Dinosaur

What's the weight of the new truck? Can all the old bridges in Putnam handle it?

The irony abounds.

It is amazing how we criticize everyone about calls at assisted living facilities while we don't cover all our own calls and have our own system problems. Glass houses! If it is a tax-paying facility in your community, you have to go there when they call. Even when it is often and for what you consider minor or unwarranted calls.

We could absolutely compare this to Westchester. The costs of emergency services are staggering and we don't have any idea the true cost because there is no transparency. As for the 800K for "air packs", that raises a red flag to me. Rounding very high, not considering any discounts or economies of scale for a large order, I come up with about 675K for 100 new packs and 250 new masks. Maybe they are all personally engraved and have gold regulators?

Interesting. Can't wait to see the report.

Big surprise. Get funding legislation passed using one hot-button topic and then reallocate the funds to other projects that wouldn't get the same level of support. Typical Albany!

My apologies. I misinterpreted your message.

If you're actually defending the notion that 5.58 FF responding to a fire is acceptable, due respect, you're part of the problem. Read NFPA 1710 or 1720 or whatever applies to that thing you call a fire department. I am continually amazed that people continue to defend grossly understaffed departments as if what they have is acceptable. This is 2016 in one of the most heavily taxed counties in the country and we still send 5.58 FF to a fire call. And the icing on the cake for me is that's the AVERAGE. Meaning half the time you respond with less than that. Pathetic!

Ya think?

Fail. Then maybe they should hire the other half of the crew. This is ridiculous. Does anyone know why they would hold onto the call for so long when they couldn't muster a crew?

How is that possible? Do they only have one person on duty? Sounds like a failure to me. Where's the County EMS Coordinator or State EMS Bureau of any other responsible party in this?

You should get a job in the media.They pay top dollar for sensationalizing things.

Where does it say that EMS crews shall use force to remove homeless to a shelter? If a warrant is signed by the "homeless intervention team" (I'd like to hear more about who they are and how they sign warrants for this) and the NYPD executes the warrant, the EMS crew is really nothing more than a ride. I'm not a fan of all this "executive action" but it is being sensationalized a lot and misrepresented. I imagine that there are lawyers lining up to challenge this the first time it happens too.

Used to be that the EMS agencies changed in the big cities on a regular basis. It was kind of a joke every time the contract was awarded. Most of the EMS crews would just change shirts and move into a different vehicle and voila, new agency. I guess it was when the contracts became zero bid and relied solely on billing (?) that the tenure of an agency got so much longer.

You're making your own case for it. Consolidate the five or six different agencies within the town into one and now you're paying one insurance bill, you can probably reduce the size of the fleet, you have all kinds of economies of scale, and most important - all the members would be able to respond to any calls anywhere in the town. Paid personnel could be strategically based to cover the most calls efficiently and volunteers could be used to augment. I don't really see a downside. As for losing out on money, who's really making any???

What's a "notable incident"? How about asking how many times apparatus responded without a full crew of properly trained personnel? Do numbers tell us anything at all tell us about what we do????

5

Your point? Does their doing it wrong somehow excuse the prior performance by the neighboring department?

More than $1.00 is more than poor accounting! This is allegedly a fire protection district and under contract to the Town of Patterson. They are accountable, albeit indirectly, to the taxpayers of the town who fund their operations. The days of ignoring things "because they're volunteers" has to be over! $6M from two Putnam FD's. Uncovered at roughly the same time. That speaks volumes about the over-budgeting and complete lack of fiscal responsibility in these two organizations. It's a disgrace and gives the entire fire service a black eye. $6M would fund many years of operations and/or procurement of new equipment/apparatus. To think that it is "gone" is inexcusable.

It goes to show how organization is becoming a more and more rare phenomenon. If these guys had riding positions and knew the job and their tools of the trade, there wouldn't be so much back and forth and wasted time and effort. Why didn't someone have the can as soon as they got off the truck? Where's the primary search beyond the doorway of the store? I'm guessing that this was a truck company and that's why there was no hose line but the tactics were weak at best and the leadership/organization was abysmal. Of course, this is just from a short YouTube video so take it for what it's worth...

He didn't have a fiddle...

What is an "abolishion"?

Why? They're just going to close 84 anyway. Only interstate I've seen that has barriers at all the on ramps. It's not even the worst highway in the state but it gets all the attention from Unkle Andy.

http://news.hamlethub.com/brewster/publicsafety/1040-patterson-fd-finances-under-scrutiny If you look at the findings of the NYS Comptrollers Office and all the reports they prepare, there is a a recurring theme. Poor oversight and accountability relating to finance. When are we going to address the problems associated with having unprepared and unqualified people running multi-million dollar businesses?

How a knotted napkin "knocked him off his chair" is another question. Must have been a BIG knot. LOL