Bnechis

In NYS they do based on NYS Insurance Laws (other states vary) While the rating is applied to all policies each company can assign different financials to the numbers. So one company might save much more or much less than another. NYS allows residential ISO ratings to be grouped: PPC #1,2 &3 = A, #4, 5 & 6 = B and #7, 8, 9 & 10 =C No they are not. ISO is funded by selling the information to the insurance industry. They are reviewed annually by servey (looking for major changes) and by inspection every 10-15 years. They are also reassessed when requested (i.e. you have made major improvements) or a major complaint is recieved (they laid off & closed the house or everyone quit...etc.) They do not use time in there calculations, only distance (from the 1st due engine & ladder) they calculate the time based on that distance and maximum road speeds. They do not give a penalty for additional assembly time because they are requiring that many more responders (and if you do not have them then your rating goes way up). Note the 6 vs. 18 is just what they are claiming will change. They still expect 12 onduty ff's & 1 on duty IC to respond to all fire calls or 36 and 1 on call personnel. for combo depts start with the 36 number and for each on-duty person they count as 3. At the presentation they also ttold us they are strongly considering changing the 12 ff/1 IC to 16 ff/1 IC. To more closely match NFPA 1710. The extra personnel are for 2 man FAST & 2 man SAR. Since they are only conserned with saving property, they understand that we need to go after life (& meet 2in/2out) before we can save life. They did not say how this would affect on call personnel.

Interesting, most times when we arrive at a minorcall in 5 minutes the caller states; "wow, you got here fast" but at a true emergency when we get there in 3 minutes the caller states; "It took you 20 minutes to get here". Can I get that guarantee in writing? We have been doing nonemergency responses for decades and if we have had a handful of upgrades by callers that would be a lot. How many people actually make enough 911 calls to figure this out and actually do this? The bigger complaint we get on minor calls is; "why did you need to bring the big red truck or trucks, we just wanted 1 firefighter in a car".

They have not published it yet. This summer the Director of Public Protection Classification (PPC) section of ISO presented this information to the Westchester Career Chiefs at a presentation that he and the head of Inspection services gave.

Thats why NFPA 1710 splits it into 2; an IRIC (2 man Initial Rapid intervention Crew) on all alarms (this covers your 2 out) and a full RIC (minimum of 4 members) must be dispatched along with a safety officer upon determination that the call is a working fire. Studies have shown 8 ff's are truly needed. The bigger problem is how many depts. Volunteer, Combination & Career are understaffed and can not even provide the numbers of interior FF's needed to start to deal with a "simple" fire in a small residential home (without a basement)? If you are sending less than 6 firefighters (4 interior minimum) to be a "2 in", "2 out", 1 Pump operator & 1 IC then you are not a fire department. By law you are at best an incipient fire brigade. Based on this ISO announced they will be changing their standards this fall/winter. If you average less than 6 responders they will automatically change your rating to an ISO 9, since in the eyes of the law you can not go into a burning structure to save property. If you are sending less than 16 members (with at least 11 interior) you are not meeting NFPA 1710 (and while you may not be required to, look at the diagram, because thats what evelution 1710 wants you to be able to do). Whats interesting is there numbers are almost the same as what ISO has been saying for almost 100 years and the same as the governmental standards in Germany, France, Great Britton, etc. Their must be something to it. Agreed, well said. My intent was not to turn it into one. Of course we all know it. As a volunteer I had to go to work. My point was in many threads here it has been denied.

It was not NVFC it was FASNY. Many states require the same training. But FASNY says it is to hard on volunteers in NYS. Even NYS FF1 is 20-30 hours less than the NFPA standard its based on. Because its to many hours. Infact when it 1st came out they required the 15 hours of Hazmat Ops to be covered in no more than 6 hours. Since NYS Law requires more than that for all firefighters BEFORE they are allowed to respond to any calls OFPC added more time to it. A good friend of mine went thru the NYS training and found when he moved that 2 other states would not count any of his NYS FF1 or FF2 because it was substandard.

Lets spin this around, as you pointed out many depts are so ineffective and so unsafe that OSHA & NFPA have no choise but to attempt to get the fire service to evaluate itself and perform risk/benifit assessments as well as determine what needs to be done to protect the public and ourselves.

We are the Fire Department. We are above the law, we never have to follow the law........ Maybe if we did there would be fewer losses. Currently at least 3 departments in Westchester have at least 5 or more outstanding written violations from PESH (NYS OSHA) for failing to meet the law. Maybe the Tarrytown incident (which has yet to be given violations) will convince the chiefs and municipal administrators that yes the Fire Department must follow the law.

Are you saying that some volunteers actually "pick and choice" there calls? In the past when this was claimed it was denied and claimed that this never happens.

I dont think he comes with a recommendation

Is he willing to relocate it? We could use one.

Dont Orange County property owners benifit from having all the properties that are undisirable in one place? Dont most home buyers look to avoid having places like this on their block? This is one reason why most of the country has county wide services, everyone benifits.

