AFS1970

Sadly we end up enforcing this lack of brotherhood ourselves. It starts innocently enough with some good natured rivalry between companies that ends up leading to almsot a breakdown of communications. We set up rules that are designed to make us take sides. Here are a couple of examples. In my old department that was combination when I joined, the career FF's were still allowed to be active Volunteers on their time off, well er sort of that is, they were actually paid for all responses but only a few knew that. However we had a rule that allowed only one career member to be an officer and another rule that said they could not act in that capacity while at work, but then and here is the confusing part, if there was no officer they were considered acting lieutenants. So the Captain who was my first training officer, was also a career FF. As a Captain he wore red gear, however at work he wore black gear because he was no longer a Captain, but then on most calls that same Captain was an Acting Lieutenant. How confusing do you think that was for a new guy to understand? Our department was very proud of the Truck and many members considered us a Truck company that also had engines. We went to a call once for multiple cars on fire next to a house, we took the truck as it was in another district. This fire was pretty much all engine work as there was no extension to the house. We got there second and grabbed the second handline that the Engine driver had flaked out. The second Engine had long stretch from the nearest hydrant. When all was said and done and it was time to pack up the hose, my Captain told me and another junior guy to get up on the hosebed and help the Engine crew. A senior man on our crew had words with the Captain ON SCENE about having us do engine work. Not exactly a paragon of brotherhood. One factor I think has a great deal to do with this however is that familiarity breeds contempt. Distance is a great benefit to brotherhood sometimes. In my 13 years as a volunteer I met more firefighters from out of town (or even ou of state), both career and volunteer, that treated me as a brother than I can count. For the most part we were able to treat each other as equals becasue we did not know each other. Some I took classes with and others I stood next to at funerals, but many I saw over and over again and we always greeted each other as friends. I remember stopping by a career house to meet a friend who worked there after a funeral we had both been at. His officer found out I was a volunteer and thanked me several times for coming to a career funeral in the middle of the week. I don't think I did anything special but it was interesting to see his reaction. When I got back to my own station that night I was criticisized by one of our members for going to the funeral because he knew for a fact that everyone just goes to those to drink beer. There are definately times when I felt like a brother and times when I felt like an outsider in my own station. That loss of brotherhood was one of the main factors in my leaving.

There absolutely is a reason to designates Towers and Ladders differently. A good Chief will know his department and the surrounding departments and maybe anything unique from the next town after that, but nobody can know every rig in the county (or beyond), especially in the heat of commanding a dynamic incident. I can think of one fire many years ago in Stamford where buckets would have been very useful after the IC had made the decision not to do a certain operation with straight ladders. At the time there was a Tower Ladder FromBelltown that had been relocated downtown, a Snorkel in Springdale, A Tower Ladder in Greenwich and a Tower Ladder and Snorkel in Darien but for whatevver reason they were never called for. I am not second guessing the Chief on the scene but I would be willing to bet that he was probably aware of the two rigs from Stamford and might have been aware of the Greenwich and Darien ones, However Norwalk and Portchester were probably not even considerations. This happens all the time with Tankers. We know the departments we deal with regularly, but not the other nearby ones. I remember hearing about Port Chester having a water issue a few years ago and they were sending Tankers from all over the county in and rotating them a few hours at a time. I don't know if Greenwich was included but I know the two tankers in Stamford were not and we are only two towns away. For that matter New Canaan and Darien could have rotated in and been closer than some of the Westchester tankers that were called. So there are numerous cases where the Chief may not be aware of what resources he has nearby.

I can't really speak towards westchester, but I know that from a dispatch perspective it is nice to know when a unit has some special ability/equipment. I know there are staffing issues among some that lead them to designate quints as either an Engine or a Ladder, but in some cases they really aren't either. I have seen mutual aid plans that do not recognize engines with less than 500 gallon booster tanks and insurance ratings that do not recognize ladders under 100'. Yet these rigs are for all their limitations still a versitile resource. From an incident command perspective knowing what is nearby is helpful in deciding if you simpl;y want the next due or need to special call to get around a limitation. Knowing what is coming can help you plan for the incident much better and utilize resources better. Quints are not the answer to everything, as St. Louis learned, but they can be helpful in a number of situations. However they are not a good fit in all the districts even within a single city. While it would be tempting to put one in a slower rural or suburban area that doesn't need that long a ladder remember that those are often the districts that need the most water, perhaps even larger than normal tanks that would preclude the weight of a ladder. Oddly enough as I am writing this my neighborhood quint just came past me on a call. Of course it is called and engine because quint's don't exist here either.

