antiquefirelt

Evidence that just going to a lot of fires is not enough.

There's two videos floating around here, the OP incident looks clearly like an ALF aerial, unless the ladder itself was a remount. The other video is not an ALF, but is the 2009 incident.

From the information the Chief gave in a press release the ladder was about 45 ft. above the ground, flowing water, with the Capt on the stick when the accident occurred. My guess is that that likely does exceed the ratings given it looks to be a near full extension. Thankfully it appears the Captain will recover from his injuries and the FD will be getting a new, already on order, aerial right off.

No, it's basically a Second Amendment Rights saying that comes up every time a citizen defends themself. None of us(fire/EMS/PD) can be everywhere at once, thus preventative measures are the best defense against whatever you may face. I believe it could apply to Fire/EMS as well. My thought that everyone is better off depending on themselves for the immediate safety of themselves and family. Hence, own a gun, live in a sprinklered house and know basic first aid and CPR.

Maybe "God Love the State of _____." Not all State's have the "Castle Doctrine" and while this case seems fairly cut and dry, I'd not be surprised if the woman faced charges in many places in this country. Sad but true... While I mean no offense to our brothers and sisters in Law Enforcement, as the saying goes: "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away!"

BNECHIS makes a good point about the tag systems and our modified system in particular: First the tag system is basically just an "I'm here somewhere" system, the "upgrade" in our system is the entry point cone, which again, as noted, is fairly simple for smaller residential structures, but says little about the personnel beyond that point when the building is vast. One part of our system that assists us in tracking who is where is the "Resource Pool" check-in/assignment stop. While this doesn't account for the initial first due crews, it allows the IC to step up the system by assigning later arriving crews to specific groups or divisions and know where they are, who the crew leader is, and the officer overseeing that group or division. Air management as a "command function" is not part of how we operate currently. I understand the UK and other countries make a strict practice of accounting for personnel who are "on air" and likely that's in not far from where we'll be in the US in the future. Hopefully the radio's, SIMS and other technological advances will become more accessible for smaller FD's. Right now the costs and logistics of trialing these systems do not make them a realistic option for a large number of us. To even consider making any system better you must evaluate and understand the limitations and realities you deal with. Having personnel arrive in stages with no specific company or officer makes managing them far more challenging. I'm hoping to see some ideas we've not seen or tried.

There is a lot of truth to this paragraph. It is unfortunate that often far too many firefighters fail to realize the importance of utilizing whatever accountability measures are in place, every single time they step off the truck. While I agree with the every member gets a radio, I'm not seeing a direct correlation to accountability? They are able to call for help if needed (and able) but the radio doesn't tell the IC who's on the fireground, their location or assignment unless they stand fast until receiving said assignment via the radio?

8-10 years ago we determined that if we had a catastrophic event on the fireground the best we could do would be to send a member back to the station and see who's gear was on the hook: that meant they were not in trouble! We developed a system we beleive works when properly and routinely implemented, meaning everyone must fully understand and use it on every run. This has not always been the case I hate to admit, but a re-dedication to the system has begun and it seems hard to argue with wanting to ensure our members safety no matter how tedious some of the details seem on trivial calls. Our system requires the use of two clip on ID tags. One denotes your presence on the fireground, the second your entry point or assignment. On duty staff give their tags to the driver who tosses them in the same spot of the given apparatus. The second tag upon arrival gets left at the door clipped either to a "TAG IN" ring that most carry (doubles as a glove holder) or a cone with a wire ring on top (generally later in an operation). Later arriving off duty or call members must go to the Resource Pool location at the lead pumper and tag their first (fireground) tag to the cone at that location and upon assignment give their tag to to the IC or his aide (an assigned position) or depending on the complexity and the IC, tag an entry point cone. One of the key points to accountability is that it has to be more than just who's at the fire and who's not. Our system relies on the first due personnel being accountable to their officer(s) and later arriving personnel working through the resource pool to ensure the IC knows who is assigned to what task, the location and who's the officer of the crew. Because personnel do not arrive in true company form, this allows us to make crews on the fly. Part of our past issues with the system was our officers being directly involved in initial tasks due to poor staffing. This allowed personnel arriving after the firs due to enter the fireground with little or no supervision and begin working without clear assignments. While our training and some (maybe a lot) of luck kept us out of trouble, it failed upon an honest review of our accountability and command policies. Thus the senior first due officer will no longer be involved in interior tasks short of known rescues or circumstances beyond "normal". We finally have had to back up and say, "we're only able to do so much with what we're given, we cannot assume even greater risk for the shortsightedness of politicians and number crunchers". Continually ignoring 2 in 2 out really was far to risky for our personnel and those initial IC's. Now if we have to decide between a line or immediate search that's what happens, no more doing both regardless of crew size. Sadly this is routinely a high potential scenario due to our on duty staff running EMS calls day and night. Oh, you asked about M/A as well, maybe tomorrow...

