Dinosaur

Did this team ever get trained and formally certified or did it die like so many other ideas for emergency services?

This isn't the forum for such a question. There's really no guidance you can get from us keyboard commandos without specific information, the kind of information that (a) doesn't belong here and (b) could reveal the identity of the agency or person. Suffice it to say that terminating a union employee is not taken lightly and there are statutory and contractual considerations before it can happen. Most jobs don't want to get it reversed in court so they're very careful about taking such drastic action so they must have dotted the i's and crossed the t's.

There's a big difference between searching for and "rescuing" a lost hiker and performing a technical rescue on a construction worker buried up to his neck in a collapsed excavation. Response time for one. Unless there's a blizzard coming, lost people can wait for a voluntary team to be assembled and mobilized. Not so with many technical rescues. Breakneck Mountain has been in the news a lot lately. How will this team benefit western Putnam, specifically to respond to Breakneck, when it's going to be based out of Carmel and staffed with people in Brewster and Carmel? How will they get there? By POV with a blue light? Absurd! Our system is flawed. It's been failing for decades but we just keep putting bandaids on it.

This is not unique to Yonkers. Where does all the 2% money go everywhere else????

Considering the median age of former presidents the likelihood that any would be an active volunteer firefighter is slim. Further, considering the manner in which our presidential candidates are selected, unless Harvard or Yale starts a volunteer FD, I don't think we're going to see any volly presidents in our lifetimes.

Asinine. Put more troopers in the city with almost 40K cops. Meanwhile, on the Sprain, Taconic, 684, 84, etc. your wife may wait for an hour before seeing a trooper if her car breaks down and rush hour is like the autobahn. When is his term up?

Part time = no benefits, no pension, no real job security. Well done, Patterson! Well done! (/sarcasm)

They gotta stop drying them on high after the car wash!

I think you're stretching the role of 60-Control and it's basis in government to suit a gripe you have with a commercial provider picking up the slack for a volunteer agency that can't get out the door. 60-Control isn't "awarding business", they're using agencies that already have a DOH CON to operate in Westchester to cover 911 calls that volunteers can't cover. Instead of being pissed off that the commercial company is doing 911 calls without an RFP or competitive bid (which is absurd in an emergency by the way) you should be pissed at the agency or agencies that can't get out the door themselves and is creating this mess. 60-Control is a dispatch center. They don't set the dispatch policy for local communities. If the local communities are OK with the coverage by a commercial provider instead of toning out another volunteer agency that may not get out the door, why does it matter? If Town X doesn't want 123 Ambulance coming into their town when they don't get out the door I'm sure they'll call 60 and give them an earful. Who should be next up on mutual aid? Or are you saying that there is a mutual aid run card that isn't being used? If that's the case then the gripe is the home agency and if they're not griping.... why are you?

Back to the subject of lights and sirens, the two Con Ed guys I was speaking to today said the "Incident Response Unit" or "Emergency Command Unit" or whatever they may say are most likely members of the Emergency Response Group. They have 'em in gas, electric, steam and substations. None of them are authorized to have red lights or sirens but, just like we have some people with "extra" bells and whistles, some of these guys may have additional lights. These are the guys that will hold the fort until more crews can arrive and they're trained in ICS and are the SME from their part of the company. The substations guys are trained in firefighting at TEEX and deal with the oil filled transformer fires and other big events like that. They can all set up one of the Con Ed ICS command boards and be your point of contact until more help arrives.

Great insight. I was talking to two Con Ed guys today and they echo your sentiment that the last thing the FD should be doing is turning valves in the street. They may inadvertently turn off a transmission main instead of the distribution main supplying the house in question and that could impact THOUSANDS depending on where it is. They also said that they've been finding valve boxes completely paved over, not just hidden by errant water valve boxes. Just like we shouldn't climb poles to disconnect power lines, we shouldn't be messing with gas infrastructure. The results could be costly both in time and money and public safety. In my 35 years I never had a complaint with the response time of Con Ed responders, especially gas crews.

If the water department is requested on a rush for a water main break or Con Ed electric is requested for down wires on a rush, should they all have emergency lights and sirens too? Sorry for the sarcasm but there are all ready too many vehicles with red lights and sirens. Adding more won't help us get anywhere and it isn't about what an IC wants. It's what the law says. There's no provision in law for utility vehicles to be emergency vehicles. The fire department is already there, they responded with lights and siren. They can make the scene safe until Con Ed arrives whether within 14 minutes or 40 minutes.

