 25ft into the house. It was your typica raised ranch and in the bedroom that was on fire, there was a 6" step that led to the waterbed. I hadn't noticed it because I wasn't paying much attention (due to a combination of lack of training/experience). Since then, I've pushed for training on drill nights and not of cleaning the trucks/firehouse. I've since gone on the get my EMT, 2Q license, FFII, Pump Operator, etc.. I would love to get my Fire Instructor, Fire Officer & Ariel Operator certs. All the young 18 yr olds in my dept keep talking like they're 20 yr vets even though they haven't seen crap yet. they want to go for high angle rescue & other bs stuff we don't do. I've told them that they should go for firfighter safety & survival and flashover training first because it may save their a** one day. I've told them to master the basics before trying to become supermen. But what drives me absolutely crazy is the guys that only show up to the good calls. I feel they should not be allowed to respond because they don't go to drills or other training when we offer it. When it is brought upat officer meetings about the lack of training some members have, other officers defend them saying they're volunteer and can only come around when they have free time!!! I feel like I'm the only one that wants to make us better firefighters at times.

Ok, I don't want to start a war here but I thought Brewsters FH on Rte 312 was called station 2? It has 6 bays if trucks are parked back to back. To me, that isn't a substation, it's a full firehouse. In my area, several Dept's have small 2 bay buildings that are 50' by 70' as a substation. They have 1 or 2 trucks in them and have an office, bathrooms and a small common area. They are easily maintained and are basically used to house apparatus only. The one thing that drives me nutz is the volly dept's that have a lot of equipment they don't need or use. I'll be the firs to admit my dept has overkill considering there are 3 seperate dept's with 2 stations each & a total of 26 pieces of apparatus in town covering 27 square miles & protect 21,000 people. It just boggles the mind why we need soo much when cities like Bridgeport CT run with6 engines & 3 truck co's (not sure of exact #, BFD website is under construction) and protect 150,000 people. We need ways to attract & retain new members or hate to say it possibly have either paid EMS/Fire during working hours to reduce response times. Sorry for my little rant. I'm coming from a dept who's annual budget from the town is $180,000 a year and have to prioritize our needs vs wants. Again, sorry for the ranting, I just want want what's best for the people we serve and I feel sometimes we don't do that. Just my 2 cents

I used to have that problem also. I know use the Duracell Ultra's or the Energizer E2. I found out they last a lot longer. I tried usung rechargables but they seemed to die out far more quickly than a standard battery.

let's see, worked 0700-2300 on Thanksgiving (gotta love holiday pay then doubletime for an extra shift) 12/24/06 2300-0700 12/25/06 2300-0700 then back for 1500-2300 12/31/06 2300-0700 (would kiss the sarge at midnight but he'd taser my a** )

In Stepney, if the truck gets called mutual aid out of town, min staffing is 4 firefighters. All the seats are numbered in order as most important. Ie, driver is seat #1, Officer is seat #2 etc... The positions are just guidelines though. depending on the type of call, the entire truck crew could be on the roof doing a vent if it's a commercial building or the crew could be split up into an interior search team & the vent team. If it's a call in our first due district or anywhere within the town of Monroe, you could wind up having anywhere from 1-6 firefighters/officers on the truck depending on the time of day. I learned thath you have to just prioritize what needs to get done first and usually have enough guys on scene to put to work as the truck co. Just wish we did more drills in truck co ops though.

Christ Eckart, why can't you put this much effort while you're at work. You def need a girlfriend

Vagrant faces charges in Atlanta firefighter's death The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (December 1, 2006) A 53-year-old vagrant, Joseph Pendergrass, was charged with involuntary manslaughter, reckless conduct, criminal damage to property and burglary for allegedly starting the fire in a northwest Atlanta home Thanksgiving night that took the life of firefighter Steven Solomon. Fire Chief Dennis Rubin said investigators think Pendergrass, who has a history of cocaine arrests, was using a candle or something else to keep warm in the vacant Vine City house on Thanksgiving night and left it burning. Pendergrass was already in the Fulton County Jail, having been arrested Saturday for cocaine possession. He has two previous convictions for possession of cocaine, according to jail records. "At first, we thought that the fire was accidentally set. We're now learning that the fire had burned for a while, and the vagrants then intentionally left without making any contact," Rubin said. Solomon died of cardiac arrest early Wednesday in the burn unit at Grady Memorial Hospital. "We're outraged," Rubin said. An independent panel chaired by the director of the state Fire Academy will investigate Solomon's death to determine what, if anything, can be done to prevent another such death, Rubin said. The American flag flew at half-staff Wednesday at Fire Station 16 on Simpson Road, where Atlanta firefighters wore black tape on their badges in memory of Solomon, a seven-year fireman who joined the Atlanta department from Macon four months ago. He and his wife had four children, all under 13. A fund has been set up through Wachovia Bank for Solomon's wife, Kennetha, and their children. Capt. Byron Kennedy, the department spokesman, said contributions made at any Wachovia branch "will go straight to the family." --- Staff writers Mike Morris, Kathy Jefcoats and Cynthia Daniels contributed. Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution My sympathy goes out to FF Soloman's family in this terrible tragedy

Jason762, this was never about volly vs career. Volunteer burnout comes from having to meet dept requirements for training, fundraising, meetings, etc.. on top of your family duties/obligations, working 2 jobs, etc... There is only so much someone can do. I'm feeling burnt out from starting a new job, going to drills, company meeting, officer meetings & combined officers meetings on top of my assigned duties I must do. I've been a firefighter for 14 years now and dealing with dumb people calling the dispatch center, I feel I need a break. Volunteers go 24/7 7 days a week w/o a break.