It appears that early PUC's did have issues attaining their 1500 gpm rating, but the issue(s) were addressed which explains your newer PUC exceeding the 1500 gpm threshold. My only question would be what were the corrections and does the engine work harder to make the rating? Maybe different gear rati0ns to bring the gpm up while maintaining the 150 psi at draft?

We have a fairly lengthy Uniform Standard for career personnel. What can be worn when, how it shall be worn, what collar brass, badges, etc down to the item order numbers. Grooming and actions while in uniform are in the rules and regs. Most of the stuff hasn't been reviewed or updated for many years, with the exception of the uniform policy, which is kept current. Call division (POC's) personnel must meet the R+R's but are not issued uniforms, though are required to wear them to the standard if they buy their own.

Mutual aid will be a necessity in 98% of the US likely forever. While most FD's should be far more capable of handling "routine" fires and emergencies, those smaller cities and communities with never have the staffing and equipment to handle multiple greater alarm fires simultaneously, large scale disasters or other resource taxing events. In fact, right now it's likely that more FD's are increasing the need for M.A due to budget cuts. Even without cuts far too many of us run at bare bones or less. The taxpayers have little sympathy when they beleive their publicly funded employees are underutilized in their minds. Most of us have less than what we need to be truly efficient at most calls, so those once a year or decade fires we can't even hope to contain without outside aid. Outside of some larger metro FD's I doubt we'll ever see mutual aid go away. Can we stop it from being used to gut FD's? I hope so. If we need daily/weekly M.A we should seriously consider that we're not providing the level of service our incidents are demanding.

While it seems ludicrous to most of us, this is the system that they have in place and had they attacked any fire in a non-member's home they'd collapse the system. As was mentioned above, what happens to a member who is hurt when they're operating outside their mission? For those of you who think fire protection is a right and should be granted equally, how might that be accomplished? How much fire protection does the "right" provide? And "equally"? At who's level do we set the bar? And what would this cost? Life's not as simple in some places.

It would be great if insurance companies were more involved in educating the public about reducing fire risk and how that benefit reduces the cost of premiums. While they'd lose some money up front in places that took advantage of strengthening the fire departments responses, they'd save money in fire loss payouts. Maybe in the form of helping municipalities hire consultants to study the true costs of bolstering fire protection? It amazes me to see the amount of information out there if one knows how to obtain it, as Capt. Nechis does, while so many of us are still only scratching the surface of knowing how to show bettering our ISO ratings can reduce individuals out of pocket expenses (taxes and/or fire insurance). This would also be a great avenue for the IAFF and the I Chief's to consider spending time and money on. With members losing jobs everywhere, we're still doing very little to show that it actually has a negative financial impact on the community as a whole.

You should definitively heed the advice of the persons telling you to fight this in any way. Up here in Maine, previous governors raided pensions funds every time one of their pet projects didn't get funded directly. Now, especially in the last year, the Tea party and Heritage Policy Center, and new Governor have made a push to significantly change the pensions for retirees and those already vested in the system, due to what they call the failure of the state pension system and showing the cost to the taxpayers. The taxpayers have essentially been turned against all state and municipal employees who are now seen as getting cushy pensions at a significant tax cost to them. The numbers don't lie, but the public doesn't care who created the mess, they just want to pay less, which can only be done by cutting benefits. Most firefighters and cops were lucky as we have separate pension funds within the system, and the municipal pension fund is 98% funded as it was not allowed to be raided, but the state employees and teachers (statewide Union) are in a real bind with a broke pension fund and angry taxpayers. Everyday in any newspapers' forum area you can read tons of anti-municipal/Union/state employee comments basically caused by exploitation of this issue. Do not let them touch pension funds at any cost, people will forget who took and and why when faced with growing debt in later years.

