res6cue

Sure would be nice to have a newer model, no question about it. We get quite a lot of use out of that thing, but it has next to no real rescue capability. I wonder what models they're looking at replacing it with.

I wouldn't put too much stock in it, otherwise you'll just give these dumb kids more exposure and attention, which is probably what they want. Mission accomplished, they got a photo of their pathetic shirt on our board and we're wasting our energy discussing it. Anyone who thinks that these ignorant bastards represent the volunteer fire service needs to get their head checked. In my experience, it's a VERY small percentage of guys that start or promote the volly vs career bullsh!t, and it goes both ways 50/50.

We pick up skip and distant stations all the time on 46.18. I remember back in the day before the county went PL it was pretty annoying at times. Sometimes it's interesting to listen to and figure out where it's coming from.

That's horrible, hopefully he'll make a full recovery. I have to ask though, what exactly did his hand get pinned against? Between the ladder rack and what, exactly? Also, why the hell would anyone be anywhere near or under the rack while it's in operation to begin with? Hopefully this terrible incident will serve as a reminder to be alert and be safe at all times, even during "routine" operations.

We cover between exits 10 and just past 13 of the Palisades Interstate Parkway, around 12 combined miles total northbound and southbound. We're very lucky in that the PIP is only 2 lanes wide each direction with no paved shoulder, which means that just about any incident shuts it down completely anyway. But in cases where the vehicle is off on the grass shoulders, we shut it down anyway. The Troopers not only don't complain when we do so, but they usually have it shut down before we even get there. On the flip side, that makes it very hard at times to even respond since it gets backed up so quick and there's no shoulder to respond on. Generally once we have confirmation that all traffic is stopped, we'll get on the next exit and come the wrong way. We roll no less than an engine and rescue from each station for both vehicle fires and extrications regardless of where it takes place.

Ah, here's another aspect of this whole discussion. The fact that in many volunteer organizations, a lower ranking officer is quite often the incident commander. How many times have we seen where the junior most lieutenant (or engineer, chauffer, etc) winds up being the highest ranking officer on scene? Or many times the senior member, senior driver or driver of the first due apparatus is the IC in the absence of any officer? I couldn't even count how many times I've not only seen it, but that guy was me back in my early days. It happens, it's the nature of the volunteer service beast. So no matter what your rank or position is in the dept, you have to be prepared to step up to the plate and lead. Which only makes choosing officers, and drivers even, that much more critical. Generally a 22 year old junior lieutenant isn't going to have near the experience an older captain or chief will (should) have, but they MUST be competent enough to take that older officer's place should they find themselves acting in that capacity at any given time. Any good organization will strive for a "plug and play" type chain of command, where almost any given senior member, and most certainly any driver/chauffer, is capable to act in a capacity above their current rank up to and including the overall IC. This is where good training and mentoring becomes absolutely critical. It's also where it makes it a more important decision when it comes to choosing new drivers. It's simply not enough to pick a guy that "can drive a truck" and put him through a pumping and driving class anymore. There has to be high standards set for the position of driver. It essentially has to be treated as an officer's position in so far as the training requirements and fireground experience goes.

I've seen both side of this debate throughout the years. I've seen young guys that make it up the line too fast and just aren't ready for it. I've also seen some young guys that are old souls and are fantastic leaders and well respected. By the same token, I've seen some older guys that have no clue and are just pushed along up the ladder until they hit Chief, but should definitely not be there. It works both ways, there's no doubt about it. Ultimately it comes down to the individual, and while it might generally be true that younger guys are less mature, less experienced and therefore less able to be a leader, it's certainly not always the case. Believe me, I've had the unfortunate displeasure of being "lead" by a 40-something year old Chief who was pretty much inept at just about anything he did, and lacked both the confidence and respect of the men under him. Meanwhile, there were 25 year old guys with whom I would trust my life with to make the right calls and get us all home alive and well. As far as it being a problem limited to volunteer depts, I find it hard to believe that there are no bad officers in career depts. Or the military, for that matter. Of course there are. Granted, it's certainly a lot harder to slip through, but it happens. As long as you have officers primarily being promoted by popular election in the volunteer service as a whole, it's not likely to change. You can try to put standards or tests in place, but in the case of a very small dept with limited membership composed of younger guys, I don't really see that they have any alternative.

