antiquefirelt

It appears that the original question really refers to Mutual Aid. I can tell you that the IC doesn't want to hear he has an engine or truck coming only to learn upon their arrival that they cannot be used for some of the requisite tasks. If you guys use exterior people in your hometown, all the better, we do too (not career personnel of course). But our mutual aid pact requires engines and trucks respond with 5 Interior qualified personnel. The IC merely knows he has a a company coming and that he can assign them to whatever he needs. As far as we're concerned non-interior firefighters cannot count as company strength. We do not have any other career staffed companies around us, but if we did I'm confident we'd work them into our alarms earlier than closer VFD neighbors for the consistency alone. We have some great volunteer M/A partners, but over the course of time consistently staffed apparatus in a consistent time frame has not been proven to be a reality.

While that may be accurate, it's seems like tacit approval for EMS employees to begin to carry. There had to be some thought behind repealing this?

I'm generally a proponent of gun rights, but this doesn't seem to a good idea. As noted above, very often EMS and Fire crews are the good guys when it comes to bad guys. No doubt there are places where no one is safe, but again as noted above, this is when you stage and await PD's clearing of the scene.

Good points. Our SOG was taken from elsewhere and adapted to fit our department. The 35 ppm threshold is to ensure members are masked up before entering a space with concerning levels. Mask use may be discontinued once all spaces are found to have levels closer to the OSHA 8 hrs level. Given the number of CO runs we have, this conservative approach doesn't (or has yet to) hamper us.As for industrial or other spaces where other figures are used, we've not had any. We have but a few "large" industrial plants (Fisher Snowplows, FMC Bioproducts, Back Cove Yachts) and mostly small marine related industry along our harbor. The smaller folks tend to be slightly ignorant/oblivious to any rules made by those sporting acronyms. The larger few tend to be the other end of the spectrum. As with so many businesses, those with a lot to lose, do everything they can to protect themselves. Our officers are granted latitude enough to not forcibly stick to any guideline. So when standard work practices such as you've noted allow for these conditions, I'd anticipate a common sense course of action. Like any guideline the numbers and actions must be evaluated given the total picture. If any member varies from the guidelines and is called into question they are first asked if they know the SOG, as only when they know them may shall they vary for cause. But again, when it comes to CO, we haven't had any issues with our SOG as long as I can remember.

Our FD policy dictates an engine respond to CO alarms without signs or symptoms, those calls with signs and symptoms get an ambulance added. Similar to other's here, our first due engine/squad carries all the same ventilation equipment as out truck company and additionally carries 4 gas meters as well as the single gas CO meters carried on first due apparatus and ambulances. Our personnel wear SCBA on all CO alarms, any reading of 9 ppm or greater is considered abnormal, at 35 ppm we're required to be on air. We routinely utilize our electric fan to PPV and clear conditions and only in significant cases use the gas powered blowers as they create and introduce CO. We do not allow re-occupancy until the readings go back below 9 ppm.

Wow, that's some coin. In fact $13.9 million would cover our FD budget for 7 years, which coincidentally would be how long it would take them to have the same number of incidents we cover in 1 year.

Uhmm.... I guess you could be referring to 9/11 of 2009, 2010 or 2011, but I'd think the more significant 9/11 happened in 2001 which predates the 2009 NYPD memo.

Going to be awhile before I'll trust adding any additional steps, equipment or technology when it comes to emergency comms. While hey extend range, the repeater systems I'm familiar with are for more prone to issues than simplex radio, never mind simplex or repeater pair synched to cellular. I could just be old...

While this is difficult and likely extremely hard on those officers, they were faced with a instantaneously unfolding dynamic situation that resulted in their having no reasonable option other than to engage. They were not afforded concealment or cover from which to take slower more well placed shots, they were suddenly faced with being killed themselves. No doubt they'll take a lot of heat, but I'd be surprised to hear from any true "experts in the field" that this could have been handled differently.

SageVigiles: We've just changed to a more performance based spec. We detail color, trim, pockets, clips, holders etc. Then we've decided that instead of speccing a particular outershell, MB and liner, we'll spec specific TPP and THL values that must be met. This allows each manufacturer a chance to use the combination their most comfortable with and give us the best price. Given the purchase costs are lower than our bid required number, we can toss our gear we feel is poorly constructed (or not as good at least). Our newest spec just came out and morning Pride is selling us a demo set on the cheap(? half -price). We'd been ordering Globe G-Extreme and found it to be pretty good, to a man I've yet to hear a complaint and in this building that's saying something. We supposedly had to change up our spec due to 100% Basofil no longer being offered. I will tell you the cost of our spec is likely far more than your previous price point if you were getting the cheapest you could. As for the research side, we took all the outershell, MB and liner TPP and THL numbers charted them on a spreadsheet and determined the top 20 or 25 combinations so that we could spec a specific total score. Here's the main part: Our goal is to purchase custom fitted gear with the best protection at the lightest weight and least bulk for a reasonable price. The gear shall be black in color and the coat shall be mid length and the pants shall not be of the rise back or bib style. The minimum acceptable TPP shall be: 45 The minimum acceptable THL shall be: 250 The minimum acceptable combined TPP + THL shall be: 300 (using the individual minimums together will not result in meeting the combined score 295/300) I'll send you a PM and upon receipt of your email can send you the full spec.

