Bnechis

Do not hold your breath. This was tried twice and failed. The majority of the legislature will not touch this (particularly in an election year) and both the current Gov and the most lickly next one have said they will veto it if it gets to them.

Seagrave is also considered to be questionable along with Oshkosh (which owns Pierce). So that makes 4 of the 8 arial manufacturers. We have had a rather diverse fleet (pierce, seagrave, ALF, RD Murry, LTI, Stuphen) and we have had almost the exact same level of problems with "sole source" as the seperate chassie/body. What has always made them equal is that our contract always includes that the apparatus manufacturer is 100% responsible for everything, since we are buying from them and not the chassie manufacturer. This has held up in court on the one case it needed to go there. The use of the term "sole source" is not very accurate. it is used by those depts that want to narrow down the bidders to the company they want (often without regard for what is being proposed). When you consider that "sole source" chassies use the same engines, transmittions, fans, radiators, alternators, batteries, hoses, multiplex (except Pierce), tires, wheels, suspensions, break systems, seats, Climate controls, etc. Is it really sole source?

If you go by that, i can think of a number of other manufactures that there financials are also of concern. Can you explain why you believe a single source is the best way to go?

And we have seen junk from low, medium & the high bidder. We have also seen high quality from all 3.

It very hard to read it since I have yet to see a full version. It seems no one reaaly wants anyone to know whats really in it. What I did find was most interesting: 1) Why doesn’t the City just create one fire department instead of separating volunteers from the city fire department? "Having one fire department would be an ideal solution, but unfortunately, legal limitations, state statutes and the City’s own Charter prohibit us from creating a single fire department. In the long term, a single citywide fire department may be given further consideration; in the near-term this combined approach is the best option". Written By Mayor Michael A. Pavia So 1 is better than 2 and thats what the Mayor thinks you will have in the long term. In other words the obsticles can be overcome, but not by him.

And this is the real problem. How can it be safe? What a great example this sets for the community. Because kids see this and many of us have responded to teens/young adults who thought it was ok to hand out of the car or ride on the roof, hood or trunk. In addition to the risk to your members, what risk are you placing your community & department in? In Waterbury CT. after a fatal accident the family is sueing the apparatus opperator and the department for not enforcing a seat belt policy. Now you think its ok to climb up top past those nice warning plaques that say do not ride on the outside of the truck. If a member falls and is killed, do you think his family might sue the driver and the dept.? How do you explain that to the taxpayers that will foot the bill.

OSHA & NFPA have developed regulations and standards that over the years many in the fire service have complained about. How many of those regulations and standards that we all have to follow were developped because of the actions of stupidity. Your response is the perfect example of why we are our own worst enemy.

The law is crystal clear on this the "employeer" (in this case the VFD) is required to do the testing. The county was doing it to easy the burden on the local dept. and one of the problems when politicians come up with "cut the budget to save tax payers money". When all is said and done the county will save a few pennies and the tax payers will pay a few dollars to cover the savings. OSHA does not require the machine, but its very hard to "fool" the machine and very easy to fool the rainbow passage. The machine gives you great documentation for each member. If a member is hurt or becomes ill what are the legal ramifications of not using the machine?

Fire trucks do not put out fires, firefighters do. The real question is do departments have enough personnel to handle the job.

For an engine I agree. I did get to see it used on a hose wagon that a 3 man crew used it to pack 6,000 feet of 6 inch hose and they made it look easy. They had it mounted in the front over the left side of the cab and the driver just drove forward while the 2 members just made the folds inside a closed box that made up the hose bed.

