AFS1970

Even if the department is increasing it's runs every year, I am not sure that you can make the anaolgy to E82 that this writer makes. I am sure that if Spring Valley were burning the way the Bronx once was we would have heard about it by now. That being said, lots of runs, especially non-fire runs, can burn out a volunteer fire department maybe more so than lots of fires would. Ever hear the phrase "everybody comes out of the woodwork for fires" or something similar? That is because firefighters sort of like going to fires. That being said, the writer does bring up some good points, about landlords, code enforcement and public education. I think the last one can be solved internally. My old department did just over 1,000 runs for most of the last few years I was there and we were one of the most active in public education. We even went and helped out with public education in other districts when we could. Now as for what runs were actually necessary, we almost cut our runs in half by reducing Automatic Aid on fire alarms and adopting a more sensible EMS response policy. That took the burnout rate pretty much away for the last couple of years I was there. When I was an officer I found an old annual report from the 1950's that listed us as have 52 runs that year (yes only one a week) but 26 of them were classified as structure fires. Since it was a summary I don't have fire details. But think about it, you only go once a week, but half the time the horn blows you are going to work. Compare that to going out 1,000 times (almost 3 times per day) but only 15 of those are fires. Like it or not the fire service has changed.

I am not now nor will I ever be a facebook user. I actually like forum based sites because it allows me to have focused discussions about related topics. Without having to filter out stuff that is not relevant to the discussions at hand.

I too check frequently but don't often reply because so many threads don't really need replies. I have not found there to be any more negativity than there has been in the past, but it is an ever present part of this board. Look at the thread on run numbers, that should have been a nice easy thread but there had to be debates about which runs were "real" runs or how many people were on the runs or other factors that really belonged elsewhere. I am a member of several different forums and most of them are slowing down due to the dreaded facebook.

I have heard this also, and even heard of some DOT's discontinuing the use of MC because of the brake line issues.

Nice job!

Congratulations on your retirement. Best of luck in future endeavors.

I was once on a gas odor call where the driver of the truck I was on lit up a cigarette in the cab while stopped in the street where the engine company was investigating.

I might have to change my otherwise low opinion of Jet Blue. I may just give them another try now.

I am glad to see that the fire service is picking up on the Below 50 concept that was started by Private Officer International a few years ago. Maybe it will gain some traction now.

The residence name is sometimes important, although has become less so as street addresses get better. In the days before every house needed a street address you might have members that know exactly where "Sam Smith's Barn" is or the "Jenkins House" on "Old Route 10". Much of this is a thing of the past although we still have one district in Stamford where addresses like that may still mean something to some members.

It seems to me that a number of factors need to come into play here. How far away is the relocation? What are the current traffic and weather conditions? What kind of incident has the local units committed? Are all surrounding areas also committed? What is general call volume in the area you are relocating into? What is the specific immediate call volume int eh area like today? Some but not all of these may be important to each response, some relocations may be more important than others.

I am going to guess that since it is Inspections plural, it is those tests. Now since I don;t come from an area that has the annual inspection dinners and I don;t fully understand their history, I may be off base here with my next comment. I wish we had had some sort of annual event where everyone had to appear in their Class A uniform because the morning of a parade (or worse a funeral) is not when you need to find out someone does not know where their necktie is, or someone doesn't like all that "military stuff" so chose not to bring collar brass. If the end result is an awards banquet then so be it, but I don;t think the concept is bad. I just wish more departments would staff their own stand-by crews for these nights instead of using neighboring departments.