While I have no actual knowledge I'd think hat $3000 for a 6 month academy (going on what's posted above) would be cheap? If you looked at how much it costs to keep a recruit academy running and divided that by the number of cadets, one would anticipate the cost to be far more than $3000. Is that figure one used to tuition outside dept's recruits in?

Do they pay the cadets while their in the academy?

I know our state (Maine) passed a law allowing this practice on some sort of sliding scale to keep candidates from using some places as stepping/training stones. Many smaller and volunteer agencies pay for personnel to become paramedics only to have them leave for bigger/better career positions. Given the amount of money we pay to put an employee through a medic program we'd likely pay to poach too. When we've paid for an employee to take a paramedic program, we paid for the class, the books, their scheduled work time at straight pay, their unscheduled class/clinical time at overtime and pay to cover their shifts if they fall below minimum manning. Thus far only one of the last four left for "greener" pastures (Fire Chief's position). Needless to say, this is not cheap and is no longer done. We currently have one employee in a paramedic program, through a "special" deal between the Union, the employee and the department. We cover his duty shifts as "school time" and upon completion pay the tuition. He makes no OT(for class) and must pass with a 3.0 to get the tuition reimbursement. We also backfill staffing as needed on the house.

Interesting theory. I get the last one to touch it, but then we seem to do a whole lot of that in the various incidents we run on. In my mind, there's very little to go wrong with resetting alarms once they've been thoroughly investigated. 99% of the time it involves no more than pushing RESET and entering a code. The system does everything else. It's hard to imagine causing a problem.Maybe it's a different breed of people or lack of more rules, but we too often seem to find the people who are responsible for the building are the lowest employee on the totem pole or a building tenant who's agreed to respond. Again too often these people have not been granted the authority to make decisions that cost the owner money, thus asking them to call out a fire alarm technician or sprinkler contractor takes far longer as they try and get a hold of the owner. It's a large responsibility to investigate and with authority declare an alarm in a large elderly housing project to be false, allow or effect a reset and leave. There's times when a cause for an activation is not found, and we have to chalk it up to moisture/humidity, dust/dirty or other. Too me the declaration that it's safe to reset the alarm and allow occupants to return is far more a liability issue than the simple task of pushing Reset, one, two, three, four, Enter( yes that's the actual code for many buildings. Real imaginative.) Again, in buildings that have trained staff we allow them to do their jobs, but 90% of our systems are in smaller businesses, multiple occupancy buildings, light industrial or non-high rise apartment buildings, and none have paid 24/7 security or maintenance staff.

I've heard of many places having these policies, do you have issues from it? I mean are there times the building personnel cannot readily reset the system and what happens? Does the FD leave the premises before ensuring the system is activated again? As i said, we've found many levels of competence (from totally incompetent to fire alarm masters) in dealing with owners/occupants/employees/personnel thus we seem to reset more often than letting them, unless they are proficient.I'm not questioning other people's/state's/cities policies, but I'm trying to understand the liability of performing the reset? In my mind, leaving a property where we (by being the AHJ) required an alarm system, without ensuring the system is active seems to carry some liability, unless they maintain an approved fire watch or remain evacuated. As I said above, when we perform a reset if it doesn't restore properly we require a service technician respond and/or detail exactly the parameters of continues building use without a full system activation. The parameters range from total evacuation until correction, an approved fire watch with times/checklists or other as determined by the perceived hazard to life.

As noted above, RP stands for Responsible Party up this way. Our dispatch center maintains lists of all alarmed buildings and the RP's for each. Our fire alarm ordinance requires each building/occupancy owner report any fire alarm system that reports to 911 by any means, detailing the system, and a list of RP's with a 10 minute of less response time (or Knox Box and 20 minutes) and some other information. We often have to call multiple RP's to ensure one responds, as we require one responds everytime or the owner may be fined. While it's caused some heartburn over the years with a few owners, it's not really been too often we've not been able to get someone to come.