"Its all in the "plan" the problem is all you Union guys don't understand the "plan" and are not willing to let the "plan" work. The plan means that chiefs that burn homes to the ground because they dont want union members on there scene will still be chiefs. The plan is the union will never know..oh wait SFRD has the tapes......unless we do our own dispatch...but thats not in the plan. The plan solves our daytime manning by placing 15 career firefighters who are really volunteers and will remain faithful to their volunteer roots. They will still volunteer (FLSA does not bother us we can ingor that law) and they will not want to join the union or we will not let them (oh wait, Springdale tried that. Damn laws). Those 15 career ff's in 6 stations will be able to jump from rig to rig and handle everything without needing SFRD. The plan also has those 15 positions at night but we have plenty of active volunteers at night, except of course when there is a house fire in Long Ridge. But the plan will work because we know what is needed in North Stamford and the union does not. We are the ones for 50 years who fought all the fires without the union. Please do not tell us that after burning down a few homes and having 3 or 4 SFRD units placed into service in our district because we could not put enough ff's on the scene the the union has any right to even comment on this. No union member has a stake in this, those union members who have been assinged to North Stamford do not know anything about North Stamford. The plan is perfect because with 15 career firefighters onduty we will be able to handle everything for ever because we will always have plenty of volunteers. The plan will improve response times because the career "drivers" can respond by themselves and be onscene in minutes (thus stopping the clock) and all our volunteers which are all over North Stamford can get there fast from home. The plan does not need to mention that they currently have not been showing up or that responding in private vehicles to the scene creats major accountability issues and a major lack in teamwork. The plan does not need to use the SFRD model of members arriving together as a team. The plan means that those most loyal to the VFD's and to the plan will get the biggest rewards....a job. The hiring plan is line up single file behind PCoggs and no one should worry about layoffs in SFRD because the mayor has promised and we all know that mayors NEVER break their promises. Most important the plan places North Stamford Volunteers above those that they swore to protect. Why cant people understand that! Its all about us...not you and not the citizens of North Stamford. Nothing will stop the plan and in 20 years we can have this fight all over again when the SVFD has no more volunteers and the taxpayers wont pay for a 200 man dept. so maybe 1 dept is better than 2. I return you to your regularly scheduled rant.......

Its not just municipal employees its all employees. for example, if you work as a janator for a church you can not volunteer to do any similar work for that church. Its not just for the guy who submits the bill. In Montgomery County MD about 10 years back one or two career ff's brought a suit in federal court over this and the county was forced to pay millions to every career ff who volunteered and for every hour they volunteered in the county. I wonder if this came up in the Stamford "review" of how well the combination departments in Maryland work?

I said chase the British...not the scotish

It was popular when we used it to chase the british out......

I think your use of unified needs some clarification. Unified under ICS means more than one agency operating together, SFRD is only unified when it is working with the VFD's or with EMS, PD, DPW etc. The proposal to merge 4 VFD's will not make them unified, it will make them a single entity. Unified is when the work together as seperate agencies. Yes the key is to be self-sufficent, if they still need mutual aid on a regular basis then it will prove that this plan is a total failure. So how will this plan solve this?

The problem is defining "suspicious". At the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City it was assumed it was a gas explosion until a bomb tech determined the crater was from a vehicle bomb.

E6 was the squad and it was a 2nd engine out of HQ on Church street. No additional ladders. Also I was advised that E-20 was inservice from 1962 - 1972ish at what is now station #5. The house was station #7 at the time and we did not hav E-27 (eastchester)

was it ever?

Ding, ding, ding....you win a prize!!!

Could be either. ie. We are assigned Engines 17-26 E17, E18, & E19 - Two of these 3 are spare engines. the numbers rotate as rigs go in and out of the fleet. Currently we have E18 and E19 (was just decommissioned) upon arrival of the next engine, which ever it replaces will become E17. Next will be E19, then E18. The rotation makes it easier for the dept shop to keep them seperated. E20 - is reserved for future use (and to my knowledge has never been used) E21-E25 are our frontline engines and for us the 2nd digit is the station (E-21 - Station #1, E25 - Station #5). E26 was disbanded in the 1970's

