Monty

With regards to picking and choosing, I speak from my fire experience. I used to be with a Dept that responded to the station for all calls. It was proposed at one time that we just be alerted to an emergency call and have to get to the fire house to find out what it was. The BS A/A at 2am was getting maybe 3 people, the reported structure would get 50 people (not really but you get the point). Of course, it was never tried and the problem pretty much continued unabated. In the UK, they used to operate exactly this way - and I believe still do, in that they carry beepers and not pagers.

Surpised I didn't see this elsewhere on here. sounds like a good ending to what could have been a real bad one.

Kudos to roofsopen - I did a quick search in the forum but missed this thread (must be all the activity on the staffing issues - or maybe the last partying of 2007) Thanks for the detailed info on what went down. Great job by all involved.

A couple of things come to mind. It seems in WC that there are a lot of 'companies' that pretty much act independently of other companies in that department. I don't know the Dept in question here, but maybe the Fire Company had a driver and was not affiliated with the EMS side. Maybe the responder for the second call started to head for the first call but took a long time to get there, or was in the shower or something. From what I know it seems OVAC works well, my other experience of a good ems system is Town Of Colonie EMS. They work pretty well with the FD's and are a mixture of paid and un-paid paramedics, EMT's and drivers. I'm not sure where I'm going with this - but I guess its that change happens slowly, and that people (politicians / taxpayers) need to be educated and made to care.

I think this is a very true, and key point that should be addressed first - maybe through the mutual aid plan ie that you only get & give MA if you have the qualified trained firefighters available. As mentioned elsewhere, my prior department was part of a town mutual aid plan that was quite rigid in stating that all members had to be FF1 / Basic firefighter / Essentials, hazmat ops trained within a year and at least the annual OSHA and hazmat training as ongoing training. I'd say the IC. It's his/her job to manage life safety, incident stabilization, property conservation. If he doesn't have the required resources available, then s/he can ask for more, through the County, State, Feds if need be. Now realistically, if it becomes a regular event that MA can't be provided, then I'm sure the IC will know and not bother asking (isn't that happening elsewhere with both career and volunteer departments), or ask for additional aid at the same time.

I wasn't saying they had to be NYS certified firefighters, but they need to be NYS firefighters with that minimum training (which is what members of all departments in the town need to have within 1 year). As usual, good points here. In this particular case, there is a Town of Colonie EMS department which is a mix of paid and unpaid staff. Some of those staff are FF's, a lot aren't. There have been people that have thought that the EMS Director wants to provide the town Fire Protection - but that hasn't happened yet. Likewise, there are building inspectors that don't want to be firefighters - I guess they are civil / professional engineers. So, by this logic perhaps we should do away with all volunteers? Or make all volunteers undertake the same 229 and annual training as career firefighters. In the case I'm talking about the work needs to get done, so why not have someone that can also provide emergency service. Again, this isn't any different from those few people left working in town in an office, or the local garage or where-ever that respond during the day. Actually, I believe that many airports (Westchester?) have people running multiple spots as the needs arise, ramp ops, ticket counter, baggage handler, oh and yes fire protection. Maybe we as a society are tending away from big government, wanting lower taxes and as a society (however that is represented) deciding to fight for ourselves. Perhaps we should contract with Wackenhut or Boeing to provide fire protection. Isn't that what's happening out West with fire protection being provided through insurance companies - how much do you want to pay for a government run shared resource instead of paying for your own service? Stretching it some, but why doesn't the government pay for car insurance / coverage through registration fees instead of (forcing) private insurance. Actually this sounds like the whole health insurance debate. Incidentally, again the department I was talking about, the staff there actually get paid more than many of the starting salaries for firefighters in Westchester - although again to be fair, they don't get the overtime, government pension or guaranteed salary increases that you do as a civil servant. I think there are many here that would agree in general that Westchester could provide a better service by providing a consolidate county Fire Department (whether combination, career or paid on call) - but unfortunately we all know that isn't happening anytime soon. Like it or not, I don't see this situation changing anytime soon. I don't see any legislation getting passed anytime soon to change it (imagine the stink FASNY would create!). There's decent demand - probably a lot of turnover while people wait to get on the job in the civil service as a firefighter. And whether through ignorance or not - the taxpayers are happy with the status quo (you've seen cases of taxpayers rejecting new firehouses - I don't think there are too many that are going to speak up for increased taxes). Looking on the web I tried to find some info on the cost of a career department vs. volunteer, it's tough to find hard figures but there are a couple of articles. http://www2.gazette.com/display.php?id=1326764 talks about Falcon fire Protection District in Colorado which serves approx 23,000 residents over a 133 square mile area. Which on the face of it seems like a pretty good deal. Also an older article: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-1...efighters_x.htm Which lead me to this USA Today comments: which I think sums it up pretty well (although I don't know if you necessarily need to start with 24/7):

