trauma74

I was waiting for this topic to come up!!! I will dispel many of the rumors and much of the rhetoric that is being posted here. I am not an employee of Regional EMS, Rockland Paramedics, Rockland Mobile Care, Empire, Hudson Valley Paramedics or any commercial or other paid EMS or ambulance service. I am, however, the Chief of Operations for the Chester Volunteer Ambulance Corps Inc. CVAC has 2 contracts with Regional EMS. The first contract we have with them is for daytime staffing of our units M-F 0600-1800. The second contract we have with them is an ALS intercept/billing contract. I was contacted by Mike Witkowski of Hudson Valley Paramedics this past Monday and was given the following information: Hudson Valley Paramedics (aka Empire State Ambulance) has completed the acquisition of the Orange and Pike County Pennsylvania divisions of Regional EMS. This acquisition includes the following: the name “Regional EMS”, the Regional EMS CON, all of the contracts that Regional EMS has in Orange County and Pike County Pennsylvania. This includes all contracts with healthcare facilities, contracts for BLS staffing for Volunteer Ambulance Corps, contracts for ALS intercepts/ALS billing reimbursement, all ambulances and equipment assigned to the Orange and Pike County Divisons, all personnel assigned to the Orange and Pike County Divisions. The Rockland County Division of Regional EMS will be changing back to the name of Rockland Mobile Care, which is the name that Regional EMS started off with when Rockland Paramedic Services created an ambulance transport division of their ALS Fly Car company.

In my VAC, the three operations officers and three civil officers get reimbursed monthly for our cell phones.

http://www.sprintenterprise.com/newphones/curve.html http://www.sprintenterprise.com/newphones/i576.html I know that there are many Nextel users out there who have felt like they have gotten the short end of the stick since Sprint took over. Sprint has not made many new phones available that work on the Nextel iDen network. They came out with Hybrid phones and then they came out with Qchat phones in an effort to get as many PTT users off of the iDen network and onto the CDMA/PCS network. Sprint made numerous statements that they would not sink anymore money into the iDen network. As a heavy user of the Nextel network, I have tried Hybrid phones as well as some of the new Qchat phones. At this point, there is nothing that compares to the Nextel iDen network as far as PTT service goes. I know that the iDen network is often slow when it comes to data and text messaging, but the PTT is second to none. The iDen PTT service has come in handy so many times as a backup/alternate to my local public safety radio systems. I know that the Nextel network is not the best at times and as I mentioned above it is not the best for texting, data and email services. For this reason I have a Sprint CDMA/PCS BlackBerry for these services and I use it as a backup if I am in a dead zone for Nextel service. Sprint has finally realized that they lost tens of thousands of customers on the Nextel network. They have decided to commit more funding to the iDen network and they are finally are coming out with some new phones that have the features that were previously available on the CDMA network. Listed above is a link to a new BlackBerry Curve that will have Direct Connect and the other link is to a new rugged slim Razr style phone. They should be available for sale in the next month or two and I will be trying them both out. Please feel free to share your opinions about these phones and your good/bad experiences with the current Nextel phones and the service.

http://www.nydmv.state.ny.us/edl.htm

It is my pleasure to announce that the New Windsor VAC has been approved for an ALS Paramedic upgrade by the HVREMSCO & NYS DOH. This info is as per the Chief & Assistance Chief of NWVAC. NWVAC will upgrade their service sometime between now and 1/1/09. I know that NWVAC has been working on this since they returned to service a few years ago. Congrats to NWVAC on this upgrade!! If it was not for the hard work of Chief Dineen and Asst. Chief Bigg, none of this would have happened. Good Luck guys. Doug

I have been an avid supporter of all emergency vehicles getting permission from the State of NY to have blue lights on the rear of their vehicles. To go even further, I think that all emergency vehicles should be permitted to have blue lights on the front of their vehicles along with red and/or white. NJ permits blue on the font and rear of all emergency vehicles in combination with red and white. ALL volunteers (EMS & FD) use straight blue on their POVs. In states outside of NY, green flashing lights are used to signify a command post. Many FD & EMS vehicles in NY have already put rear facing blue lights on their vehicles. Some have even gone as far as putting at least one forward facing blue light on thier vehicles. Regardless of the law, I think this is a step in the right direction. Yonkers PD has been running blue and red for many years now. Are they exempt from the blue light law due to a city ordinance?

Is there a filing date for this position? I know someone who is interested. Thanks.

