Bnechis

This was correct. The question asked was "Now, with all that said, the questions have become these: how will this change the borough's ISO rating and how many insurance companies actually use the ISO rating as a benchmark for setting their homeowner rates?" 1st. I am going to assume that the communications & water supply will most likely stay the same or 50% of the rating. Now since we are comparing the current fire service in the community to a proposed one, we are dealing with the remaining 50% (plus 10% for Diversion - see below). Distribution is how far the fire station is from structures in the district. ISO considers the ideal distance at 1.5 miles (travel distance) for engines and 2.5 miles (travel distance) for ladders and/or service companies. Beyond 5 miles ISO automatically considers the property to be an ISO PPC 10 (no FD). The biggest issue for points is personnel which is worth 15%+ (of the FD's rating). The plus is because it is open ended (it includes total number onduty and average oncall responders). It is unclear if you will be affected by this, but if you are removing the career FF's to do just EMS and do not replace them it is going to hurt you. Next biggest (10%) is engine companies; are they properly equipped, annual pump tests, annual hose tests and do you send enough of of them on a structure call (based on the needed fire flow)? Training (9%) this includes facilities and hours in specific areas. Having lots of members who do not do lots of training hurts a dept very bad, because they average the total number of members by the total training hours. This hurts depts that have members that no longer respond, but are considered "active or full" members. Hours required: Recruit 240 hrs. - 46 hours per month per member - New Driver 40 hrs. Annual driver 12 hrs per year and some others. Hopefully the new dept will do better here. Pump capacity (do you have enough pump gpm to meet ISO's needed fire flow for the community - gennerally its 3,500 gpm and max is 5,000 gpm) is worth 5% Truck or Service company is also worth 5% (properly equipped, annual arial tests and sent on all calls) Note: Quints can help you here or hurt you base on the equipment and total units sent. Distribution (travel distance) is 4%. Then spares and a few other minor issues round it out. Diversion is a comparrison between the FD & the water. It is worth 10% (thats above the 100% for the 3 areas looked at) and it works in the negative. If you have a great FD, but no water or you have hydrants every 100ft that flow 5,000gpm, but no FD...your community will not have a good fire outcome. SO ISO deducts up to 10% off which ever side fire or water that is statistically better than the other. If both are good, then you do not lose, but if one is good and the other poor, the poor side gets an extra reduction in credit under diversion. Each insurance company can use the ISO info as it sees fit to determine rates and each state has some minor differences, but in general the rates drop about 8% per rating i.e. if your ISO is 10 and you pay $1,000/yr, ISO 9 would be $920/yr. ISO 8 $846/yr....etc. Since this is per property, you add up the savings for the whole community and its often many millions. ISO is very simple and very complicated. Good Luck, If you have more questions please feel free to PM me.

That was a reasonable started, 1 minor correction, ISO does not consider "response time", instead they look at response distance (and they calculate how long it should take based on the distance and if the apparatus is staffed).

Justice was swift and all appeals have been denied

Yes, I'm sure every member would be, but sometimes the truth hurts.

NYS has mandated most of this for many years. What NYS is missing is enforcement of the regulations.

Agreed, they had 1 (or was it 2) "REKINDELS"....WTF. There is no such thing as a rekindle. You have one of 3 choices: 1) you left the scene without putting it out (i.e. failure to overhaul) after declaring it out. 2) the arsonest came back and started another fire 3) you left the scene without putting it out, but left a fire watch (to maintain possesion of the scene) and you determined that it was still burning but posed no threat to exposures, and you would be unable to extingush it till later (like after heavy equipment was brought in to open it up and due to cold your crews were rehabed). The fire didn't just "re-start on its own" We need to stop using that term, it just makes the fire service look foolish.

So everyone was on 1 fireground for attack and another for water supply. 2 frequencies and you need the field com to coordinate? Yes its warm, but so is any rehab unit, bus, ambulance, etc.

