AFS1970

I saw this in my e-mail today: DRONE VIDEO Now I am sure we could all comment on the specific fire, but my first thought was could a drone be used as a tool by an IC? Would this be a cost effective way to get air recon in a department without rapid access to other aircraft? I am sure that a drone that could operate at or near a fire would need to be better quality than those ones that are little more than RC aircraft one can by at the local mall, but it does seem to have some possibilities.

How long are departments waiting before the second or third tones? Way back in the dark days when I started in Dispatch we had 2 of our ambulances that were staffed like this at night. We had a policy that if they did not sign on within a minute we toned again, and if they did not sign on in 30 seconds after that we toned out the other ambulance. Now in practice this was too short a time because it could take the other half of the crew more than 90 seconds to get out of his driveway. In most cases there were designated crew members who could be at home but would take a radio with them and sign on to let us know they were wither going to the station or the scene, or even to call their partner for an intercept if the ambulance had to pass their house on the way to the call. I have friends who volunteer in NJ and when they get toned out, even if they have signed up to cover for the shift, they call in either by radio (officers) or phone to tell the dispatcher they are responding. They only go to a second tone if no one calls in. I am not sure how long they wait but I think it is less than 5 minutes. It seems to me that since mutual aid is by definition coming from a greater distance, waiting 12-15 minutes to even call them is too long.

I wonder about how heat resistant some of these cheap ones would be. I saw one at the local mall that had a Styrofoam body. That doesn't seem all that safe to me. As for the FAA, like all regulatory agencies, they don't feel they are doing their job unless they are writing new regulations. I do think there would have to be some air space restrictions on drones, because they are sharing space with other aircraft. So there might need to be some training involved. However I also think these are likely to be operating at relatively low altitudes, because too high up and they are not getting you the information you need for the command post, especially if the camera does not zoom.

THanks for this report. I heard about this through a security association I am a member of but it was a very basic report. Seeing the other pics and reading about the plan(s) were helpful in fleshing out the incident.

This brings up another issue. Spare trucks. Most larger departments have at least one spare engine, however the fire service seems to keep trucks until they are dead or trade them in for the new one, leaving most departments with no spare truck should something like this happen. I have heard that the fix is going to take a while. So had the list been that big, how would departments have handled this need? You can call on mutual aid, but that is only good as long as the department you are calling isn't using their own truck at the moment. I know at least one truck in Stamford is effected by this notice. However we have a spare (used to be a quint) and trucks from other manufacturers. Looking at that list, what would that have done to Westchester's responses? I know it is often said on here that there are too many aerials in the area, but if you take a bunch out of service does that quickly become too little? What if they are all clustered in one area, are long term relocations even possible in a system made up of smaller independant departments?

Let's not forget that in so many similar cases the news media edits the video to show you the most incriminating 5 seconds of a 20 minute video. A court in Florida recently rules that news media editing like this is not libel. I read an article years ago about a very high profile case, where an expert witness was brought in to testify against the police. He, like everyone else in the nation, had seen the footage shown on the news. After watching the whole unedited video, he refused to testify against the police, went to their lawyer and became their expert witness for free. Cameras will not solve anything. First of all there was a camera in this case and the public is still up in arms. How did the presence of the video help the suspect? The police officers did what they did, right or wrong the camera did not seem to have any effect on this. There is still a dead suspect, although I can't help but think there were other factors beyond control of the police or EMS that played into the end result. The NYPD commissioner says that he expects the entire department to go through retraining. I always laugh at this. The news is reporting that choke holds are not allowed. So if (and only if) this is a case of excessive force, how will a class about following an existing rule that was not followed help the situation? I am pretty sure there are already classes in that. How about a class for the public on how not to sell bootleg cigarettes or DVD's or illegal drugs? Maybe pass a new law that says you still have to follow all the other laws we already have? From the video footage I have seen I saw the EMS workers check the pulse and do some sort of assessment. Of course the video does not show what care occurred int he Ambulance, but that is irrelevant to the pro-criminal crowd, who make a living stirring up local communities against the police. What I did get from the video is someone who was about to be arrested and when the cuffs came out, resisted being cuffed. When officers tried to restrain him, he turned away and probably would have tried to run if he were not outnumbered and 300 pounds. I will be willing to say that had he been compliant during the arrest, he would be alive today. Not only that but EMS would not have been needed and we would not be talking about 4 EMS members being suspended. I do have to laugh (in a sort of sad way) at the reporters that have not stopped using as some sort of damning evidence that the suspect kept saying he could not breath. Last time I checked it took breathing to talk. This is just like the parent that says their baby isn't breathing and you can hear the baby crying. I can't speak to the effectiveness of respiration, but I do not that if you can talk to me you are breathing. This is the same theory behind not doing the Heimlich maneuver on someone who says they are choking, only on someone who isn't speaking and is holding their throat in the "international choking sign". You would think that every channel would get one of their semi-doctors or even Dr. Oz to explain this to them before they go on the air.

