Bnechis

I agree with everything you said. My point is that YFD is understaffed, but NR & WP are running with 3 per rig. when 1 remains in the street to pump. That leaves the officer and ff to lay hose from the standpipe to the fire apt. Now who mans the valve, the officer or the ff and what if the ff is a probie (do you send him in alone?). In either case 1 in an IDLH atmospher is a problem. The study shows that pairing up 2) 3 man units (6 members) is less effective than 5 man companies.

Interesting how language works. At 1st reading I questioned how many "taller" 40 story buildings are in the county (outside WP & NR). But on rereading I get the "taller" buildings could be 6 story "highrise" cause they are taller than theother buildings in the community.

And then there are depts with lower staffing and taller buildings........We must be at a really big disadvanage

This was tested in New Rochelle and they found it worked well in some areas and not at all in others. Areas with tight windy streets, heavy street parking and overhead wires (cable & phone) made it useless

And now, for an opposing view: The "Oklahoma 2nd Amendment Preservation Act" is now working its way through the Oklahoma legislature. The language of the legislation is clear: "Federal acts, laws, orders, rules, regulations, bans or registration requirements regarding firearms constitute an infringement on the individual right [to keep and bear arms] in the Constitution of the United States...and are hereby declared to be invalid in the State of Oklahoma." The legislation mentions the "intent" of America's "Founders" and the Constitution's "ratifiers," and sets forth the punishment for trying to enforce new gun control measures: Any official, agent, or employee of the United States government or any employee of a corporation providing services to the United States government that enforces or attempts to enforce an act, order, law, statute, rule or regulation of the government of the United States in violation of this act shall be guilty of a felony and upon conviction...shall be punished by imprisonment in the custody of the Department of Corrections not to exceed five (5) years. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/17/Oklahoma-Steps-Up-Threatens-5-Years-Imprisonment-For-Federal-Gun-Grabbers

1st - At a minimum you need to follow OSHA regulations for both CO levels and O2 levels. O2 must be higher than 19.5% (and your alarms on your 4 gas meter should be set for this.) For CO the short term exposure level (max level for 15 mins then 1 hour in clear air) is 200ppm. This is the standard high alarm setting (we have changed ours to 100ppm). Anything above that point or below the 19.5% we mandate you wear your mask. The 35ppm low alarm level for CO warns workers that they can not go higher without resp. protection when they will be exposed for 8 hours (40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year for 20+ years). 2nd - When monitoring, I have always found that the highest levels of CO, lowest of O2 are almost NEVER in the room of most fire. In multiple dwelling fires, the high levels will be found in the hall, floor above, top floor, other apts. etc. This is because we vent (or its already vented) the fire area. 3rd - There are other toxic gasses such as hydrogen cynide that your monitor will not detect., If you are not dealing with a facility that uses it, then in general if the other levels are low, because of venting you should be ok. 4th - Here is the problem.......How can you tell if the particulates in the environment are a problem? You can't. So if the gas levels are ok at a minimum you still need a good fitting particulate mask. I like using a cartridge filter on my SCBA Mask.

So can the NY National Guard have more than 7 rounds? What about a 7 round belt for their 50 cals?

So if they only threaten to poison or blow people up, they can keep their guns? —Ban the Internet sale of assault weapons. 1. Does that overstep state authority, since only the Feds can regulate interstate commerce 2. How can you possible enforce this? —Restrict ammunition magazines to seven bullets, from the current national standard of 10. Current owners of higher-capacity magazines would have a year to sell them out of state. An owner caught at home with eight or more bullets in a magazine could face a misdemeanor charge. So if a retired LEO has had a larger capacity mag, because it mrrors what he was issued/trained on, he cant. —Increase sentences for gun crimes including for taking a gun on school property. The "Webster provision" would increase penalties for shooting first responders. Two firefighters were killed when shot by a person who set a fire in the western New York town of Webster last month. The crime would be punishable by life in prison without parole. Wow, I person kills a bunch of kids at school and we will make his sentence longer, Life in prison only works if he does not kill himself. If you make the law strict enough and stupid enough (like over stepping the states constitutional power) you are more likely to get someone to challenge it in federal court.

I love the fact that politicians use the term "assault weapon" or "military style" to make people think they are only needed by the military to kill people, but most of the legal "assault" weapons are not used by the military as they are not good enough. So a person with a hand injury (say a retired police officer who was injuried on the job) wont be able to get a pistol grip...I we no longer consider ADA, only legal gun owners as potential mass killers.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Segments of the media and some politicians have had a long standing agenda against guns and this tragedy is their excuse to take action.

While many "routine" calls might be better handled by a transport unit instead of 911 the issue is (like it or not) residents in nursing homes are still residents of your comunity and you have a moral and ethical obligation to serve them. Remember that almost everyone will someday either be there or have loved ones there. It is sad that the care there is often poor, its made worst when those sworn to protect them, have so little interest.

Good luck with that. NYS law requires an environmental impact statement on all new projects. In it must include how the project will effect FD, PD, EMS, Water, sewer, noise, traffic, etc. They must also state how it will effect the services currently being provided to the existing community. We said the highrises and New Roc city would put a strain on FD/EMS, The developer said: "No impact"....City council said we need the development. Next project and the same developers say No impact, we show impact and city says, we need development. Now city still wants more development and they want to reduce cost of FD, they ask why so many calls at these developments? How can we cut the numbers down? You can't charge them extra, either you are billing the patients (if allowed) for transport or you are taxing them. If you tax them extra, they will fight it and win.

