res6cue

We are? Sorry, I could not disagree with that statement more. Besides, you basically answered your own question right above that... There you go, in your own words. If just a few guys and gals that read the posts here see us discussing these types of incidents, maybe they'll learn from it. Maybe it will deter them and make them strive to be better than the chuckleheads and scumbags that are the subject of these articles. We're not embarrassing ourselves by posting and discussing, we all know these morons are out there among us. What WOULD be embarrassing, however, is if we buried our heads in the sand and pretended stuff like this didn't happen and wasn't a problem.

What a moron.

I wish our dept would do away with them. The amount of income generated from them is a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of our income. Thankfully I'm not too far away from life membership and I'll never have to pay them again. I'm even thinking of pre-paying just to get it out of the way. We used to have fines for various infractions but they were mostly done away with when our bylaws were recently revamped. Some of them were silly anyway, and apparently had been in the bylaws since like...I dunno 1930 maybe lol. "For neglect to equip within the time prescribed, 50 cents per month fine." <-- what does that even mean??? "Any member found removing or in any way interfering with orders or papers on the bulletin board, unless authorized by the proper officers, $1.00 fine." "For using personalities towards any members, or for introducing religious or political subjects at the meetings, $1.00 fine." This one everyone liked though, but sadly it's gone now. The rule was always interpreted to take profanity into account also, at the rate of $1 per curse word. If someone were pissed at a meeting, they'd stand up once recognized by the chair and usually with a bit of showmanship, would take their wallet from their pocket, pluck out a dollar bill, hold it up and then proceed to call someone an a-hole. If you were really lucky, they'd pull out a five or ten dollar bill before treating the whole room to a rant! And if you slipped up and let a curse out accidentally, the entire room would remind you, simultaneously piping up with "ONE DOLLAR!" I can see people not understanding or believing why you should have to pay to volunteer, and I guess I'm inclined to agree. But I'm just so used to it by now that I don't b**** about it. Probably should though, but it's also not like we don't get it all back and then some what with all the toys we buy and food we eat and whatnot.

Yes, yearly.

*gets up on Hoss' soapbox* The real crux of the problem is that some "parents" are nothing but adolescents themselves, and age really has nothing to do with that either. How can you control your kids if you can't even control yourself? Ridiculous. You have to be a certain age and take a test to drive, you have to be 18 to vote, you have to be 21 to drink, etc. yet any fool can become a parent and potentially ruin not only the child's life, but others they come in contact with. *steps off soapbox* NEXT!!

Yes, I've had this happen to us once for a false alarm, and I've heard firsthand of it happening at least once to a neighboring dept that covers a pretty affluent area. To be honest, it struck me as a bit ridiculous to ask the fire dept to take off their boots, and still does. But then I think about how many of our calls are clearly BS, especially when the homeowner is standing right there telling you they tripped the alarm themselves accidentally, and there we are tracking mud, soot and God knows what else all throughout their clean house. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating the removal of our boots before entering a house, but I do advocate some common sense and common courtesy. Nothing burns me more than watching guys walk through someone's home with no regard or decency, like bulls in a china shop. Obviously if it's a legit incident, all bets are off. By the way, the article never really tells the reader what the incident wound up being, but I suspect food on the stove. The media kills me with their all too familiar hyperbole. "to tackle a blaze" I'm pretty certain that anyone with a sliver of a brain would not be thinking about their carpets if it were, in fact, a "blaze".

Another honest answer - I got entirely too wrapped up in the fire dept and neglected many (most) other things in my life. I will never regret being a firefighter, but I do regret not being able to leave the firehouse stuff at the firehouse and spending so much time there. As far as hating people, I don't but I can see how that's easily possible. I will say that it's made me very cynical about most things in life though. Then again, I've seen some ordinary people do extraordinary things and at times, have seen the best of humanity. Along with the worst, of course. I guess on balance, I'd say it's a tie.

I actually had a bag of that exact brand in my fridge, and I ate some of it already last week. Obviously I tossed the rest, and I'm not dead so I guess my bag was alright.

I have so many pics of Rockland apparatus that I've collected online, I can't keep track of who from. As much as I think watermarks are sometimes distracting, at least they automatically give credit where due, so I apologize in advance to everyone for any photos I post if they're yours!

I always liked the idea of "pushing" it back into the firehouse. Of course nowadays it's more symbolic than anything, but it's still a classy thing to do. It's also nice to have it blessed by your local clergy or dept chaplain right before you push it into the firehouse.

Well, I have to say the Quantum is all of a sudden looking pretty nice to me after the release of the Velocity/Impel! Here's one of my favorites, Chelsea H & L, Nyack's 1999 TDA "10-99" complete with traditional wooden ground ladders

I don't know much about Westchester depts, but I do know from looking at the pics on this site that Harrison doesn't have any Pierce rigs, and neither does Mamaroneck. I highly doubt Pierce would feature depts that have Seagrave rigs in their latest sales brochure. And oh yeah, the gear and helmets don't seem to match either. So I'm guessing...no, it's not them.

I'm guessing the stokes basket and/or backboard, same as ours.

Here's their 1988 Arrow. Man, looking at these old Pierce towers, you can't help but be struck by how MASSIVE the ladders were. They're almost as tall as the truck itself!

