NJMedic

Never heard of Elizabeth Township, NJ. There is the City of Elizabeth in Union County but that minipumper is not from there. I suspect it might be in PA.

In 1987 I took a several classes at George Washington University and one of the first topics that was discussed was the system failures with DC Fire/EMS. Speaking to those same people over the years and nothing much has changed in DC. The stories are numerous and well documented so you can imagine what doesn't make the paper. Given those circumstances and problems are going to be well covered by the media. Most medical directors finally give up after a while and pull the rip cord. Most of their CODs last a few years and then move on so any long term improvements stop dead in the water or run out of money.

In this day and age its hard enough just keeping the chiefs much less the aid/driver/IMT! :angry:

If that was the case we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Another useless feel good law that will never be enforced. Go over to any county facility and watch how long the diesels idle in the morning now that its cold out.

Greetings from the Garden State..... Evidence and research has shown that the concept of the Golden Hour has no medical signifiance. Evidence and research has also shown the MOI alone should not be sole decision maker in determinimg if a patient needs to go by helicopter or to a trauma center. Here in NJ the decision to call or cancel a helicopter rests with the highest medical authority on the scene. Remember we are treating the patient, not the car. I don't care how bad the car looks, I've seen patients walk away with no injuries from totaled cars and fatal injuries on cars that could be repaired in a week at a local body shop. I've seen fire chiefs and BLS personnel give me grief for cancelling helicopters because it was not medically needed. I'll be damned if 4 people are going to risk their lives transporting a patient in their helicopter when the need wasn't there. I've been to jobs were "someone" called for a helicopter when they could actually see the Level 1 trauma center from where the were. I've seen agencies call from medevac when the call came in too close to quitting time. I don't get excited about called a helicopter. Our policy is that medevac will only be used if ground transport will take longer then 30 minutes. On countless occasions I have seen patients arrive at our trauma center by ambulance before another patient from the same accident was transported by helicopter. From my location in New Brunswick I have 19 helicopters within a 30 minute flight time. At least in NJ one single agency determines if any helicopter can fly. There is no shopping for a medevac program that will take a flight when the weather minimums would ground any other program. The concept of flying patients "just to be safe" is killing pilots and flight crews every year. Too many times I've seen patients discharged from the ED after being flown in by helicopter. The NTSB this week issued its annual list of "Most Wanted Safety Improvements," and topping the list for aviation: Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Flights, making the list for the first time. In the last 11 months, there have been nine EMS accidents, resulting in 35 fatalities. The economic losses from these crashes are around $100 million, assuming a statistical value of $3 million for each life lost, some $500,000 for each injury, and about $5 million for replacing each helicopter. If anything, the costs are on the low side and could be substantially higher. The costs are certainly greater than any safety improvements, and the toll over the last 12 months is the worst in the history of such operations. If scheduled airliners were crashing at this rate, more than one per month, there would be an enormous and anguished public outcry about the crisis in air safety. In 2006 the NTSB issued a Special Investigation Report in which 55 emergency medical service (EMS) accidents were reviewed for common causations. As a result of the NTSB’s review, four recommendations were issued to the FAA. Among these recommendation was that flight programs conduct flight risk evaluations to determine if the EMS flight is worth the risk. I doubt the lack of assessment skills or that MOI is going to pass muster when the risk benefit ratio is determined.

Some decent NYC*EMS photos can be seen at http://stevespak.com/spak/ems.html

Cadillac/Superior, I'm guessing 1968 to 1970 in vintage. The bullet lights were a Superior trademark. If it wasn't for the sign over the rear door it could be one of the ambulances that my first volunteer ambulance corp use to run back up until 1982. NYC EMS never ran anything like this.

I'm not a tree hugger but which is worse.....dumping snow into the water or flushing melted snow into the sewer system then into the river but using 64 gallons of fuel every hour to melt the aforementioned snow?????

As odd as it might sound I always wanted to go out to California during these major operations and watch their management teams work these incidents. We rarely have responses any where near as big or as complex as the fires during the Santa Anna season.

