antiquefirelt

This is exactly what we found when our truck was out of service. The local VFD quickly got sick of running BS alarm runs. In most cases our first due would call them off before they'd get out of their station staffed. A few months later, they couldn't staff their truck with any regularity. Is NFD going to fill out boxes with a full response? Or will they confirm fire before requesting M/A? The latter may appeal to those not wanting overuse, but it certainly puts everyone way behind the curve when a real job is found.

Interesting, as always there are studies on both sides of this. Thankfully, our pre-hospital use is relegated to "ruling in" CO poisoning vs. ruling it out. Meaning, if you're exposed to abnormal CO levels we'll try and convince you to go, the RAD-57 can help. We would not use the RAD 57 to determine a person is safe to sign off, though the higher the number the more convincing it can be to get them checked in the ED. Any patient displaying sign/symptoms will get the RAD-57, but the care would be the same with or without, high flow O2 and recommendation for the hyperbaric chamber. Sadly in Maine where diving is an industry as well a past time, there are only 2 hyperbaric chambers statewide.

The RAD-57 by Massimo is a CO in blood measuring device that works like a pulse oximeter, non-invasive. We've had one since they came out and it's been great for convincing those who try to sign off instead of being seen in the ED. At first the ED was skeptical, and after hearing from their respiratory docs, they now trust the instant reading to begin treatment or shipment to a hyperbaric chamber as they wait for blood gas results.

This is a hard thing. "Doing the right thing" would likely be seen by the public as responding to the city? Flat out refusing will likely reveal how dangerous the City has allowed the situation to come, but only after great losses or injury. On the other hand, short of a current mutual aid agreement, these VFD's could respond and then bill the city? Let the City of Newburgh make the hard decisions. The VFD's could likely rescind current M/A agreements based on the drastic change in actual responses taxing their personnel and equipment. While I wholeheartedly understand the sentiment of "doing the right thing" by not helping the City sink the firefighters, doing so will harm innocent citizens and end up with both the VFD's and the NFD Firefighters Union looking very bad. All in all a terrible situation for all involved. Again I wonder how many years of mismanagement took place to have it get this bad? 69% tax increase in one year? Was this a loss of State Revenue sharing? Borrowing money to pay back borrowed money?

Tough stuff, good luck Brother. Hopefully someone will recognize they are pulling the stopper completely out of the circling drain. Hopefully your legal counsel has reviewed the manning clause so that they cannot reneg on it by failing to fund positions in future years, which is the case in my state.

Not sure about different states, but many times monetary issues in a contract are non-binding. Therefore if the city cannot afford to staff the positions they can be cut and staffing is only required to be adjusted amongst remaining on duty staff. In many metro cities, this means browning out or shuttering houses to staff pieces. This way they maintain minimum staffing per unit, but not duty strength. The City basically says, "This is what you have to work with" and the Union and admin have to figure out how to make it work best for the remaining troops.

I remember not long ago someone on here noted the VFD's were not going to enthusiastically help the City out? It'll be interesting. Quite often there are all too many vollies who are salivating to get more runs and M/A to a city is their dream come true, for a little while, then it quickly dries up. Our council forced us to run without an aerial for about 6 months, relying on the VFD next door, who all too quickly said Yes! After just two months they couldn't muster a turnout for alarms at night and the daytime it would roll with just a driver. The City gave in a rented us a Tower while our new one was being built.

Some good info here. We just had our state's ISO rater (Maine, we have just one guy)at our county Chief's meeting. A few highlights: *Mutual aid doesn't count if it isn't automatic. *Automatic aid doesn't count if you don't document joint training/drills. *You can use auto-aid FD's during your rural water proofing, but it only counts for the FD being tested, the aiding FD's get no credit and cannot use that test for their FD's (yes, sadly that was asked) *Sharing apparatus doesn't count in most cases, due to distances and staffing concerns, except in the "spare" category. *Spares can be shared if all FD's have access and trained personnel. In our area a shared spare aerial seems to be a great option. *many of the equivalency items don't make sense? A TIC isn't on the list, but can be used to replace a cutting torch. Maybe it's because Larry Stevens called TIC's "lasers" for years?

Our FD runs a minimum of four training drills a year and one hands on exercise. They (OSHA?) also allow you to document a response as refresher training if it meets certain criteria. Our regional team hosts a 4 station 6-8 hour training program once a summer for all operations personnel in the county. The sessions of the "Big Saturday" inlcude: Station 1: damming/diking, Station 2: go over a tank car/trailer and then use binoculars on placards downrange and answers 10 questions from the ERG regarding the placards you see, Station 3: a full patient/victim decon line, and Station 4: technician decon line.

How bad do you have to mismanage a City to end up with a one year tax increase of 69%? What suddenly came up that created this huge change? The article lost me on the impact of the $200K savings? What's the increase after the cuts? Now when a business has a fire, the damage will be worse and the likelihood of the same business re-opening in Newburgh is far less, so the taxpayers lose again. This cycle only gets worse as more vacant properties invite crime and detract from home values and a positive business climate. So as services erode, the taxpayers lose more as businesses leave, their own property values drop, their taxes increase and the services they do pay for are far more limited in scope and efficiency. Recipe for restructure.

