firemoose827

In no way do I wish to insult you sir, but I believe that is the attitude Seth was talking about in his post, instead of taking responsibility for your own actions you point fingers at others and do nothing but sling baseless negative comments at each other which solves nothing. Seth said it right. I have always felt that I do not use my skills enough to be truly efficient at everything, which is why if you look in my certificates you will see numerous duplicates. I refresh training every chance I get, especially if it is something I dont use often enough. Training at my firehouse is non-existant right now, but thats because our firehouse has turned into a shelter relief effort to collect enough food, clothing and household items for those that were affected by the Hurricane and flooding in my county. My chief has been consumed with that for months now and our drill nights are just not what they should be. So I go looking for training elsewhere, at other stations. Instead of pointing fingers at my fellow officers, I take accountability for myself and get the training I need other places. For years now I have felt that Firefighter I & II should be just like EMT certifications where you need to recert every 3-5 years. But every time I talk about it I get laughed at and told that idea is rediculous (most of the time by career firefighters whom I thought would never discard that idea) and even have people get angry with me. Its mostly lazy firefighters who do not want to train any more than they have to let alone have to do it every 3-5 years, who I feel shouldnt be firefighters any way. I agree, people need to be less defensive when mistakes are pointed out and more proactive in finding solutions, and learn from the mistake instead of make excuses for it or try to sweep it under the carpet.

I am a former EMT-CC, its basically a Paramedic that cant do crycothyrotomy's (spellings bad I know) or administer Oxytocin in OB/GYN emergencies, and we needed more med-control permission than medics where they have more standing orders. But we could shock manually, start IV's, intubate, administer certain drugs. You need to be 18, and be a Basic EMT. Hope that helps more.

I had a playful argument with an older ex-chief at drill the other night. We discussed the smooth bore he found on the hose bed on our engine during a recent fire we had. He started to bash the nozzle and say that any good firefighter knows that a fog nozzle is the best kind to use. Intrigued by his remarks I asked him why he felt that way. He explained that the smooth bore nozzles knock everything in the room around and mess up the evidence of the investigation later on. I proceeded to tell him that the untrained firefighter with a fog nozzle could very well do that also, and that the fog nozzles disrupt the thermal layer and if your not carefull and do not coordinate with the vent team you could steam yourself and the crew and become human lobsters. The argument went back and forth, and ended at the end of the night with a playful smack on the back of my head and me being called "A stubborn @$#%^" So, at risk of being yelled at and accused of starting a thread that has already been talked about, I searched in the database and found this one started back in 2006, and thought i could please interest all of you in sharing additional, up-to-date information about the two types of nozzles and what your preference and personal experiences are with them. This way I can arm myself with more info for "round two" next Monday night! I figured that since this post has been retired, there have got to be atleast 100 newer members that have not participated in this discussion and thought it would be beneficial to everyone, creating another positive learning evironment for the younger members. So, without further adieu....Let the games begin. PS-keep it civil and clean, offer info both positive and negative but keep it professional, and remember there are members out there who want to know this stuff but are afraid to ask. Thanks and Stay Safe.

LOL...Im pleading the fifth amendment and keeping my team a secret for now

Or how about just being happy with the fact that your hockey teams are better than ours??? Thats why making a membership appreciation care package would work out OK, give us gift cards or EMTBravo shirts. The gift cards nowadays can be used online which is good for those of you with better hockey teams and better bacon... Stay Safe. Moose

All my best to you Captain, get well soon and feel better.