My old department went through three variations of cards while I was there. First we had printed cards that a member made at his buisiness. THey were blue with black lettering and just had a name and our SS numbers. This was the days before identity teft. When that member sold his business we could no longer get hat card stock so we went to engraved tags similar to keyrings, which proved to be expensive as new members joined and we needed a single tag. After that we went with a program that prints ID cards, We bought the printer software and 1,000 cards. These cards were the best because it allowed us to add all sorts of features. When I was there the cards had the department logo, our picture and our certifications. As well as our name and ID number. All cards expired the at the end of April as that was our annual meeting and we could always get people there for updated photos and cards. Some of the features we put on the cards were diferent color backgrounds for the pictures. Firefighters had Blue, Officers had Yellow, Probies had Orange and Associate members had Green. These were simple poster boards we bought at CVS. The certifications were in colored letteing and had 4 categories. Fire in Red, EMS in Blue, Haz Mat in Green and Specialties in Purple. This way Any IC that got my tag knew exactly what he could assign me to do. The back had a statement saying the card was department property and had to be surrendered on demand and also had the address to mail it back to if found. I think the catalog we got the set up from was called IDVille. I worked out the cost and figured that the cards cost us about 37 cents to print both sides.

Date: 08/18/2013 Time:22:29 Location: 143 Hoyt St (Buckingham Buildings) Units: E1,T1,E5,E3,R1,E4 (RIT),U4 (IC),E6.T3 (2nd Alarm),M1, M901 (EMS Command),FM112 (C&O) Description: Initially reported via 9-1-1 to State Police as a car fire in the basement garage of a high rise condo building. Simultaneous to dispatch this was reported by a central station as an activated alarm. Initial dispatch of an Engine and Truck for the car fire was sent. At 22:31, units arriving on scene reported smoke condition in basement, at 22:38 upgrade to full box and stretching a handline into garage. Upgrade brought an aditional 2 engines, Rescue, Deputy Chief and a RIT (another Engine). Updated size up reported fire extinguished by sprinklers, Fire Marshal requested. Units assigned to primary search of residential units above fire. At 22:50 IC requested an additional Truck, followed by an additional Engine (Equivilent of a 2nd Alarm*). Further Update from IC at 23:08 was All Hands Working on smoke removal (Including reassigned RIT) with no aditional RIT needed. Units begining tp be released as able at 23:15.

I can think of two from dispatch from many years ago when I was new and far less jaded. We got a couple of calls for strange lights in the sky (UFO’s). One reported the lights low in the sky one high. Both calls were not from great neighborhoods to go into (more on that later). Now normally there was really nothing we could do about anything in the sky so this call was not going to get typed up or dispatched. However I remembered a story from a senior dispatcher about a similar call many years ago and he said he called the Air Force to report it and had put the number in the rolodex. So being new I went over to the rolodex and found a card marked USAF UFO hotline. I figured what harm could come in calling them and telling them about this. I called the number in Washington DC and got a recording that the number had been changed and it gave the new number. So I called the new number. The new number was answered by a live person with “UFO hotline how can I help?” So I gave him what information I had and figured that would be the end of it. About 20 minutes later I get a call from Trumbull CT from someone who says they are a local investigator and got the call from the hotline. They wanted to come down and interview the original callers. I was surprised, I remember reading about Project Blue Book, but didn’t think USAF took this that seriously. The investigator asked what the neighborhood was like and if it was safe to go there this time of night. I said it probably wasn’t and we only had information of one caller. The investigator said they would go out tomorrow. So I tell my fellow dispatchers about this call and we are laughing about it when the guy working police radio sends are car to investigate the call. This lead to many remarks on the radio and the officer concluding that the lights were spotlights being used several towns away for an event but visible on the clouds. So I thought this was over. The next morning an article appeared in the paper with my name and title in it about the UFO sightings. IT seems that the USAF does not handle this anymore and the recording I got was because they had handed these off to a civilian club called MUFON (Mutual UFO Network). I had never talked to anyone from the government just MUFON members, and they had issued a press release. It took me a while to live that one down. The second was more serious. We got a call from a woman who said her 10 year old sister had come to her apartment and was reporting she was molested by a tenant of her mother’s. This part of the call was fairly standard. Police go out to start the report, EMS to take the victim to the hospital. Notify the Youth Bureau and go from there. However the next call I take is from a man who asks what he should do if a 10 year old girl were to say he molested her. Needless to say the red flag popped up as this could not be a coincidence. My sergeant was on a break and the manpower was low. I stayed on the phone with the guy and tried to get some information while waving at others to come to my console. The only one who saw me was a fire lieutenant and I had him call the phone company and start to trace the call I was on. Despite the speed of light this is done with on TV, it actually takes quite a while, so I had to stall this guy. We let the units going to the first call know we had a possible suspect on the phone and we got the name of the tenant. I told my caller that I needed his name so I could look up and see if anyone had complained about him. I was able to get him to give his DOB also so I knew that this was our suspect. It seemed like the trace was taking forever and the caller was adamant in his refusal to say where he was. However the Lt. was eventually able to get the location of the pay phone he was calling from and we got units going there. He was calling from a pay phone at the end of a boat dock. This was good because it gave him nowhere to run, but could have been bad if he had decided to swim for it. He heard the sirens coming into the marina parking lot and said something to the effect of I guess those are for me and hung up. He was taken into custody without further incident. Like most calls in dispatch, I have no idea what the final outcome was for the case.