We reset alarms but always require an RP to respond and "re-take possession" of the building and assume responsibility for securing the property. We have found that unless a facility has a 24/7 trained maintenance/security staff, most other employees no very little about the alarm systems, and showing them how to silence and reset alarms only leads to problems (resetting or silencing alarms prior to FD arrival). Any time a detector, device or zone must be deactivated to effect a reset we require the RP contact the alarm company and ensure a technician is responding. While we typically have far more knowledge of fire alarm systems in general than most occupants/employees, the technology and systems outpace training all officers to be up to date at all times. Our policy is based on our desire to keep the systems up and running as much as possible with as little difficulty to the owner/RP so that they remain committed to maintaining them and understanding their value. While a significant portion of these systems are required by code, many still are not and causing too much heartache could result in no0n-required systems being discontinued. Being able to silence and rest alarms quickly upon determining their cause also helps residents/occupants understand and trust the systems.

How might you be considering them for this? This is interesting, do they adapt a backflow preventer to the hydrant, inline or are they integral to the foam apparatus?

Really, it's just simple question? Why don't you answer it for him? Not so simple when you don't know the answers or even the whole question (hint: you need to know the apparatus to reference the proper manual). My point was twofold: One, looking in forums is a great way to find the wrong answer. Maybe someone just posts an answer, with no idea what aerial his FD uses, and that information is used and subsequently wrong. And two, if this is part of a promotional packet, the candidates should be finding their own answers for themselves, and know where to look (this not being that place). Maybe my post isn't as tactful as it might have been, but it's factual. I have no reason to be rude to people asking questions, in fact I will always try to answer those I can answer factually. I agree this is a great place to ask questions and seek opinions, but the type of questions posed were very limited in where the answers could come from and did not provide the proper information for anyone here to answer. The note about trying to help those seeking promotion merely notes to me that the candidates are not seeking the info on their own, something I think is a mistake. But maybe this is the day we live in where easy a priority over right? Funny, I like men and women who lead others to not seek the easiest path, but instead favor the correct one, but that's just me.

If I found out this is how my officer candidates got their answers, I'd be very disappointed. Look the web is great and serves to uncover all types of information, but looking in a forum for answers that should be found within one's own FD manuals is just crazy and another word that rhymes with it.

I should note that it appears this likely wouldn't have been an AFG purchase, I'm pretty sure fireboats are pretty far down their list of priorities. That likely being the case, I have no knowledge of the vetting process for other Federal DHS grants.

IO'm not trying to say there isn't a need, but at some point your taxpayers have to determine what they want and you have to help sell it to them. If you cannot keep members in proper/safe PPE, the community needs to know how that effects them. I'm not sure how my taxpayers helping you by funding your gear work out when your taxpayers are funding my breathing air system, exhaust extraction or how any of us are better off paying for some yahoo FD's super fireboat.

They have a pretty decent program to evaluate the applications, but how honest the departments are is certainly at question. Given the review process takes place in Emmitsburg and doesn't entail any roadtrips and to my knowledge do not require further review beyond the application, a creative writer can make a case for the "need" where if a reviewer was in the same town, see the application as a "want". Some very needed equipment will not get funded due to poor grant writing or failure to meet guidelines, while others hire professional grant writers to get what they want.We have been awarded 3 or 4 AFG's, but in the last few years not applied as when the grants came out we looked at what we needed and had to really think about it, thus it seems we don't have a true need. Many FD's found that they could buy tons of things they never dreamed of having, and likely didn't need. Ultimately, IMO, grant programs that are taxpayer funded cost taxpayers more than they should as they typically take the money locally (from your taxpayers) bring it to DC, pay some people to run the program, then re-distribute the money to local areas. This allows some places to buy things their community's would never buy at full price, but couldn't turn down at a 20% match cost. So 100% of the money goes to DC, 80% goes back, we lose 20%, I guess we write it off to job creation. Of course this reaches far further than AFG's and is done across all ranges of government services. Sure there are places that have needs, but why are we all paying for some town that refuses to put enough money in their budget for turnout gear? The FD should instead tell them they cannot do more than spray water from afar if they choose not to properly fund them. Some Homeland Security stuff might need to be done in the current manner given the problem is far more regional than most typical fire issues.

Seems to me the aerial issue is "much to do about nothing". Coming from a FD that runs short handed all the time, it appears they did what we likely would have: dump the aerial given the conditions on arrival, use every firefighter available for getting the first line in place, vent opposite the attack and search. If things changed I have all the faith in the world any of my operators could have made that stick by turning on to the street on the left and backing the turntable under the power lines, I'd certainly hope WPFD has the same thoughts. Different staffing would certainly change this, but being short means doing things sequentially as opposed to simultaneously most days.

Truly a sad moment. Go in peace Brother.