Monty

A lot of feelings being expressed, but I see no-one tried answering the question. I remember reading an interesting article a while ago (about LBJ I believe). One of the things it pointed out is that when going against the majority, you have to be careful, as you can lose your voice within the group. As may have happened in this case. Anyway some ideas to bat around .... Could you go to the local politicians? Could you go to the local press? Could you go to a FF association (not sure how much traction that has, as several of them have their own parades)? Contact the county about scheduling training to avoid parades, as you are currently mandated to attend parades? Like a super tanker, you can turn the steering wheel (or whatever it's called), but given the momentum - it takes a heck of a long time to make that turn. The fire service around here has a lot of momentum with 100-200 years of tradition to over come. My take is not to be the Martyr - but to be in the for the long haul, slowly trying to bring things round.

Saw a memo from OFPC. Basically it states that due to National Guard operational requirements, that the site will be closed to the fire service from September 1st. It goes on to say about facilities at the state academy, and outreach training. Makes it sound like it's no big deal to go (the 4+ hours) to Montour Falls! Camp Smith was a great facility. Real shame.

From Tucson Citizen An earlier story on the subject is at the Arizona Daily Star I bet if they weren't wearing seat belts, it would have been a different story. Also, interesting to hear the PD's take on the situation. I seem to remember reading about Phoenix having some issues with PD too. I guess we're lucky around here, although I do know one guy upstate who was ticketed by NYSP while he was responding in a mini pumper.

Not to drag this on, but I scored higher on the WC test and received several canvasssing letters a couple of years back. Not one had a starting salary more than $30K, several were less than 19K. I still have the letters somewhere if you want to know the details. Sounds like you made a very smart move moving out of the area. If I were 10 or 15 years younger I'd seriously look at doing that. But you can't change history .... yet

If it's a picture on a web page, you can click the IMG code button, or press alt+g. If it's a picture on your computer, you can include it by adding it as an attachment. Click on the browse, select the file and click 'Add this Attachment'. Once it's uploaded, it should show listed as a file attachment. You can then click 'Add into Post' Really, pretty decent piece of software Seth has set up here.

Maybe we should take all of the County taxes used for Fire Protection and create a county-wide department with assets strategically placed through out the county. Works elsewhere ....

Got this in an email - made me smile

Some departments haven't issued any tags. In my limited observations at incidents, accountability is sorely missing. From prior experience, we were issued a tag went on the trucks riding board. If it turned in to a 'real' / prolonged incident, these would be gathered and placed at the command post. If it was moderately large, or larger, an accountability officer would be assigned under the IC. Our dept also had a metal tag attached to the turnouts -- supposedly to aid in identification if it ever came to that I believe Westchester is coming up with, or has come up with a standard tag, might be worth checking with your Battalion car, or someone at DES. Maybe with the move to NIMS, we will see a lot more focus on ICS and accountability, maybe even more county standardization!

This reminds me of my earlier days upstate. I was with a department that was one of twelve in a town of 85,000 nighttime, 300,000 daytime population (A rescue from the town was recently featured in FireRescue Magazine). For many years there has been automatic daytime mutual aid where at least an engine was dispatched from another department on weekdays for most calls. On reported working fires, an engine would automatically be dispatched to standby in quarters - a no lights and siren response. Often this engine would be upgraded and redirected to the scene. I belive they have now added FAST team response as well to the signal 30 response. This whole process was very smooth and worked very well. All the 'boxes' were set out so the dispatchers knew which department to call in what order. Admittedly, the town is a much smaller area than Westchester. However, it would be nice if the county here worked better together, less politics, more standardized operating procedures, less politics, etc. Maybe we'd get away from calling a FAST team, putting them to use as regular teams then having to dispatch the next FAST team. Although, maybe we should use the Phoenix On-Deck concept .....

Maybe this will be the kick in the pants that the servivce needs - if the company is closed down. In another post there was mention of the last training post being June 22 (Stand down?). There is lots of talk about our job, training or lack of, leadership and lack of etc. Maybe this will wake up some people and start some change. I don't know much about the LI departments other than what I read and hear, but it does seem that some are pretty excessive in many ways. This should be taken as a wake up call and a reminder that we are first and foremost firefighters. Monty.