Quite a few years ago our city put in a very draconian sexual harassment policy. We were told that failing to sign it would result in immediate termination. Our union advised us all to add the words "signed under duress" above our signatures. To the best of my knowledge nothing else was ever done about the fact that this threat bypassed the normal chain of discipline. I think the union knew that this was a hot button issue and any attempt to alter the policy would fail n the court of public opinion. I only know of two complaints filed under that, one was found to be false and the other was thrown out because of the insane nature of the complaint (it also mentioned that the harassment involved the past lives of both parties). Back when I was a volunteer officer, there was a brief push to write a code of conduct that would address this. The chief wanted to hire a lawyer to write it. I asked to do it and have the lawyer look it over. My version (as far as I know) is still a draft that was never adopted. This was mostly because the members the chief was looking to harass with charges of breach of conduct all left the department so he didn't see the vital need for the document any more. A few years later another officer tried writing a sexual harassment SOP, he was assisted in this by his girlfriend / subordinate (as opposed to his wife at the time) so you can see where the frame of reference was going on that one. However she was taking much from the corporate world which had some truly bizarre regulations. Mine had come largely from college athletic programs because they recognized that close physical contact might be part of the activity and not harassing in any way. To the best of my knowledge, my former volunteer department still has no policy despite a couple of high profile incidents. Lately at work there is some new form that acknowledges the long policy from before that we all have to sign. This time the union seems silent on it, offering no advice about how to sign it. The end result is you have people who are too afraid to talk with each other look at each other or even engage in friendly banter because something might be taken the wrong way. In my opinion this actually makes for a more hostile work environment as it erodes the camaraderie that has been a hallmark of the emergency services forever.

I agree with most posters, but I have to say that the suggestion to sit down and have a chat with him and understand what he is all about is hogwash. If the original post had the races reversed and this was about a white firefighter who refused to treat black patients (something equally as irresponsible and reprehensible) there would have been no suggestions to do anything other than fire him without due process. As the poster is in Texas, think about if this had been about refusing to treat Hispanics, considering our ongoing national debate on immigration. As a service we need to move on past this crap and the only way this will ever happen is to get rid of the bad apples and actually enforce standards across the board. The sad thing is that Affirmative Action in and of itself does not protect this individual, but the attitudes that have been bred from affirmative action do. Those attitudes are prevalent in the management of many departments. You have chiefs that will openly tell you they cannot write someone up because it would somehow violate their rights. You have firefighters who think that since institutional racism got someone their job, it guarantees then a job for the rest of their life. Then you have employees that even when they know it doesn't fly logically, know if they cry foul based on affirmative action others will run away frightened. I knew of a case where a new officer found a bad behavior (one that most on this baords would be horrified of) that was happening with a veteran firefighter. It was at the point where he felt it was not safe to have that firefighter on scene. The matter was sent up the line and ultimately did turn into a "racial issue" that was exasperated by the fact that the issue had been ignored for so long. My suggestion would be to document the incidents as best you can, then make whatever complaints you have to without any mention of race. This way if there is some form of dereliction of duty the written complaints will not be able to be disregarded as racially motivated. It may take longer as it will not be on every case, and it may make the work environment a bit tenser as it will quickly become obvious where the complaints are coming from. However it may just give some of the department leadership the cause they have been looking for to deal with a problem they know about even if they have ignored it for years.

Some departments need to make an internal rules change to allow this and it has been long overdue. In my old department there were actually more classes of non-firefighting membership than there were of firefighting membership, each with slightly different rights. I tried to combine them once when I was on the By-Laws committee and you should have seen the hornets come out of the nest. I also remember finding all sorts of old paperwork showing us having a fairly large fire police unit, including their own officers, yet there was no membership classification for them. When I was in there we had only 1 fire police member left but I was able to get a class of membership for him in the by-laws. I believe they have some new members in that class now. That being said, a neighboring department in the same city had no class of membership other than firefighter (well they did have veteran but you had to be a firefighter first). They had someone apply who did not want to be an interior firefighter but had other skills that would be useful, aparently in over 70 years this had never come up before. Some of their members came to us for wording for a by-law change to allow this. I have long advocated creating a training program specific to exterior positions. Most of it could come from the FF1 & FF2 class. However some state agencies would need to make adjustments also. Think about the departments that have driver only members, yet many of the good driver/operator classes require FF1 (or the basic FF training) as a prerequisite. I think a single standard for each position would be a great thing.