Having mapped out the 1,500 hydrants in my city I can tell you there are ones that you will never find if you do not have a map (and a few that even with the map and the water company engineer you will still not find). I also found 3 hydrants that are ornimental and do not function (one was plumbed with a 5/8" garden hose oulet that worked). What Eastchester, Fairview, Greenville, Hartsdale, Larchmont, New Rochelle, Pelham, Pelham Manor and Scarsdale have done is added rig laptop computers with mapping software Lots to see here, hydrants: red, orange, green & blue are NFPA flows. Blue with a red ring is unknown flow. Marked with a "P" are private, "T" are out of town (normally they would be tank, but we do not have any of those) they can also list dry ones & yard ones. If you click on the hydrant the yellow box pops up, gives some info, then if you hit "open" gives specs, inspection history etc. on the hydrant. Out of service Hydrants (none here) get a big X over the top of them and that can be set on our master PC at HQ and it pushes that info out to the fleet every 15 minutes. In this map if you hit a button (distanse to 3 closest hydrants) you get the above on the rig map. Note the distances are direct to the house not via roads, so they are approx and they are color coded by flow.

Chief of Operations is the highest

Maybe you do not know, but, MV has lots of brush, but could use a few more brushes

This came up on another thread, so lets look at this issue. Hopefully everyone understands the importance of this issue. How does your department handle accountability? And does it really account for your personnel? Do you handle the 1st rig or 2 different than once you have established a "full" command structure? How are mutual aid agencies addressed? How do you account for members (career or volunteers) who arrive on-scene without apparatus (i.e. buffing, POV, call back, etc.)?

Agreed like any system, its only as good as the last update. Our chiefs aide keeps it updated, and it can be updated/printed in the car. I believe your version and definatly our version can be updated at the car/CP. very critical for us since a 2nd alarm brings in call back. I hear its not ready for prime time yet.

Yes

I do not believe that any of the career depts are even aware of that system. We still have tags, but we only use them for going out of town, they are color coded by rank: FF - Black, Lt. & Capt - White, Chiefs - gold. Each rig has a ring with a tag that ID's the rig. Members attach their tags to it. The reason we have gotten away from the tags is while they look good in concept, we have found that occasionally a tag is missing (because a member was detailed from another rig) or there are "extras" at shift change, because a member going off forgot to remove it and the officer has not yet checked it. The bigger problem was the "chain". I have often been the accoutability officer (not an official title on our job, but default by running the CP). On a working fire we would collect each rigs ring (7 or 8 rigs + staff). Each ring has 3-4 tags....thats approximatly 30 tags that are all channed together. They would hang from the command board down to the ground. On the few occassions when we needed to figure out who was where or had to remove a tag (like when a member is transported by EMS off the scene), it was a major production to sort thru that mess to find them. I never had to search under the pressure of a missing member or mayday and at that time I would have other responsabilities on top of that. While this would not be very workable in a VFD, we switched to a single page riding list for the entire onduty shift and a copy is kept in the command car & attached 2x per day to the command board. Its easy to see who is on what rig, & what radio they have. I agree accountability can not wait, but until we have standardized responses and sop's it is unlikely that we will have real accountability for our firefighters. Yes, we should not be asking, we should be confirming. The point was accountability means know where everyone (particularly those in the hazard zone) is. Everyone so far has assumed tha the company officer is keeping track of his/her crew (as they should). But there are a few issues with this: 1)as others have mentioned, it is not uncommon for members to not be working with the officer. The FDNY trucks, being a good example as the roof & ovm do not work in the area of their officers. The driver also is often in the same situation and (particularly in short handed depts) if the driver is not pumping or running the ladder, they might be anywhere. 2)what happens if the officer goes down, calls a mayday or simply losses or cant use his radio? how do you account for him and his crew then? Great points. Also shows why standardization is so critical. Sounds great, I hope others do the same.

Is that sheer luck or dumb luck?

I wanted to congratulate Chief Fitzpatrick on his well deserved retirement. Many people know how he was key in developing Yonkers FD SOD to the finest in the region. But, he was also key in improving special operations countywide. While Yonkers clearly has the best capabilities in the county, Chief Fitzpatrick was able to evaluate the gaps and realized that additional resources beyond Yonkers would be required for a large scale ongoing disaster. He proposed to the Westchester Career Chiefs Association the concept of the Westchester Special Operations Task Force (WSOTF), and then he created it. He was able to get federal funding for the training and equipment, which he spec'ed, purchased and distributed to the 9 departments. He oversaw the training of over 700 firefighters to the Hazardous Materials Technician level and another 500 firefighters to the Technical Rescue Technician level. He was also directly involved in the oversight of the development of the Westchester Tech Rescue Team where his experience convinced the county to adopt minimum training standards for the team. He also was one of the lead instructors at OFPC Technical Rescue School at Camp Smith. From Hazmat, WMD, a building collapse, trench collapse, confined space incident or a high angle accident the public and all emergency responders are safer today because of his leadership. Chief, you accomplished what few have ever done. Job well done. Enjoy your retirement. Be well.