ENGLAND! Oops sorry taking a quick nap and dreaming again

I'll try ..... In the first round there are 8 groups each with 4 teams. Each team plays each other team in their group - so 3 games. Each game points are awarded. For a win 3 points For a draw 1 point For a loss 0 points The top two teams will advance to the knockout rounds. The groups are ordered by highest points. For teams with equal points it is decided on goal difference. Not sure what happens if that is equal! In theory 3 draws (3 points) or a draw and win (4) could get you through to the second round. After the first round it is a knockout process. Team with higher score after 90 minutes, if equal, two 15 minute halves are played. If at the end of that, penalty shootouts are used. I believe best of 5 and then if equal, keep going until someone misses! Wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_World_Cup#Final_tournament has a pretty good write up. The US plays Ghana Thursday at 10am and has to win to stand a chance of going through - it also depends on how Italy plays against the Czech ...

I think the biggest issue with POV's is personnel accountability. It is a lot easier when you have crews on trucks to know who is at the scene, and to apply ics. I'm sure it can be done with crews responding directly to the scene - but it's a lot more difficult. Likewise, OSHA, 2 in 2 out, IDLH etc ... now I know a lot of people consider this a pain in the a**, ignore it completely etc, etc. But .... it was put in place for a good reason. Imagine going to a Hazmat / CO call or something being first on scene and going to render aid - and no-one knows you are there ..... As I said before, I'm sure this can be overcome with responding directly to the scene but it takes a lot more discipline, restraint and training.

No Problem. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. If I was around, and thought about it when I got out of school a salary like that (23K) would be great. But when you have a family, house payments, taxes etc (and 10yrs+ work experience) - it just doesn't cut it. Obviously, you don't do this job for the money - that's why so many have second or third jobs. Incidentally, my second job is Firefighting. At this point it's irrelevant - I can't change the system (I can just whine on message boards ). Maybe if I save enough, or win big in Vegas or something, I can join a department as a hobby. Although even then, there will probably be guys / gals that don't want me around! I'm glad it's working for you - next time around I'll know to start this game earlier

Saw mention of Mother Power Ball before on the board - and a nice glossy ad in Popular Mechanics. Just wondering what experiences people have had with these on apparatus. Is it worth it? Does it work? Or is it yet another gimmick? Thanks.

I took both White Plains and Yonkers tests in previous years. White plains told me I'd passed and invited me to the practice physical then told me I wouldn't take the real physical as I didn't have residency. I took the Yonkers test (and was pretty much laughed at when I applied as I didn't have residency) and never heard back again! I also took the County test but couldn't afford to take any of the jobs on the money they were offering. Guess I'll just stick to volleying

Feeling slighty under the weather this morning ..... I'm sure like most things here - no repercussions - unless something really, really bad happens and you get lawyers involved. I'm sure there are mutual aid and other agreements stating requirements, but enforcing those is another thing. If you have an underperforming team though, I'm sure you will be called less often as it generally seems to be up to each IC who gets called as opposed to a standard process that dispatch follows. (I guess it would be tough to have a standard process without a standard dispatching procedure anyway )

You may want to try something like AdAware which is a free program for finding and removing adware and other software. It may be that the machine has been infected from a nasty website . If you don't already have anti virus software, there are some free / trial products out there you can find on google.

Sounds like a good dose of common sense Up North they used vhf high band for the pagers and fire traffic was on UHF trunking. The voice would be on both, but at least you wouldn't get tones on the fire traffic. At times, they'd also split the town up geograpichally and dispatch on different frequencies and finally if you had something, then you'd switch to an alternate frequency. Listening to 46.26 last night you couldn't help but step on someone at times - there was no dead air.

I happened to be in Nevada for the show last year. I only had the exhibit pass, although one of the lectures was open - Brunaci (sp?) and the Phoenix on-deck principal. I was underwhelmed with the exhibits (maybe because the exhibit hall is so damn big). Personally, I'm in no hurry to go back. I'd prefer Lake George. Of course your mileage may vary

Our dept doesn't issue BLue Light cards. In fac tI have no id from my current department. I do however have a BAC from my former department. Most the time I don't use it anyway. Maybe if I'm parked up on the road at a scene ...

Mmmm, what do you do here? Look at the scale of the thing ..... Use a lot of water - and patience I guess.

The NYSP Lifeguard helicopter out of Albany provides EMS service. It's based at Albany Airport in Colonie. It is staffed by (paid) paramedics from the Town Of Colonie EMS department. As it is a NYSP helicopter, it does have a hoist and the paramedics / flight crew are certified for extraction - can't be sure about rapelling though. See the CEMS site for more details...

Take a look at Colonie Fire Training Center, they usually have a lot going on, extremely professional instructors and students. Also Albany County Sheriffs co-ordinate training for Albany County. From my experience, it's a very different environment from the lower hudson area. Well worth looking in to. The departments up there are very friendly too if you are going to spend any time up there.

No I didn't I've just checked the web site a few times and not really seen anything there. Incidentally - it now looks like I'm too old for any test that they do offer :angry: