helicopper

Recently I've heard Putnam 911 dispatching "BLS 4" along with the medic and VAC/VFD for calls. Is this the contract BLS unit and if so what response areas is it covering?

You want questions, OK... How many ambulances were ultimately involved?? The newspaper said that victims were transported as far south as Lawrence and Sound Shore. Did any go to Greenwich or Stamford? Were any of the area MCI trailers needed or requested? If not I'm guessing that not alot of the victims were boarded??? Perhaps someone that was involved in the management of this scene can write a short "article" for their Bravo colleagues who would like to learn a little something from a local experience!

Date: 07/26/08 Time: 1650 (approximately) Location: Coney Island Frequency: just about all of them Units Operating: FDNY, NYPD Patrol, ESU, Harbor, Aviation, Scuba, US Coast Guard, Parks Department Life Guards Description Of Incident: Search underway for missing 10 year old girl in the water. Second 10 year old child rescued. Lifeguards performing chain search along beach, NYPD Aviation deployed their divers to assist with search. FDNY and PD ESU put additional divers in the water. Three helicopters (2 NYPD and 1 USCG) performing aerial search. Negative results as of 1835 hours, search was still underway. Writer: Chris192 Links: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/27/drrowning...=rss_topstories http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,391748,00.html

Hysterical!

I beg to differ. On the west side of the county there are TWO VAC's paying for coverage when the volume would be adequately covered by a BLS 1. EJS, I'm not whining. I think it is ridiculous that the County is supporting only a portion of its population with a service that is paid for by the entire population. That's not whining, it's a legitimate gripe. Medic137, you make a great point. The taxpayers of the districts that are unable to cover their own calls are paying twice for a service and that too is ridiculous. Finally, we're not beating a dead horse. The issue of EMS in Putnam County is an ongoing one and it is time that a comprehensive strategy be adopted for the entire county rather than these band-aid fixes that don't actually address the underlying problems.

Insurance premiums most certainly do go up in part because of EMS billing, not just EMS billing, but it is part of what drives insurance companies rate adjustments. Imagine a $10,000 STAT-Flight bill that is not covered by someone's insurance. They're going to make that 10K back off someone, most likely all of us! Insurance companies don't lose money! They just keep jacking up our rates to balance their bottom line regardless of whether or not our bottom line suffers. If I had to pay $150.00 a year to guarantee that I had EMS coverage, I'd gladly do it. That would give the EMS provider in my town just about $1,000,000 to operate with. I consider that a modest tax considering my school taxes are over $6,000 per year. Why do so many people cling to the idea that EMS can be "free". It costs money to provide the service (fuel, insurance, equipment, building, phone, etc.) excluding personnel. vacguy, I assume you meant you'd prefer that nobody got a bill for emergency medical care (EMS or ER). Why shouldn't the users of the service pay for it?

Mike, in researching the answer to your question for myself, I came across an interesting interpretation that makes much of this discussion a moot point. There is a "rescue circumstance" exemption (bold text below) that allows for FF to enter a building to conduct a rescue prior to the two out being present. The answer to your question is also highlighted below, no, you don't need 4 out for 4 in or 8 out for 8 in. There is also a cautionary statement about using common sense and having more than two out if the building is too large to cover with just two. Respiratory Protection Standard on the OSHA website.

Have you ever listened to NYPD dispatchers? Experience required? I think not!!! If you're looking for a PD dispatch job, what about Westchester? They're giving a test, here's the post about it: http://www.emtbravo.net/index.php?showtopic=26702

So residents of Putnam County WEST are once again subsidizing a program for Putnam County EAST. Unbelievable! The EMS agencies in Philipstown recognized their own staffing problems and hired their own personnel to cover the day shifts but the agencies on the opposite side of the County are relying on the County to solve their problems for them. It's truly pathetic. The agencies in the east have much larger tax bases to draw from but they choose not to - what's up with that? The Philipstown agencies ought to fire their people and petition the County to pay their bills too!

As long as your tray tables and seat backs are in their upright and locked positions when the class starts...

I'm sorry but I fail to understand how billing the insurance company equates to free service?!?!?! If they're billing, it's not free. There may be no salaries involved but that doesn't make the service free. As for taxation to support the service, depending on the community the tax bill would be very modest. And there are a lot of VAC's who receive tax subsidies and bill for their service and still ask for donations to support various projects.

Quite a sum of money for New York State. It will be interesting to see how much is received by jurisdictions outside NYC. http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/grant-p...view-fy2008.pdf (not subject to copyright restrictions)

Just a reminder about this - there are still seats so if you want to attend, there should be no problem.