The federal government makes me want to puke sometimes.

Well...I was trying to be polite and diplomatic about it, but I really do not like Sutphen at all. I've spent a fair amount of time around our neighbor dept's and was less than impressed. But, they've never had any major problems with theirs, so I'm not exactly going to call them junk either.

I'm not sure if that was in response to my bit about spec'ing our Tower, but yes Sutphen makes a decent truck. Although one of our neighboring depts has an all Sutphen fleet going back many, many decades, and word from them is that Sutphen's quality has gone down somewhat in recent years. There are 4 Sutphen platforms right around us, but we knew it wasn't the truck for us for a whole list of reasons. Not the least of which is that we wanted a platform with an actual steel heavy duty ladder, not an aluminum box boom with handrails bolted to the top of it. In any case, no manufacturer we looked at could match what we eventually got from Pierce, as far as standard features and the options we wanted and requirements we had.

Counting off the top of my head, 8 companies in Rockland have a total of 13 KMEs. 3 of those companies are repeat customers with as many as 3 units each and a rather long history with KME going back over a decade (matter of fact, you can add another unit to the 13 if you want to include Grumman). Of the other 5 companies, the KME was their most recent purchase. I've not heard any gripes from any of these companies. When we were spec'ing our Tower, we looked at the KME midmount. It was a nice truck, good build quality. In my personal opinion, it was a better built truck than the ALF midmount we looked at. I can definitely see why they're appealing to many depts.

Funny you mention the wetdown for the Tower...I actually missed half of it because I drove the 1750 down to Valley Cottage for their wetdown that night. Actually it was a pretty fun night, we took the 1750 and Tanker, along with two trucks from Suffern down there, then when we got back we wet down our own truck. As far as 17-Quint, yeah it has been OOS for quite a while. I'm not sure exactly when or why they retired it. I will say this though, if I had a nickel for every time we were on AMA for a ladder with the Valley and I drove or rode the 65 (and now the 75) to a call in their area, I'd be able to fill a decent sized piggy bank. It seemed like every other month either of their ALFs were OOS. That got better once they got the Metz, of course.

Yeah I would also be surprised if they officially designated it "17-Truck", although stranger things have happened. I mean, we are talking about the company that, over the course of less than 10 years, has renamed the same truck "17-EM", "17-EMR", "17-Squad" and now "17-EQ"...so I guess I was fibbing...nothing really would surprise me. But my gut feeling is that they'll wind up keeping the "17-Quint" designation. FYI, that maroon color was a new thing as of the 2002 ALF rescue. I suspect in light of the Columbians having blue and the Hooks having traditional red, the Rocklands wanted to go their own route. I like it, I think it suits them and it's different. Not the usual alternative colors we usually see like green or white. Cool. It seems like Seagrave is finally starting to get a following in the county, what with Vol Hose and Excelsior recently going with them, and now you guys. I was always surprised there weren't more of them around here.

Andy was a great guy, a tremendous firefighter, a top notch teacher and mentor, and I was truly blessed to know him for so many good years and call him my friend. God Bless him indeed.

Sounds like it was indeed a DNS problem with the cable company. Glad it's resolved.

Sounds like you're having issues with DNS. Could be on your end, could be on your ISP's end. Assuming you're running XP, try this: Start > Run > type "ipconfig /flushdns" and hit Enter That'll clear out the cache of domain names to IP addresses your computer has stored. This usually resolves any issues on your end. The other, more likely problem, is with the DNS servers your IP is using. This will usually clear itself up quickly, but if not, you can manually change your DNS servers. There's a company out there called OpenDNS that has pretty good free DNS servers you can use instead of the ones your ISP assigned you. I've tried them out, they're very reliable. http://www.opendns.com PS - Basically "DNS" (Domain Name System) is how a computer translates a URL into the actual IP address of the site you're trying to reach. If the DNS server you're connecting to is either down, unreachable or hasn't been updated, you're going to get the same "Cannot find server" errors you're getting. By the way, it would help us help you better if you could tell us about your situation, such as what operating system you're using, what kind of connection you have (dialup, DSL, cable) and if you use a router or connect directly to the DSL or cable modem.

