antiquefirelt

Excellent point! Far too many FD's still put guys on the tip of sticks to flow aerial master streams. If the guns are up, the building is coming down and we have no excuse for exposing our members to the dangers of operating from the tip. Failure of basic risk/benefit analysis. I think the FDNY operation BNECHIS was describing was originally blamed on the operator but found to be an extreme situation that had no other real options. As I recall the tip was up at a low angle fully extended down a the side of a building and as the ladder became loaded one side made contact with the building causing a twisting action that failed as more victims exits onto the ladder? It's a case study Mike Wilbur uses in his presentations. Know your equipment, know your limitations, and sometimes you have to go beyond. Sadly sometimes going outside the safety parameters have serious consequences. In general Maxim has had many aerial failures. A few brother in Seattle were injured on a reserve Ward LaFrance/Maxim when the ladder failed in similar fashion as this latest one. On the side to side motion, and quick shut downs: When speccing our tower, we found two of the big builders outright said no to a manual tiller bar controlled gun due to the ability to change the direction of nozzle reaction too quickly. One other builder failed to give and answer and three said they do it all the time and were confident. We also wanted no valves between the waterway inlet and the nozzle tip to ensure all water flow was controlled by the engine to alleviate fast opening and closing and the chance of closing the waterway in freezing conditions. We ended up with a handwheel shutoff just below the gun and two 2.5" discharges with quarter valves, that we have instructed operators they are never to use.

Thankfully all were OK. We skirted a bullet when we got rid of our Maxim ladder. For years we said we could ladder around the corner with it, and after passing numerous UL tests, someone finally realized they were using the wrong test specs for it after it had been de-stroked to 80ft! What a great laugh when we were told to use it for emergencies only! Or :I know it's not safe, but you'd use if you had to right?"

I second the best beef jerky anywhere! Growing up of divorced parents my father lived in Bolton Landing, so Oscars' was a regular weekly shopping trip. I was hooked on their jerky for good. The internet made it possible to find and stock up the past few years long after Dad moved to Florida for warmer weather. "LL Bean of Warrensburg". I live just north a bit from LL Bean and I'd trade them for Oscar's any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

I had thought this option was offered on our Spartan Gladiator, but I may be wrong. We ended up with it in the middle so both the officer and driver can reach it.

My understanding is that most hospitals cannot test for cyanide in a useful manner. The issue being the lab technique/equipment needed to preform the tests rapidly enough to be useful. There was an article by Kurt Varone of Providence Fire about 2 years ago explaining their "stumbling" upon this issue with numerous firefighters exposed in one day at two separate fires. I'll dig a little, I know a guy in a nearby FD that was trying to prepare a program for our State to get EMS the Cyno-kits and he had a lot of good info. UPDATE: Here's the Link to D/C Varone's article: http://www.fireengineering.com/display_art...UCH-0F-A-THREAT At the time of his research only one hospital in New England was performing the complex blood cyanide tests that ensure results in 2 hrs. Most others send blood cyanide tests out.

This topic seems to rear it's head many times a year after a tragic accident claims one of our own. Fire apparatus that carry large quantities of water often are overloaded, under braked and top heavy. Until recently a significant number up in my area were converted oil or milk trucks who upon being too worn out for commercial deliveries were sold to FD's who made cheap tankers. When I started in 1986 my VFD had two such conversions. One thankfully only carried 750 gallons of water in a fairly low profile, but he other was a 2200 gal oil tanker with a gas powered portable pump tacked in the rear. Coupled with a 10 spd. tranny and we had a recipe for disaster with drivers of every type. Here's my solution: Any fire apparatus that is fails to meet NFPA standards for it's post 1991 age should not be considered an authorized emergency vehicle. If your truck is pre-1991 it either must meet or exceed 1991 NFPA standards or lose it's emergency vehicle status. Removing the "authorized emergency vehicle" status in my state would mean: no red, white or blue warning lights (amber only), no authorization to operate outside the rules of the road, and if GVW meets the thresholds: CDL drivers. NFPA standards do require baffles in water tanks and the new standards will start to take care of the top-heaviness with tilt-table testing. But under or un-baffled tanks, rural roads and adrenaline are all that are needed to continue our trend of killing a handful of firefighters every year in these apparatus. BTW: When I was made the station officer of the house with the 2200 gal. tanker back in the 90's I refused to assign any firefighters to it. I was not able to remove it from service but I could warn firefighters that it was unsafe and that I'd protect them if they refused to operate it. It worked, we replaced it two years later.