As I said in my last reply I think that this is in general a good thing. However as others have pointed out it has you doing things on air that you simply would not do normally on air. That being said I can see that doing the whole test on air is a way of seeing how long you can make the air last. I don't think we can justify any training or testing initiative based on how close it is to the Scott Firefighter Challenge. As fun as it is to watch, that is like making the Midnight Alarm or Bucket Brigade contests from a muster part of your FF1 practical. I like that Erie County concept and it could easily be adapted as the hours go up in various subjects. I have often wondered why we did not embrace the exterior positions from a training standpoint as a fire service. Regardless of if we like them or not, there are departments that utilize them and failing to develop training for these members is allowing them to go untrained. Several times when I was involved with recruitment, we would get potential members that just wanted to be drivers. I have mixed feelings on that, as I knew that we needed more firefighters, but could also benefit from these drivers as they would free up a firefighter from driving. Two cases I know of caused me to rethink my initial objections, one was a guy who drove a dump truck and another was a transit bus driver. Both had CDL's and both had worked (although not in an emergency setting) with various electronic and hydraulic devices on vehicles. It seemed to me that they had at least the aptitude to take training, but there was no class for them. I thought of trying to develop an internal course, but then the question arises of who would accept that course other than us? In CT at least FF1 is a prerequisite for Pump Operator or Ariel Operator, so there goes that idea. As for the actual job title, sure we could call them Exterior Fire Service Technicians but the bottom line is the public would very quickly shorten that to Firefighter because they do not know any better. We could give them different styles and colors of helmets but that would only last as far as the district border, or if you are lucky a state border. We could buy fancy stickers but those are really only good until the first fire or even drill you go into. So while I agree that the public should be better informed, they are not, and I am not sure it is a good use of limited resources to devote that much public education time to this issue when there are fire prevention and Homeland Security matters that are more pressing.

This is probably in the long run a good thing. I agree that doing a series of tasks in short order on a single bottle of air is unrealistic, unless we are going to drop that pesky rehab standard that was implemented a few years ago. You know the one that limits the time you can work without a rest period. Which probably would prevent you from doing a rapid series of tasks on a single bottle on a fire ground. As for the ability of the instructors to do this, I would be willing to bet that most can, however we all know guys who while mostly good at what they do have made teaching their main career and have not been in a fire in years. I have a feeling that this is who will be questioned, not the younger gung ho guys who nobody doubts can do the job. As for a single standard, that is good in theory but has some problems in practice. The ability of someone in a career department to spend more time training is a reality that we have to face. The ability of a department to order someone to attend an academy on a full time basis is simply not there in a volunteer department or even some smaller career departments. a 14 week academy is over 500 hours, when I took FF1 is was about 120, the same for FF2 which together equal about half of that time. So how long would it take to run that full time standard on a part time basis? I doubt that this standard will be applied to existing personnel, much in the same way that the CPAT was not. The concept of grandfathering is alive and well and in most cases reasonably applied in the fire service. So a single standard if possible will take years to implement, possibly 20 or more. I don't think we need to get rid of support positions or exterior positions, although they probably need to be standardized as everyone seems to define them slightly differently. No matter the kind of department the guy who only files paperwork does not need to pass an interior standard any more than a paramedic does, as neither one is going into a burning building any time soon.

I just watched this video. It doesn't seem like it would conflict with any other CPR protocols. Even the concept of getting the patient onto solid ground and off of soft cushions says to do so when possible. Although not under ideal conditions this seems to me that it could be put into place as part of a RIT/FAST operation provided you could get to somewhere outside of IDLH (like a front yard or area of refuge). It is certainly a skill that could be added to RIT/FAST training. This is something that everyone should train on, as that way anyone can fill any position. The video shows a hand off to EMS but really given that we often talk about being shorthanded, CPR can be done by anyone and that leg drag should be able to be done by anyone. It might even be worth including PD in this training as they may find themselves as available hands on scene. I would also like to try working with bomb squads about adapting this to the bomb suit. I have no idea how to get in and out of one of those but I know they include SCBA. It might even be able to be adapted to Haz-Mat suits, although due to the way they are sealed more might need to be cut off.

OK so now what happens to a Chief when departments merge? Had he remained a sergeant then he would have laterally become a county sergeant. Does a local chief get some sort of county deputy chief position? It seems that operationally they would not need nearly so many chief officers. Although it seems unfair that if the county HR wanted the position filled to make it essentially temporary should the merger go through.