I admit, I've done it myself in the past. Get geared up at my gear rack, toss wallet inside shoes, jump on rig. Not that I'm naive, I'm not by any means, but isn't it so tremendously sad that of all places you should have to worry about your sh!t getting lifted, it's inside the firehouse? BTW, the only thing worse than some skell having the balls to come in off the street and do something like this is one of your own MEMBERS doing it. I've seen that happen too, let's just hope in Vol Hose's case here, that's not what happened. :angry:

I can't believe you guys are actually arguing something as irrelevant as whether it was a "robbery" or "burglary". Point is, that neighborhood is full of punks and scumbags, so I'm surprised the guys didn't take the time to shut the door. Then again, it was a working structure so obviously they had more important things on their minds. That sure doesn't sound too safe. Convenient, yes...but no way would I ever want an automatic system that closes a bay door using sensors rather than human interaction. What happens if something else crosses that threshold and trips the sensor, while you're pulling out? Or worse, while someone is standing under the door? No thank you. We've had guys close doors on apparatus before, which was enough of a headache that we had to disable the door close buttons from every controller except the one right next to the door itself.

I have to say, even though I have very strong emotions about that day (as most of us obviously do), I have no problem with movies being made about the events. To me, it's no different than movies about the attack on Pearl Harbor. I do prefer it lean more towards the realism of the event rather than the sensationalism or fictionalization though. Of course, it is Hollywood, so it'll likely be a mixed bag. As far as the profits, it would certainly be nice to see a large percentage being given back to one or more victim's funds or charities. That being said, I'm not a huge fan of Nicholas Cage, so I'm a little put off by him staring in the movie. His whiny voice gets to me after about 5 minutes lol. By the way, I would absolutely agree that the raw footage the Naudet brothers shot that day is and always will be by far the most compelling record of the events of that day.

I agree, I don't like the look of it. I much prefer the traditional Pierce design. That being said, it was a revoluntionary chassis when it was introduced back in 1995. Even to this day, it has a tremendous amount of glass which is great for visibility. The amount of leg room up front is huge. The engine tunnel was very low also. The revised Dash 2000 and Lance 2000 chassis took a lot of their cues from the Quantum, at least as far as the interior layout, dashboard and lowered engine tunnel. It's a really nice cab all in all, and a lot of other manufacturers have taken (copied) a lot of styling from it, notably the Spartan Gladiator Evolution.

Pierce definitely has a hit with that Arrow XT chassis. I can't believe how many of them they're pumping out lately. It's a bit ironic when you think about it, that for so many years apparatus has been getting more and more complex and technical and computerized, only to have one of the best selling chassis lately be a "conventional" design with organic wiring.

Are you seriously arguing the position that a FAST team from a mutual aid company should be able to leave the scene to respond to another job AT THEIR OWN DISCRETION? If so, that is the most irresponsible thing I've ever heard. I really don't care if you do think most mutual aid called is never really needed. While you may have a point, in the specific case of a FAST team (which seems to be your main example) it's NEVER acceptable for them to stand down until the IC sees fit, and generally they're one of the last units to pack up and for good reason. We tend to let our guard down during overhaul, and that's when guys can get hurt. Most FAST teams I've been a part of or have called have consisted of only 1 truck and not more than 5 or 6 guys. If your dept is so strapped that they can't cover a fire in their own district with the rest of the apparatus and manpower they have, you have MUCH bigger issues you should be concerned with. I can tell you firsthand that our dept and our bordering dept are the 2 busiest depts in Rockland, and we constantly call each other for MA and wind up getting alarms of our own at the same time. Sometimes legitimate calls at that. We manage just fine to get it done, and if need be then we call another dept for MA, but we never stand down from a FAST team assignment to respond.

The unit that was previously assigned to E34 is now on Governor's Island. Not sure about the fifth unit.