Good catch on the tanker, I hadn't seen the post-crash picture. It looks like the tanker/pumper he was operating could be a compliant one as it looks like it was designed and purpose built. I've had this discussion with Mike Wilbur and he published it along with some opposing views as a response to a driver safety article he wrote for Firehouse in a previous issue (maybe 2 years ago?). It seems that this ruffled some feathers in the hinterlands where many rural FD's are convinced that all tankers need the ability to speed, run red lights and violate other rules of the road. They cite having no budgets and needing to hold chicken BBQ's to buy equipment and the travel distance to fires as excuses to speed in old crappy conversion trucks. I am remiss in my duty as I told Mike that I would work on this issue in my state and he promised to help by flying in and testifying if need be at our legislature. But local duties have kept me far too busy to try and battle with the State Fire Chief's who represent predominantly rural FD's with these types of apparatus. I guess it may be time to try and recommit to this goal. Of course, I look like a hypocrite in this regard as our FD has no tankers so it's easy to banish those that do, or so it seems.

I usually tell the guys who complain about stuff like this, that if they're that uncomfortable with their own masculinity that a color makes them question whether they like boys or girls, it's their issue to deal with not mine...

As I suspected, the picture of what I assume was the tanker in the VT LODD is just as I pictured when I saw the announcement. A day must come when we have laws that prevent us from allowing brothers/sisters from operating these vehicles. Affordability cannot overrule basic minimum safety requirements. Here's a link to a picture on New England Fire News's website: http://www.firenews.org/vt/vtc.html scroll down to Charleston and click Tanker 1.

Sorry, when I noted "after a tragic accident claims one of our own" I was speaking of the posts we see each time a tanker accident occurs nationwide. Thankfully no one from the RFD has died in almost a century. The LODD in VT again will bring about a round of posts questioning the use of "unsafe" tankers, driver training program questions and CDLs for all apparatus operators. None of which are bad topics to discuss, but in fact should be carried on tirelessly until changes are effected that reduce driving deaths. I'm at home so I don't have the NFPA code set on my computer, but I'm 99% certain that they require a minimum baffling of sixteen chambers in all water tanks to prevent slosh. Oil tankers generally have three vertical baffles making three chambers splitting the unit lengthwise into thirds. Milk trucks have no baffles and are almost always elliptical as I believe corners are sources harder to keep clean. Also the new standards for apparatus call for tilt-table testing of all designs to further eliminate top heavy apparatus prone to roll over. Of course I'm not sure how that plays out with FD's adding tons of equipment after delivery. Maybe they have to add weight to open spaces like hosebeds and coffin compartments to complete the tests. I'll check my codes tomorrow. My previous FD (St. George) replaced the 2220 gal. oil tanker with a 1800 gal. Central States NFPA compliant tanker on a Ford LN800 single axle with a 500 gpm pump. For reason that escapes me now (money I'm guessing), we put the 500 gpm in instead of the 750 which was all this (and it's sister the next year) needed to be Class A pumpers. Undoubtedly, this is tough topic for many as more often than not the places with rural water an old sketchy tankers have little resources to buy new apparatus. Couple this with typical low volume FD's and it isn't hard to see these accidents in the making. This is why I think slowing them down by taking away warning lights and sirens makes sense. Rarely does a large tanker need to break the rules of the road and often they should not at all costs. Putting water in a truck made to carry oil immediately overloads the design of the brakes and suspension if it wasn't modified properly. Overweight trucks with inexperienced drivers going to the infrequent fire spells LODD.

This is neither a Peirce Innovation, or dare I guess cheap! As Bnechis noted, I remember these units in Virginia easily as far back as the early 90's. I believe the first US ones may have been on larger chassis and therefore had a larger payload. I remember they looked like red dumpster haulers, but the PODs seemed to make sense for those SOC type units that had limited numbers individual incidents, but multiple roles.

This is a good issue to talk about, though I'm hesitant to speak of it here. I'll start a thread on tankers so we carry on without casting any unintended dispersion on this FFer's tragedy. Peace be with our Brother, his family and the FD.

I agree that lightweight composite structural members have had significant impact on the fire service, but how do you figure they're a substantial advancement "for the fire service" over stick and timber frame?

Brains. We've evolved from "strong like bull smart like tractor" to a much more methodical fire service who analyzes our every actions and tries to ensure we're doing the best way. But if you want a material item, it probably is the TIC. Not a panacea but a tool with huge potential for all parties concerned.