The aviation industry has made great strides in improving safety since the advent of crew resource management. We don't need a show called firefighting disasters, we have the news for that. We see our failures live and in person right on the evening news. I hope your comments are tongue in cheek but they smack of the arrogance in the fire service that is above being criticized. Right now we desperately need some constructive criticism. Delays due to not meeting any kind of standards or because we don't have a plan or procedure for response are inexcusable. Delays due to a safe response are not delays at all. If you think it is correct to drive fast through intersections and not wear a seatbelt, first of all please be an organ donor but second of all, the seconds saved are negligible. That's simple fact and is borne out by studies every year. Response times because it takes 10-15 minutes to staff the apparatus is a topic for response time thread. Not it took them 4.5 minutes to drive from the house to the scene. Responses with less than a full crew are a topic for response thread. I'm probably more pissy than usual today because nowadays the only time I wear my old class A's is for funerals and memorial services but the airline industry admitted they had a problem!

I disagree. I think all police cars should be the same - different patches, fine - but I happen to like knowing that when I am visiting California I'm looking at a police car and not a taxi. State law in CA has all police cars black and white and even specifies that there have to be certain lighting combinations to insure they are recognized as a police vehicle. There's no rhyme or reason here in NY. At all.

That's more fire load than most places will see in a decade (or longer) and that was just one month! Crazy.

At a fire call, the transmission of "all-hands" results in the addition of a rescue company and squad company to the box. They may or may not be assigned on transmission of a 10-75. It also serves as a heads-up that everyone is working for incoming resources or those that may be "next" due. At a non-fire, it simply indicates that everyone is engaged in some capacity. I believe, and it has been many years since dealing with it, on non-fires it is simply informational.

Yes, it will hit us or it will miss us. Now I can be a meteorologist.

There isn't "ENOUGH help" in any Westchester County department anymore. I don't care if it's paid or volunteer; the first due doesn't meet NFPA1710 or 1720 anywhere but perhaps Yonkers and even Yonkers has been cut back. At this fire and at most other fires there is no staging of additional resources; everyone is working and then they put the FAST to work so there's NOBODY left if something untoward happens. There should be some resources available at the scene to go to work when it gets ahead of you. We don't do that and it's going to bite us in the rear one of these days. Luck only lasts for so long. As for 1&1 on additional alarms, when it's all you can get... It's what it is my friend. Contrary to this experience, consider the recent fire in Staten Island that went to a 6th Alarm. I would guess that's close to 250 FDNY members. How many did Bronxville have on their 4th? Or even on the initial response. The system is broken but nobody, and I mean nobody, will say that the emperor has no clothes!

So what finally put the fire out?

It's a damn shame this thread is getting so little attention. This should be a big wake-up call for every department to take a few minutes and do an honest, objective self-assessment to answer "can this happen to us?" For younger FF coming up, this should be a heads-up that if someone is telling you to do something that doesn't seem right you should confirm it. And if you don't have the training, don't do it! The old attitude "new guys / young ones need to keep the eyes open and mouths shut" has no business in today's fire service. Have a questioning attitude. Not to be obnoxious but to learn and make sure you're doing it right. Sadly we can't assume that the senior guys - or even all the officers - are leading by example. Before everyone jumps on me, I'm not saying that we all do it wrong, I'm saying we can always do it better! Be smart, be safe, and live to fight another day!

Well, this just adds to the black eye that the PCFD has already suffered. As if the violations aren't bad enough, the allegation of falsifying an incident report and insurance claim are particularly troubling. It seems that Chief Quinn can't keep himself out of trouble.

Bad analogy. The best analogy would be the volunteer EMT compared to the "career" "paid" EMT. Both receive the same training and hold the same certification. All security guards in NYS receive the same training and certification from NYS as do police officers but they are not the same. That's unfortunately not the case with firefighter training in NYS!

Sue Suez for withholding the information and/or demand that the PSC require it be provided. It seems very disingenuous to have critical data withheld by a regulated utility.

Sue 'em! It's a safety issue and the PSC should really stop ignoring things like NFPA. On a side note, who says that PSC trumps DOS? Is that statutory or just the laissez faire bureacracy in Albany failing us yet again?

So the county has 58 departments. We can debate the logic and necessity of that for days without ever resolving it. Does it need 58? Does the number of departments have some significance to fire growth? I think not. Population drives demand so dismissing population considerations is flawed reasoning.