Monty

The truck was featured a few months back in the 'Fire Rescue' magazine. Unfortunately they don't seem to have the article online. One of the reasons cited for the crane is to help with offloading of equipment from the top of the truck.

Maybe, but it also maybe quantity. Think of the money being spent by hospitals, insurance companies etc on all those near fatal injuries where seatbelts aren't worn. There's several examples on this topic of people using seatbelts and walking away with band-aids etc. Think how much money was saved and would outherwise be spent on treating patients if they hadn't worn seatbelts. With the sheer quantity of car occupants think how much money is saved by paying all those lobbyists to get the law passed. Maybe with motorbikes the helmet doesn't make that much difference. In fact maybe accidents are more costly if a helmet is worn?

I honestly don't know - but what are the rules for the Armed Forces? You can argue that they don't wear their work uniform and that they are showing their pride as a member of the military. During Fleet Week I see a lot of naval personnel in uniform. Are they allowed to drink in public bars in uniform? Or do they have orders to be out of uniform?

Good, provocative piece. Well done. Given the current view of society on drinking, I personally feel very wary drinking in uniform (work or dress) in public. Recently there was a posting here of an apparatus driver being charged with DWI. I'm sure over the years, this has quietly been swept under the carpet. I wonder what would happen how if drivers at a 11pm call were faced with a DWI check? The thing to remember is that when you are a firefighter (career or volunteer), police officer or any other slew of public officials - you are on duty 24hrs. We're always seeing stories with 'off-duty' firefighters. Who ever hears about John Doe, a plumber saving someone / DWI / larceny etc??? It's tough, happens slowly - but maybe we should stand up against tradition?

Don't know if anyone has already seen this. Found it on Fire Engineering:

I respectfully disagree. Looks like they are trying to find a scapegoat. Firefighting is a risky business. We try to mitigate the risks as much as possible. If they win, then all SCBA manufacturers will spend more money on insurance, R&D, making things more foolproof. In turn this drives up the cost of new equipment and more departments don't upgrade and stay with old equipment. Like most things, it seems that there was a chain reaction of bad events possibly including training, experience, manpower, equipment. My final thought - how much attention do people on a fire scene pay to PASS devices? I know when I started we had units that had to be turned on - and often weren't. If you heard a PASS you paid attention (at least to some extent). These days, with the automatic alarms - how often are they just ignored? Until some really gets pi**ed off, or someon that has enough training can turn them off.

Interesting thought (reducing taxes) given the thread on the Philly Firefighters article. I must admit I am not aware of the current teams or what they offer. Do they offer, or plan to offer a county wide resource? I believe there were a mixture of career and volunteer units that responded to the Hawthorne Tornado. How are these teams composed? I wonder if there is any interest to expand membership outside of the current organisations.

That's why they offer different levels of insurance, different levels of deductible so you can decide on your level of risk. And if you own the home outright - you don't even any isurance! How many people don't have renters insurance? The question is striking the right balance. Do you need a firehouse for every 10 square miles, 50, 100? How much are you willing to pay for? Whatever happens, you're not going to make everyone happy.

I can't speak directly to the Westchester team, I'm sure these questions will be answered in due course. Though based on my experience with the team in Albany (now about 9 years ago) when they started, they only required essentials and hazmat ops. Each team member would need a signature from their chief to cover them under the home departments insurance. There was no plan for reimbursing time spent with the team - so one major career department wouldn't agree to allow their members to participate. However, there was a good mixture of career and volunteer team members. The team went through the various training classes, confined space, ropes, trench etc. Eventually, there were certain standards required to be deployed with the team. Those that didn't have the required training still participated in team meetings, drills, work details etc and could be called upon for support roles with team deployments.

Some years ago, up until 2004, there was a group of firefighters, mostly volunteer that trained at the FTC. The idea was that the team would be similar to the NYS Regional Response Rescue Team. The team wouldn't have any jurisdiction per se. It would be a resouce for the local incident commander - obviously primarily Westchester, but I'm sure elsewhere too if requested. The team leaders went before the County Legislature to get approval for a formal county team and funding. However, there was some concerns rasied by the career sector which resulted in a stalemate for a while. The legislature actually passed a resolution June 6th 2005 to allow DES to create special operations teams. Unfortunately, it seems to have taken pretty much until now to make every one happy about how to move it forward.