I like this guy and his plan for the future of energy in the USA. http://www.pickensplan.com/

155.715 is the NYS MCI Channel. It is written into NYS DOH EMS Policy Statements. Individual agencies do not need to have a license for it. If you are an agency that provides EMS, you can use it during an MCI.

Steve, Thank you for finding the section of the NFPA regarding the radios. I know that the NFPA standard is only a recommendation, however, if/when something should happen to a firefighter, God Forbid!!!!!.....in court the lawyers will look at the recommendations from the NFPA and ask why they were not followed. This actually goes for all of the NFPA standards and recommendations.

I will have to do some searching, but I will find the codes & regulations that deal with the use of repeaters during fireground operations. There are a few things that I want to clarify here also. The type of repeater system that they do not want used on the fireground are the repeaters that are used to communicate across long distances. These repeaters use one frequency for the input and one for the output. If you are doing an interior fire attack over this type of repeater system, there is a chance that your portable radio may not be able to hit (reach) the repeater. If you do not hit the repeater, your transmission (your MAYDAY) will not be sent thru the repeater and back to your incident commanders and brother/sister firefighters who are on the fireground waiting to hear your call for help or assistance. If you were on a non-repeated talkaround channel, your radio would transmit and receive on the same channel and when you transmit. Your transmissions from your portable radios would be sent directly to the other firefighters who are on the fireground with you. Now, there are other types of systems and/or units that may be called "repeaters". These maybe be mobile vehicle repeaters, in-building repeaters or bi-directional amplifiers. Mobile vehicle repeaters are units that take your radio transmissions and repeat them over a different frequency band. This type of repeater should not prevent your transmissions from inside a building from being heard on the outside. In-building repeaters or Bi-directions amplifiers are systems that amplify radio signals from the outside of a structure to the inside of a structure and vice versa. Several companies make these amplifiers, my EMS station has one for Nextel service. Our station did not have great Nextel service, so the addition of this bi-directional amplifier brought a strong signal into our building so we could use our Nextel phones without any problems. The use of bi-directional amplifiers in highrise buildings could great improve radio communications between interior attack crews and their commanders on the outside or down in the lobby of the building. These types of systems could have helped emergency personnel communicate better at the WTC towers on 9/11. I know that there were other communications issues on 9/11 which I will not touch on at this time, but bi-directional amplifiers could have helped and can help in any type of high rise or large building. I hope that this helps give a better understanding of the different definitions of "repeaters" and what they are used for.

I have been saying since the day that M/ACOM was awarded the bid to build the Statewide Radio Network for NY that it was a mistake and that the system will never work properly. I attended a meeting about 2 years ago that was given by the NYS Office of Technology. The guys from NYS and the rep from M/ACOM gave everyone in the room a good line of crap saying this system was going to work all over the state. When the group I was sitting with started asking questions about the system, the guys from NYS and the M/ACOM rep tried answering our questions and sounded like a bunch of morons. I have been keeping up on all of the failures since the beginning. The state has stated numerous times that there has been no state money used on this system, but what about all of the hours that the NYS Office of Technology guys spent working on this system? They were paid their salary all this time working with M/ACOM, so taxpayer money has been wasted!!!! The lowest bidder should not always be awarded the contract. Everyone in Public Safety has seen the results of contracts being awarded to the lowest bidder and how the taxpayers ended up being screwed. Many proponents of the M/ACOM system bashed Motorola for coming in with a bid that was double that of the M/ACOM bid. There were a few reasons why the Motorola bid was double. One was that Motorola was actually building a system that would provide real statewide coverage. Their system would have had more tower sites and would have provided "in building" portable radio coverage. Second was that Motorola was going to use equipment and technology that is not inexpensive by nature. Digital encrypted radios, repeaters and other equipement is expensive and if they were going to have more tower sites than M/ACOM, of course the price would be higher. What NYS also failed to tell everyone was that Motorola was going to provide backup power sources to their sites via fuel and solar powered generators. It is a "you get what you pay for" situation. You pay half the amount of the Motorola system and you get half the system. Much of the technology that M/ACOM was going to use is new and unproven technology. Who is their right mind would want to use unproven technology in a statewide system? M/ACOM's system was not even going to utilize the same frequency bands across the state. How is a system that does not use the same frequency bands throughout the whole system a true system? The state was broken up into 3 parts. One part was going to be on the 800MHZ frequency band, the second part was going to utilize the 700MHZ frequency band and the third part was going to be on the VHF 150MHZ frequency band. The M/ACOM system was not even going to be FCC Project 25 compliant. It was going to be a propietary system. If a Public Safety agency was on the boarder of the areas of state where the 3 different frequency bands are used, this would mean that they would have to have 3 different radios in their vehicles. Due to the system not being P25 compliant, an interoperable radio such as the Thales Liberty would not work for the agencies that need to cover multiple frequency bands. The State also did not take a few things into consideration. They did not take into consideration that fact that the 700 & 800 MHZ frequency bands do not work well in areas with a lot of hills and mountains. The last time I checked, the State of New York was not flat! Yes, there are a few areas of the state that do not have hills and mountains, but the these areas are few and far between. Why not shoot for a system that works well with hills and mountains, such as a VHF system or maybe a UHF system. The State also did not take into consideration that voice paging cannot be performed on any frequency bands above the 400MHZ band and that OSHA & NFPA standards do not permit the use of radios working off of repeaters on the fireground. There was no plan on the M/ACOM system for voice paging (only digital paging, which nobody uses as their primary paging system) and there was no plan for non-repeated frequencies talk around frequencies for fireground use. It has also been highly recommended along with the use of non-repeated fireground frequencies for fireground operations, that these communications be performed over non-digital analog radios. Digital radios have too many downfalls for fireground and have been found to be dangerous and have caused much needed calls for help to not reach incident commanders and dispatch centers. The majority of public safety agencies within NYS use Motorola, Kenwood and Icom radio systems. Why bring in a company that will not have any compatability with these 3 brands of radio systems? Also, the majority of these agencies use analog VHF & UHF radio systems. Why switch to a system that does not fall into these categories? Since the beginning of this statewide radio project, the City of NY has had no intention of switching over to it. When 9/11 happened, there were agencies from the entire State that responded to NYC to help. The M/ACOM system would not be compatable with the various radio systems that are in use in NYC, so any agency that would have switched to the Statewide system would still not have had the ability to communicate with the agencies in NYC. The Federal Government uses proven Motorola VHF & UHF nationwide radio systems. The State of NY needs to dump this M/ACOM system and go back to the drawing board.

