trauma74

My EMS Agency allows the Captain and the two Lieutenants to use red lights and sirens when responding to the scene of any call we are dispatched to. Because we are a NYS Certified EMS Agency and we have to follow NYS Department of Health Policies, our POVs have to be certified as EASVs (emergency ambulance service vehicles) also commonly known as fly cars. This means that our POVs must have all the same equipment that is required to be in a fly car owned by an EMS agency. As far as who pays for the lights, sirens, radios and medical equipment.....The VAC owns three 8 outlet Whelen strobe power supplies. Each of us gets the power supply and the strobe bulbs. We have to purchase our own sirens, siren speakers and any additional red lights such as ones for the dash, rear window, grill etc. The mobile radios are supplied by the VAC. The VAC pays for the installation of all of the equipment that they own as well as the additional equipment we have to purhcase ourselves. In my vehicle they also purchased a Havis console to house my scanner, my VHF and my Low Band Radio (VAC does not use low band, but I have it for inter-ops with the FD). All medical equipment that we are required to carry is supplied by the VAC. We each have a trauma/airway bag, c-collar bag, O2 bag, Phillips AED, KED, yellow disposable blankets, flares, fire extinguisher and some other misc equipment. We also have to have lettering on our vehicles as per NYS DOH. All three of us have magnetic signs that we put on our vehicles when we are responding to calls. Insurance coverage is as follows......If we are in an accident, our own insurance covers everything and the VACs insurance company picks up our deductible.

Last month I signed up with Time Warner for their Triple Play Package. Next month I am moving to a new place that does not have Time Warner service. They offer Cablevision only. When I call Time Warner to cancel will their be any type of termination fee? Thanks in advance for helping me.

This new Ford is a nice looking truck. If you look at the video on the website, they show the new Ford being tested in proving grounds in Alaska. When we get ready to purchase our new ambulance, we will be looking at getting one on this new Ford chassis.

Rest In Peace Brother!

They should focus less on this expensive dinner and focus more on the fact that Sean Bell was a criminal. If anyone uses their vehicle as a deadly weapon they deserve to be shot and killed. End of Story! I do not know what this is so hard for some people to comprehend. Be all means you should fire as many rounds as needed to stop a threat. You know that the liberals will say that the officers should have shot the tires out on the car. These are the same people who say that officers should aim for the legs and shoot a criminal in the knee. Shoot to kill is the proper way to handle a threat to the life of a law enforcement officer or the life of an innocent civilan.

I am totally in favor of having any continuous duty vehicle with a diesel engine. The problem is that our choices are limited. Chevy stopped making the Suburban with a diesel, Ford stopped making the Excursion plus they never offered the Expedition or the Explorer with a diesel motor option, Dodge does not make an SUV with a diesel, Ford also now stopped making the E-Series in a diesel. Diesel fuel by nature is an oily type of fuel. With that being said, that is one of the reasons why diesel engines last longer. The more lubrication you have the less friction you have, less friction results in less wear and tear on the engine and better fuel economy. There are some negatives when it comes to purchasing a vehicle with a diesel. Cost is the main thing. On many vehicles you are talking about a $3K-$5K difference in the price. In the long run I think spending the extra money up front is worth it. Diesel motors stand up better to long periods of idling. As many of you already know, idling and heavy duty usage with a gasoline engine will result in the engine not lasting very long. As stated in one of the posts above, the majority of vehicles in Europe are diesels. The major car companies need to get on the ball with offering more vehicles with diesel engines. If any one you have watched "Future Vehicles" on the Discovery channel you saw many new concept cars being made with diesel engines. In one such case, there was a Formula One style race car that runs on diesel. This race car averaged 150mph in a race while getting 113mpg!!!!!!!! If a car like that can get that kind of performance, the future of diesels looks brighter every day. In addition to performance, you have a few alternative types of diesel fuel to use in a diesel engine. You have the new low sulfer fuel and a few different types of bio-diesel. You can make bio-diesel in your own garage. The equipment does not seem very expensive, but it appears to be time consuming. Many restaurants discard their used cooking oil. They have to pay to get this oil removed. Many of them have no problem letting people take their used oil. It saves them money. Bio-Diesel can be made from many different types of crops. Bio-Diesel can be mass produced. This can help reduce our dependency on oil from terrorist countries. There are ways to make gasoline like fuels from other sources, but the process is more time consuming and more expensive. It would be nice to see the Tahoe & Suburban offered with the Duramax engine paired up with a nice Allison transmission!

Nice looking new design, but what a mistake not making the van to hold the new deisel motor!