Im sorry, I didnt mean to make it look like I was insulting your post and I hope you didnt take it that way cap. Being a former moderator I have seen other attempts at raising the necessary funds to run the site so Seth didnt have to out of his pocket, and they all ended with grief basically. Most of the members do not realize what they have in this site and they could care less, they just like to snoop around and read other posts and only get involved when its real hairy, and when you mention money...they jump up in protest and start the idle threats to the staff of leaving EMTBravo and going to other sites if they have to pay. Thats my only reason for saying what I did. I like the idea but I see two things; the costs of printing the cards and mailing them to members, and whether or not you could get the backing from businesses to make it work. Maybe use your idea for an incentive type deal instead, make an annual membership fee of $1-2 with options of making donations as well, and the biggest donation gets the member package of like a round of golf and some gift cards to LEO, EMS and fire stores or something to say "thank you" for the extra donation. I agre though, something needs to happen to help Seth pay for the expenses of the site, its too much for just him and the few die hard donators that still give regularly. I unfortunately have not been able to give any in a long time but my family comes first. Hopefully I will be in a better spot soon and I can shovel $20 or more towards the cause. Stay Safe Moose

Price Chopper has the same deal with gas incentives. You use your PC card and for every $50 in groceries you get $.10 off a gas purchase at any Sunoco dealer. Most people spend $100-200 each time to the grocery store, giving you $.40 off per gallon, build that up for a month and I have seen some people get gas for free. I say that the membership card, although meaning well, will not work too much. EMTBravo has a hard time getting people to donate $1 or 2 as it is for the great site we use everyday, I think he would get nothing but grief if he tried that. You could do like another site I belong to and just charge $2-3 a year for annual dues; if you dont pay you dont get in to the site. If we have 3000 members, at $2 a person, thats $6,000. That covers operating costs and leaves some for the ability to make shirts and other promotional material to give out as incentive for membership awards.

My thoughts and prayers are with you NFD2004, may she rest in peace. Reach out if you need to talk.

I was tasked with assisting a retired chief of our department look into and get quotes for a Multi-Gas meter for our small department. With the threat of Chemical Suicides hitting close to home, and the increase in CO calls all over the county, we decided its time to research the different units and purchase one that will work for us. Being a Haz-Mat Tech and a member of the county response team, we used the Multi-Rae Detectors but the ex-chief found out that there are issues with them? I have never had an issue with the one for our county team but will respect the wishes of our department and go with what they want as a body. So, if anyone could offer input on the meters you use in your departments, pro's, con's, and stay away froms that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! Moose

Thank you Cap, I saw the differences in calibration intervals but I went to the web sites for each monitor and printed info from the site. I basically asked for what type of monitors worked for everyone and for each to give pros and cons. Thanks everyone

Thanks for all the tips so far everyone. The main reason we need a meter is the CO calls we are getting lately in our area. The only decent meter is the one the Fire Coordinator has so he has to respond to all CO calls. The second reason is the natural gas pipeline running through our district that covers the whole northeast. We have a transfer/pump station in our town also where we had a tour and a little informational lecture from some of the engineers there, and they told us that they sometimes pump other gasses through the line also. They said they dont know what is going through at any time some times and that concerned us. Anyone hear of the Blenheim Pipeline explosion in the 1980's from my county? The same kind of pipeline but from a different company. Thirdly is the fact that we had 3 chemicaly assisted suicides in the surrounding area in the past few months. Thats scary enough. We just want a handheld 4 gas meter, and our budget will probably be up to $900, maybe more depending on a few fundraisers we have planned. We are also looking to get a thermal imager too hopefully since we still dont have one of those either, but thats another whole battle we need to fight with the commisoners and then the public at the referendum. Thanks again for the info, Im passing it on to the next meeting. Anyone else have any more?

I am colorblind, and I have been an EMT for 16 years on and off, even an EMT-CC for 3 years. When I check for skin tone I hold my hand up to the patients face, if they are lighter than they are pale, Etc. I made it through the practicals with no problems and when I am in the field it helps to have your entire squad know you are colorblind so they can help you in tight situations. Like once at the ER I was assisting in the trauma room with a bad trauma call and the documenting nurse asked outloud for me to tell her what the skin temp and color were, another friend of mine immediately jumped in and answered for me. So tell him not to be shy when it comes to telling the squad about the colorblindness. I do not have trouble seeing shades, I can tell if something is darker or lighter than something else so I use that. My main area of colorblindness is blue/brown, so anything in that spectrum I have trouble with. Sometimes as a firefighter too I have issues like reading the color of smoke and flames, but I have help from my brothers/sisters there too and have never had any problems as a result. You or your son can contact me at any time to talk more if you wish, just send me a PM and we can chat.

