SteveC7010

I'm more interested to hear the real facts of the case. There is too much that is not said in the article and a whole bunch of open-ended statements and unanswered questions. Did the plant manager approach the command post or just some FF on a hose somewhere? Was the IC ever notified of the request?What do they mean by "discharge"? That's a very vague word in this context. Were the firefighters intentionally discharging excess pump or tank water without regard to where it was going, or (more likely) was this surface runoff from legit hose streams?I'd like to know a lot more about the terrain between the paper mill and the power plant. If we're talking surface water runoff from the firefighting, would that not be the same as or very similar to a heavy rainfall or snow melt? If so, then why isn't the power plant better protected from surface runoff?I think there are a bunch of other reasonable questions that need to be answered here. While we in public safety all tend to jump to each others' defense in matters like this (and most of the time, rightfully so), there's just not enough information here to draw any meaningful conclusions.

Health department inspection and/or certification stickers are a completely separate issue from motor vehicle registration plates.

Might just be OK. Thanks for the tip. I'll try to snap pics of new ones as I see them.

I've seen a couple of these in just the last few days and wondered how far the state is going to go with this. Our ambulance expires at the end of the year so I'll see how they handle long names like Northampton. Town of Hope looks good on the supervisor's truck and easy to read.

Seth, right up until you asked the question, I would have said that NY plates only would be acceptable. But, I browsed through Article 30, Part 800, and the Policies and Procedures all the way back into the 1990's and found NOTHING. Doesn't mean it isn't there somewhere, but I sure could not find it with my trusty search words. I'm located at least three or four counties from the Vermont border, and more from any other adjoining state. (We'll leave Canada out of the discussion to keep things simple.) Here in Fulton County, it's kind of obvious that an agency owned ambulance or fly car, or a POV EASV would be expected to have the appropriate NY plates. But for those in counties adjoining other states, it's a lot murkier. I suspect that there is more than one ambulance service based in an adjoining state that holds a NYS DOH CON for territory inside NY State. That leads to the obvious conclusion that there must be ambulances (and other EMS vehicles) with out-of-state plates bearing DOH Certification decals. The opposite is almost certainly true as well. I'm fairly certain that none of the BEMS reps would certify a vehicle bearing temporary or dealer plates, but we'd have to have a BEMS rep chime in here to be sure.

There has never been an "official" EMT or Paramedic patch authorized by NYS DOH BEMS. It would be legit, however, for an agency or local government to adopt an official patch for their people, but that would only apply to people working within those agencies affected. FDNY long ago had a modified version of the yellow or orange tombstone EMT patch. They pop up on Ebay once in a while. The yellow/orange tombstone was the closest to an official patch that happened in the past. The NYSP look-alike patches are currently very popular, but again, not official, at least by DOH authorization.

I am unfamiliar with any section of the V&TL that covers transmitting on a public safety radio. Would you provide the exact section, please? The portion about radios that can receive police frequencies in a motor vehicle is already well known and documented. Anyone who wishes to verify what services any specific radio is type accepted can do so by going to http://transition.fcc.gov/oet/ea/fccid/ and entering the requested FCC ID number which can be found on the back or bottom of most radios. On portables, you will generally have to remove the battery to locate the tag. Lastly, a radio does not have to be owned by an agency to be legit to use on that agency's frequency. Authorization from the agency will cover this just fine. It is highly preferable to get that permission in writing. Many reputable radio shops and programmers will not program a transmit frequency without this authorization. (For my ambulance squad, we issue this authorization as part of the members ID card which is also their green light card and a photo ID. The radio authorization specifically cites our FCC license call letters so that there is no question about which frequencies the member may use.)

I live in the southern Adirondacks. The nearest Level 1 Trauma Center is Albany Med which is about an hour and 15 minutes from my home. From the far north end of our ambulance district, it's another 20 minutes at least; and even more if it's up one of the back country roads and into the woods. So we use the birds a lot, and have many saves because of the time saved over ground transport. I used to live in Ontario County and worked full time as a Dispatcher II for Rochester-Monroe County 911. Inside Monroe County, we rarely used the helicopters. Primary reason was short ground time and choice of two trauma centers, even from the edges of the county. The only exceptions were MVA's with long extrication times and other rare situations with long time frames prior to getting the patient into the ambulance. Ontario County on the other hand used the birds a lot. Mercy Flight Central is based in north central Ontario County and has very short response times to anywhere in that county so they are a very valuable resource. It's all about the time. In the situation that prompted this thread, I tend to agree with the original question of why call the bird with a 21 minute ground time. But not being on the team that treated the patient, it's not fair to judge either. I would offer that if you can have the bird on the scene when the patient is packaged and ready for transport, there can be benefits, even with relatively short flight times, over ground transport. If there is any appreciable wait for the bird when the patient is ready to go, the value drops off rapidly. But it's the more distant situations that really prove the value of air transport. Side comment here... Living and working in the Rochester area was good when it came to burn patients. Strong Memorial is one of the best burn centers in the US and being close meant that we got our burn patients there fast and had lots of good outcomes. Up here, the nearest burn centers, I believe, are Westchester or Syracuse. Both are several hours by ground from here at a minimum. Couple that with the fact that helos don't fly under certain weather conditions, and it you have a very scary situation for EMS dealing with burns.