I admit, it's a bit tongue in cheek comparing the two. Although I would certainly say some fire departments have a pretty stringent physical and sometimes even training requirements. However, I make the point that I volunteer as I choose to serve to help others. I don't volunteer because I don't want to get paid. In fact I'd rather be paid on call. My brother in England is retained, he gets paid for calls (I think it's about $20) and gets paid for training. Looking at dictionary.com, they have the definition below. The first definition seems a bit circular, but is above not getting paid. Personally, I like 9 & 11 best.

I was catching up on some reading, and I think it was Fire Rescue from September 2007 that had an article I started reading on firefighter deaths. Hopefully, everyone in the fire service is aware that there are about 50 or so deaths annually from heart related incidents. This article was talking about the effects of CO and Carboxyhaemoglobin (COHB). I'm not a medical guy, but it seemed to make sense to me that fire fighters get exposed to more CO than most people, and may be a factor to the number of MI's that we see in the service. Made me wonder what my COHB level is - does anyone have that as part of their annual physical? Personally, I've been more aware of the dangers during overhaul and am more inclined to use my SCBA during overhaul than 10 years ago. However, we've never talked about this at the dept level. Has anyone used a meter in an overhaul situation? Anyone have formal policies about SCBA during overhaul? I'd be curious to know what others think of this topic. In doing a quick google search, I found a couple of links on CO levels, and ironically, someone just started a thread on firehouse.com about CO levels during overhaul (not much response to that yet though) http://www.coheadquarters.com/ZerotoMillion1.htm Pleasant Valley

Or shut the department down, or merge with another department, or contract out to an another department, or go without fire protection. Not sure that can be done in NY but I'm pretty sure it can in other parts of the country. As for hiring fire-fighters, what if there's a call every other day, say. Do you have the firefighter cutting grass? Oops - been there before. What's the taxpayer going to say when they hear they're paying someone 40 hours to go to 5 automatic alarms? Sure, once, twice maybe more you get a worker but that's not my house (probably). Different story if you're in a half busy area, or do EMS - oops we've been there before. Yeah, a true career firefighter gets better benefits, but they also generally face a higher risk of injury (I know there are busy volunteer and slow career but in general I'll argue that a career dept is busier). For these guys in question, they could be as easily working for Walmart, local Tax Accountant etc and still respond when called. It's the whole risk / reward equation and what are you willing to pay for. If you don't already have it, in the current climate it's going to be very difficult to get it now - especially if it costs more money. About the only thing I could see to sell this is if you could say that going career would improve ISO, reduce insurance rates and those savings would offset tax increases then you might get most people to buy in to it.

The interesting thing is that with the new $200 NYS Tax Credit for volunteer fire fighters / EMTs - do you take the tax credit, or the tax property reduction (if you can)? Either way - it still aint much.

Mmmm, aren't our armed forces volunteer? According to the President they are. See this White house Proclamation. Mind you, I disagree about The UK stopped the draft in 1960. I guess it depends on what the meaning of comparable is