I forgot one thing, I would like to comment the billing of MOS's. If an MOS gets injured on or off duty and a bus responds, the MOS's insurance carrier should be billed for the service provided. If the MOS does not have insurance, a bill should not be sent to the MOS. That would be a courtesy to the MOS from the EMS service. I see no reason why a bill should not be sent to the MOS's insurance carrier. Is the MOS's insurance carrier going to give a refund to the MOS because the EMS service did not send a bill to them? The MOS's insurance carrier will not raise the insurance just because the EMS service came and treated the MOS. When we started billing back in 2000 we spoke to our local FD and PD. We explained the third party billing to them and we told them that we will bill the workers comp insurance if we transport one of them. The FD Chiefs and Commissioners along with our local PD Chiefs all had no problem with this. We told them that if one of their guys happens to receive a bill either by accident or if the workers comp does not pay the bill, to call one of us and we will take care of it. They all agreed to this. We also explained to them that when we come to a fire scene to do rehab, we are not going to bill them for being at the scene, for the use of our oxygen, oxygen supplies or any other medical supplies used there. We told them that we would only generate a bill if we transported. They were good with this set up. Our local fire district gets a million and a half dollars a year from the tax payers. This is way more then EMS gets and we are running double the amount of calls and when we go out on a call we end up transporting 90% of the time. The FD runs less calls and when they get paged out 90% of the time it is for an automatic alarm and they are back in quarters within a short time. We also have paid EMTs during the day. This is not free, so we must try to collect as much money as possible for the services we provide.

I am not sure how things work in Westchester, but I can tell you how things are in Orange County when it comes to billing & taxes for EMS. Within the entire County there are only two VACs that get funded thru a tax district. The rest of us are at the mercy of the Towns and Villages for funding. In my town, the Town Board gives us apprx $190K per year. Our operating budget which includes having paid EMTs during the day is about $375K per year. Being that the Town will not provide us with funding for our entire budget, we have to get the money from somewhere. That is why we started billing. We mainly do third party (soft) billing. If a patient does not have insurance and they cannot afford to pay the bill, we do not pursue them for the money. We send a few letters of request for payment because some patients get a check sent directly to them from the insurance company and they fail to turn that amount of money over to us. This is considered insurance fraud. Some of the VACs up here do not receive any tax money, so their only source if revenue is from billing. It is kind of sad that in this day and age with the cost of medical supplies and equipment that municipalities do not provide funding to the VACs. Some of the VACs who provide EMS to non-residents of their Towns will take these patients to collects for non-payment of a bill. The point I am trying to make is that even though VACs get some tax money, they need this billing money to survive. Until the municipalities start providing more funding to the VACs, they VACs will continue the practice of billing. The members of the public and others in the public safety field might think this is wrong, but for now it is a fact of life. For those who do not agree with billing, I urge you to lobby your town officals to provide more funding for EMS.

I am leaving for Baltimore tonight to attend the JEMS EMS Today Conference & Expo. I am looking to get the frequencies for the FD & EMS. I have been going to Baltimore every year for 5 years and I always forget to get these frequencies. I want to listen to what is going on in the City while I am down there.

Try contacting the communications vendor who services your FD. They might help you out. I think they will give you the tones for your own FD, but they probably will not give you the tones of all of the FDs in your area. I have to agree with Chris that a list of pager tones falling into the wrong hands can be very bad. With the availablity of radios on sites such as ebay along with illegal copies of radio software, anyone could drive around and set off tones of FDs. Think about how malicious this would be if a firefighter's pager tripped and he started responding to the station and got hurt or killed! I have one of the new scanners that accepts pager tones. I can see programming the tones of your FD or VAC, but why would anyone want their scanner to trip for all over the county. At that point you might as well just monitor the channel with an open carrier.

You did hit the nail right on the head when it comes to strobes. The "flash back" off of your surroundings helps increase your visibilty. It appears that although LEDs have a higher intensity, you actually need more of them to equal the area covered by a strobe light. There are times when you do not want all of the "flash back" from your strobe lights, like during inclement weather. On my POV (which is certified by NYS Department of Health as a fly car) I have a combination of strobes and LEDs. We have a strobe & LED combination on our First Response vehicle. We just had two brand new ambulances delivered with all LED emergency lighting. After looking at these vehicles from a distance I think we should have ordered them with an LED/Strobe combination. Do not get me wrong, these things look like a rolling disco ball coming down the road, but a few strobes in the mix would break up the LEDs a little.

Yesterday I spoke with our salesman from VCI (dealer for AEV & Horton), he told me that Ford has ceased production of the E series van chassis. He said that they are unsure what the future holds for agencies who signed contracts to have ambulances built on this chassis. He said that AEV made an order a few weeks ago for 400 E series chassis and they are not sure if they are getting them or not. He did say that a gasoline version of some new design of E series van is in the works, but he said that Ford has not provided any further information. He said it appears that anyone wanting an ambualnce on a van chassis will have to choose either a chevy van or the new gas model E series. Ford is continuing the F series trucks. I am guessing we will be seeing a lot more Type 1 ambulances being build on the F-350 & F-450 chassis as well as the Chevy 4500, International and Freighliner chassis.

Very nice looking rig. PL Custom is a good choice. We have had 4 of them. Good Luck with it.

The 5's are on State Contract. We use the VHF 2 channel stored voice version. I think they are just under $500. Our vendor is Goosetown Communications in Rockland County. We lease them and I think each pager is $20/month.