Not here, they love us and we really dont cost that much (compared to the schools). They would never cut us. "[The Constitution] was framed upon the theory that the peoples of the several states must sink or swim together, and that in the long run prosperity and salvation are in union and non division" - Benjamin N. Cardozo 1935 Benjamin N. Cardozo served from 1914 - 1926 as a Judge on the NYS Court of Appeals. He was elected from both the Democratic & Republican ticket. In 1926 he was elected to a 14 year term as the states chief judge. He resigned in 1932 to accept an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. He served on the Supreme Court until his death in 1938.

Agreed, the problem is too many depts do not maintain company (or group/division) integrity. This is a major problem with understaffed units. I see many incidents in many communities where 1 officer ends up with more guys than he started with, while others have less. THe understaffing extends to members who started by making the hydrant (part of Eng 1) ending up doing search (part of Lad 1). Most of the accountability systems that do anything more than tell us who is here, depend on unit integrity. In the above case FF Smith is listed with Engine 1 on the fire floor, when he is actually with ladder 1 on the floor above. This is also a problem when exiting for a bottle change/rehab. I commonly see "units" where some members are ready to go right back to work, while other members are drifting back at different time. And if they don't have a system or they fail to follow it? Years past, we had sent an eng & truck mutual aid. They were left inside, when the host dept. switched to a defensive operation. From that point forward we always send an additional officer with mutual aid. That officers roll is to be a liason and protect our members. Additionally, the career depts., this year has done a major realignment of fire ground channels and those who were still on VHF moved to UHF. With a group grant an additional 90 portables were purchased for the career chiefs association. In almost all cases we can now talk on the hosts fire ground. Agreed. Agreed, but again this requires company integraty. If E-1 is sent to rehab, but E-1 driver teams up with R-1 driver then you need to know this. I have been at many command posts (as a M/A liason) and I can not remember having ever seen that documented. In addition the most common thing I see on those boards is the list and a diagram of where every rig is, what hydrant they are using, where the lines go and where each cop car & amb is located. They never show who is working and where inside the fire building. Accountability is not knowing the location of the rigs, its knowing where the members are....starting with those in the hazard zone. Excellent, very important. Better yet, report to stagging / accountability as the IC often has his hands full. Well said. Take 20 bucks out of petty cash (inflation).

Very true, but the real problem is most depts. either do not make them work (i.e. going through the motions) or do not understand the whole concept that accountability is more than just collecting tags, t-cards or radio id's. In this case its the other way around. The probie has no say in the organization and his attitude is a reflection of those above. The FF and Jr. officers will do as instructed, unless they know that the chief(s) dont really care or enforce the rules and then they will do as they please. This one is all on the chief. If he believes this is important, then he will direct the dept to comply. Otherwise nothing happens. This is only true if the officer (person or rank) is respected. In many places it is not and if they are voted in (or politically appointed), it is less likely they will order anything other than another slice of pizza (for those in dry stations). I still see many incidents where the chief has massivly exceeded the span of control and still believes they can handle everyone & everything onscene. When something radically changes, it is too easy to miss something, and thats the entire point of having a working accountability system.

Very Funny

Thanks. I find it amazing how the last few posts lead up to that answer. I was going to give you a rep point for it....but I saw you are at 343 and I just could not do it (yet).

Wouldn't a simple dry chem extingusher (refill) be just as good and only about $30? Did the FIT-5 actually make more of a mess by filling the room, than a standard extingusher might have? I ask because of your insurance question? If its more mess, why would the insurance industry imbrase it?

I agree it needs to be on a county level. but you can't just put together an accountability system, until you standardize a few things: ICS, response patterns, training, equipment, sop's, manning...etc. Look at the other thread which shows every dept has a different standard for what it sends to a structure call. How do you standardize accountability when there are 59 different minimum standards for staffing (from a minimum of 3ff's to a minimum of 26 for the same type of call). I have been an advocate of this for many years. I call it consolidation.

Yes. With some modifications that should make it more flexable than what FDNY needs.

ROFLMAO Wonderful.....