Bnechis

In this case its not the judge. its the mayor who gave in.

1) Nobody in NYS believed it, it was claimed by many in the fire service it would not be used against us, but at the same time the judges & lawyers were saying it would. 2) The volunteer fire service needs to convince FASNY. They have lobbied against it on your behalf for decades.

Legally the only requirement is for "2 out" not FAST, but since FAST is in NFPA standards, a dept &/or IC could get sued if something went wrong and they did not have FAST.

1) semantics 2) Mack & Sutphen "tower ladders" were more common in the county when the naming was done

I have had them in a number of vehicles over the years, if they are not putting them in some now, your right it maybe to save a few bucks. Before they were available, a few here will remember an incident in Eastchester, where their ambulance was stolen while on a call. The unit travelled a few miles up Route 22 where it crashed into the Scarsdale Animal Control Officer, killing him and totaling the ambulance.

Well said. Now the diagram you have shown is the minimum response for a 2,000 sq ft home (or smaller) without a basement. Not many of those in Greenwich. Anything larger requires more in the 1st 8 minutes.

Wow, we have way too many lawyers. 1st off, local governments including fire depts. dispose of equipment without value all of the time. if I have 20 year old turnouts, never used & in the original bag...what is it worth? Some would say $100's or more. We would say its worth millions in liability if used. Ok lets say this 17 year old truck is worth $15,000, The chassis manufacturer went belly up 15 years ago, so parts are hard to come by and the cost to keep it "road worthy" might be more than its worth (so in 1 year it could be worthless), what are our options: 1) we can trade it in on a new rig, but wont get $15,000 for it. 2) action it. But in the past we find the high bidders run around $3,000 - 5,000 (usually for scrap) 3) we can donate it to another governmental agency, and our probies & other ff's get to use it for a few years and saves us from having to send another truck, depriving our citizens of that coverage. Well worth the $3,000 - $5,000 we usually get at this point. 4) to keep it longer violates NFPA 1901 (mostly for vehicle safety issues, like stability control & anti-lock breaks). So again liability & can't be don't because the manufacture is out of the game. btw: this vehicle is perfectly safe for training center use. past its ladder & pump tests within the year, but is no longer safe to be responding in traffic.

Without going into the details of this incident, a number of items should be re-evaluated in many depts. based on this incident. It is very easy for a routine incident to go bad very quickly. Many depts. do not have adequate trained interior firefighters both operating AND in staging (to be available when things go bad). FAST teams in many cases are only capable of dealing with 1 or 2 firefighter maydays, what's your back up plan? Lucky in this case, we will not be learning the lessons from a NIOSH report, but this will happen again here or some other community, lets look into how we prevent a tragedy in the future.

In our case we suggested to city council that it was in the city's best interest to donate it. They agreed. They have the authority to determine how surplus equipment is disposed of.

http://www.dhses.ny.gov/ofpc/training/

The letter was written January 1, 1802 The Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787

"Don't Ask" "Don't Tell" Oh wait that's from another thread...lol. I know......

Yes it was donated to the training center.

I agree (we only use them for special dead loads). The tall narrow beds for attack hose on this rig are too deep, you will never be able to pack this bed (shorten the dividers & it will be fine)..

Christmas lights are not religious, wreaths are seen on the front of many rigs and again not religious (unless you go back to the druids) and the courts have stated this along with the fact that religious symbols can not be displayed. I see no issue with Santa fire apparatus runs, except when depts. violate V&T laws and dept policies by having Santa ride on top of the rig. Can you imagine the effect on a small child, if Santa falls off the rig and gets crush. Christmas in this country is 2 different events; 1) It is the celebration of the birth of Christ for those that believe that and should be celebrated in the homes & houses of worship of those that believe and 2) it is a commercial (non-religious) event where people celebrate at the malls and on line.

Yes its a religious symbol. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hindi and a number of lesser known small eastern religions. So a major difference here is most of the world recognizes them as an important symbol. While as a religious symbol it still should not be on a tax funded community asset. But Angels are much less an issue as they represent the majority of religions and not just the one in the majority.

Generally a member of the clergy who volunteers their time to assist members of the fire department & the public. In my departments case we have had &/or have Fire Service Chaplains who are Protestant, Catholic and Jewish (at one point all 3 service at the same time).

"Separation of church and state" (sometimes "wall of separation between church and state") is a phrase used by Thomas Jefferson and others expressing an understanding of the intent and function of the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The phrase has since been repeatedly used by the Supreme Court of the United States. The phrase "separation of church and state" in this context is generally traced to a January 1, 1802 Letter by Thomas Jefferson, addressed to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut, and published in a Massachusetts newspaper. Jefferson's metaphor of a wall of separation has been cited repeatedly by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Reynolds v. United States (1879) the Court wrote that Jefferson's comments "may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the [First] Amendment." In Everson v. Board of Education(1947), Justice Hugo Black wrote: "In the words of Thomas Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state." A number of letters written by both Jefferson and Madison, show what their intent was, and you have misrepresented their positions. It has nothing to do with current radical atheist's, since this is the position they wrote on 200 years ago.

Its not if tax money was used for the mural, its if any tax money was used to buy the truck. Because you might then need to use more tax money to defend the dept. in a separation of church & state federal lawsuit.

Most of those manufactures have items that those making split tilt & SS cabs do not, so its a wash. If you want a specific manufacturer and are willing to accept minimal bids you can do it. But you may pay more because of the lack of compation and depending on how you did it you may be breaking the law. Sometimes its got to be, for example when we spec'ed Ladder 12 we had a maximum height that only 3 manufacturers could meet, that knocked 5 out of the running before any other item was even mentioned. We had no choice because of bridge and station heights.

The main reason that vendors do not bid is because it costs them $10,000-$20,000 just to put the bid in. If they feel they do not have a good shot at winning it, why throw your money away. The main reason a vendor would feel they do not have a good shot is the Spec itself. For example if the bid required a Stainless steel cab, Smeal & Sutphen do not offer this. Same for the split tilt cab, etc.

What obligation does the community have to provide this level of service? In most cases if you can not prove this question, then their is no liability.

It was not that important to me to spend time checking "every" depts. spec. Feel free to if makes you feel better, because clearly your post is about building your ego up. I have admitted when I am incorrect, but since you have this need to prove me wrong, please look up the other 16 depts. and share Glad I made your day. Thanks for the update. It turns out that 2 out of 18 of the depts. that I spent 10 minutes doing a quick search on, only did raised roofs for awhile. Still means that many of the busiest depts. in the world are still using them. There was a comment earlier on the waist of $$$ to buy them. Found out today that on Spartan Chassis the added cost for the standard raised roof is $0.00

While I did not contact each dept to get a copy of their latest spec, I took a little look and figured this was good enough: the two are worth 2,000 words.

Its not that stooping causes injury, its getting out and something as simple as twisting ones ankle because the ff was just a little off balance. We have seen it a number of times and the cost of sending a career ff to the ER and losing them for the rest of the tour (and replacing on OT) costs more than the raised roof. So if it prevents 1 injury it paid for itself, and the likelihood of that in a 10-15 year service life is pretty good.