Bnechis

The airport has a hydrant system (some normal and some "airport" hydrants, which are low profile). Most ARFF trucks carry 2-4 loads of foam, but only 1 load of water, so if you resupply them with water, they can continue to use foam. Sometimes it is simpler to nurse them then establish a hydrant supply, also then you do not block pavement, which makes bring additional resources and having ambulances leave much easier.

Very sad, but true. Working as a medic I have seen a few fires with "brothers" in turnout coats taking lots of pics and the dept names on the coats were not invited to the fire. I am glad our PD maintains our fire lines (most of the time).

No we should request that law enforcment should maintain a security zone so the buffs and general public can be kept safe.

Is it not the policy of most law enforcment to have someone who is detained and has an "injury" to be medically evaluated? Does not matter what caused the injury. If a police officer or innocent bystander was accidently hit, would they go ALS? Would that not set the standard?

New 12 was just reporting that the son woke up to his father yelling the the house was on fire. The son crawled down the stairs, made it into the garage where he pulled a string to open the garage door. Then the father was trying to get everyone else out, they were trapped when the house collapsed. It was previously reported that the collapse occured within 10 minutes of the FD's arrival. The timeline does not quite make sense...but the investigation may determine that. My big question is, did the detectors work and why did the family have so little time? The bigest concern, you can clearly see on news 12 footage the damaged lightweight truss floors. These assemblies fall apart in minutes, everyone in the fire service knows this, but we did not fight hard to stop them and the developpers fought to get them. In codes class we were taught that 90% of them are not installled to code (making it even worst). But the fire service has only pushed to get so signs. This was a relativly new home (built since the state code was passed in 1984) And the code still does not require home sprinklers. This house would still be standing with them and when they built it, the added cost would have only been a few thousand dollars. The fire service needs to put its money where its mouth is and fight for sprinklers and against light weight construction.

18 years ago I got to see how into PODS (platform on demand) they are. At the Intershutz fire show (largest in the world) I got pics of a lot of different PODS, Once the pics were developped (film for the digitaly impaired) I found I had shot 70 distinct types of PODS. They had them for everything and the cost for a basic POD was about $10,000 so it was cheap.

Not if it is an escilating fine. $250 1st fine, $500 2nd fine, $1,000 3rd fine, $2,000 4th fine....etc. At some point it will be cheaper to fix it. (not thats not the 1st time it happens, just the 1st fine) Also, for those that will disconnect the system, while we cant stop that on residential (have yet to find anyone doing that, because then they also lose the burglar alarm and the insurance discount). But on commercial systems they are often mandated by code. This is particularly true for are worst offenders, so if you disconnect we can force you to evacuate and close until you reactivate or post an approved fire watch. To give an idea of what that costs; we had a supermarket that had to shut its sprinkler system down for maintenance. The code enforcment officer gave them the option of closing to the public or an approved fire watch. They had the FD provide the fire watch @ $125/hr times 3 days x 20 hours per day. Does force the issue.

However, ISO ratings of the Fire communications is based on NFPA 1221, even if its part of a multi agency center.

NFPA 1911 - Standard for the Inspection, Maintenance, Testing, and Retirement of In-Service Automotive Fire Apparatus. I do not have access to it today, but will look up the ages and post when I do. Its not been an issue for us...they never last that long here. lol

Generally, I would say no we cant, but the comptrollers (at least 4 of them over the last 30 years) have told Albany to go scratch, time after time. They appear to have maintained a seperation from the majority of the "government" and thats why it has remained strong. The comptroller made it very clear that teir 6 would cause insolvency and Albany would not even respond to him, Cuomo promised the voters that he would make the "tough" choices, He never said he would make good ones. So which is rolling the dice? It has been tried before, Its called tier 2. Albany wanted to show how "tough" they were, so they limitied the retirement benefit and added a penelty for anyone that had full time in but retired between 55 and 62. We have members who are 57/58 how would love to go, but will lose money if they do not stay till 62. I appears that the only financial ruin is when the politicians get involved. When its just the accountants, we do just fine.

I pay taxes to make sure I get service (well trained, properly staffed & equipped) in a timely manor. But a substantial amount of the time those resources are covering false alarms at IONA, CNR, the Hospital and the highrises, all of which do not pay taxes. If they are malfunctining (crying wolf) they will not save lives when the time comes, because they will be ignored.

Your source claims to be an independant research group, but they appaear to be more of a lobbying group. They came up with info that no one else is using, The info they are using is 4 years old and they were behind the push to get teir 6 pushed through. They claim that without the pension reform of tier 6 they claim we will bankrupt the system. This last week our Mayor's citizen's budget committee asked how do we convince older firefighters to retire? They stated that the cost of older firefighters both becuase they are at top pay and because they have more injuries and take longer to heal than younger ones. When we looked at the new Tier 6 we find a huge penalty for each year under 63 that a person retires. So to "save the pension system" (using this data), this group promoted tier 6 and we now have a lower upfront pension cost, but will skyrocket the disability pension cost in about 10 years.