I should have clarified another issue from our area, we do both "stand -by's" and "stand-in's" depending on what the IC or the assisting fire coordinator requests. If they can cover a large enough area from their station then they stand by, if the area is spread out to a large area with multiple districts than they stand in someones station as a central location to respond to calls. I like the idea of sending only so many chiefs, we cant keep ours from responding to every call. I asked once to have only one respond and almost got kicked out. Something about needing more than one officer to run a chain of command and most times the IC welcomes a couple of chiefs from mutual aid depts to help out with the IC positions. I still think its because they want to see whats going on. (half of them dont even remember what positions there are in the IC system or what their roles are, they just think the shiny reflective vests are cool and running with reds and sirens is fun) :angry: In a perfect world I would like to see our area adopt something similar to the above mentioned SOP of only sending what they call for and only one chief officer accompanying that unit to the call. With our department its hard though only having an engine, engine/tanker, brush truck, and a rescue. If our MA dept calls for a tanker and manpower its usually our engine/tanker with 2 and our rescue with 6 (4 packed and 2 up front). Leaving us with an engine and a brush unit and a handfull of interior qualified people, so we call for our MA dept to "Stand By" their station to assist if anything else happens. It differs from area to area and dept to dept, there are still a lot of variables that need to be known ahead of time before one can say anything about anothers MA policies.

Simple answer to that is most employers allow firefighters to respond to calls from work but they have to be actuall fires. They wont let me go for every smell of gas, CO detector, cat in the tree type calls that can be handled by a crew of 3-4 trained personnel. They require it to be a fire or major accident, haz-mat response, that can be backed up with a letter from the chief. So if there is a house fire most people are then allowed to leave work and respond. So contrary to what most people think, its not just a bunch of vollies that refuse to respond to smaller calls and only wait for the big ones ( Although there are those types of members and they do this routinely enough that it makes me sick) Most people around me respond from work regardless, which eventually gets them in trouble with work. There are jobs like the Highway Departments that are REQUIRED to allow their firefighter employees to respond to all calls. Is this legitimate? No. I am one of the volunteers that believe in having a prompt response to all calls for help with the properly trained crew. Around me, day time fires are a BIG problem, especially when you have manpower responding from their jobs BUT they are 10-15 minutes away. Most of the time we roll with our engine/tanker with a crew of 2, the driver and a firefighter. Our mutual aid is simple, when we respond to a neighboring district with a tanker and manpower we have our other neighbor move into our house with an engine and crew. Nine times out of ten they also have additional manpower at their station with other engines to respond as well. If the mutual aid escalates then we move more engines with crews around to cover all affected stations which isnt that hard for us.

And whatever we cant use here in Schoharie we will ship to Broome County who was also hit hard with flooding. So anything you can donate will be used. Thanks Again. Moose

Thank you PVAC, especially Kelli and Madison for putting this together. The Schoharie valley floods have been devastating, taking out entire communities. We have 100's of people still in shelters in schools that are just opening this week. We started to raise money, food and clothing in my department located in schoharie but found out that what they needed most are the things on the list. The local Elks clubs and Eagles have all been trying to get donations of these things but there is not enough for everyone, and these things are needed to clean up the mess of the aftermath. To make things worse we had atleast 3 if not 4 inches of rain less than a week later and we flooded out again and all of those people had to be evacuated again, including the CP located at the county fair grounds. It was a mess. I am sure that whatever you guys get for us we will all appreciate it immensely. I have not been displaced myself but have brothers who have lost their homes, yet they still respond to calls and pump outs as if everything is ok, they worked tirelessly for days and days with none to very little sleep, only to go to what used to be their house and begin the cleanup for themselves. Its very heartbreaking to say the least, and I feel that no matter what we do as a department for our brothers and sisters its never enough. You guys have already helped in more ways than you know; everyone that responded for coverage in our county so that those that lost houses themsleves could take care of their own families, those that have made donations and those of you that are running these donation drives, have all helped us out in so many ways. Thanks to all of you, I can not say it enough and I hope I speak for those in my county as well. Kelli, let me know what I can do to help out, and thank you again. Brian Captain, Carlisle FD Schoharie County NY

LMAO...Thats a fully involved confectionary fire. Happy Birthday to you X129K, I hope you have a great day.

