Bnechis

We tossed a coin and its spinning....heads its 21, tails 23....will see shortly.

Yep. Must have been the FD's since they had a number of them on the line. I wonder if this means the total quint is no longer the way to go dont know

I thought so, but the engineers say the 500 gal of water and tank are the same weight as the hose and hosebed.

We have 100's of frequencies...i.e. a network. But you can not expect 1,000 of responders to communicate on the same frequency. Also we have found if you put to many frequencies in the radios that members never use, the members do not remember whats there or worst, they end up on the wrong channel on an every day call, which puts everyone in danger. After 9-1-1 DHS made a big deal about interoperable communications between different agencies and has since spent 100's of millions in radios. They forgot we already have interoperable communications between different agencies if we just follow unified command as outlined by DHS, it seams the people at DHS missed that lesson.

Who is going to pay and & the technology does not exist.

Excellent 1st post. Welcome The right palance has always been an issue. Consider that 30 years ago the class was only 81 hours and the only major item that has been added is Defib. When I took my original EMT the instructor pushed us to 110 or 120 hours and I felt the same when I started in the field as you do. When I tought EMT classes I pushed it to 160-180 hours, & lucky for me I had a hosptial that was willing to pay for the extra time, even thought the state did not cover the additional time. The key as I mentioned before is good field supervision, which saddly does not exist in much of the north east. Good luck, find a good EMT or medic and learn from them.

I just wrote about how to solve this in another thread (do line officers need medical training). The main problem is lack of supervison in the field. FD supervises its people, PD does also, EMS..you have a valid card...man the ambulance. Everyone cry's about adding more training time and who else is taking the classes?

Very true. It will need to come from outside. 2 ways its coming, 1 the state can mandate manditory tax caps (which they have prommised they will do). If the mandate does not exempt major costs (pension, health ins and bonds) the combo districts in Westchester will be forced to lay off 4-6 firefighters every year until the law is changed or they have no firefighters left. 2 the state recently mandated that the smallest school district will be disolved and must merge with larger ones. The Greenburgh combo depts have had 2 options for consolidation (just the 3 or with other career/combo depts in Westchester). The 2nd one was basicly ignored. An interesting political dynamic exists in Edgemont with Town Supervisor Finer that they would rather become a village than have anything to do with the town. So I do not see the 3 merging without outside force as listed aboved. Other communities like the Greenburgh river depts or Mt Pleasant have gotten to a point where lack of volunteers is becoming critical. At times in some towns in Westchester more rigs exist than the number of available firefighters. At some point the depts will have to pull their heads out of the sand and figure out how they are going to provide service. But for how long?

If we keep beating up the tax payer, while toning out for any available driver over and over, your "dead horse" is either the taxpayer or it will be the tax payer beating us up. Some of the proposals in Albany will bankrupt most Fire Districts and small municipalities. If they go through, you will see either FD consolidation or no coverage. Particularly in Westchester where depts spend plenty of money and still need 5-10 mutual aid depts to handle a bedroom fire.

Excellent post. Prior to your post I would have always said that all line officers should have medical training, after reading your post I realize that in one post you covered all of the EMS issues listed in all of the other EMS related threads: Professionalism, MCI managment, incident liability, protocols, training, etc. Having been involved with a number of different vac's I agree with your "mommy" statement and how all the other issues that you listed as needing to be addressed. Now this brings me to the real issue: EMS critically needs field supervision!!!! It solves many of the above issues. I have been on many calls where the crew chief has been an EMT for the last week or 2 and has no clue. We want EMS to be treated the same as FD and PD. But EMS crews are not supervised. In larger EMS systems there are field supervisors who insure proper response, proper procedures and during MCI's to COORDINATE the response and administer the incident. If your emergency response agency (FD, EMS or any other group) needs a "MOMMY", it is not the agency that I want responding to an emergency with myself, my mother or my child. Its time to go to regional EMS (yes it can still have volunteers). It really is nice that VAC's get to play, but this really needs to be all about the "PATIENT".

You (or who evers "moon" that is) needs to go to a dermatologist

Its not volunteer when the choice is stretch a line or swim

I am reading this a little different than most of the other commenters. I have speced a number of vehicles for a number of different depts. and based on what you've written, you are working backwards. It is very common for depts to decide on a manufacturer, before they decide what the depts needs are. Every dealer who reads your spec will know who you want and often few others will invest in bidding the rig (it costs them $1,000's and if they know you want something else, why waste their $$$). I have also seen depts. that make it so clear that they want one brand, that their is only one bid and they get hit with an extra $60,000 for the rig, because everyone knew that was the rig before the spec went out. There are clearly differences from one manufacturer to the next. But the biggest differences when it comes to quality, reliability, service, etc. is your spec and the local dealer. I have seen many apparatus committee's that spend days figuring out if the light bar sould be red on the left and blue on the right (or vis versa), but have no idea what pump is right, or the difference between a jake brake and a telma retarder (and how that will affect maintenance). I have also seen good spec's that were not followed because the manufacture &/or dealer knew you'd accept whatever they built as long as the stripes and lights looked cool. In the last 25 years my dept. has owned: ALF (2 different companies), LTI, Maxium, Pierce, RD Murry, Seagrave, Sutphen, SVI and we are soon to get a smeal. They have been on ALF, Pirce, Seagrave, Simon-Duplex, Spartan and Sutphen Chassies. All have been fine and all have had major issues. Almost every manufacture uses the same tires, wheels, axles, brakes, engines, transmissions, pumps, drivetrains, seats, mirrors, lights, filters, etc. Write a good performance spec that meets your needs then let the dealers fight to prove who will build you what you want for the most reasonable (note: not cheapest) price. If the bids are close, then consider reputations, recommendations and past experiences in making the final cut. Remember your spec (and the follow thru) is what will make or break this engine. Good luck

