ltjay157

Some other advice that I can give having been a young officer myself is, just because they offer you the position, you don't have to take it if you don't feel ready. Wish I had turned it down because I didn't have enough experience or enough knowledge. Take as many classes as you can. Wish I had done that when I had the chance. Don't get a big ego just because you're an officer. It's still a learning process. Be fair and don't fall into a clique. Pick up a broom or rag when people are cleaning/ washing the trucks. I resented officers that would bark orders to wash this/clean that while they went and hid in the office until the work was done.

Like Izzy said in CT, you don't need a CDL to drive fire apparatus in CT but must have the Q endorsment. I've been pushing for more training in my dept other than just having a "Q" license. I believe all drivers should have pump operator & ariel operator certs also if they want to drive. I've had guys ask me to let them drive to calls just after they get their license. They don't seem to grasp that there's more to it than just driving. They don't know how to pump, where to place the apparatus, or how to work the tower ladder. what good is getting the truck to a fire if you can't get water out of the truck?

I like having the stealthlight from streamlight on my helmet. It's a little bulkier than the garrity light but a lot brighter. It has come in handy with doing overhaul. now at least I can see up at the ceiling at what I'm doing. It also helps when you need to pop a door at night. the light is always pointed to where I'm looking so i can get a better picture of where to place the tool. Not everyone likes a light on their helmet, so don't knock the guys that do. it all comes down to personal preferance.

I'll never see this movie. Hollywood doesn't make movies to show history, they make movies to make money. If they waited thirty years or something before making this movie it'd be more respectful. Families still haven't healed from this tragedy. What's the next movie Hollywood is going to make? A movie about the war in Iraq? :angry:

Why must people always have to bash other agencies? Putnam County is taking steps to change the fact that there was a poor turnout for ambulances. So what if a new paid company is taking over the ALS service? So what if the new company ordered new fly cars? But i find it deploring that the employees of Empire are being made out to be subpar medics with no proof to back it up. The whole point of this post was about the proactive approach Putnam County took to try to solve an EMS problem countywide. Change for the better is good. I know some PC dispatchers personally and how they take multiple calls from a person requesting an ambulance 20+ min after the requested one. To me, that is unacceptable to have to wait that long for medical aid. Can't we all just get along?

Out of curiousity, what would the qualifications for a Chief, Asst Chief, Capt, Lieut be? I'm working on trying to get my dept to adopt such qualifications because we have none currently which is sad. Our training officer doesn't know his a** from his elbow and have some lieutenants that have never seen a fire. I'll be the first to admit that I don't have enough training as a Lieutenant. I'm just trying to better our officers to lead our firefighters. Most of my training was OTJ and I feel that's not enough. I have 14 yrs in and have these certs FF-1, FF-2, Pump Operator, Confined Space Operations, Haz Mat Awareness, Haz Mat Operations, Incident Command System, Safe Driver Training, and MRT (Medical Response Tech). I'm about ready to hang up my LT's shield because we have a lot of guys with the 2/20 syndrome )2yrs on & 20yrs experience) that think they should be officers. Any help would be greatly appreciated

Hmmm, let me get this straight. The Gov of New Jersey is shutting down the casino's because he can't pay the state inspectors to watch the casino's. The casino's pay the State of NJ about 1.3 mil a day in taxes, Now multiply that by 7 day and it comes out to be 9.1 mil the state has lost. Now multiply 1.3 mil by 365 and you get 4.7 BILLION. My question is, if you're getting 4.7 bil from the casino's a year, how in the hell do you get your state 4.5 bil in the hole??? Just gotta love those politicians.

Wow, who'd a thunk-it that you can't drink fire. I learn something new everyday

Got a 22. It's sad when I trust the USPS over the Pentagon What really gets me is an illegal immigrant can go to the hospital and get treated for free but i have to pay. Defiantely need term limits for these politicians. Strom Thurgood was in politics until his mid 80's. They need to realize that these aren't jobs for life and Joe Lieberman running for Prez when he should've been serving the people of CT that elected him really ticked me off.

Ok, enough with the "What will happen to the vollies blue lights". I've said it before and I'll say it again. NYS vollies will not lose the right to use blue lights now that the NY PD's can legally use blue. Many states such as CT, the PD's use red/blue and the vollies use only blue. This topic is starting to get old and I think everyone can find a better use for their time then whinning about the PD's using blue now. Thats just my rant and 2 cents

Yes, we all know what happens if you don't use a manual defibulator correctly. AED stands for Automated External Defibulator. An AED will only shock V-tach and V-fib rythms. All you do is apply pads that have pictures on them showing where they go. The AED will not let you shock unshockable rythms. You push 1 or 2 buttons depending on the model and it walks you through it. AED's are virtually idiot proof, especially for us officers

I thought that everyone had to use a priority dispatch system. Seems like a waste of resources to be sending a medic with a BLS bus for a stubbed toe or the finger lac.

I was just wondering how many of you carry foam extinguishers on your apparattus and what you think of them? We have one on every truck next to the water can. I haven't gotten to use one on a fire yet and was wondering how well they work.

First off, let me appologize in advance for the rant I'm going to make. Who cares that the PD's in NY can now legally use blue lights. It's going to have no effect on vol ff's. Many other states have PD's using red/blue with no effect on the vol ff's. I feel that this forum was designed to share ideas & experiences with other ff's, ems workers, & police officers. This should be a dead issue by now so stop beating the horse. Second, stop the whining about how Vermont ff's can use sirens in their POV's or how New Jersey now supposedly lets vol ff's drive through red lights, stop signs, etc... It's like you're all trying to keep up with the Jones's. Oh look, Jone's now has this so we must have it. Thirdly, if the public won't move out of the way for a 72,000 lb ladder truck going lights & siren, what makes you think they'd move for you in your pov? I'll admit i used to be a whacker. I had the full light bar & lights everywhere. I found that i atractted a lot of attention driving down the street and that people still didn't move out of the way. I use just a dashlight andfound i get to the fire house in the same amount of time. I know some of you aren't going to agree with me but can we put this issue behind us now? There are more important issues that we can be discussing here. That's just my two cents.

How you respond all comes down from the info the dispatcher takes. In Monroe Ct, the FD's & EMS are dispatched by CMED. CMED stays on the line with the caller to get as much info they can of the injury. They won's send EMS in emergency response if the caller is complaining of a stubbed toe or for a lift assist. Not every call that comes in warrants an emergency response. I know some of you aren't going to agree with this. It's like a double edged sword. You don't respond lights/siren and the caller b&%#@es that it took you forever to get there, or you respond lights/siren and get into an accident and have to explain to someones family why their relative was hit by an ambulance driving lights & siren to the stubbed toe. Man, I miss the old days when it was soo much simpler

Date: 4-18-06 Time:12:03 Location: Monroe CT Rte 110 at Old Tannery Rd Frequency: 45.08 Units Operating: R-120 E-201 Q-200 952 (Ambulance) Description Of Incident: Multi Vehicle MVA w/multiple extrications & fire Writer: ltjay157 12:03 Monroe & Stepney FD's dispatched with Monreo EMS for a multi-car MVA with entrapment. 12:04 R-120 (Stepney) E-201 (Monroe) enroute 12:05 PD reports multiple 911 calls on MVA. Now states MVA with entrapment & fire. 12:06 E-201 arrives and reports a 4 car MVA with dump truck & 1 car fully involved in fire with extrication of 2 occupants of another car. E-201 requests 2nd tone for manpower. 12:08 R-120 arrives and extricates two occupants out of a car in a ditch. Occupants handed of to EMS 952 for transport to haospital. 12:08 PD notifies FD that there is still an occupant in the car that is on fire. 12:20 FD units on scene assiting PD with the accident & await the State Medical Examiner. 17:20 Stae Medical Examiner on scene. 17:30 Extrication started on the fatality. 17:45 extrication complete. 17:55 R-120 & Q-200 clear of scene returning. 19:02 E-201 clear of the scene. PD still on scene &Rte 110 is still closed between Old Tannery Rd & Barn Hill Rd.

I have a minitor IV and it's ok. the one feature i like on it is the vibrate alert. the reception is ok for being digital. I had to send it back to the factory because it lost the programing on it. my old minitor II had excellent reception and used crystals that were field replaceble. I hate how Motorola discontinues the radios and pagers that worked the best.

Our dept's website shows accidents and other incidents but we will never show a picture of a victim or disclose any medical condition. If we put up a pic of a MVA we may only say "We were dispatched to an MVA w/reported injuries" and leave it at that. And yes, HIPPA does apply to fire dept's also.

Using sirens and airhorns during parades is stupid. Think of the marchers in front of the rig? i know i hate having the horn/siren hit when I'm standing 20 ft in front of it. Think of the people watching the parade. If you look at them closely, most are holding their hands over their ears due to the noise. People respect us for what we do, but do you want then to start thinking we're a bunch of jack@##*&?

I don't know about you guys, but my firefighters badge says what ageny I'm with, my rank, and state. The badge you're talking about just says you're an EMT with a number. There was no agency name on the badge. The reason for a badge is a symbol of authority. What was he gonna do in an emergency at the courthouse? Whip out the badge and say "I'm an EMT so do as i say"? If you're a volunteer, what's the purpose of carrying a badge when you're not in uniform? I can see if you are working a shift at the ambulance and you have it on you're uniform for identification purposes. With people out there impersonating police officers, you need to use common sense. The only people I know that carry a badge when off duty are police officers. That's just my opinion.

The State of Connecticut employs firefighters at Uconn, Bradley International Airport, Oxford Airport, Southbury Training School etc....... It's very competetive to get hired by the state. This position i believe is going to be at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks because that's where the Air National Guard is Stationed. I hope this helps you.

I carry in my pockets 12ft of webbing, multihead screwdriver, small adjustable wrench, cable cutters, shove knife, center punch, folding spanner(s), utility knife, ems shears, gemtor harness and i used to have bail out bad until someone stole it

guess he should've been wearing his seat belt...............morons=job security

Putnam 911 would be great if utilized properly. It's understaffed plain and simple. Only 2 dispatchers to handle the whole county maybe a third from 12pm-8pm but that's it? 60 Control has a min of 4 dispacthers on per shift. I'm not here to pick on any of the dispatchers (I know a couple of them). But I feel the Administrators are to blame for the problems of lack of training and not sticking up for the dispatcher. They Administrators bowed down to the fire depts that each want the dispatch done differently at different times of the day. 10 tones for a fire dispatch is a little excessive to me. Especially when it's an AFA. Where I am, 1 tone (a second if no one signs on within 3 min) and the trucks and or ambulance is out the door. To keep re-dispatching a dept for 1 call when other 911 calls are coming in seems crazy to me. But then again that's just my opinion on this subject.

Stepney's reel truck (E-102) is a 1972 Maxim that has only 2000 ft of 5". It used to have around 2500 ft of 5" until Monroe E-201 ran over 5 lengths of it at a structure fire (sorry, had to bust your b*#@s on that). E-102 is in the process of being replaced within the next year or so. The new E-102 will not have a hose reel due to newly installed hydrants in the fire district. Monroe/Stepney are in the same town and are no longer rural. www.stepneyfire.com