Interesting, too bad it's just refilling open vacancies and retirement slots. It appears that none of these are new positions, but atleast they'll be back to fully staffed, which in today's economy is a huge win.

I think the situation is likely much more complex than we often give it credit. There are to major political entities for a new chief do face: the city councilors/board/mayor/whatever and the Dept. While everything seems good, often people in government seek outside persons to either validate their dept. is doing well or uncover issues and correct them. Like anything, the hiring process rarely uncovers all the things about the new boss, who may "rock" the hiring process, then seemingly decimate the department afterwards. This could be a case of the great chief who is never accepted by the dept. or a snake oil salesman who BSed for the job, got it and now is revealing his true colors. Hiring from within certainly is good for the dept. It shows that continued hard work and dedication will allow you to ascend the top rung, and puts a person in the position that is intimately familiar with the community, equipment and personnel. On the other hand, chances are that needed changes will go on unheeded or even recognized as we tend to narrow our view when we see everything our way. Maybe hiring consultants and outside trainers on a consistent basis can help overcome this, or maybe if it ain't broke... I know that when the hiring of new Chief's in a local FD and my own were last undertaken, the politics came out, personal feelings about "people from away" and ridiculous perceptions of "big city" vs. small town" all contributed to some qualified candidates not getting as far as they probably should have.

The issue with multi-gas detectors is that they generally must be "fresh air bumped" before any use and cannot sit with he power on 100% of the time. The single gas disposable CO detectors have a sealed 24 month battery and require little maintenance and limited user interaction (infrequent fresh air bumps every 30 days or so. The actual CO detection within the units is either far more simple than most other gases or due to the proliferation (millions of in home units) the technology was made simpler as there is a large market for it. We run a handful of multi-gas meters as well on fire apparatus and all the other sensors seem to require far more intervention by way of sensor replacement and/or span gas calibration. Most of these units run CO/O2/LEL/H2S. Also, the aniticpation of most other gases being present without signs/symptoms is far lower than CO. CO (carbon monoxide): odorless, colorless, virtually undetectable without metering/detection equipment LEL (lower explosive limits): The common expectation is natural gas or LPG leaks, both of which are treated with an odorant to ensure leaks are detectable by the human nose. O2 (oxygen concentration): very little expectation of a low O2 issue in most settings. Calls where this mighjt occur are generally known to the responders and anticipated (or should be). H2S (hydrogen sulfide): stinks like rotten eggs/ sulfur. Also more predicable if you understand the common causes and places to anticipate it. Other Gases: Most other gases are metered for when they're anticipated. Most of us don't carry Chlorine sensors routinely, but guys in treatment plants might (being phased out?) The same with many other gases that are far less common outside specific settings. This is how many of us think. It's good to be highly suspicious in this business. Flu season can bring about whole households of sick people displaying CO poisoning symptoms, but being suspicious could uncover that it is not in fact the flu. Without the detectors or as part of your investigative "toolkit" understanding other signs of CO potential such as tight dwelling units with condensation on the inside of the windows, soot near floor registers, fuel oil odors, etc. all can help.

The problem is that it is not easy to measure this accurately. First, the basic premise of the program is that employees use sick time when they're not sick. The second issue is that some personnel will come to work somewhat sick, to avoid losing the bonus pay, especially when the payout day gets nearer. I've had to send one person home, who was clearly too sick to work, yet came in anyway, clearly claiming he didn't want to short shift our crew on a "busy" day. All in all we probably pay 75% of the people each period, meaning only 25% of the FD uses any sick time at all. It will become easier to track going forward from here as a new payroll clerk is tracking maximum sick leave time for buyout, as opposed to just showing us who's maxed out. This program started before they kept records nearly as accurately or re-traceable as they are today. There are a few downsides to the program as well. Number one is that the employees show up to work when they shouldn't. This isn't routine, but it happens and requires the duty officer to evaluate and act on it, causing some friction when the employee disagrees. Also, in the original plan we just got the 18 hours, then they found that once employees lost the bonus pay for the period, they suddenly were sick more often until the payout, then it was back to showing up every tour. So they added the second 9 hour bonus to sweeten not taking multiple days if they weren't needed. Again, the results are herd to measure, maybe if we had a few thousand personnel we could get a more accurate sample size, but at our size one or two anomalies through off the statistics greatly. And lastly, the program as a whole is sort of an accusation that employees use sick time when they're not sick, which of course is reality, but it's unfortunate to have a policy that boldly puts that characterization out there.