If the park is within the district boundries, then legally the district must cover it and no contract is required

My car is 2306 thank you

Lawer representing U.S.Airways: "judge, we acknowledge the laws regarding navigatable waters, but we believe the the laws of gravity and of physics take precedent in this case"

The USCG does not restrict commercial activity on a navigatable water way Unless, maybe splitting hairs between a commercial vehicle and commercial vessel.

I think the point was more that failing to fix our problems will result in non-fire service officials forcing consolidation based on their needs and or misunderstanding and not based on consolidating to sound fire service principals. While the job still needs to get done, there may still be plenty of additional firefighters sitting in fire stations minutes away, but they are on the other side of a dotted line, so we will continue to work short because we do not want the status quo to change.

The primary group that praises this concept is the International City Managers Association (ICMA). This is a group that has said that NFPA 1710's staffing has no basis and is unnessesary. But the NFPA 1710 committee notes that part of the company staffing came from the ICMA handbook on fire service administration (which says 5 on engines and 6 on ladders). They also promote response time as the only critical measure of fire service. During one study they attempted in Westchester they claimed that a hypothetical Fire Dept. with an average response time of 3min 45sec with a maximum of 3 fire fighters responding was clearly providing a better service than a dept. with a response time of 4min, but a minimum of 20 FF's.

There have been a number of studies that show it only works in very specific types of communities. Remote communites in the middle of kansas, nevada, etc. where they can not call mutual aid (for fd or pd) because of distance. Also in gated "retirement" communities. These locations have minimal police needs (since they control access) and minimal fire needs (sprinklers and uniformity makes for a simpler fd ops) the primary need is EMS. Also the need for special training (swat, youth, anti-crime, tech rescue, hazmat, etc.) is greatly reduced. The communities that are not remote that have tried it fall into 2 catagories; 1) Those that drop it after they find it costs much more (as the unions will negotiate for the increased skill sets), tremendous turnover occures (costing increased funds), training hours drop to levels that in many cases are below legally mandated hours (i.e. in NYS you would need to take a cross trained LEO off police duties for at least 100/yr to do fire training, plus EMS and increased hazmat training). 2) Those that have kept it and praised how wonderful it is like Kalamazoo MI. (but looking carefully at their stats find, crime rates sky rocket and fire losses also go up). For a similar population Kalamazoo has 4x more crime than NR and more annual homicides than Westchester, but a population of New Rochelle. THe good note is they were able to reduce the number of firefighters and cops with this program.

There was a time not that long ago when we had a lot more. The engines use to always have 3ff/1of (and sometimes had a 4th ff) until NYS made NR the only municipality in the state with a mandated tax cap. that dropped us from 31 to 27. Since the tax base has not grown and unless we (local, region and state) come up with a different system to fund all services we will continue to struggle to maintain the current level. I wrote extensively 3-4 years ago that this was coming to every FD and the only thing FD's could do is bleed to death or consolidate to maintain service levels and staffing. I see many depts that are shrinking or just managing to maintain, but one can still see the cliff is coming when the tax base will no longer support the current less.

Currently its 27 minimum shift 2ff/1of on engines 22, 23, 24 & 25 3ff/1of on engines 21 2ff/1of or 3ff on TL11, L12 & L13

How many officers/commissioners even acknowledge they have a staffing problem? 1firefighter per rig, 2, 3..........how about they have 6 per rig on some days/hours but other days the rig can't get out the door?

1) More people in NYC get pushed into traffic or down stairs should we gate every sidewalk and staircase. Only 54 people out of 100's of millions of trips each year is very low. 2) MTA does not have liability, since they tell you to stand back and almost everyone who ends up on the tracks (pushed or fell) was too close to the edge to begin with. I cant tell you how many times I see people leaning over the edge to see if the subway is coming. 3) Yes track safety will be improved, but to pay for it they will reduce something that will negate that. 4) Very few things with the MTA are a "great investment". They can not manage their budget without annual bailouts and support from employee payroll tax. We do not need them taking more money, because its already been proven that that it hurts local industry and reduces local employment as companies must reduce the payroll to pay MTA.

The peace officer training for other services do not have the benefit of the lobbying efforts of FASNY to protect them from the damage caused by being properly trained.

Great Questions!!! The reason we follow the minor ones is 3 fold: 1) OSHA / PESH also require us to follow NFPA Standards and they will give violations for failing to meet the minor one (but they have never enforced 1710, which they can only do under the "General Duty Clause", as there is no OSHA standard for manning. NYS DOL does not appear to be overly concerned with enforcement of the "General Duty Clause"). 2) Liability - There are many documented legal cases where NFPA standards were used, but not 1 case on 1710. 3) Availablity/Liability - The minor items listed are often only available in NFPA versions or the chief must sign liability waviers to get around them. For examble we had red/white rear chevrons, when we purchased the 1st rig after the NFPA 1901 change to red / yellow our chief asked if we could keep it red/white and the manufacturer said only if he would sign a liability release. We got red/yellow. The standard (as partially listed above) requires 3ff's and 1of per company minimum and 16 or 17 total (based on ladder ops) on the 1st alarm assignment. These numbers are based on a 2,000 sq/ft pvt. dwelling without a basement, larger structures require greater staffing. The 2 reasons we do not enforce NFPA 1710 is 2 fold: 1) Because no department has been sued and/or lost. I always believed that if the insurance industry ever figures this one out we will be hit hard (i.e. 2 on a rig =50% complience, sue the FD for 50% of the loss). 2) 99% of Mayors, Managers, Counciles, etc. do not believe this is important so they do not fund (or cant afford to fund) 1710. The only other option for depts is CONSOLIDATION, and we all have learned that we would rather run short then go down that road.