Who knew, all those years of drinking cheap crappy beer like Old Mil Swil or Bud Dry and I could've got the same effect without tasting them?!

Chances are these other departments are not meeting the mark when it comes to national standards set forth for efficiency and safety of operations. If all you know about NR is the call volume, you know too little to compare them to anyone. Also, can you explain the logic used in a calculation that determines "firefighters per shift per call"? Most of these types of numbers are used to compare FD to FD, but one must also show the types of responses and other factors to have any realistic comparison. A FD that provides first responder EMS may have greater incident counts than a similar FD that does zero EMS, but have far less time per incident due to the nature of the work.

Our FD has a POC division (call division) which all members are paid for any drill, class or incident they attend. There are 25 slots available and the cost of this is $44k /yr, basically less than the cost of one career firefighters salary and benefits. In the end, while the ability to count on all 25 positions is far less, chances are we get more than one firefighter's worth of work from the call personnel, so it ends up being a good deal for the city. While there are significant pitfalls along the way, it's hard to argue that this system works for us vs. trying to staff up a career only force.I suggested our union look at allowing members to buy gas and heating oil on the city contract a few years ago when raises were way off the table and basically anything that had any cost associated to the city was a non-starter. It didn't take off, but I still think there's some merit, given that the more fuel and gas the city buys, the lower the annual bid prices come in at. Of course the taxpayers don't tend to like the employees they pay for getting a better deal they they can, but creative ways to offset some of the austere budget measures are worth investigating in my mind. Having had insurance costs crush either zero increases or meager raises in the past two contracts, I'd hope the taxpayers would see that while thye pay our salaries, we too are taxpayers and we too feel the pinch of poor economy.

I think one of the things IMS stresses is that the CP can be remote where it is necessary. Given a complex incident, the range of entities represented may be such that being close by is a disadvantage. If we have qualified personnel working in the operations sector, a command post can function without seeing the incident as the decisions are not being made "spur of the moment" or even on tactics, but focusing on strategic goals within a operational/planning cycle. This typically doesn't fit into incidents that won't extend past a single operation period. Most of our routine incidents, even multiple alarm fires don't last long enough to fully stand up a remote CP, planning and logistics section. We may conduct planning and logistical tasks during routine incidents, but often they don't necessitate a larger separate section.The issue is realizing when the incident could progress beyond our "routine" and beginning to lay the foundation for the larger system when it becomes necessary. If we don't see the need until too late, we'll be playing catch up. This is especially difficult for smaller agencies where we assign most of our officers to operational groups or divisions leaving few or no qualified personnel o staff the rapidly needed sections. Good discussion, albeit a little far from the original topic. A lot of this is still fairly new too us on the east coast as compared to the folks who have been using some form of the IMS more often on much larger incidents out west. Al the classes and exercises help, but those who have operated on some of the big wildland fires tend to have a better grasp of how it all actually plays out.

The one of the most basic premises of NIMS is that it's is to be sized appropriate for the incident. A remote command post is generally unnecessary for structure fires, and therefore the IC can be located onscene and may or may not be the operations officer, depending on the need.

Hopefully not too near!

Ah, we've had a few 1st alarm dumpsters and car fires due to over eager officers striking alarms on the sight of smoke. Most often this is a once in a career mistake given the ball busting they get. On the other hand, thankfully we haven't had anything downgraded for lack of smoke! We have lesson plans, classes and shortly a new SOP specifically addressing exactly this (well close, we say the first 10 minutes).