Im posted at the State EMO Bunker tonight, running the desk for my job, doing the midnight shift. Impressive operation they have set up here. I will be back with the volunteer dept tomorrow. Chris, I had no idea you were up here, you should have popped in and said hello! lol

Being from there I can tell you this; We have been going 24/7 since the storm hit. Three communities have been decimated by the floods, 2 have lost their fire stations and some equipment. The rest of us have been heading up relief efforts to supply food and clothing and cleaning supplies to the affected. Numerous homes wiped out. Schoharie (Village) itself has become a haz-mat site with unknown quantities of fuel oil and god knows what else soaked into the soils and buildings from the flooding. We had another 3 inches of rain yesterday and had a mandatory evacuation of Middleburgh and Schoharie and I think Livingstonville as well. Whatever help you all can offer will be appreciated, as helicopter already pointed out, you may very well not respond to anything while you are here, but just being here, relieving the crews from local departments who may have lost their homes as well is more help than you can imagine. Thanks to all that respond here, from all of my brothers/sisters here in Schoharie County, we appreciate it all. If you are anywhere near my station stop by and say hello, we will feed you too!! Thanks again. Stay Safe. Moose

Nice truck chief! I wish you guys all the best with it, may it serve you well.

Could that be credited to a magnesium engine block? Looked like the typical white sparks from a magnesium fire. That brother hung in there, i give him credit, although it was probably a bleach wash that night!! I would have dumped some cookies for sure!

Thanks for that detailed info Atv300, I was looking for responses like that and I appreciate your participation. But...Where is everyone else? Are nozzles too trivial a thing for most of you to talk about? Is the topic beneath you? I was hoping for a great discussion with personal experiences and even drill experiences like Atv300 brought up to generate educational lessons for the younger members who may be reading this but too shy to respond. Lets get some more input please?!?!?! I plan on having a drill next monday night and go through advancing hose lines, handling them, picking the right size and type of nozzle and their patterns, than finish it off with a roundtable discussion and have each member bring up something they know about them. See how it works and I will let you all know.

Could you PM me where the damages are please? I am a State Fire Inspector and I cover that county, just want to know if its any of my places, thanks!

This was a Pro that was given to me by the ex-chief in my department. I thought I would be fair in using it to start discussion in this thread. I agree, using fog will not protect you inside when the temps are high, it will just generate more steam that will envelop you and your team and cook you like lobsters. The reason most interior teams face high temps is because they are using fog streams and disrupting the thermal layer, pushing it everywhere and feeling the heat. I am a big proponent of crawling in under the thermal layer to find the seat of the fire and putting water directly on it. The bigger the droplets the more heat is absorbed and the more fire you put out. I held back on some of the comments given to me by this ex-chief to see what others would say first. Here is one. He responded to a structure fire we had a month ago and it was a day time call, so we had no manpower initially. So it was him and another firefighter. They strecthed 2 lines off the rear of our engine, one was a 1.75" with a fog (that the other guy got) and the other was an 1.75" with a smooth bore. He complained that he couldnt handle the line because it was a smooth bore and it was lifting him off the ground. What he failed to realise...the pump operator was giving the PSI needed to run the fog nozzle, 100PSI, and the smooth bore, only requiring 60PSI got the 100 instead. But, if you operate the SB at the pressure needed its easier to maneuver and handle with one person, and you get the droplets needed to absorb the heat faster and not steam yourself. Good discussion so far, keep it up everyone. Hey X129 where is all the experienced engine men you were referring too? Lets discuss and share!