I dont have the info for Westchester, but I have all the frequencies, PL tones and pager tones for Orange, Rockland and Ulster. You can PM for the info if you need it.

I will vouch for Mike Witkowski. He is a standup guy. When my VAC changed from MLSS to Regional EMS for paid staff and ALS services, Mike was the main person that we dealt with. He made sure that our the change over was smooth and painless. Once on board, he did not just say "now that we got this contract, we dont have to do anymore work here", up until the time he left Regional EMS, he was still there making sure everything was going well

ALL EMS Providers in NYS have a Duty to Act within NYS!!!!! It does not matter if you work for a commercial service or a VAC, you have a Duty to Act even when off duty. If you are out somewhere and someone becomes sick or gets injured and you are fit to act (you are not intoxicated etc) you have to take action. If you do not take action and the person who is sick or injured finds out that you are a NYS Certified EMS provider, you can end up in some trouble. MODERATOR NOTE: Doug, please post a reference or citation for this comment.

Price looks good. Try it out. Axixtech (not sure of spelling) makes a good LED dash light. They are like $125 for a double. My fiance has a double green on her dash and it its pretty damn good.

I watched all three episodes last night and I thought they were pretty darn good.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/05162008/news/...cide_111079.htm

Chester Volunteer Ambulance Corps Mother’s Day Pancake Breakfast!! Pancakes, Eggs, Sausage, Hash Browns Juice, Milk and Coffee. Custom Omelet Station Sunday May 11 8:30am – 12:00pm Chester Ambulance Bay 79 Laroe Rd Chester, NY $5.00 per Person Children Under 10 Eat Free 50/50 Raffle

Does 60 Control hire lateral transfers?

I will not waste a trip all the way up there for the 08 VS Conference. I would rather make the 3.5 trip to Baltimore for the Firehouse Fire/Rescue/EMS Expo which is 1000 time better.

Although I can not yet state the name, rank and current position of a paramedic chief that I know very well, but he has been hired as the new Senior Executive VP of Empire. If anyone can save them, it will be him.

I am glad to see that these cops were not punished as criminals for doing their jobs!

Orange County should be giving the Public Safety Dispatcher (911 dispatch) test & the test for the Towns & Villages around the end of the year or the early part of next year. They do hire part time dispatchers there and there are a handful of PDs that hire dispatchers part time and you do not need to have any experience. At my job (no spots available, sorry), they hire part timers and train them.

Nice Rescue!~ Good job with the DOT striping on the rear. I am kicking myself for not getting that on the back of our newest buses.