I don't know about impressive - but it gave me a good laugh Especially, some of the comments! What's he doing with the thing on the roof that looks like a floor tile puller

oops

From BATTALION 14 News & Information Interesting article - wonder what SCBA they use? I don't think it is SCOTT because they talk about bells - and my understanding is that the air for the vibralert is not vented but directed to the user. I've not tried emptying a bottle - but i'd be very surprised if I got that long. The one thing I have tried is 'skip breathing' but I didn't see any mention of that in the article. Interesting idea shutting off the valve - not something I'd think of - not sure what effect it would have either. Guess I'll have to try this sometime!

I think in some ways this highlights a common problem. There seems to be an idea that once the fire is knocked down, everything is going to be OK. In some ways this could be more dangerous (maybe not at this incident but in general). How about all the thermal stresses involved in the structure? Can it collapse - and trap FF's? How about tired FF's running on adrenaline that is now drying up? Can a FF colapse on the roof - in the basement? How about toxicity? CO? I probably don't wear my air long enough in to overhaul - I know others don't. I believe someone here mentioned personal CO monitors they wear on their turnout - sounds like a very smart idea. Just a few more thoughts that came up.

Maybe the point is that the IC should have enough resources to do all the jobs. Typically, it's quicker to get Mutual Aid than a FAS Team. For Mutual Aid you don't need to be FAST qualified (in some dept's you donty need to be qualified - period ). If you think you'll need more resources - then call them and don't bank on using FAST for regular jobs. Of course, you can't predict everything and sometimes things do go tits up. But, it often seems that you have this group of well trained FF's on the fire ground and the temptation is to use them for 'normal' fire ground operations. I know this has been talked about previously, but maybe IC's should call MA to standby in the station or to the scene when they have a worker. Have these resouces in reserve and then be able to use them instead of the FAST. Or - you coudl do away with FAST and use the on-deck system where everyone can perform the RIT role.

From Fire Engineering's web site Am I getting old, or was this capability in use in Rampart many years ago with Squad 51? I know they didn't have bluetooth back then but .....

Hi, I was wondering if anyone knows of a list of tones used to dispatch departments in Westchester? I found the link NYS Tones which has a lot of information - but not Westchester. Thanks.

Quite a few years ago when I was taking a class of some sort (EMT?) there was a video shown. The camera was inside a car, engine idling, radio playing, and the camera facing the rear view mirror. They had an engine drive up behind using a siren - this was repeated several times using the different types of sirens. Basically the wail and yelp were heard the furtherst away. The Q was the least effective. Another thing I was told - take it with a pinch of salt - was that if you were following another truck, to use a different siren (like hi-lo). Theory was that drivers would hear two sirens and realise there was two emergency vehicles. Kind of goes to alsfirefighter's point about these new dual speaker sirens.

Fascinating info. I've been taking trains in the last few years and it's an amazing place - especially as it's almost 100 years old! I saw a documentary - are the lightbulbs still reverse thread? Apparently they did that because so many were stolen. Let us know if you can do private tours - love to get some behind the scene views! I've meant to walk platform 34 which I understand is the longest platform, but I've never got around to it yet. I've also seen some old cars that look like diners. They are in a pretty poor state and look like maybe they're used by work crews now. Given the current state of the world, I'm amazed there are not more signs of surveilance. Maybe it's covert, but in the UK you see cameras and signs everywhere. Thanks again to all for the info on this one.

I think the big difference with the other article, was once you get to the scene - kill the lights. I believe there is something now with NFPA that new trucks have certain light circuits that won't operate when the parking brake is on? If I recall, one of them is flashing white lights, wig wags etc. Seems to make a lot of sense. How many times have you been sitting at a call and a truck opposite you is continually blinding you with their headlights flashing away?

Saw 17 Tower at Ossining's parade - neat looking truck - very European. Also saw their Rescue. Had the pleasure of working with that at an AVET class in Rockland - very nice piece of kit.

From Yahoo TV - they also have E-One coming up too ...

Ahh, if only WC was so organised

A couple of the things I liked about CS were that course were published, and you could work things around courses you want to take. Another was that it was a bigger catchment than a county and had things like the collapse / void simulator. It would be nice if there was a 'clearing house' of County courses. Rockland and Westchester have good sites, frequently updated, Putnam has a site, although its not too obvious how often it is updated. I must admit I haven't looked at Dutchess or Orange.

There's also some information and pictures on the board here. I think maybe the tpoics were magically merged? Or I just hadn't had enough coffee this morning and scr*wed up.