For some time now one of the criticisms of the moderators on this site has been that we are the "grammar police"; that is we go in and make spelling corrections, fix grammatical mistakes, and add punctuation where necessary. I'd like to suggest that before hitting the "post" button for your addition to this site you consider how many people will read it and at the very least proof read your work. If you're an atrocious speller, consider using a spell check. At least make sure it makes sense to YOU when you reread it. Many times our brains move faster than our fingers and we miss something when typing (I know I'm guilty of this). As has been pointed out before, one of the problems with a forum such as this is that your tone of voice is missing so things like sarcasm or humor can easily be overlooked. Consider that when posting! Make sure you are going to be understood. I'm not a member of this site to be the grammar police but it can be very frustrating trying to follow someone's train of thought when it has derailed! So just take the extra few seconds and we'll all be able to read things and understand what the author meant. Thanks! Chris

Just curious, how would ICS be used as a standard to be cited in a civil suit?

ICS is the management process used on a fireground. It does not set any regulations or standards for staffing or deployment.

its not even the spelling that bothers me the most its the single runon paragraph with no punctuation or capitalization so you need a map and compass to figure out what the person is actually trying to say and you wind up reading the same post seven times just to get the hint about the subject and what the writer is saying it can be really annoying don't you think? Happily the people who tried to use "texting short hand" have been stopped, too. It's amazing how many people think that txt spk is appropriate for all communications.

To my knowledge, most of them are stationed with the aviation unit at their bases around the state. There may be rare occasions where a medic unit responds to join the helicopter or where the medic rides along on a law enforcement mission. As for the SP aircraft, they're usually on the ground awaiting a call unless they have a mission or training or something. Because of the territory they cover, regular patrol flights are impractical.

If the mats are getting heated to 165 degrees that's too hot for anyone let alone little kids. Lawsuits are not the answer of course; perhaps some SHADE would solve the problem. The City does have the responsibility to make sure the playgrounds are safe and parents must, as WAS said, not use the playgrounds as baybsitters. Responsibility is a two way street.

Conversely if you're sued by the family of a member killed in a fire because they called a mayday but nobody was there yet to bail them out would you be able to look yourself in the mirror? Would you even be able to defend that lawsuit if you knowingly ignored standards and regulations about 2 in 2 out or whatever else applies? Aren't there plenty of things you can do from the outside without endangering yourselves until the next apparatus arrives? Its very interesting that these rules are touted as the benchmarks of the industry and agencies want our municipalities to support them (more staffing, newer/better apparatus, etc.) and yet here we sit saying we'd throw it all away because somebody's property is burning. If 2 in 2 out is the rule for YOUR safety why would you go into a hazardous environment without that minimum back-up? (Robert, this is not criticism directed at YOU. I've heard much the same sentiment from plenty of other people that cause me to ask the question)

http://www.westchestergov.com/csexam/exann...exams/60006.htm Link about the upcoming exam, not just for the County PD but for all the towns and villages as well.

Cause someone started a conversation about blue lights!!! Seriously though, this program was developed because we learned that a lot of people have absolutely no idea what services we can provide to their agencies or what the helicopter's capabilities are. In fact, some people don't even know how to request us! Based on feedback from some other training that we've done, this should be pretty informative and hopefully people will leave knowing a little bit more about how aviation can be used in their services (police, fire, EMS, emergency management). And if this session is sucessful more will be scheduled.

Perhaps you should re-read some of that ICS you're criticizing. If your incident doesn't require the services of a PIO and Liaison you simply don't fill those positions. Most calls don't require a big elaborate organization but if you don't use ICS until the "big one" you're going to be far behind the curve. ICS is just a process that provides some structure and order to the things we do. And they need to be done at EVERY call in one way, shape or form. It works just about everywhere else in the country, why do we fight it so much around here?

Someone suggested that we should take all this energy and instead of fighting each other, fight to improve the system! I think that's great advice and I also think that while the mindset "you fight the fights you can win" may be the easy way out if we're going to do what we're all supposed to be here for (protect the public) we really need to focus on the fights that need fighting. I think it is equally absurd for a fire department to send one person out on an engine as a fire department not being able to field a crew for an appropriate response at all. Why don't we discuss what the IDEAL fire department should be and lobby for that? To start, what is the minimum training that each should have? How many should be on a truck (as in vehicle not truck company)? Response times? etc. To me, regardless of career/volunteer, every engine/truck should respond with four firefighters who are all trained to the same standard (not being and FF, I'd suggest FF1, Haz-Mat Ops, and Survival as the minimum - please educate me if that's unreasonable). Once we identify the ideal, submit a plan to the Legislature to use the 100 Million dollars from the "tax credit" to promote the concept! How's that for directing this energy to a useful cause?

Actually that was just a plug for the thermal imaging camera. The point is that it can make quick work of an large area with JFLYNN's caveat. If the person is concealed their heat signature may be very difficult to see (if at all) and that would make the foot search necessary. It does highlight another point - how often do you train/practice using the camera? Detecting different things on the camera requires interpretative skills that only come with practice. There are FLIR operators that have recovered discarded handguns from the air but only because they're well trained and highly proficient in their use.