I have used every single model of Minitor pager since I became a member of my FD 16 years ago. My Minitor 1 worked awesome. The Minitor 2 & 2 SV were great pagers. I had an amplified base charger for the 2 and it worked that much better. The 3's & 4's were crap compared to any of the past models. The 4's were just a 3 in a different casing. I got a 5 when they first came out. We have had a few issues with them, but I must say that I think that the reception is almost equal to the 2's & 2 SV's. The 5's are a little bigger and heavier, but I do not mind knowing my pager is on my hip. The batteries last pretty long. I can get 5 days without recharging. The battery used is like a cell phone battery. We use VHF pagers here in Orange County, but from the people I talk to in other areas that use they UHF version I have heard very few problems. Hope this helps out.

Thank Arrow. They were on the way to get inspections done at a truck center in Maybrook.

Since taking delivery of our new ambulances last week, I have seen some negative comments posted here and on another website that I visit frequently. I have heard that there is no reason to get an ambulance with an International chassis and that having this type of ambulance is a waste of money etc. I am aware that everyone has their own opinions about these types of ambulances. What I am going to state here is fact. Up until now we always had Ford type 3 ambulances. In recent years Ford has been plagued with many problems. The ambulances that are being replaced we built on E-350 chassis. These E-350's have been nothing but trouble as far as maintenance goes. Because of the weight of the box and the equipment we carry these ambulances we either at or just over their maximum weight. Brakes and suspension parts were being replaced a few times a year. We had other issues with them also. Back in 2000, we purchased another Ford (unit 315) on the E-450 chassis. This ambulance has been a little better then the 350's but not that much better. Our maintenance costs for all 3 Fords were thru the roof. We began to research other types/brands of chassis to have ambulances built on. We spent about 2 years researching other options. We looked at the Chevy 4500, Freightliner and International. We drove a few demos and talked to just about every major ambulance manufacturer at EMS & Fire Expos. Our research revealed that medium duty type 1 ambulances do not even come close to being over weight. The maintenance problems that we had with the Fords were basically non-existant on the medium duty ambulances. We also heard about how these types of ambulances had a horrible ride, especially in the patient compartment. We did some more research and found out that the older medium duties did have a horrible ride, but new innovations is suspension systems have smoothed out the ride. When driving the demo ambulances we took them on the worst road in our town to see how the ride was. I had one of my members laying on the stretcher so we would know how the patient felt. We had members standing in the back and also sitting on the bench seat. Another thing we kept in mind was that these demo units were not stocked with any equipment and that the more weight you add to this type of ambulance the better it will ride. We asked the opinions of all our members involved in this research and everyone pretty much agreed that this was the type of ambulance we wanted. We selected Horton as who we wanted to build our ambulances. We went to our Town Board with the information we had and they started the ball rolling for us. Since the Town was going to pay for these ambulances we had to get a set of specs and have the Town put out the information for the bid process. The Town was aware that these types of ambulances cost more money. They also knew that we had a lot of problems with the Fords. The Town Board had no problem with making a purchase of two medium duty type 1 ambulances. Horton came back as the only bidder and the process went forward from there. These new units are a little taller and 6 inches longer then our older units. They ride nice and are actually not hard to drive. We do not need a CDL to drive these. They do not have air brakes, they have air assisted brakes. We have one of these new units fully loaded and ready to respond. During our driver training I rode in the back of the ambulance. The ride was a little different, but not anything that would make me or any of my members regret the purchase. I hope this clears up things. Douglas S. DiBlasi - Captain Chester Volunteer Ambulance Corps, Inc.

In an earlier post, a reference was made to the new Euro style Ford concept van called the "Transit" Click the link below to see a photo of this concept vehicle. http://www.custom-carhire.com/Vehicles/Ford%20Transit.jpg

I heard the same thing about the Ford E-450 last week. I do not know why Ford would do away with this vehicle/chassis for ambulances. It is the most popular make/model for ambulances. I have also heard numerous problems with the Ford 6.0 liter diesel motor. After speaking with a salesman for Horton and AEV I was told that the 6.0 is going to be discontinued and a new diesel motor that is compliant with the new EPA standards will be put into the 2008 Ford vehicles. Ford is supposedly paying fines because they should be in compliance with the EPA standards, but they are not in compliance. Another issue brought to light by a commercial service in my area was the problem with delamination of the fuel tanks on the diesel models. The coating inside the tank is breaking down, mixing with the fuel and clogging one of the two fuel filters. This has caused vehicles to not start because the fuel supply is being cut off by the clogged filter. Once the vehicles sit for a while, the sludge goes back into the tank and they vehicle will start. After a while this happens again. This commercial service also advised me that some of this sludge made it into the fuel injectors and in turn the motor was rendered inoperable. Ford has denied that there is a problem and they are not doing a recall. This commercial service has had to replace two motors already. Ford told them that the diesel fuel sold in NY may have caused the problem. What is difference between diesel fuel in NY and fuel from a different state.

The International is about $30K more then the E-450. It is a big increase, but our buses will last longer and our vehicle repair costs will decrease.

First Ambulances in Orange County that are mounted on International Chassis.

Rob, Thanks for posting the pics!

Try the Uniden BCD996T or the BCT-15. They both do UHF trunking.

The bad guys already know about this!