Working the midnight shift in dispatch, I can tell you how easy this is to happen. There is clearly a need for some sort of SOP/SOG that requires communications with all field units, especially single man units like safety officers and fire marshals. In this day and age when we have cell phones in addition to radios and many vehicles are equipped with GPS tracking it should be fairly easy to check on someone. If I call someone on the radio and they do not answer, then call them on the phone. I would rather wake someone up over and over again than miss a injured or dead MOS. That being said, some of these units have traditionally not bothered to clear verbally when leaving a scene and that has to stop also. I would suggest that a few things be put into place. 1) all units must report when they are clear from a scene wither by voice (recorded radio or phone) or by data (MDT/computer). 2) all single man units must be checked for status every 20 minutes, just like a MARC time for IDLH operations. However incidental communications can count for this and reset the clock. 3) If a unit fails to check in or contact can not be made at appropriate interval, attempt to contact by other means. If you can't get them by radio try the phone. Send a message to the MDT, try any and every method you have. 4) If all contact methods fail, then a unit from some agency needs to go to the last know location to make face to face contact. This could be sending a police car to check on a fire marshal or if necessary send a suppression unit back to the scene. Eventually like with all regulations updating status will become commonplace and the alternate communications methods will be needed less and less except in true emergencies. However I personally don't care how many people it takes to make make sure everybody goes home.

Somehow there is a bad joke waiting to be made about a "special officer".

We have been given the new EMD guidelines for Ebola however the similarities to the flu brings up an interesting point. We have not been told when to switch over to this new card. Since the first symptom is breathing related, do we question every difficulty breathing call for African travel status? Do we wait for more than one symptom to be mentioned? If we hear one symptom, do we ask about the others regardless of chief complaint? Basically nobody knows the answers and we are all flying by the seat of our pants.

Yes the "Universal Precautions" method is still used on our police radio, as a matter of fact I heard it tonight from a field unit. I always wondered why the much more code heavy police side did not have a code for this while the fire side that was heading towards plain language at the time made one up.

We just got a similar memo. I think this puts us up to 4 memos on this, not all of which comply with each other. It brings me back to the days of what we used to call "Signal 46". This was officially the communicable disease signal but was commonly called the AIDS signal. It was phased out because it had only one common use that some found distasteful and because with BSI becoming part of the standard protocol, it was felt that telling people to use precautions when they should be doing so on all calls was a bit redundant. I met a Battalion Chief from down south who ran a large county wide dispatch center. They had a signal (I forget the number) that was then followed by an A, B or C. A for Airborne, B for Bloodborne, and C for Combination or Unknown. Basically this was broadcast anytime the dispatcher was aware of the presence of such a disease. The three varieties meant that it was not only an AIDS signal, and I can't help thinking that such a signal in place now would make this recent epidemic a non issue as far as dispatch goes.

Aarfe those extensions universal so they can be put on any vac truck (assuming the right type of vac truck)? Also are they property of the FD or of Con Ed?

I fail to see how "right to work" enters into this at all. I am a Dispatcher, and am in a union. Although there was a brief hitch in the very beginning, well before my time, for the most part the position of Dispatcher where I work has always been a union job.

In municipal government we do not call it profit, but by the simple fact that this job is a promotion for line personnel yet civilians make less than line personnel in general, there is definately the same motivation. Perhaps the private companies are a little more honest about it.

Doing the right thing should not have to be legislated, but in this day and age few do the right thing. At the very least they weigh doing it against their own needs first. I would bet that this law is in response to a coulple of incidents where people were told to choose volunteering or working but not both. So like scoolhouse rock said they called up their representative and he said you;re right there aught to be a law. A few years ago when Long ISland was having the big brush fires I read an article that the post office initially told their employees that they could not respond. Meanwhile apparatus was responding from other states. It took a lot of people calling various government officials to get the post master to reverse that decision. Times have changed, years ago a town that had a volunteer fire department was all local and when the bells went off the town shut down. People left their stores and offices and homes and went on the call then returned and finished their work day. Many times they did so along side of their boss. That is now a rare occurance. The end result is needing a law that says you can't fire someone who responds to a disaster. I for one would like to see this expanded to include working fires.