Departmental policy and procedures are pretty much a totally separate issue from how the agency utilizes the grant money, especially concerning the specific concern you raise above. It's completely unrelated in this case.

The link you provided yesterday in response to the question about which grant program we're discussing is clearly a Federal one.

The only way to determine if the grantee is following the grant award is to review the approved grant application for that agency and compare it to their actual performance. So you have to find a copy of the final grant award for that agency that includes the final and approved application. It does seem odd that they'd use the grant money for firefighter training but not EMT. But you'd have to look at the application to know if it is OK or not. Same for your other issues. If the application included hiring a retention specialist and an advertising program, then it's OK as well.

I did, lots of times during my career as a dispatcher. It was usually a result of a) overly eager to give an arrival and size-up or just plain force of habit, especially for some of the paid guys in the larger departments. Always good for chuckle, though.

From a dispatcher's point of view, arrival size-up can be valuable. For example, if we know we received what sounded like a legit call for a structure fire, and the first unit on scene reported, "Nothing showing.", we would immediately initiate a rapid supervisor's review of the 911 phone call and ANI data. Excited citizens on untraceable cell phones give less than reliable info sometimes. We also knew that "Nothing showing." was understood by all departments in the county to mean an initial, rapid size-up from the street as the first unit arrives, and that investigation would be initiated and a better report was to follow. Having a good definition of a phrase like this in place puts it in the right context.

I'm not having any problems with the religious and cultural issues presented in this discussion. What nags at me a bit is why Hatzolah hasn't taken steps to deal with this in some way a long time ago. I don't pretend to know the rules around Hatzolah membership, but it seems to me that even if they don't allow female members, they'd have recognized the need and importance and helped a female team into existence to work with them. Please understand that I am not being critical of any of these squads, but more trying to better understand the entire situation and not just one point of view.

+1 And it still needs to go to bid. In our town, any purchase of $3,000 or greater has to go to bid. Purchases between $1,000 and $2,999 require several quotes. Purchases under $1,000 require a quote. Those limits are set by local government vote, and might vary from place to place. The State Comptroller will tell you that your town, village, FD, whatever, has to have rules in place like this. Even the private non-profit that funds part of our ambulance service has similar rules in the by-laws.

In no way do reserve funds circumvent bid processes or voter approval. All laws governing municipal purchases still apply. I'm not sure where you got that idea, but it's incorrect. If the reserve fund is specific, say new truck or building, then the fund can only be spent on the planned purpose. If the expenditure is made and there are funds left in the reserve, the governing body can vote to move the money into another fund, reserve or general.

The annual independent audit is very valuable to keep the agency's accounting practices in good order, but the State Comptroller's audits also compare the accounting against state laws regarding municipal finance, governmental practices, and more. FD's such as this one would be subject to both audit requirements. It's certainly OK to have a reserve fund that exceeds a single year's budget, depending on the purpose of the fund, of course. If they are saving for a new truck or fire house, it would be appropriate. But setting aside 30% of the total yearly budget into a single reserve fund is almost certainly going to raise a large red flag with the Comptroller.

The State Comptroller's Office performs audits of all governmental and municipal agencies including fire departments and fire districts. I get their weekly email newsletter and browse the audits. An often repeated criticism of these agencies audits is reserve funds that are way too large compared to the rest of the budget. Those that control these budgets would do well to read over some of these audits and learn from them before their agency comes under the same scrutiny. And yes, 30% of the annual budget set aside for a reserve fund is way out of line.

In regards to these issues, I've often been tempted to call up the BEMS reps for my area and ask them if it would be OK if we operate our ambulance services and fly cars in the same manner. I'd really like to hear their side of the story of the double standard.

We've got a fully loaded Zoll X on our unit. It's great and not terribly difficult to learn to use. We just had a confirmed save with it late last week. Never got to the CPR stage. The 12 lead in the house showed a STEMI so we had the patient airlifted out. He came home today. Life-Net (Air Methods) uses them exclusively up here and may nation wide. I'm not 100% on that. If you get one (or more), get the full saddlebag accessory and the right mount to place it in your unit safely.