The Anniston, Elkso, Seccoro and Vegas training all are "full boats". Basically you pay for any adult beverages or food if you want to skip the cafeteria (Anniston's is good). In Elko they gave us $75 Fire Bucks good for evening meals at most every establishment in Elko. Elko is part of the University of Reno system their website has info and Anniston is either under COBRA or the CDP (Center for Domestic Preparedness) I believe.

All of our career personnel have been to Anniston AL for the WMD-Haz-Mat Technician program, many of our offciers have been there for the WMD/IC program, a few for "Advanced" Decon and a few guys have gone for the IC/HOT program as well as some of the peer review course/evaluations. Absolutely top notch training with a good cross section of emergency services represented in most classes. I know that as an ICS/NIMS instructor we could only dream of having each of the disciplines so well represented. In my WMD/IC class we had personnel from the largest FD's and PD's in the country, Red Cross supervisors from places that actually do stuff, the DPW director of a major city, SWAT supervisors, and more. It's amazing to see how little many of us know about other disciplines. Many myths are exposed as well as eyes opened. And like anything else many networking possibilities exist after hours at the on campus pub or during a night on the town. A few other places we've sent personnel (free to local agencies): Seccoro (?) NM, Elko NV and Las Vegas. These covered radiological courses, IED's and Flammable Liquids/Gases.

Quite an interesting question. I know that our apparatus are equipped back up cameras and we require the screens be shut-off until backing up on those that are not "automatic" as we found the lighted screen at night was distracting for the operator.

The problem with this is similar to the issue of having two or more trailers. The number of incidents B foam is actually needed for rarely calls for most engines to have systems. This coupled with the fact that structural engine borne B Foam systems have inherently small foam tanks which makes starting an op before the arrival of other foam near futile. In comparison to water or A foam, B-Foam is more complex to use, costs more and expires fairly rapidly. I know our county which is far smaller and less populated has at least 10 or 12 B-Foam capable engines, but cannot put them all in one place as fast as a trailer could be deployed with more foam. Each carries a limited amount of foam which may or may not be compatible with other FD's resources. As we protect a large industrial plant that uses alcohol we carry all AR-AFFF, but most do not use AR foam, yet. The other issue is that too often the foam expires in the tank as few of us train enough to cycle the foam out. Add in that without the newer vacuum units refill foam tanks on top of trucks becomes an accident waiting to happen and you have a poor system destined to fail at multiple points. Now the only thing that throws a "monkey wrench" into this is the increased use of Ethanol in fuels. In 23 years I have never had to flow foam on a car fire or even tractor trailer for that matter, but we remain highway free. Could this change with more persistent burning fuel? The future may dictate we use foam on standard vehicle fires. But then again A foam (systems are far cheaper and get used more often) works well on some fires, B-Foam tends to be better on standing fuel not 3-D fires. Since we're on the topic of foam, if anyone has a chance to go to the University of Reno's Elko NV, flammable liquid/gases program it's well worth it. This was a 4 day program fully funded by DHS through WMD monies. All expenses paid to and from Elko, hotels, meal money and excellent training at the Carlin NV training facility. About 50/50 classroom to hands on program about controlling fuel fires (LPG, natural gas, tank farms, spilled fuels, etc.

No worries, I wasn't "dissed" by the "dissing" comment , but in fact used the term to note that while I have some reservations about the realistic implementation of NIMS and Unified Command I was not stating I don't believe there is value in both. Just trying to keep up with the current terminology of our youth