Will be in-station within a week or so. Replaces their 1988 Pierce Arrow 105' Platform. 2006 Pierce Dash 100' Platform 1750/300 9-Tower http://piercemfg.com/new_deliveries/new_de...485&Type=aerial

Our aerials have chocks on both sides, as I suspect just about all do, but not our other trucks. Our policy is to set the chocks anytime the driver is out of the cab. At the least one chock in front of the rear wheel, preferred both sides of the rear wheel. The only exception to this is the aerials while they're actually being flown, in which case the policy is to chock both sides of both front wheels.

Ugh, the more and more I look at these new cabs AND realize that they're killing off the Lance/Dash cabs, the more sick to my stomach I get. I've been a lifelong fan of Pierce, if for no other and better reason than every one our dept has ever owned has been rock solid reliable AND looked good at the same time. When they reworked the Lance/Dash chassis back in the late 90s for the 2000 series, I thought it was a good move to modernize them and found no fault. Mainly because they managed to keep the beloved design of them while modernizing the interior and electronics. I've never had an issue with the Command Zone system, it works just fine on our rigs, but it was really nice to see Pierce come out with the Arrow XT chassis to give depts a choice. Now, sadly, they're shoving this modern look down our throats. This is an absolute nightmare come true for anyone who hated the Quantum chassis and wondered how long until the rest of the lineup looked like them. I suspect sales of the already venerable Arrow XT chassis will SKYROCKET, watch and see. I don't know, maybe they will catch on, but I'm not convinced. There are people like me who have never taken issue or offense with too many changes Pierce has made, save for the Quantum, which never grew on us and neither will these. Pierce is (was) supposed to be about CHOICES, and now that has been whittled down to just four choices, with the Arrow XT the only non-modern looking chassis. Realistically it's down to two choices, the modern Quantum/Velocity/Impel or the traditional Arrow XT. What a seismic shift this is, and in my opinion, a giant one backwards. They most certainly could've reworked the Lance/Dash to fit the 07 engines in them. If they could update them as much as they did with the 2000 series, there's no reason they couldn't have now. While I don't think that looks are a legitimate criteria for spec'ing a truck, we all know the reality is that it does play a large part. I think Pierce just lost themselves a good junk of the market by taking away choices. It wouldn't shock me to see a return of the Lance/Dash design in the near future as sales dip and Pierce hopefully realizes what a colossal error they've made. It's truly a sad day for many Pierce aficionados.

If I knew nothing else about this story or about their product, this direct quote alone would concern me terribly. We're not talking about a little $5 toy you bought in K-Mart that sometimes doesn't work, we're talking about people's LIVES. I'm sorry, but "the word was out there" is simply not good enough when you're talking about a potential defect in a device designed to save lives. Swallow your pride and issue some kind of official notice to each and every dealer and customer, period. I'm sorry, but having it constantly alert is almost (but not quite) as bad as not having it go off at all. As Monty pointed out, we're already falling victim to the "cry wolf" syndrome with these alarms going off inadvertently all the time as it is, we don't need an issue with the manufacturing of the device to complicate matters. Nonsense. Find a solution to fix the problem, issue a recall notice and get the battery and electronics compartments sealed watertight. I can't imagine it really takes much to put some sort of gasket around potential points of entry for liquid or smoke.

Yeah the mirrors are very effective, but gawdawfully ugly. The other thing I don't much like about them is that you can't easily wipe them off if you get snow or slush or rain or dirt or etc on them because they're so far away. The heating element can only do so much. Well, I guess the Quantum is no longer my least favorite looking Pierce chassis. I do really like some of the features of the Velocity, but not the look of it. Those round headlights are a big turnoff. Most of the interior improvements look really good though, especially the CUPHOLDERS!! As far as the Impel, well...it's clearly going to be their lowest level custom chassis as the rumor is it will replace the Saber and maybe even the Enforcer (although I think that's less likely). Butt ugly.

Really? Hmm maybe but I'm watching it now and it seems live. It was 7:10 CST which is 8:10 EST. Anyway I see it's already plastered all over the Pierce site so I'm sorry, didn't mean to snap at you. I shouldn't have clicked on the thread lol.

Well, I guess there's no anticipation or point in watching the webcast now. Couldn't you have waited a half hour?

Aww, it must be so hard being so popular, you poor guy! Seriously, weakest excuse EVER. First of all, there is an option to log in and be invisible so no one knows you're on unless they happen to see you make a post. Clearly if you're just surfing and not posting, this isn't an issue and no one will realize you're on. Second, you used this alterego name for the SOLE PURPOSE of stirring the sh!t. That, my friend, is a pu$$y move. I'm not buying your garbage and I hope no one else does either. You're lucky Seth is a fair guy, because if it were my board, I would've outted you.

Actually I think it starts for us at 8:10 because it's 7:10 Central Time. 40 minutes or so.

Oops, busted! Anyone who is too chicken sh!t to post critical remarks under their original name isn't even worth listening to, much less responded to. Seth and the mods do a fine job of keeping this place running smoothly, and believe me that's no easy task.

That's just wrong. Mexico is such a screwed up country. Considering their police forces are among the most corrupt in the world, it's a joke that bounty hunting a suspected serial rapist who fled this country is considered a crime. The Mexican authorities should be more worried about closing their damn border than stopping a couple of Americans from nabbing a scumbag. It's a shame the judge signed that warrant, but I'm sure he didn't have much choice, nor did the Marshals in arresting them.