We're on our third generation of two year disposables and the last ones are as maintenance free as they can be. They get checked as part of the daily check and monthly get a fresh air bump that the unit tells you it needs. Once in a while they ask for the span gas test, but very infrequently. These units low alarm at 35 ppm period an go to high alarm at 200 ppm. At any sign of CO (35 ppm w/ these) the crew exits with any civilians and calls for an engine co. if they're not on scene for a multi-gas meter check. Interestingly, we call anything over 9 ppm abnormal if we detect it, but on EMS runs, no one would be the wiser until it reached 35. Basically we do anything we can to ensure the level is under 9 ppm before we leave, though 0-3 is really preferred.As I recall these last ones were under $200 each. We have one on each primary EMS jump kit, the ALS out of town bag (mutual aid EMS calls) and one in each first due fire apparatus.

Are benefits that robust typical in NY? What I mean is 100% medical for the whole family, before and after retirement? Also what percentage is the retirement based on, regardless of the 1 year vs. "best 3 average"? I know we struggle every contract year to maintain our 85/15 medical coverage, that ends at retirement. My FD is one of the last in Maine to offer the 2/3 retirement plan, with 95% of others having sold out for 50%. And we thought we had it good? I hope this works out for the Brothers/Sisters in the area this report covered, as it appears that the public is starting to grow leery of public servants benefits vastly exceeding their own, though they were gained through bargaining over the years.

Interesting comment, it what way does the report disappoint you? While I have very little knowledge of the actual communities studied, these reports are always interesting to me as they shed light of the disparity in the fire service.

Our city pays us not to use sick leave, three times a year. Any employee who doesn't use any sick leave in the previous 4 months gets 18 hours of pay (not at 1.5x)and those who have used only 1 sick unit (hour or day) get 9 hours pay. In the past our sick leave accrual maxed out at 3168 hours and those hours in excess went into a "sick leave pool" for covering persons who were out longer than they had SL time for. This year, in an effort to help eliminate those hours in the future, we can enroll in retirement health saving plan, that buys out all maxed out sick time and vacation time beyond max allowable carryover and puts that money into an account to draw from after retirement. Though I'd say that while this seems like a benefit to us, it still was only offered to benefit the city somehow by eliminating unfunded hours or clearing them off the books.

I'm not sure if this was what BNECHIS was driving at or not, but: those of us working 24 hr shifts have a three times as likely need to take sick time per "day". Many people can get by their 8 hrs with many illnesses, to go home that night, whereas feeling like crap and not be 100% for a 24 hour tour is asking a lot. Not to mention if someone at city hall doesn't give their 100%, no one even notices, whereas in emergency work, not giving your all can be deadly. We rely on each other to get home safely after each tour, coming to work at 60% should not be an option.

My thought is that the FD needs the duty staff at the fireground on the initial call. The replacement truck will require one less firefighter to bring to the scene, reducing the immediate resources by one. No one expects rubber stamps, or shouldn't anyway, even in good times, but forcibly reducing staff by changing the apparatus against the better judgement of the people who run the FD, will only lead to more losses, hopefully only monetary. It appears they admit that the new proposed aerial will not be able to make the same spots as the tiller type, a significant tactical disadvantage, plus reducing staffing! The bitter pill is that as the economy fails crime and fires go up, short changing those that protect the public is poor public policy.

All to save money by cutting staffing? Another case of the city not trusting the FD to know best how to safely operate on the fireground.

There area a few older threads here that really delve into this fairly well. In addition to the above items: Often a MM will have more sections to attain the aerial length, allowing it to come to the ground closer to the apparatus body. Also, RM often hang out over the front of the cab presenting a visual obstruction, while MM's have a longer body from the rear tires back, making the "tailslap" much more pronounced. Another minor issue is loading the tower bucket on a RM requires members walking the length of the bedded ladder to the bucket, where on a MM you usually can climb in close to the rear body ladder and pass tools up (saws, ect.)

Their final day cannot come soon enough, nor can it be painful enough.

Clearly the Mayor is accusing the FD of being manpower heavy. How can you cut a company and not affect the responses? Far too often lately we see Mayors, Councilors, Managers and sadly Fire Chief's state that reductions in manpower/staffing/companies will not affect services. This is a blatant lie. One cannot continue to provide the same number and level of service with fewer personnel unless those cut do nothing already. What they mean, but will not come out and say is that the FD will not eliminate any of the services it's mission requires (rescue, suppression, prevention, EMS, etc), but the delivery of those services will be diminished in one manner or another. Longer responses times, fewer personnel on runs, slower task completion all spells L-O-S-S to the citizens. Loss of property and lives, it's that simple. Also, do you KNOW for a fact the surrounding VFD's won't tolerate filling the voids? In many places vollies can't wait to catch more runs and the grudges between paid and Volunteers are so deep that many would take the extra calls just to screw the paid guys over. Sad but true in many areas. Just look at some of the posts here on EMT-Bravo between the two groups.

True enough. While a bunch of guys at work said,"It'll just be a matter of time before you register for FB", my opinion has only become more critical with each passing day. I guess maybe some people hate to feel like they're missing out on something by not hearing or reading stuff first, but I've got plenty of other stuff to concern me, that knowing all our members current relationship status doesn't matter to me. Not that I'm out of the loop long, as what was on FB last night is usually the first conversation of the day at the dayroom table every morning.