My former department upstate started this almost 10 years ago. It was a combination of reasons that led the department to do this. Mainly the decrease in volunteering. Whereas you used to have people spending their time to clean the place, fix the trucks, do the books etc these days there are many more requirements than there used to be and on top of that people have less time to volunteer. So, the membership approved a proposal by the Board of Directors to hire a janitor, mechanic and administrator. This for a department that runs about 700-800 calls a year or so. The department has had the same administrator since the program has begun but been through several mechanics and janitors. All the employees need to be NYS firefighters and because of Mutual Aid agreements, all need to be at least FF1 and Hazmat Ops. As you can see from the call volume, they can go several days working from 7-4 without any calls, in which time they spend doing their job (ie entering financial details, membership reports, newsletters, filing reports, Preventive Maintenance etc). In fact, if for whatever reason there are enough members around to fill a crew, then the employees will remain behind, continuing with their paid work. This was reviewed by the lawyers before any vacanices were posted and determined to be lawful, and covered under vfbl. I don't know what would be involved to become a true career/combination fire department, but I imagine a lot more, possibly voter referendum, increased taxes, collective bargaining etc. So, given that these employees are primarily something other than firefighters, who are encouraged to respond during their work day this situation works very well in this case. Things get done around the firehouse, there's additional manpower for a time that is tough to fill, there is very little difference to the tax payers of the district. Incidentally, in this case, I know there was no mention of '100% volunteer' or concern over pride or egos related to being 'volunteer'. As to a couple of the questions, it certainly helps increase the departments response, and doesn't prevent members from responding (from what I've seen, I'd go as far to say that all the reponders up there are more qualfied than most down here). Actually, the department has gone to providing a stipend to increase reponse levels. I'm not sure the exact details but I belive it was up to $600 depending on the percentage of calls you make in the year - however this has failed to improve response levels significantly and they are considering stopping this practice. Again this was reviewed by counsel. Lastly, the department joined the local Chamber of Commerce, and as such as been able to give the employees (and maybe even the members that want them) pretty decent medical and dental benefits. Not sure what they have in the way of retirement opportunities though. Hope this gives some useful information on this topic. Monty.

Not too pertinent to the original topic, but my understanding is that volunteers are covered as soon as they start responding to a call. This appears to be backed up by: which comes from AssemblymanDavid Koon's flyer on vfbl. Seth, I definitely think you need a lawyer that specializes in this kind of thing. I'd suggest contacting IAFF, or maybe NYS Chiefs Association for any recommendations they have on lawyers well versed in Fire Service Law. Monty.

Heard about this on the firehouse.com Through the Smoke podcast. The Emergency Responder Reply System. Seems to be a pretty neat idea - thought up by one of our own, relatively cheap too, my understanding is $800/year. I'm sure this would help with many of those calls where you hear for members to call dispatch to determine if they have a crew, or have to go to mutual aid. I would think this could be useful for the County teams like the Hazmat, or C&O.

I've been somewhat interested by GIS for some years as a rank amateur. My interest was piqued recently by a couple of articles about Pictometry. Most counties in NY have a blanket agreement but not Westchester. It seems like Google Earth on steroids This got me thinking that a while back I'd seen on http://westchestergov.com some GIS info. So with some time to kill (doesn't often happen), I was able to take some of the files from there and create these files for Google Earth. They show the district boundaries (for some reason, they show several boundaries within a given fire district in several cases), the name of the district's and the firehouses. I think at one point someone was asking about firehouse addresses - from this data the zip has a csv file and a .dbf file (the .dbf is part of the GIS file). Looking at the data some of it is pretty old mind you. I was looking to see if I could get utilities and hydrants but I don't see that available on the internet. Anyway, if someone else wants to try importing some of the other GIS information available, then this is pretty much the steps I went through: I got a lot of info from http://freegeographytools.com/2007/convert...inless-approach From http://avce00.maptools.org/avce00/ get the avce00 tool From http://fwtools.maptools.org/ get the FWTools program From http://freegeographytools.com/upfiles/ArcINFO2Shape.zip get ArcInfo2Shape From http://www.mapwindow.org/download.php download map window From http://www.zonums.com/shp2kml.html get shp2kml Download e00 file (need to copy link and remove anonymous from link (eg change ftp://ftp.westchestergov.com/Anonymous/GI...ts/wcfirdst.zip to ftp://ftp.westchestergov.com/GISData/Districts/wcfirdst.zip) run the avcimport tool: eg avcimport.exe wcfire.e00 firehouses follow the instructions to run 'ArcInfo2Shape Gui' tool Then in the MapWindow program, make sure under Plug-ins menu option that the GIS Tools is selected, then on the 'GIS Tools' menu select Vector->Reproject a Shape Tool In the project to dialog box select: Select Category as Geographic Coordinate Systems Select Group as North America Select Name as North American Datum 1983 If a second dialog box comes if it comes up as: Select Category as Projected Coordinate Systems Select Group as State Plane - NAD 1983 (Feet) Select Name as NAD 1983 StatePlane New York East FIPS 3101 (Feet) run shp2klm.exe, select the file created in MapWindow, go through (you can try different settings as you feel like it and see the effect), then save and/or open the kml file That's all there is to it - actually probably a simpler way out there but it served my purpose. WestchesterFire.zip