There are 4 ways to supply the overhead fill: 1) With an overhead tank. I looks like the fill from the old steam locomotives. This one is least common, since its limited in location and after a fire it needs to be refilled. 2) Uses a 12 foot x 6 inch pipe aluminum. The base is about 4 ft x 4 ft (made of the 6" pipe) and has a 5" storz (often with a ball valve) the pipe can stand on the ground and when the base is full of water its self supporting and can swing over the top of a tanker (then left there as each tanker drives thru to be filled. Most depts that use this carry it in the hose bed on top of the tanker and its set up at the 1st fill. Set up is less then 1 minute for 2 ff's. 3) There is one dept in Minnisota or upper Mi that uses a dedicated fill (or source) pumper with a rear mounted pump and has a 6" overhead fill that is attached to an articulated boom (it looks a lot like the boom on a cinder block loader), with the operator sitting in a little seat up top. The operator can manuver the boom to fill and he can control the pump. It has 2 discarges, 1 thru the boom and the other via a diverter valve, which dumps back into the "pond" to limit spillage. I would love to see this hooked to a hydaulic pump (like the one we have) If set up properly it could move 2,430 gpm from "draft" at a distance of 100' from the apparatus and with a lift of up to 35 feet. 4) The best designed system used a series of 30,000 gallon underground cisterns. Each one had a dry hydrant, a manhole, and an overhead fill that was supplied with a deisel powered fire pump. The driver could pull up reach out the window and hit the start button (like getting a ticket at the mall garage) and its filling. They were stratigically positioned and designed to capture rain and spilled water. Reducing the flow by 6 - 9 times to preven spilling. Whats the priority, turn around time or saving water?

And the depts who really know how to move water with tankers go to 6" top fill with out having to connect any hose to the tanker. this requires 1 driver per tanker (who does not need to get out of the truck) and 1-2 operators (including pump operator) to run the fill station. Departments that have gone to this operation improve there ISO rating to a 4. Thats a 50% improvment over the 9's around here. One dept, even managed to get rid of the 2 operators and the tanker driver can fill his own truck with a simple touch of a button. Wouldn't it be nice to free up an engine and crew from the fill site, to go fight the fire.

They raise the lightbar up so in heavy traffic they can be seen further. See whelen product sheet for a full set of pictures: http://www.whelen.com/pb/Automotive/ProductSheets/Lightbars/HiWay_Riser_Lightbar.pdf http___www.whelen.bmp

If this was true, then the entire bill is even less then useless. Ok we have a policy that says you can never be late for work. If you are and we fire you then you have no legal recourse. The whole purpose of the bill is to superceed job rules. If this were the case then the bill is not even worth the paper its printed on.

Yes, while the employeer does not have to pay that volunteers salary for the time, the employeer is not compensated for lost productivite, which depending on the industry can be substantial. Nope, but I know many and there have even been many threads on here about chiefs commuting in dept cars or parking at the train stations. I do not know how many, but even with this law, I dont see that they will be coming back quickly or will use the law to go to work late. If protecting the community is so important, then maybe they should not commute out of the community. So which law takes is correct the one that says you can or the one that says you can not? The bigger issue is when the nurse does not relieve anyone or is not relieved by some one. Then that does not apply. i.e. most OR nurses work a day shift and prior to the start of the shift there is minimal staff if any assigned to the OR. Same deal as the nurses, day shifts have more staff and oncoming employees may not actually relive somebody. If its extreme then why no exemption in the law? This was for municipal or commercial EMS employees and the same holds true for them as the corrections. Then 1) This is clearly not true in CT (they pass a law that says they can) and 2) IAFF has never enforced this and its up to each local & each department to determine how they handle this. I guess the 1,000's of IAFF members who are FDNY firefighters that volunteer never new that. So if a FDNY member is late because of a volly call does he need the law to protect his job? Now please answer the original question: "Now we have volunteer firefighters who are employees of my career department. Does the legislation mean they can come to work late or leave work to cover calls back in their volunteer community? To cover them the citizens of my city will have to pay overtime to cover this. That means that my taxpayers (who are willing to fund proper fire protection) will be subsidizing a volunteer community that if they utilize this law (if signed) shows they are willing to let our taxpayers fund their dept." Your answer was an attempt to say that career FF's dont volunteer and we all know thats not the truth. 1)this bill will do nothing to improve the dropping numbers of volunteers, but the politicians that cant pass a budget will use this to show that the are behind the VFD's....please reelect me. 2)If the employeer wants to fire them he just can't use the excuse you were late.....it will take him one more day to "find" a reason. 3) it allows employeers to screen out volunteers and not hire them in the 1st place. That maybe true, but is only because the bill wont do what FASNY wants it to do........turn back the clock to the good old days when everyone worked localy and the whistle got 100 guys.