My original reply was about the posts that came after the pubic remark. That is the point, we don't know. Based on the quality of the news reporting we will probably never know. However to assume that the building burned down because of something the volunteers did or did not sue is every bit as ad as praising them for loosing a building. As for watching the building burn down, the only way to stop that would be to keep your eyes closed at all exterior operations. Are there times when some IC's make a fire exterior that should be handled interior, absolutely, but we have no way of knowing from ths one article if that was the case. There is nothing wrong with parades or social functions, as long as they are secondary to fire operations. IF your fire department has more classes of membership that are not responders than they do for actual active firefighters something may be wrong. However this is the way departments were organized way back when. I had to research my old department's charter once for a class, I found a short typed document from the state that said the department was a fire department located in the town and then went on to list the activities it could participate in, like raffles, fundraisers, carnivals, games of chance, ect. No where did it actually authorize us to fight fires. Now I like to think that is because it was taken for granted that that is what a fire department does, but it was still kind of odd to see the way it was written down. I have had some similar conversations right in my own state. I have no problem with elections as long as there are more qualifications than a pulse to hold office. I was just talking the other day with a friend who is an EMS chief in NJ. She is trying to loosen up some restrictions on who can serve as Chief because of an odd conflict in between the number of officers and the requirements to have held lower ofices. Basically unless everyone moves up regardless of qualifications, nobody will ever be able to replace her as Chief. I have seen departments that put in lots of training requirements and then end up with no one who can meet them. So one has to strike a sensible balance.

Had this article been titled Two Recent Fires Highlight Career Firefighter Role, the only replies here would have been a chorus of "Nice Job Brothers". If by chance someone did try to critique the fire they would have been blasted for armchair quarterbacking. The residents might have escaped the fire, all that really means is they were not rescued. They could have walked out the front door or jumped from a bedroom window. As with most recent new articles the style is more dramatic than it should be with adjectives selected that call the reporting into question. However this article does seem to be about a fire where nothing much went wrong. There is a big pot of something brown and stinky and people here need to stop stirring it up so much.

This sounds like a good idea. I have seen a few in my area where updates or further information were available after the first post.

I saw this story recently and had to wonder, while I admit they seem to have found a niche market in EMS, is this really the sort of thing we need to be doing? I remember (way back when) in my initial EMT class discussions on being sensitive to such concerns as part of the medical ethics section of the class. I have to wonder if being there to serve only a specific subset of a specific isolated community is in keeping with the idea of EMT's being there to help anyone who needs our help. I have to wonder if this isn't going backwards, just a bit. The female crew of Orthodox Jewish EMTs was created to serve Hasidic women uncomfortable with male EMTs in situations such as child birth

Why make more of this than it is. This list was generated purely on total post count. If this list were run annually, those that have not posted in a while, regardless of reason, would eventually be eclipsed. Although given that Seth is over 6,700 posts above his nearest competition I doubt anyone else will ever see the #1 spot. So let's agree to look at this list as the somewhat useless fun that it is.

I am not upset, I just wonder if this is advisable to limit care to such a small segment of the population against everything we were taught in class. I understand the cultural issues but this is worthy of discussion. Lets use that example, if I were to start a male only EMS service, I would probably be fined by the federal government for not accepting female members. If I were to say I was only going to treat male patients, I would probably not get the required licenses. What if I formed a male only VFD and said we would only put out fires at homes owned by males, because they were more comfortable seeing male firefighters?

I also wondered about that fly car, it had no star of life, did not say EMS or Rescue or even First Aid on it. Just the fairly generic word Emergency which I have also seen on utility trucks in NYC. I am guessing there is some regulation that is not being met but that is just a guess. Since they are only providing first responder services and the story said they are contracting with a nearby transport service (anyone want to take a guess?) it seems that they are not really getting anyone to the hospital quicker, although they may be providing care quicker. While I understand the idea that she doesn't think her next door neighbor should see her in such a position, if her next door neighbor is an EMT then that is part of what he is trained for. Years ago in a RIT class I took with one of our female members. Most of the students could not bring themselves to get close enough in training to do some of the rescue methods on her. The instructors went over that with us and basically said if you can't get over your modesty in an emergency someone may die. If I were part of any of the EMS services that cover that part of Brooklyn I would be somewhat insulted that they thought so little of my ethics.

I don't know the specifics of this district, but since it is going to be a volunteer station, with volunteers responding to get the apparatus, does it make operational sense to even build a station? As someone pointed out, residents in that area probably are already members of another department. Given the method that a department like this staffs apparatus, station location might be better off based on where drivers respond from not where the apparatus will be responding to.