I took these photos while attending a Roco Rope Resuce class back around 1990. From what I've heard the Engine served with Yonkers. Upon further exam I see that the second photo posted by TR54 is mine, just backwards. The first photo above of Ladder 7 is from Thomas Wanstall's (RIP) and George Hall's (RIP) book "Fire! At War with the Red Devil", published in 1989.

You can add Somerville, NJ; Irvington, NJ; (which actually bought Somerville's old Seagrave), Morristown, NJ; Trenton, NJ; Hamilton Twp, NJ; Atlantic City, NJ; Ventnor Cuty, NJ; and Camden, NJ to the list of departments that run TDAs or tiller ladders.

I have my admiration for the MSP and grieve for thier loses today and while it is too early to say what the cause of this loss it the aeromedical industry has not had the best safety record over the last several years. The idea that one agency will fly while the other doesn't bacause of higher minimum flight rules has been a factor is several crashes.

Sorry to rain on your parade but the basic training is just that, basic. Just because career and volunteer have the same baseline training does not make everyone equal. If you needed brain surgery would you go to the doctor that does one brain operation a month or one that does one a week. Would you say a firefighter in a slow suburban station who gets one job every couple of months is as good a firefighter as one that gets a workers every couiple of days. I left one fire company because the membership would not pass minimum training standards for officers. I know plenty of companies that have to drag guys to do training.

Not unusual for EMS and fire agencies to have policies on when things get too bad to respond. Ambulances are particularly nasty to drive when winds get in the area of 60-70mph. I was driving a Hackney heavy rescue style vehicle when it got hit with a 45-50mph cross wind on a bridge. Not a feeling I want to have again. Houston apparently pulled back from attacking a fire this morning by to Hurricane Ike. Unsure if it was flloding, high winds, or a combination of both.

Sitting in the driver's seat of my medic unit at the intersection of Somerset Street and Easton Avenue in New Brunswick waiting for my partner for my partner to come out with his breakfast. I turned on WCBS News just to listen to something and knew immediately something wasn't right. Tapped the siren and waved to him to get in. He said "I didn't here them call us, do we have a job?". I said "maybe." Went to our headquarters and watched TV for about 10 minutes. I remember our Operations Coordinator walking in an saying "There must be a big brush fire somewhere near Woodbridge, there's alot of smoke in that direction". Stayed in New Brunswick for about a hour and was sent with the County EMS Coordinator to Newark and then to Hoboken and Jersey City. Spent most of the day doing triage and decon on the NJ side. Made a couple of trips on a USCG boat over to the North Cove Marina to drop off supplies and pick up anyone left. Went home around 4 in the AM. We had NJ units in Manhattan for the next 14 days.

Job security

The news is reporting that the death in Waldwick was attributted to a congential defect. No other information on the Cliffside Park death. From the picture in the news the Waldwick boy was not fat. My kid plays in Pop Warner and the coaches provide water breaks every 15 minutes and do not run the kids into the ground. They have a SAED on the practice field. It hasn't been very hot over the latest two weeks but who knows.

Built with the crane. I was in Phoenix just after they received it.

It carries the bomb robot and the monitor. I "think" it also carries an x-ray machine. The Emergency Medical Squad's ambulance is in the background.

Any chance this is what you saw?

Marine Company 1 has a pretty good website that details how the marine companies operate. http://marine1fdny.com/

I guess they plantiff's lawyer had time to waste. God knows what the family is trying to get out of this. My initial thought that the lady was confused and wasn't paying attention but I've seen this before. Fifth car in line cannot imagine why traffic is stopped and starts to pass only to get t-bone by an emergency vehicle. Clueless people

Flight 800 went down in the Atlantic.

Back in the late 80's, early 90's we used to get Orange County, California loud and clear on 33.820 here in Middlesex County, NJ. They came in so clear at times they would cut out the local units. At times you could hear their dispatchers having to repeat themselves because "units in NJ cut you out"