dadbo46

Am I reading the emails from the pcbes correctly, that they are looking for fire police to direct traffic for nyseg? If so that is complete horse crap! Our volunteers should never be used for any corporate entity, especially one that likes to run bare bones operations till its too late. Pay these guys 30 an hour and ot after 8 hours like everyone else gets.

Every county owned park, road, golf course, building, jail, etc. loses money. Funny that the biggest money making rides at playland were sold to private vendors. Maybe if we actually owned the profit making rides it would not be losing money.
Yes, but not because of playland. NY is one of only 3 states that requires counties to pay medicid and thats along with some other mandates make up 80% of the county tax. We are also overtaxed because only a few other counties in America have as much duplication of local government as Westchester. How many police chiefs, fire chiefs, school superentendants, village managers and there cars and all the other apparatus and "stuff" we are paying for that sits there for years because we do not need it?

When I was on still on the job, we would receive a lot of misdials from people trying to call overseas. (The overseas area code is 011). As well as hang-ups. The problem with 911 hang-ups is what is your policy?
At the time when I will a sergeant, if the dispatcher could not call the person back and receive an assurance that everything was alright, we would dispatch two cars to the scene and attempt to make contact. If we were met with no answer at the door, a supervisor was dispatched to make a determination. If the site was an apartment and a super with a key could not be located, the door was taken down. Houses were a little different in that sometimes you could see into the house. If not an entry was made.
The end result was that we made a lot of entries to people’s dwellings because they would not answer the phone or left the dwelling after dialing a wrong number.
This is a dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t situation of the first order.
If you receive a 911 call and don’t enter the premises and Mrs. Smith dies because she was just able to punch in the 3 numbers and passed out and you don’t make an entry, you are wrong. If you break into an apartment because you John Jones left after misdialing and cause $1000 in damage to the front door, you are also wrong. Also do you have to baby sit the residence because you broke down a door and it can’t be secured? As you can see, all departments should have a 911 response policy including hang-ups.
Now let’s throw another wrench in the works. Telephone service is migrating toward VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and wireless. A larger portion of phone service is using the internet or cable as a carrier. Services such as Vonage, Cable providers and FIOS are using this technology. The days of POTs lines are coming to close. This may mean an end to the traditional pair of wires from the Central Office directly to a fixed location. The location of the origin of a call placed will become harder to determine. Also Vonage provides an “alternate 911 service”. In that the customer enters the address of the phone location through a signup process. If you don’t complete the sign up, no 911 dispatches are provided. Vonage has an answering service that receives 911 calls and transmits them to the local authority. Vonage uses a router that is portable and you can take with you and make calls anywhere you can connect to the internet. In other words, if you plug in a phone to your Vonage router that is connected to the internet to a hotel in Florida and dial 911, the service thinks that you are calling from your home in New York.
The moral of the story is people should be instructed (or reminded) that if you dial 911 by accident don’t be embarrassed, stay on the line and give the dispatcher honest answers. If they decide to send a car, wait for them to arrive. The consequences for not answering could get expensive. Also if you have a nontraditional phone service, keep you information up to date and if you move, advise your carrier

Well done documentary - just wish there were no commercials. Those who perished and those who survived are still in my thoughts and prayers. The visions of what those who initially responded and who worked on the pile afterward saw unfortunately may never dull with time, as evidenced by those interviewed. You can see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices. Hope they and their families know we still care about them............and some of us, although not the best at what we do, will continue to try to carry on their work, because that is what we train to do, what we feel is our calling, what we almost MUST do, for others and ourselves, because we are needed........... God bless them all.

From today's NY Times. Very interesting:
Prolonged CPR Holds Benefits, a Study Shows
When a hospital patient goes into cardiac arrest, one of the most difficult questions facing the medical team is how long to continue cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Now a new study involving hundreds of hospitals suggests that many doctors may be giving up too soon.
http://www.nytimes.c...study-says.html

kids!!!

I miss Rural Metro. They kept everyones blood circulating.