Before this deteroiates into every manufactures problems, you need to look a little deeper. Their are only a few pump controlers on the market and they must be matched with the engine, transmission and pump. In fact if you even had an option, your dept spec'ed it and it is very likely that no other unit can be used. I suspect your dept may have even been told this, but often I find depts don't want to accept that it is what it is.

Trailers are regestered vehicles in NYS

Dispatch may know with the identifier, but what about other responding units?

From Airplane: "Gate #1, Gate #2, Gate #3, Gate #4, Gate #5.....etc. Consider the Miricle o nthe Hudson Crash, every few minites the command post moved down river to keep up with the incident.

All OSHA standards are based on a healthy adult in a workpalce (meaning they are exposed no more than 40 hours/week 50 weeks/year for 30 years) and at the end of each shift they leave the potentially contaminated area. We must consider that persons near this accident include those who may have previous medical conditions, are children or infants, are pregnant, etc. For them levels may need to be much lower, but the standard considers exposure everyday for 30 years, so they are lower than an emergency dose.

Chris...he ment to say dessert

There is one on paper. Here is the real problem. Last week Jim Soto (NYS Dept of Health, BEMS rep/Disaster planner) gave a talk to the emergency managers of NYSEMO region II (Hudson Valley). He said that EMS in NYS is so "Fragile" that it can not be expected to mount an effective large scale response. He stated that the basic issue one must understand is that there is no requirement in NYS for any community, municipality, or response agency to provide EMS or ambulance service. So when a community sets up a VAC, a FDVAC, a municipal service, or a contract service it sets up what ever it wants and it is happy with that because isn't that much better than nothing? Now the reason most EMS agencies in Westchester (or NYS for that matter) can't put together a proper disaster response is they are not designed or required to do so. Nothing. A number of people have tried for decades and there is zero interest in EMS to even consider this a problem. Maybe when we consider how bad EMS is in handling a simple "sick" call in many communities, then we should not be surprised we are not ready for a major one. As Pemo3 stated (above) "two plans do not do anyone any good". There is a plan but it needs to be implimented. Drilled on and improved. We do not need another 36 plans that dont work. In fact when I started trying to fix this Westchester had 36 plans and the best was each communities plan had the same resources coming to help them. Amazing to see how in a multi jurisdictional incident some vacs were being asked to send there one ambulance to 5 different communities.

This is one of our "newer" chiefs cars

I have worked as a review and trainer for over 20 years at HPN. And while a lot of effort has gone into the "plan" one thing that has never improved is the triage & transport of injured "victims". The last drill was stopped because rescuer were dropping like flies due to heat. And while I agree that the drill needed to be stopped at that point, we still had not completed moving people to treatment or transport. The gold standard is the flight 232 crash (Sioux City, IA) where they managed to triage, treat and transport 184 patients in just over an hour. In westchester it takes that long to start transporting the 1st patients. The county has also decided that the "airport plan" should be different from all other MCI plans. I do not know if this is a better plan, but most responders in Westchester have problems understanding the existing plan, know we want them to follow 2 different ones. I agree, but if it is not quality training its a waste of time. Watching EMT's at the airport dragging victims from one end of the field to the other, then dragging them back for no reason is a waste of everyones time. EMS need to know how to start triage and establish treatment areas, staging and coordinate before EMS officers (some of who have no additional training or experience) arrive.

To bad the public is unwilling to foot the bill. One reason that FDNY can do what they do is that larger depts cost less per capita than multiple smaller ones. Thus they can focus the funding where it needs to be and still afford the specialized units. Also it is much easier to train and co-ordinate. Chris is correct, we tried task forces, and set them up so nobody was stripped, but we found that not only does no one want to participate, we still have agencies that refuse to sign the mutual aid agreement. Last years airport drill had the best EMS turnout for the pre drill training I have ever seen in Westchester. We need much more, but there is a major vacume in both EMS and its leadership. To many ajencies can barely cover a single patient event much less an MCI. Its coming and its not going to be pretty.

I drove a ford explorer als flycar, it was very tail heavy, with just standard medic gear, and the plywood storage system. in wet weather the front end would slide and it was very scary in snow. They ended up taking the compartments out and it was better.

1) Pelham does not have an ambulance. They have an ALS flycar and for transport Empress dispatches an ambulance from Yonkers. And PMFD & 38m1 (the flycar) was spotted responding down I-95 at the time of the crash. 2) it is much easier to coordinate a single communities resources than the patchwork we call Westchester, even if resources are available. Too many people consider mutual aid is the end all solve all and in general its poor at best. We tried in Westchester to set up EMS command and task forces and we found we could not make it work.