I can't really see it working but how about if the County setup a system, charged residents through County taxes, and then let the local municipalities decide if the County service was a better deal than paying additional taxes and having their own service? I suspect with Fire, it would be a bit more difficult because of the whole thing with Fire Districts etc, not sure that really applies to EMS as much though.

Here's an update: I wonder if the other vehicles that went through the intersection followed their procedures and stopped? I wonder if the civilian driver seeing a fire truck or two go through the intersection thought that it was now clear? Especially given the effects of the alcohol in the system. As for video cameras on the truck - it would help give a better indication of what is going on - and maybe a deterrent and make drivers pay a bit more attention. Even without onboard video, there's a good chance it will still be on video somewhere, and on newer equipment of course you have the black boxes.

From Firefighter close calls, another unfortunate incident for Baltimore, although the Audio Clip seems to be very professional.

A fun clip - is this a drill on Back To Basics?

I used to be strongly for TFT - now I'm not so sure. With a TFT, assuming you get at least the nozzle pressure at or above the operating pressure - you're guaranteed a 'good' pattern. Now with the original TFT's it was always 100psi, now they seem to offer Nozzles as low as 55psi. Personally I've thought they're good for less practiced MPO's. You can accomodate a lot of different pump pressures - you can gate down the nozzle if you're being over pumped. A smooth bore has simplicity going for it. However, basically you are on or off for an effective stream. To flow different water amounts you have to change your bore size. So, fwiw, I think if you have decent MPO's who can take in to account fritcion loss then you can get a decent stream at the tip, the nozzleman can move to a larger bore if more water is needed and then have the MPO adjust for increased GPM flow - go with the smooth bore. If you have someone who pumps once a year - or less often, go with the TFT. (And completly forget about Fixed Gallonage nozzles!).

Because it's always been that way We only just got the 5", before that we had 1500' of 3" hose. Most of our district does have hydrants, although there are some long driveways where you might get from a hydrant to the fire with two engines. The way the hose bed is laid out, it's not the best place for hose, that part is probably about 6" high as it is over the ladder compartment. The only thing I think that much 1.75" is possibly good for is a brush fire. We did request some bigger hose (2.5") earlier this year but it didn't make the cut, but we'll be trying again next year.

Not sure how serious you were ... talking about a lower stock. 2600 feet of supply hose seems like quite a lot to me! I know you have 4 attack lines, but there seems to be a lot of opinion out there to limiting the number of attack lines coming off any one piece of apparatus to two anyway. Personally, I'd like to change our layout but we're limited by the amount of hose we have available. We have: 100' 1.5" Trash Line 200' 1.75" Pre-connected cross lays 200' 1.75" Pre-connected cross lays 900' 5" Supply line 300' 3" Supply line 150' 2.5" Pre-connect 300' 1.75" Pre-connect 500' 1.75" Dead load I'd like to add more to the 2.5", maybe as dead 3" hose if we don't get any new 2.5" - however we have to drop the 5" to reconfigure the hose bed for space for that 3". I'd also like to take off the dead 1.75" and add a blitzfire type monitor to a couple hundred feet of 3" - unfortunately, all I think my fire truck is going to get from Santa is some coal

I know that over the last 20 years or so, health care has changed a lot. It's a lot more metrics and target driven. I did find the link http://www.southcentralambulance.nhs.uk/ - from that you can see they cover quite a large area. Oxford, is relative rural - especially compared to London. I also see they were rated against their targets as fair (could be poor, fair, good, excellent). I don't believe there are any private emergency response ambulances, there is a very small percentage of private health insurance. In general, the EMS (& fire for that matter) coverage is a lot more sparse than it is over here. You certainly do hear cases in the news of problems with response times at time- I don't how common this kind of incident is though.

From Firefighter Close calls

Actually received a canvass letter from Scarsdale yesterday. Salary here is listed as $20,000-31,539. This one has a response date of December 18th.