Rest in peace Neil Armstrong. For him it was, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

RIP Neil. You were the greatest explorer of my generation.

Actual audit report from the OSC:
http://www.osc.state.ny.us/localgov/audits/firedists/2012/arlington.pdf

If it was good enough for Johnny and Roy, It's good enough for the rest of us !!!!!

Being West-Coast based, and associated with this kind of suppression, beyond friends and family working the line, I found literature that looks deeper into the wild land firefighter's psyche and tactics.
The question of altitude over, and substance dropped upon wilderness fires is pretty exacting; scoopers with water make sense sometimes, tankers full of retardent saves lives and property other times. But it is pretty carefully calculated regarding evaporation rate, speed, volume, and viscosity. While the philosophy supporting or denigrating the fight against wildland fire is controversial ($-v-environment), the reality is that lots of young men and women jump at the chance to do so and this implies the visceral connection between urban structural FF and wilderness wildfire FF--its good work.
So, its not really my purview anymore-too old/beat up for a redcard now--but I remain interested in the folks that deploy each year.
Here are three books that look into the tactics and experiences of wildland firefighting:
Fire Bomber Into Hell (ISBN 978-1-60910-436-8--amazon): Good description of use of altitude and aerial tactics in wild land fire suppression (plus entire history of dropping stuff from planes onto forest fires).
Fireline ( ISBN 978-0-226-14408-5--amazon): Solid sociological ethnography of Western wildland FF folks and techniques. The Author did it for real and then built his PhD on the back of the experience.
Jumping Fire (ISBN 0-15-601397-5--amazon): Crazy SOB Murray Taylor who smoke jumped too long and ended up being the oldest guy to do so. Good contrast to the "Hot Shots" who are truly rugged. This guy was a dinosaur in the best sense of the word.
U-Tube: Check out Interagency "Hot Shots" too. Truly gnarly folks. Smell bad. Walk you into the ground.

From today's NY Times:

Doesn't the Chief have to be selected from a Civil Service list ?

I think that the TL was obtained from West Harrison FD.

Mount Vernon FD Foam 1 circa 1970. I believe that this was a 1947 Seagrave. Photo courtesy Joe Pinto.

The D.C. is the guy with NO turnout gear.

Sure. We outsourced them. We're all over the world now.

My tax dollars hard at work in the Vern and Pelham. Maybe I can get a bail out from Obama !!!!

We still have room for 40-50 Explorers for the 11th Annual Putnam County Explorer Weekend Aug 4-5th
This is open to any Explorer or Jr. Fire Fighting group that would like to come and do a weekend of training.
We will be doing low angle rescue, mask confidence, bail outs, search and rescue and car extrication

I care.
All too often, I have operated at fires of all types where the IC has been one who preaches and practices, minimum amount of water to put the fire out..and by put the fire out, i mean, once the flame is gone, out...
I myself am somewhat more aggressive...I feel that less damage is done by using enough water to confirm the fire has no threat of reignition, than the damage done by a rekindle. Don't pussyfoot around it....dump the tank and be confident!
I think what Barry wrote should be tattooo'ed to IC's hands as a constant reminder.
Rekindles exist...but I will do everything in MY power to make sure they don't...on MY watch.

Having a heavy background in chemistry and physics, I don't agree with the fact that a fire that has been extinguished cannot re-kindle. You can put the fire out, but if enough heat persists, and the fuel and oxygen is there, something as simple as a light breeze can "re-kindle" that fire.
From you're thorough explanation, however, I do agree that #3 is a good bet. I've done enough surround-and-drowns to know that sometimes the fire can be too stubborn.

From today's "Journal News" blog:
Thruway Authority: Emergency vehicle not being charged
http://taxes.lohudblogs.com/2012/06/20/thruway-says-published-reports-wrong-emergency-vehicles-arent-being-charged-tolls/

Outrageous ! What law ? Get the politicos on the horn immediately and get the "law" reversed......immediately !!!

Working Fire at Uncle Bob's Storage, Route 22 and Route 312, Brewster.
Photos courtesy Stephanie Gould.