Misunderstood? Sure by many or most, but even those that understand it must look at reality, we're dealing with humans, and most likely Type "A" strong personalities with deep seated beliefs in "we know better than you". After all this are who we attract, develop and promote. This is certainly not always true, but quite often a part of the problem. True but Very often misunderstood to the point of stalemate. People take the classes file the certificates, declare NIMS compliance, get a grant, end of story. Sure they do, it's far too altruistic to believe everyone will agree all the time. Again, day to day when resources are adequate this is rarely an issue, but when we all need to truly share resources for a common goal, someone will need to have the final say. Again, maybe it can be done, but most recent events and large incidents prove this to be a big stumbling point. I agree this is how the book says it must be, but again I work with a bunch of freaking humans that can't seems to set aside 30-40 years of their experiences. In event planning this nearly always works per NIMS training, but the background whispers say otherwise will occur when then the defecation hits the rotary wind device. Agreed, again the ops plan can develop strike teams or task fores as needed. But i fail to see how this will occur in the initial action phase which is where this thread started. As I said, I agree with the concept of Unified Command with a dose of reality thrown in. I certainly was not trying to "diss" it but share my view after 23 years having the time of my life and having been on both sides of the desk in classes. See above. I agree but maybe my realistic view is bordering on pessimistic. I need to work on that. My view of this is that most of us do our day to day well and can cover all the bases concurrently. My fear is that just because we've sat through NIMS training we are calling ourselves prepared for the big one. There will be a day, when the incident will outpace our resources and everyone will have to work on the same priority. As with the MVA case, my view is that it's always the victims. It would be tragic to have fire or PD fail to assist EMS when it's needed only to ensure fault was found or special squirrels habitats were protected, when humans lives could be lost. I frequently see this with auto extrications by FD's who do not provide EMS. They are so caught up in the cutting and tearing that they forget this is an EMS incident and often spend longer than necessary cutting and prying when a simpler less action oriented method would be faster. I think maybe now the only disagreement is the timing of when this happens, with me thinking this will not occur during initial operations. I certainly don't see anyone abdicating their responsibilities under a single commander, I just think that in any group there will always be a leader. It might be someone completely out of our norm? But generrally disagreements are overcome when someone has 51% or more of their argument agreed to and the other 49% or less. True 50/50 compromise is hardly realistic in emergency services where we all tend to have strong personalties. But alas, the mark of the true professionals are those who can do this with grace and courtesy vs,. flat out name calling and stomping of feet. No I think I'm seeing that we are not doing as effectively as your area, though we may have a more significant need to. With 90% volunteer FD's and volunteer EMS agencies, getting everyone to be in the same book, nevermind on the same page has been a long struggle. My own dept. is fortunate to have career fire/EMS staff and the city has a decent sized PD so we can train together as well as plan and implement some of the ICS system outside our day to day ops. This has been a good thread with excellent intelligent discussion.

See I find transfer of command to take place quite naturally and usually it strengthens the operations structure, but again this is in a Fire/EMS organization that has practiced this for decades. Rather losing continuity and consistency we foster it through structured transfers that have been developed and trained on. These do happen less frequently than one might think as most operations are left with the initial IC being a Lt. or A/C in our case. Very often our chiefs or COD will arrive and watch, take a look around, and hang out with the initial IC and never take command (though fully assuming responsibility) or will wait for the initial IC to ask to pass it. This allows them to have better picture than just rolling in and taking the reins. It also gives the junior officer some experience running a larger than day to day incident without fear of screwing up royally. Again, I don't see the need for a true Unified Command nor do I think realistically saying it will make it happen. Just because it's a bomb threat and LE is in charge doesn't mean we give up our operation controls and after detonation a fire IC would not ignore LE needs. My point is not that one person/agency/jurisdiction is responsible as no matter what we'll all be co-defendants, but in fact one person will have the final say about the plan. During a bomb threat PD will not have us in the UCP voting on a plan to find the device, as we will not be holding votes on rescue plans after a detonation. If a bomb detonates, everyone will first work together to ensure the safety of any and all victims and put everything else aside. This is not different than how most MVA's need to be handled, as well all work to ensure viable patients are transported before worrying about investigations or cleaning up spilled fluids. Obviously with any incident the more assets we have the more things that can be done simultaneously, as we often can do most everything at once. Without a doubt proactive training, working on MOU's, figuring out your neighbors capabilities and constraints has to happen now, before the next big one. You guys certainly have much more potential for multi-agency, multi-jurisdiction incidents than we have up here. Our limited resources force us to share operation responsibilities to the highest priority, meaning at a bomb threat fire might provide traffic control and scene security and heaven forbid a detonation occurs, PD will be involved in rescue and EMS as we all agree it about savable lives first and foremost, everything else runs a distant second.

