Dinosaur

Ahh, yes. Let's use Youtube as our source of definitive information. It's a lot like using Wikipedia as your source for a dissertation.

After a 2 year investigation and dozens of arrests, sad to say they're probably right on the mark and this is another black eye for the emergency services.

Sorry but I disagree. There are inherent risks in many things we do - and getting off the apparatus shouldn't be one of them - but our job is to manage the risk. We generally do a piss poor job of assessing and managing risk. If we did, there would be a lot more training and a lot less gum flapping! STAT and FireMedic said it well. If you train personnel, equip them, and maintain the skills with drills, the risk is greatly reduced.

Political correctness and not qualifications!

My point remains the same. I'm willing to bet none of the volunteer FD's comply with 1720 either so we're at 1 out of 59 and that is pathetic!

Buffwhacker 1? Seriously, it may belong to a hunter. And not the agency.

One out of 59. Not impressive performance by anyone's standard. We are truly pathetic!

Wouldn't be a party without a lively discussion (debate) about the emergency services at a New Year's Eve party. LOL 1. Rules for the sake of rules without any consideration to the reality around them is problematic. I venture to guess that you can guess the percentage of compliant agencies on your fingers (less than 10%). 2. Again, probably not. But the same can be said for FD's and even PD's. A private sector safety guy even went so far as to say that you can respond to haz-mat and operate defensively with only awareness level training. We all thought it was operations level to respond to a haz-mat. So even the private sector doesn't always have it right. 3. EMS agencies don't have to comply with NFPA, right? That is the standard for fire departments. How many non-fire EMS agencies care about NFPA standards? 4. What law requires that training? If they're not operating in confined areas or trenches, etc. do they need the training? Water safety? Required by law? Please cite that one for us. I'll enjoy pointing that one out to people.

It's a travesty that in 2013 we have such different levels of service in the highest taxed county in the entire Country! Am I correct in stating that only ONE FD meets the standards of NFPA 1710 or 1720?

On the other hand, how many agency's maintain questionable rules because they can while at the same time being unable to get their rigs out the door.

Your point is very well taken. Some disciplinary action is probably warranted but the larger issue here is the fact that he was the only person from the entire agency that responded. Maybe he should have gone to the FD or PD and gotten a vehicle that he is authorized to drive to respond. This isn't about protocols, this is about how the volunteer EMS system is broken and nobody is doing anything about THAT! The Board of Directors should be suspended for failure to insure adequate coverage for their district.

Perhaps you should have read the article or even the first post. Ambulance corps captain John Gavaris quoted as saying squad rules "aren't dictated by insurance".

P-O-W-E-R !!!!! Forget about service to the community, they get to control people in their little VAC world because they can't control them in the real world.

Fascinating. He can be a part-time cop, a firefighter, and even be an EMT in the back of the ambulance caring for someone but he can't drive it. Just wondering what the agency and its neighbors are doing to fix the staffing problem they have? According to the article, four agencies couldn't get a crew out. That's more of a story than the fact that a 20 year old broke the rules.

I was visiting a buddy at one of the departments that went mutual aid to this job and listened all the way up to the 4th. Never heard any mention of FDNY but of course that was Westchester radio.

Policies? Wow, if only more departments actually wrote those pesky things. I figured there was a policy to send someone with mutual aid and knew it wasn't "self-dispatching". Calling it self-dispatching was a very poor choice of words. Unless there is a policy or discussion with the requesting agency, sending more or less than is asked for undermines the entire operation. Time that nonsense stopped! If people actually stopped commenting when someone answered the question properly on this site, there'd be half as many posts. But hey, we know what a department in Maryland does and what someone in Stamford thinks. Why listen to the YFD guy?

Thank you for picking that up! You also have to wonder why anyone needs to buy there own PPE!

Hard to fit too much on a Nissan Altima!

Yonkers has an impressive fleet and does their best to minimize the use of mutual aid (imagine that!). They start recalling personnel early and staff reserve apparatus (imagine that!) so the mutual aid can be returned to where it came from. YFD also has a lot of specialty apparatus. It's an impressive operation.

Self-dispatch? Really? That's encouraging. I guess we've learned nothing in the past 13 years about that.

Conflicting information? Here? Say it isn't so!

Right now it's in Yonkers on mutual aid.

There's a thread about the age of apparatus in the county with an interesting running commentary on the replacement cost of all that apparatus. It is also interesting to consider the cost of the fire service in Westchester County. If you know, what's the total annual budget of your FD? This isn't secret or privileged information; it should be a matter of public record. To start: Yonkers - 53,073,698 (2013 Adopted Budget) New Rochelle - 27,281,810 (2012 Adopted Budget) White Plains - 25,149,045 (2013-14 Adopted Budget) Mt Vernon - 14,454,877 (2013 Adopted Budget) Peekskill - 3,342,597 (2014 Adopted Budget) *** unknown if this is complete as the individual companies may have their own operating budgets as well Armonk - 1,671,981.75 Eastchester - 16,759,387 Feel free to add on and we'll see what the grand total is.

Doesn't the above mean you have about $715,517 to work with? Isn't the revenue from Cortlandt added or does the figure of 532,213 already include that Cortlandt funding?

We ALL enter unstable environments every day, that's our job. We just have to manage the risks and develop procedures to limit the potential to become injured as well. Tactical medics, active shooter responses, and changes to the approach to mass shootings is not a terrible idea. It's just a sign of the times. There was once a time where they prevailing sentiment was that paramedics were a terrible idea too but that seems to have caught on.