Since the NYS Fire & Police pension system is fully funded (at 107%), is mandated in the state constitution and the state bills each FD or Municipality for each employee. And no career FD in NYS has its own pension system. Can you please identify which career FD you are refering to? Is it possible that the fund may become underfunded? Yes, we have had 3 govenours try to raid it, one even withheld payments, but the courts ordered him to repay it with interest. At the same time can you list who is regulating the LOSAP funds? and how they are being handled?

Years back we had a problem in a number of the elementary schools (and Middle & High schools) and would get called there multiple times every night. THey would not let us have keys or install knox boxes. They would pay the custodian double time to come in. It always took 1-2 hours to get them there (the all lived in town). Over the course of 1-2 years they ran up a fine of over $60,000. We finally got fed up and told them: no key.... get there in 15 minutes or we will use Chief Haligans Key. That solved the response time, but not the alarms or the bill. Till the School system sent us a bill of $40,000 for opening the high school to hold FD Civil service testing. We sent their bill back with an adjusted bill stating they now only owed us $20,000. Since that time the problem appears to be greatly reduced.

Yes, we can. But when we were looking at the issue of AFA's. we thought that this was most interesting. Now even "properly functioning alarms" such as burn popcorn or steam from the shower may indicate the head is the wrong type or is too close to a common source. We have a $10 smoke detector in the kitchen and the central station head a full room away. If the smoke detector goes off (from the burnt pop corn, there is still enough warning to save it and turn on the fan to prevent the central station from sending the FD. So even when we consider the "properly functioning" detectors, if we keep getting calls to the same location, there is an issue. We do bill repeat offenders (for malfunctions), but we generally do not consider the burnt food to be a malfunction, until it becomes a routine call. Well put.

More importantly, a few years ago it was reported (by the NYS Comptroller) that many LOSAP programs maybe underfunded. That means that at some point 10-20-30 years from now the departments may need to raise large sums to cover personnel who are no longer providing service.

No we are here to respond to emergencies, the majority of these are not emergencies and therefore it takes us away from other emergencies. If we find the alarm went off for a "real" reason, like smoke from cooking. No problem. (unless we have been there 3,4, 5 times) then maybe the head needs to be moved. A little fine (that escilates) will convince them its cheaper to move it. If its dust from contractors, maybe the contractor will learn to work properly if the property owner hits him with the fine, otherwise we get to follow this contractor all over town. No. We do not send PD or THe chief. But we need to correct the problem so its not a repeat. When you go to the same location over and over for a problem system, then the property is crying wolf. They will not get the same response from many depts. (as stated in the article). We do over 1,000 of these every year, we are not going away, but after a while it does hurt moral. Fair enough, but in busy depts, this is not as critical. Our stats show its less than 0.1% turn out to be the "real thing". Thats about a dozen fires in 25,000 responses. We actually found the chance of find a fire was greater when we just drove down the road and spoted one. We also had far more fires that were phoned in for another location while we were out of position at automatic alarms. Also remember, Alarm companies sell this service and promise property owners that they will keep them safe. Then they send us. Maybe they should have to give us a cut of the profits.

I disagree. Most people do not know if they are being driven off a cliff. They vote right down the line, Dem, Rep or other. On a larger scale how do you get rid of the problems in Albany or Washington? The politician who keeps screwing the state or the country will keep getting reelected as long as his/her district is happy with him/her. Consider Speaker Silver, all he needs to do is keep lower Manhattan happy and the rest of the state has no say.

If its that murky, it means they are not flushing the hydrant properly and the water is coming from the same main that feeds your house.

This concept is what the Mayor of Stamford appears to be attempting. In NYS this was made illegal when Civil service came into existance almost 100 years ago. And the reason it did was to prevent nepotism. In addition to it violating civil service law, I suspect the Feds would not like the "mix" you might get, if it does not match the community "mix".

And is this not illegal, which would clearly give the reason for revoking the authorization.

In many other threads the topic was how many depts. could not staff a FAST role because of staffing/training. If thats the case it does not matter which vehicle its assigned to.

The multiple department "system" in Weschester makes it hard to think true "system". Most Municipal and regional or county departments operate stations with 1 engine and/or 1 truck (sometimes other special units). You rarely see 2, 3 or 4 engines in a fire station. You set up a standard response based on an evaluation of what procedures need to be done at an emergency, need to stretch a line? need to vent, need to extricate, etc/ how many people per procedure. Then what is your minimum standard for personnel per rig. If you need 9 responders to get those jobs done in a timely fasion and staffing is 4, then you need 3 rigs to do it. The apparatus dispatch will come multiple stations (depts). so if 3 engines are needed they come from the 3 closest stations. If that were to happen, then its not Mutual aid....consider FDNY; when rigs go from one section to another its not mutual aid.

ROFLMAO......In Westchester their are not enough apparatus to respond. Thats funny. While individual depts may not have 4 and 2 or whatever, its available within minutes. The real issue is will the have sufficent numbers of trained responders.

Just because 60 has it in a list (CAD) does not mean it will ever get called, if the IC does not know it exists. In the new Battalion Chiefs Classes for FDNY, one this they do is show all the special equipment so the chiefs know what can be called.