It appears that NFIRs attempts to measure the response time as the time from a 911 call being answered to the time the first unit arrives. They note that depending on how FD's interpret "Alarm time" the numbers are skewed, as some only note the time they were alerted, not 911. And the arrival of a first unit does not speak to the ability that unit has to begin mitigating anything. Here's a link to a report from 2006: http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/tfrs/v5i7.pdf I personally believe you need to start at the time 911 is answered, given that dispatch is part of our system. Whether we can control it or not, how the call is received by us from the original caller is part of the emergency response system. I routinely review our monthly stats and calls that exceed certain time frames for areas of our first due get a deeper review for cause. Sometimes is a delay in dispatch, other times no address visible and sometime just a sluggish response. We've not found any particular reason standing out more than others. Our personnel are required to put a reason in the narrative of their reports if there's a delay: bad address, not numbers visible, staged for PD, etc. On the other end of the spectrum, while most of us would agree that an SUV is not much good at extinguishing fires, or for that matter an engine with only 1 or 2 on board, the first arriving unit that was assigned is where our time stops. In my view, the size-up is the first priority of any operation and if that begins with a first arriving officer or trained firefighter, than we are beginning the process of making things better. While the fire may grow, at least someone is getting a handle on what's burning, where, hazards, victims, obstacles, etc, etc.

With regard to the assumption of command from the originally established command, how much emphasis do you put on the radio report of this transfer of command? My FD requires that when establishing command, the IC makes it a "Named Command" typically the side #1 street name or if it's a widely known property such as Walmart or FMC then it becomes that. So, from that point on, when one radios command, they ask for Main St. Command, or Walmart Command. On the the fireground freq. the name is not required, though if multiple incidents are happening, it ensures the traffic will get to the intended receiver. I guess my question really is, does it matter who is on the other side of the "Command" radio? How will your knowing who is now answering to the responsibility of command change what you do? I suppose when you know who it is you can modify your operations to your comfort level? I'm just not convinced the whole transfer thing needs to be the big production we tend to make it. I know if I'm the IC and my boss shows up on scene, I remain in command until we've talked (most often face to face), but if someone called Command and he jumped in and answered, I guess I'd know it had been transferred. This hasn't happened but I can see the potential where we have a Chief who responds with our normal first alarm response, but often arrives 30 seconds to a minute behind the first arriving A/C.

These things are big up in my neck of the woods. We've been dealing with 3-4 "bath salts" patients a week since August or so. Hey make you wish for good old heroin overdoses. Heir behavior is so erratic with violent delusional outbursts that our local hospital is paying for 24/7 police coverage in the ED for the immediate future. Our department is wrestling with our PD as they routinely are too understaffed to provide an officer in the bus to ensure the safety of the medic in back. The Maine EMS Council is considering emergency protocols to allow medics to "snow" bath salts users with Versed (sp?). Luckily our state made possession and sale illegal fairly quickly, though it appears the Feds just passed a more signifcant law regarding the sale of bath slats.

While I understand your point, most citizens wouldn't no the difference between a good job and a poor one, they're happy to have someone arrive, clearly the apparatus itself denotes something positive should start happening. As for single unit arrival, it's the most consistent way of measuring for comparative purposes. So many FD's have vastly different responses to the same types of incidents. What's the first thing any member should do upon arrival? Size-up. Without a proper size-up initial actions can be a waste of time or just lucky. Someone must perform an assessment, determine the way to start mitigating the problem at hand. So to say a single unit or company arriving is not valuable is to overlook one of the first duties we have on arrival. I don't know about your FD, but I know if I arrive and the Lt. from the engine tells me where the fire is, where the best route of entry is and what he found on his 360, I'm pretty happy. Things can start happening if they haven't already. I do redo all that's been done, so positive action has been taken. Would the time from 911 dialing to a "loss stop" be a better measure? Sure, but how would we define that "loss stop"? Where would this go in the NFIRs report?And just because you arrive with sufficient members and equipment doesn't mean you'll have an effective action plan. I'm sure we've all seen operations where the outcome would have been of little difference if the FD never arrived, in which case fewer lives would have been endangered. Some jobs burn themselves down to the size we can manage with the equipment and manpower we have. The key is being able to enter consistent numbers we all can use, those later times become very subjective, those times between 911 answering and a first arriving apparatus are pretty easily reproduced in any FD in the country.