Chris- I agree that Unified Command is a useful concept. My point and agreement was with ALS's note that when you have multiple jurisdictions of the same discipline, it should be a typical ICS structure and Unified Command is not necessary and without the training and exercise you speak of, will slow actual operations. Our municipality works the unified approach frequently with large planned events, significant MVA's, shootings, etc. I don't think your assessment of what needs to happen and my thought on what we'd call the oganizational structure is much different. But in classes and event planning everyone plays nice and says they can function in a UC organization. My experience is that in a real incident PD will not want fire or EMS weighing in on decisions about law enforcement assets or operations, nor would most Chief's want to. Similarly, most fire chief's will not give up their resources to PD if it's outside their scope of operations. What we end up with is two branches or divisions under operations one fire/EMS and one LE, allowing each discipline to operate independantly of each other under OPS, though my feeling again is that early on one of the two disciplines will circumvent the Ops Officer depending on his/her affiliation to Fire/EMS/LE. This is more human nature, we trust our own. I would state I agree without a doubt that with more integration of operations and training this will get better and already has. This is why I say, having studied many incidents of significance, most of the time true Unified Command takes many operation periods to come into fruition as it takes time for everyone to realize they need to put many of these inter-discipline hang-ups aside for the greater good. Of course the other thing that has happened in that same time frame is the exciting nature of the incident has subsided. Victims are rescued, incident stabilazation has occurred and we are more likely to give up control of our resources for ongoing operations than initial ops. Again, I attribute this to human nature and the types of people involved in Fire/EMS and Law Enforcement, as most are far from meek and willing. I think some of us, many I hope, do ICS well. Contrary to the West Coast's assertion that ICS started with FIRESCOPE on the Left Coast, I'd say that since the early days of Currier and Ives pictures we have document proof of ICS. The guy in hte pics with the "megaphone" to his lips was the IC. Police agencies have not called their organization structures ICS, but in essence they always have been. First officer was in charge until a more senior one came or the Chief, even in Mayberry with Barney Fife and Andy. EMS is still learning that ICS is a useful tool, but given the nature of 90% of runs being handled by crews of two, this is a slower process to adapt. Back to the original post, the scenario begs for someone to take charge, make decisions and assign incoming units. Waiting to develop a command structure may cost lives, realistic command doesn't mean the first in junior assigns all the M/A units. But this is where having worked out the details of this stuff before the incident will pay off. If two FD's go the same call and cannot work under the others structure or figure out who's in charge in seconds, there's a problem. No amount of ICS or NIMS training and mandates will fix the fact that to command structures don't trust each other. Only working, training and talking to each other will cure this. Cogs is right on about being proactive, but man where does the time go?

Amen!! Though I frequently instruct ICS/NIMS programs, I must note that I truly believe Unified Command is a tool that cannot start/should not be attempted in the first 20-60 minutes. In reality the types of UC structures preached in NIMS will not begin to really take shape until the second or third operational period, except in those wildland papplications that use it as often as we use basic ICS. As you noted this applies to same resource types, meeting with and co-locating PD-EMS-Fire decision makers does need to happen early on, though rarely does this make a true Unified Command structure. In the end, some one will be accountable, which is not "unified" (but possibly vilified ). Someone is the final ruler, the last stop, the true IC. This person may change in name period to period, but ultimately it will likely the person with the most dogs in the fight at that time. Bomb threats are a perfect example: perfect scenario for a Unified Command, but one that easily starts with Law Enforcement in the lead role, and can quickly change to Fire in the lead if there's an actual detonation, then swing back to PD when the scene is "safe" again. Whoever is not "in charge" is in a supporting role until their expetise is needed most then the roles reverse.

This is along the lines we went, though no B foam preconnected deploy options. Years of speccing engines with B systems then rarely (I mean really rare) using them seemed to be a waste of money. Coupled with the fact that when you "really need it" we rarely carried enough (40 gals 3X3 AR-AFFF) it was determined a regional foam trailer would be a better set up for all local FD's. We too have the double donuts on our newest rescue pumper, which is why I wondered if that was what you were using. Our guys love this set up. Much easier to re-rack, and it deploys very easy. We run two 200 footers of the bumper from a gated wye. The FFer grabs the nozzle and puts his arm through three loops and walks away. All the hose is out of the tray in 25 ft and drags easily dumping each loop when it tightens, so you end up with any extra hose at the door/objective. Given the two side by side we can connect them and run it as a single 400 ft (read high FL!) or really any length 50 to 400 ft. All our 1.75" in house is no rolled double style to re-rack and turns out it's better carried this way anyhow when extending lines as both ends are in your hand. Here's a pic of our drivers side roll, same thing on the officer's side. Looks like about the same thing as NRFD's.

It's hard to argue against pulling a back up line. In our case we do, but only after we're certain the first line is properly placed in operation. All hands (Engine guys) are committed to ensuring first water before another line is pulled.