I just discussed this general situation (not the Chester one specifically) with a NYS DOH BEMS rep in the past month. He reiterated that nothing in any state law prevents a municipality from contracting with a private company to provide ambulance service, and there is no legal restriction on that private company turning a profit. If the municipality was billing the patients directly for ambulance service, there are some laws that do prohibit the municipality from billing more than the actual cost of the service. This is not the first case of this nature here in NYS. Google up East Rochester Volunteer Ambulance and see what happened there. It's a remarkably similar situation. The VAC was shut down, their rigs and all property turned over to the commercial outfit, and there was no recourse against the town. It sounds to me like this guy's lawyer has no clue about the various state laws that apply in this situation. If he did, he'd never have allowed this lawsuit to get off the ground.

http://www.northjersey.com/news/five-injured-including-ambulance-crew-in-lyndhurst-collision-1.1019061 Added some aerial pics from another news outlet: http://7online.com/news/ambulance-accident-in-lyndhurst-new-jersey/67632/#gallery-7

While there have been some valid objections raised in this discussion, I must tell you that it's really not going to matter in the grand scheme of things. While this discussion started over Westchester's plan to equip LE with narcan, that is now small potatoes. We just received a copy of the following email that originated with Lee Burns, Director of the Bureau of EMS, NYS Health Department. It's my observation that the procedural and educational hoops that need to be jumped through to equip EMT's with nasal narcan on board their ambulances look pretty silly when they're just going to hand it out with minimal instruction to 5,000 law enforcement officers. FWIW, individual ambulance services are still being required to register thier nasal narcan programs with their REMSC's and get signed off by their medical directors. Seth, back to your original post, it's plain that REMAC and REMSCO involvement in this is being swept aside throughout the state. I suspect it is only the first of a number of medical procedures or treatment that will ultimately fall under a double or even triple standard. From: Lee S. Burns [mailto:lsb02@health.state.ny.us] Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 11:15 AM Cc: mdiglio@nycremsco.org; NBenedetto@nycremsco.org; aarems@Frontiernet.net; remohmvi@nycap.rr.com; remodir@nycap.rr.com; execdir@hvremsco.org; director@midstateems.org; mlrems@mlrems.org; Remsco@nassauems.org; jhassett@nassauems.org; Robert.Delagi@suffolkcountyny.gov; director@cnyems.org; info@nycremsco.org; rstueber@flremsc.org; smitha@canton.edu; ccrawford@lakeplains.org; dowlinr@fdny.nyc.gov; director@srems.com; brajsky@emstar.org; ssurprenant@cnyems.org; thowe@nenyems.org; koc1@westchestergov.com; dkahm@sthcs.org; swander@ecmc.edu; semac-l@listserv.health.state.ny.us Subject: Equipping Law Enforcement Officers to administer Naloxone Dear Regional EMS Council and REMAC Medical Directors: The problem of opioid overdose has been increasingly coming to light in the news. This email is written to update you on new developments in NY's response to opioid overdose and to open the door for further discussions with you about the roll out of these new developments in your region. In addition to our efforts to expand EMS capacity to reverse opioid overdose, you may have alreadty heard about a new initaitive from the Office of the Attorney General. The Community Overdose Progarm (COP) will be preparing officers of law enforcement agencies across NYS to adminiser intra-nasal naloxone in cases of suspected opioid overdose. The DOH, the NYS Office of Alcoholism and Substance Use Services (OASAS), the Division of Crimnal Justice Servicves (DCJS), Albany Medical Center (Dr. Michael Dailey) and the Harm Reducation Coalition (Dr. Sharon Stancliff) are working together with the Office of the Attorney General to prepare a statewide effort to train approximately 5000 law enforcement officers and equip law enforcement agencies with naloxone. The DOH recognizes that EMS medical directors, through the various roles they play throughout their region, may have an interest in learning more and perhaps being involved in this large scale effort to train and equip police officers. A statewide training and implementation plan is currently uinder development. If your REMAC physicians would like to learn more about activities in your region, and possibly be involved in the delviery of training for law enforcement, please contact Richard Cotroneo, Director of HIV Education and Training Programs at the NYSDOH. Richard can be reached at 518-474-3045 or by email rac09@health.state.ny.us Thank You, Lee Burns Richard Cotroneo Richard Cotroneo, MA, Director HIV Education and Training Programs National Hepatitis TA Center Office of the Medical Director AIDS Institute 518-474-3045

http://wtvr.com/2014/05/13/richmond-ambulances-to-carry-plasma-a-first-for-the-nation/ This might finally change the way we treat trauma victims.

Nuc training facility for the US Navy. KAPL Milton is in the middle of a large forest just east of the Adirondack Park. http://www.knollslab.com/index.html