Bnechis

The County Legislature only authorized this team after DES established a technical rescue oversight committee. This committee was charged with establishing all policies, procedures, equipment, training requirements and other related issues. The committee 1st met in October of 2005 and last met in 2007. At the last meeting required training levels were suggested but not voted on. To streamline the meetings DES decided to schedule the meetings to be quarterly after that. We have not had a meeting in at least 6 quarters (18 months). At this point the oversight committee has never established minimum training (or any other standards) for this team, as was the intent of the County Board of Legislators

Its NYS protocol for a reason, half a dozen national studies and years of statistical data show your chances drop if you go to the local to "stabilize" unless the transport time will be more than an hour. In my experience, I have only seen one local hospital "stabalize" and transport within 15-20 minutes. I've seen a number of ER's staibilize for and hour or more until the patient is completely stable and will never get worst (read dead). Once in a facility most try to do there best, but transfering to another facility does not happen for hours.

new rochelle engine 25 is a 2008 Pierce Arrow XT

Are you kidding? While it would be great if there was more availablity, but how much more county tax do you want? Here at the county 24/7 hazmat disposal center, we are standing by in our CPC (chemical protective clothing) waiting for days for someone to bring us a thermostat.

It says Medicaid cuts for EMS of $60 M That means that any agency that bills medicaid (you know the people who pay $0.12 on the dollar). Is going to get less. In some communities that means increases in local property tax increase to cover the diference or reduction in services.

THe difference is between getting the front or the back page in the Newspaper

Holds the pump panel lights, its designed as a step, since everyone steps on the pump panel anyway

No crome on engine 25, its designed to work

Interesting...look at how many people posted about how they did not like the safety marking on the new rockland medic units and how they love the black on new fire trucks. Lets paint them all urban camo so no one will see us comming...or parked

I used the systems mentioned above on both ambulances and flycars. After extensive searching I have not found any comperarable system for fire apparatus or other larger vehicles. In fact NFPA 1901 is more concerned with making it easy to steal the vehicle. 1901 requires all vehicles to have either a push button or if a keyed ignition the key must be chained to the dashboard so it can not be removed from the vehicle and "lost"

The diamond plate boxes on NR & PC are to protect the cab AC...not for equipment.

Chris you hit the nail right on the head

and firefighters don't?

Drafting Testing the deck gun flow Pump readings, deck gun and portable deck gun deck gun and 2 portable deck guns Passed all tests, will go into service on Monday

If you believe the flow meters: 1,350 + 850 + 2,830 = 5,030 Wow and and we only paid for 1,500. To keep it nice and clean I'm going to say 5,000 gpm (Remember.....Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain).

Get the Jet Axe....................................

Thats not a system (no offense).

So in a system that provides an ambulance with an EMT & medic they can provide the same level of service and the same call to door time as a system that sends an ambulance with an EMT & medic plus two or three FF/EMT's (even if to just help carry all the bags/patient back to the rig). Unfortinatly, there are a lot of EMT's and medics in EMS who have less experience than they would like to believe. NYS DOH claims the average medic has less than 4 years experience and the average medic only does 1 refresher before expiring and leaving EMS. A number of years ago I responded on an engine (2 EMT's and Myself) to a reported Diff Breather at 3am. Pt was in mild CHF, with all the normal findings for that type of patient. I knew the patient well having treated him 2 times before. When EMS arrived, he was on O2, and I was taking a 2nd BP. I gave a very complete report to the EMS crew including both sets of vitals (which they saw me completing) HX, PA, Rx, etc.. The crew took our BP cuff of the Pt. and placed theirs on him and started to take the pts BP. The patient asked why were they doing that since I had just given them 2 sets. The EMT advised the Pt. that they could not "Trust a firefighters ability to do it" (This answer surprised me, if they had said "company policy" what happened next would never have been an issue). The patient got very angry and told the crew that he would trust the fire officer who's been a paramedic instructor since long before this crew hit puberty. I was pretty surprised at his statement, but they were really shocked. The patient happened to be a retired cardologist and I had treated many of his patients. Where do EMT's & Medics who work for commercial service go when they leave commercial EMS. They become FF's, PO's, RN's, PA's etc. And many of them are active on EMTBravo. So just because you think we are just firemen...............maybe we have a clue.

We only cancel EMS if there is no patient (left prior to arrival or never was a patient) or this is a lift assist with no medical/trauma issue (FD is disp on these not EMS). If in the FD officers assesment (all are EMT's) the patient might be an RMA, then EMS is not canceled and we have EMS perform the RMA. They want to continue in...fine. Rare to see it happen. Do they work for the municipality or they just free lancing this contract? The Commercial service wants to keep the municipal contract. Show enough attitued and they tend to bounce the EMT or Medic to another contract location or transports.

They can cancel, most times we are less than a minute out, so we drop to non-emergency mode and may continue in to assist in looking for the incident, since often we find its not unfounded, but the incident information was incorrectly given/obtained. This is at the discretion of the company officer.

When we've told our city manger that runs are up 140% in 20 years (been doing EMS over 30), his and the 2 previous managers have said they dont look at our stats, they could care less. Our justification is there without EMS, we do EMS because its the right thing to do.

Maybe some FD's have been doing this for so long that they are not "justifying anything. They are doing it because the community expects it of them. MY FD costs the average taxpayer $400 per year. If we eliminate the FD they will pay an additional $1,200 per year in insurance premiums. If we never go on another call we still save every property owner $800 per year. We are justified. If they cut our budget by $1 million/year our insurance rating will go up 2 points, which will raise premiums by more than $12,000,000 per year. We are justified. Maybe we respond to EMS because the community expects it, pays for it, and on some calls makes a major difference in the outcome for the patient. BTW 80% of EMS in the U.S. is Fire based.....Could it be that fire is needed on more than just fire and your experience with fire is off because your FD - EMS experience is different than the majority of this country?

We have City policies that say EMS can not cancel FD on MVA's even if EMS determines its an RMA, DOA or No patient. Because 1) they do not have the training or experience (yes some do) to evaluate non medical issues and in the past we had documented many cases where we were cancelled by EMS then redispatched to deal with incident clean up. We also have a policy that EMS must make patient contact and determine that based on the patient evaluation we are not needed. This came from a number of cases that EMS determined we were not needed then calling us back for assistance. We have no problem going 10-8 if we are not needed, but we respond for more than just medical and we expect that anyone who cancels us actually has determined that we are not needed, instead of because they want to be "nice" to FD or because they dont want FD on "Their" scene.

Our policy is the ambulance must have made patient contact and determined that additional personnel would not be beneficial to the patient. Also they may not cancel on MVA's since we respond for EMS as well as scene safety and environmental.

yep only 18 years till mandatory