Initially as a stand alone unit: Current configuration includes detailed GIS mapping of response district along with mutual aid mapping. Also covers GPS and CIDS is included. This plus a few other items such as Hazmat info is how NRFD's is currently set up. Those departments that want to can expand upon this (as we plan to in the next 3 months). It has taken us more than 3 years to resolve the ability to reliably transmit two way data. As of last weeks testing we are at 98% coverage. With that we will be adding AVL and the plan is to connect that to the CAD. That will allow closest available unit to be seen by the CAD. It will also allow command to see who is coming and from whice direction. Once we are up and running the other depts will have to determine if they want that.

While its a good thing the union is doing this its been law since 1993. Where has the larges union that protects municipal workers been for the last 17 years? If the workers do not know the dangers or the law and the employeer is ignoring it, the unions roll is to protect the workers. The standard actually says all spaces require a permit unless thru testing you can determine that a space is exempt. by definition all manholes in storm and sanitary lines are permit required. The only way municipal officals and emergency service leaders will final get this (yes many do) is when they get sued personnally for this.

Someone has for New Rochelle. Throughout Westchester some have others have not, this is because many communities do not think that sending 1 or 2 FF's on a rig is a problem.

Thanks George. Nice car is that yours or just an average car in the Keys? The Grant is not for New Rochelle. New Rochelle Sponsored it. It is for the Westchester Career Fire Chiefs. It will be used to purchase Mobile Data Terminials and additional radios for 10 departments.

"the union representing Stamford's professional firefighters" Volunteer....Union...... Looks like the Stamford Times needs a little more editing

Altercation at Fire Consolidation Commission This is the meeting held August 19, 2010 at Greenburgh's Town Hall where the President of the ECC (Edgemont Community Council), Robert Bernstein, is involved in an altercation by Mr. Luis A. Polit for giving out information after his resignation from the Fire Consolidation Commission about it's chair, Alan Hochberg. Bob Bernstein resigned as an adviser to the Town's Fire District Consolidation Commission after a motion was made to remove him for writing an article critical of an interim report. Bernstein cited illegal conduct by the commission and said the chair, a convicted felon and disbarred attorney, had apparently not learned his lesson. This video contains Robert Bernstein's complete statement to the consolidation commission about Alan Hochberg's past, among other things, followed by the altercation by Luis Polit. Mr. Polit will now be facing the charge of Harassment in the 2nd degree, a Violation under New York State Penal Section 240.26 (1). www.edgemontcommunitycouncil.org News Article letter

Agreed, but the current rules for billing usually do not allow you to cover your costs unless you transport. Thats why so many places do its to pay for the code.

Its not about if they are, or are not functioning well, its about MONEY. Who is paying, how much are they paying and how much money can be moved from the FD to the town, if they can pull this off.

This is somewhat correct. Based on a change in state law, a referendum can be voted on to merge local governments. The new law makes it much easier to have this referendum and in particular it makes it much easier for the town to initiate this (even without an interest from the fire districts). The town supervisor Paul Finer has made it clear that he wants this consolidation and he esablished this commission to "study" and then potentially convince the voters that this consolidation is in there best interest. It appears that the commission is basing much on a study on the 3 fire departments that was performed by the former Police Chief (Kopeca) and the former tax assessor. It is clear from the information I posted that at least 1 member of the commission believes the commission is only interested in proving the value of the merge and not looking into the facts or if this consolidation would do what Supervisor Finer says it would do.

We had similar compartments in a medic flycar I use to work on and it made the tail heavy and the front end to light. use to cause lots of front end spins particularly in bad weather. so we ripped it out. You would be shocked how much all that plywood costs. While they look very nice and orginized, why is it the very busy depts (Im thinking major cities) dont have them and you never see the chiefs car in front of the building?

Thats not completele correct. We have a partial system based on priority dispatch thru 60 Control. Which currently only looks at type and number of resources and can implement the other if depts request. The problem is they can only do this if they get proper info from the caller and 70% of the time the local PD does not transfer the call to them.

About 2 years ago I did a stitistical review of our automatic alarms going back 21 years. We did more than 35,000 automatic alarms during that time. Approximatly a dozen (that did not also have an additional call to 911) turned out to be working fires. Statistically, we documented more working fires that were discovered when the rig drove down the road and spotted it (out training, inspecting even going to the store, etc.) Makes it tough to not take into accounty the potential accidents that saving 1 minute on 34,988 calls creates. Interesting, most of the time the public thinks we abuse RLS, if they even notice us at all. If you believe this, then why send rigs on any calls, just send the chief, or better yet; have PD check and advise. Look how much we could save if we dont need the rigs anymore. Maybe just the chief and a check book...at workers he can just write a check to the owner. I guess your rigs never leave the station for anything other than calls. No maintenance trips, no training, no reason your rig would ever be on the street? Since the law says that you must use due care with RLS, if in an accident & RLS, its your fault. If driving for any reason its who is mostly responsible by the situation. A number of years ago my wifes car was struck at a red light. she was stopped waiting for the light to change and a car ran the light hit her and a wall. The insurance companies (hers and the other guys) said it was 20% her fault because: "she got up that morning" So you cant trust the trained dispatcher who may not know what the call is, but you trust the caller to know you dont need RLS? Many times I've seen people will let there loved one die or the house burn down before the embarrisment of RLS showing up in front of the house.

Are you kidding? I do not know how many "active" members they have, but in years past it was common for a 1 or 2 member response during the day, because thats what was available.