Alpinerunner

This is the key part of the law. It is only talking about taking pics of victims/patients! This should be common sense but obviously needs to also be legislated. This does not stop people from taking pics of wrecked cars or burning buildings.

Very true. I think the key issue is that the doctors from his career department made him retire. If he faked something and swore that he was in some sort of respiratory distress or had chronic back pain or something and he was relieved of his duty due to his word, then there is fraud. But if the career department's own doctors kicked him out then they can't tell him how to live his life. How is that fair if it wasn't his call to leave? They can unilaterally retire him AND then dictate what he does for the rest of his life? I'm not going to pretend to know all the ins and outs of the law here, but it certainly isn't moral fraud and isn't wrong.

Looks good. What kinds of equipment will it have and what duties will it perform?

hahahaha very unsatisfying "money shot" after 3.5 months of teaser posts. In all seriousness, good luck with it! I would say looks good, but I can't see it.

Excellent video. Very moving!

Those are amazing shots. Very high quality photography.

Yes, because using the same logic, it's also NOT the court's fault if the check was lost in the mail. Since it can't be proven where the check/summons was lost, you need to follow up if it's not sent by certified mail.

Sounds good to me. I like the idea of only having the rear-most units have their lights on (at an accident on a divided highway). People always assume "oooh lots of lights and trucks, this must be a good one that I NEED to see". It will probably take a long time to catch on especially with minimal interaction between State police and fire departments, but at least we're moving in the right direction.

That is a valid point and something that could always be worked out by TOR and SFRD higher-ups. But as things stand the service units don't have room for airpacks, and we haven't gotten any indication that grabbing stuff off an SFRD rig would be OK. The SOGs are to stay in house and wait for a driver so they can come with the right equipment, or take in a concurrent medical. The service units have all the equipment necessary for medicals only.

I already explained that they needed a driver, and that had there been career FFs in house, the first due rig would have had 6 FFs (3 paid, 3 Vol) instead of 3 or 4 total, as was the case at the incident in question. Having career FFs that are also drivers in the house 24/7 allows the volunteer FFs in the station to get out the door immediately. If there aren't FFs in the house, they can respond directly to the scene to meet the apparatus, as opposed to wasting time waiting for a driver to get to the station first, which is what happens now. Let's be honest. The issue at hand is where these career FFs are coming from, and that's not what I'm arguing or what I want to get into. My point is that the volunteers ARE there and will be an asset in the Mayor's plan.

I'm not saying FFs should not be held to some sort of liablity standard, but I think the reason there is such a difference between EMS liability and FF liability is two-fold. The first issue is due to the fact that firefighting is less of a science than the human body. The has been a lot of quantifiable studies about how the human body works and what helps and what hurts. For instance, giving nitro when the systolic BP is less than 100 is known to be bad. Giving oral glucuse to a patient without a patent airway is known to be bad. Giving O2 is (almost) never bad, and the times it is bad are clearly defined and understood through physiology (infants and chronic emphysema). It's less of a hard line between when to vent and not to vent, and when to open the walls and when not to, and how much water is necessary. The second issue is simply that the human body is more valuable than property, and the effects of negligence can be permanent. Again, I'm not saying we can't improve, I'm just stating why I think the rules are different currently.

They are good when you have a career drivers and FFs, as in a proper combination department.

Correct. 616 was in house.

I try to stay out of this, but have to step in when important information is left out to serve one's adjenda. Believe it or not, there was a crew in house during the DAY at the time of the alarm (I thought that didn't happen?!). However, they needed a driver. I know because I got a text page saying, "crew in house, need driver for oven fire TOR Rd." Now before everyone jumps up and down and says, "well you should train more drivers" let me point out that that isn't the agrument nor the issue. No one is trying to argue that things should stay the same. The issue is are the volunteers there, and will the mayor's plan work? With the Mayor's plan enacted, the initial engine would have been FULL (6 FFs!), with 3 career FFs and 3 volunteers. This is more than did respond that day. And FWIW, TOR did get a driver as the recall was put in, thus backfilling for any additional calls, which is an often overlooked benefit of volunteers who can't be at the station for the inital dispatch. So much effort goes into making it look like the volunteers aren't there, but it's simply not true. Making ~1300/2000 calls a year all-volunteer proves that they are an ASSET to the community. Please remember no one is advocating for an all volunteer department.

Sounds good to me. They are helping the community and learning skills that will help them get a job on the outside, and not wasting away shanking eachother.

VERY interesting info!! My question is how do they count the 6? I assume they aren't requiring this on the initial engine. But does Pelham not send the 6 on the initial BOX?

24 on 72 off = 48 hr work week. This is MORE than the standard 40 hr work week.

This point is contested. Other reports say he escaped out a window

Congrats! What kind of call volume do you guys run?

That is very interesting. I must say the golden hour never made sense to me, being that every trauma injury is different and some patients can last 20 mins and some can last days. It seems VERY arbitrary being there is no "average/typical" type of trauma injury.

Either some people have an adjenda or don't know how to search. Probably the latter...

This is a very good point. Parades are on holidays/weekends and we always have better coverage during parades than regular day times. But to answer your question, we usually send an engine and a utility to a parade and leave an staffed engine, ladder and rescue in the house. Many memebers aren't into parades. I personally, have never been to one. Good, important topic though for sure.

Love the pics! Especially the ones of the firehouses.

We have a small pitched roof to cut pallets on, and we put together a SCBA maze every once in a while with studs to go through. We have access to neighboring departments' full maze though. We also have a long tube to crawl through as confined space practice that is VERY nerve wracking the first time.

Not quite like a turbo. A turbo uses the exhaust gasses to power a compressor that forces CLEAN outside air into the engine. (sorry if you were being sarcasic and knew that, haha) This is an old practice used on some gas engines in the 80s in the name of emissions and it does reduce mileage because you're adding hot (less dense) air into the engine that doesn't combust as well because there is soot and burnt gasses in it. It can seriously clog up the intake manifold over time. I'd rather use UREA