Interesting article, Police one has published a couple of similar ones recently. I had to laugh about the suggestion on providing closure. We had one officer in Stamford who would call up after every call and tell us everything that happened, it got to the point where when we saw that number come up on caller ID we would not answer it telling each other that it was their turn. That one backfired when the officers started visiting the dispatch center, once even saying you guys must have been busy because you didn't answer, so I came up to tell you what happened. I guess visitors when you are busy are somehow better.

Why is it that we even have this debate in EMS but not other emergency services. Regardless of paid or volunteer for a moment, the VAC was essentially the town ambulance service. The town instead of running their own non-profit chose to contract out to a private for profit company. Now I am sure the town pays something to the company but the company bills the patients for the bulk of it. This is basically like a fair use tax, only those using the service are billed for it. If someone was to suggest the same arrangement for fire protection (like Rural Metro) this board would erupt into a fire storm of how inadequate the Rural Metro crews were, even if they were promising better service that their predecessors. There would be calls to refuse mutual aid. But do it in EMS and well that's just fine and dandy. I can't even imagine what the reaction would be if someone suggested privatizing police services.

The 2012 convention, that was before he was walking arm in arm with Obama talking about what a great job he was doing right? The media created him as a supposed frontrunner and then set about tearing him down with that stupid bridge story. Based on some of the candidates he supports (He was up here stumping for Linda McMahon) I don't think he is in any party other than the Christie party.

Growing up, my mother always said that everyone in town was either related to or knew someone who died in that fire.

IS it just me or does that yellow stripe look a little too much like it should say "DO NOT CROSS" on it?

One thing I noticed about the video is that it seemed a bit choppy. I assume that is due to editing, and having some bits removed for brevity. However that could make things worse as it actually shows more time between things shown on the video.

I am generally in favor of anything that keeps taxes low, but in reality this just means they will be raised and directed elsewhere. I find it odd that police and fire contracts were picked for this, yet other municipal contracts were left out. Now the big question that nobody wants to ask is why raises were so big (if in fact they were?) in NJ? Was it because municipalities take years to negotiate a contract and by the time it gets settled the raises which are generally reasonable per year look really big on paper? Is it because the cities have been steadily cutting benefits and raiding pensions to the point where these raises are offsetting other expenses the employees are now inuring? Lately it is the fashionable thing to blame unions for the government's mismanagement. Even if the unions bear some of the blame, they certainly do not bear it all.

Even before this event and the recent charter change, the EOC had one seat for the 5 volunteer fire department's and one seat for the city fire department. The EOC under several directors has never taken the other districts seriously and it has lead to some interesting storm responses. Now to be fair, when asked to send someone into the EOC, the VFD's didn't always take it seriously either, it is rare that I see an actual chief officer there with the rest. The fact remains that this being the first major drill under the new spirit of cooperation, it is questionable why some departments were left out.

Date: 06/24/2014 Time: 06:24 Location: 46 Leeds St District: SFRD Units: E4, E1, E6, E2 (RIT), E3 (Special Call), T1, R1, U4 (DC), U2 (Asst. Chief), FM107 (Fire Marshal), U7 (Safety Officer), U6 (Safety Chief), M2, M901 (EMS Supervisor), SPD Description: Resident reported fire in house, "lots of smoke in roof". E4 arrived at 06:28 on scene and reported heavy fire from roof, stretching line on arrival. U4 Special called aditional engine company at 06:35. Multiple handlines in operation - ALL HANDS WORKING. U4 declared fire under control at 06:50.

Wow, I doesn't seem like that long ago, but it was. I never met him, but will always remember his funeral as it was why I got my uniform. I had been a member less than a year, and only got a badge because the chief saw me wearing a generic one and issued me mine after the wake. Going to that as a probie kind of drove home what this is all about and cemented my attitude towards training. Rest in Peace.

Date: 06/21/2014 Time: 22:09 Location: 15 Pershing Av District: Belltown Units: E41, E7, E6, E8, E1 (RIT), T45, T1, R44, R1, E42, U4 (DC), U8 (Safety), C411 (District Chief), C412 (District Assistant Chief), U418 (District Safety), FM102 (Fire Marshal), M3, M901 (EMS Supervisor) Description: Multiple calls for fire in rear of occupied single family residence. Safety Officer on scene reporting working fire shortly after dispatch. 22:10 Dispatched as reported fire 22:13 U418 on Scene Declaring Working Fire 22:14 EMS dispatched 22:41 MARC Time discontinued 22:54 E1 Relocating to Belltown FD 22:55 EMS released 23:17 FM102 on scene 00:14 Incident Closed