That was the general point I was trying to make about it, although ICS was just an example.

This is kind of what I was getting to in my first post. allot of the time the rushing in to do something that is outside of the normal duties of your agency is more psychological, in that there is the need to do something, or anything. Our police department gave up it's SCUBA team quite a while ago, yet once at a car in very shallow water 2 blocks from the FD's dive unit several police officers dropped their gun belts and jumped into the rocky water to make rescues. Most went home with injuries on duty after that. Yet when the police briefly acquired an old rescue truck and rumors spread of what it would be used for, most officers were adamant that they were not going to do all that rescue stuff. There is definately a different dinamic when you are on scene than when you are just talking about it. Yes but this is the exception not the rule because of the psychological factors. It is like ICS (or NIMS) sounds good in class, we come up with and run some spectacular scenarios on top of tables, and then we argue over who has the better command post once we get on scene. Which is why I question the value of sending agencies unless we have concrete information that they will be needed at that stage in an incident. I grow tired of being told that my jonb as a dispatcher is to give as much information and keep people safe only to do things that fly in the face of safety based on limited information at best.

To many bosses, this is sadly what it is all about. For that matter a good deal of the EMS calls that get fire apparatus are for the same reason. This is not to say that extra manpower is not a benefit in many cases, it is not to say that first responder programs are bad, it is just they are rarely motivated by patient care. Sadly we have responders going to dangerous scenes for no good reason. A friend of mine is chief of a VAC in a small town in NJ, they are sent on all traffic colisions, even if all involved report no injuries, because the police want everybody checked out. However the bigger issue safety wise is that since they rarely spend the duty shift in quarters (building is not that nice) you have 2-3 home responders going for the ambulance then the ambulance going out all for an eventual RMA. I told him there was an easy way to stop that if he wanted. Stabalize all vehicles before entering to assess, pop a few tires on main street and those calls will magically not be needed any more.

There are absolutely things for each service to do at many scenes. I think it is not just adreneline that causes the potential to become victims but the genuine desire to do something helpful. This is exactly why most of us went into these fields. nobody wants to feel useless or for that matter to appear useless. This is by no means a bad thing, but it works against us. I am not saying never to send the police to a fire call, but I am not sure why it seems like a raceto see who can dispatch their units first, when the clear priority is getting the fire department going and in place quickly and efficiently. This works for other services also. I once dispatched an EDP call in a district that the FD goes on all medicals. So this call got PD, FD & EMS. I told FD & EMS to stage a block away and wait until the police cleared the scene. After a while the Captain on the engine gets on the air and asks if he can clear up, when I told him I would see if PD needed them, he said he could see them loading the EDP into the ambulance from his staging point. EMS didn't feel the need to stage. I notified the EMS supervisor about this and was told it was not my job to tell them to stage, his guys knew how to watch out for their own safety. Funny how things change, now if I don't tell them to stage they ask for a staging location on the air. The goal always has been and always will be that everyone goes home in one piece.

From the dispatch persepective I have always wondered why we send agencies to other agencie's calls. In my dispatch center a call for a structure fire automatically goes to both the police and fire dispatchers. By the very nature of police being out on patrol and fire waiting in a station for a call, it is almost impossible for the police to not arrive first. I often ask this question, why are we sending the police. Most often I get the nebulous answer that they might be needed. By this theory we should send police, fire and EMS on all calls because they might be needed. Do we send EMS on all buglaries because someone might have cut themselves on a broken window? I have been criticized for not sending the dive team to a car partially in the water with the driver standing looking at it, based on the idea that there might have been a body in the trunk. If that were really a concern then fire should be responding to all abandoned cars for the same reason. Now there are concerns that the police need to deal with at many fire scenes, but none are critical enough that we need to send them well before we have alerted the fire department. THe old joke about the first car having to get there in time to block the hydrant is only sometimes a joke, but I was on a call once where one of our guys had to get out of the tower ladder and move the unattended police car at the end of the block, because the officer parked it across the street then walked up to look at the fire. I get that there are sometimes traffic concerns and there are even times when fires become crime scenes, but I also think that we are sometimes putting our responders in a no win situation by sending them unequiped for the situation. The example of the police officer on scene when a civilian brigns out a victim needing CPR is one thing. But the public expects all responders to just do something. They do not understand why that police officer is not running in and trying to rescue all those people. This has lead to a culture where we have trained police officers to disregard their own safety. Why do firefighters wear turnout gear? Because years of science have told us it is the best way not to get burned. Why do police run into burning buildings? Because the fire department was not there yet. To this I will ask why were the police there? As a dispatcher I can wait a few seconds for the fire department to be alerted before sending the police to a call where their main function will be support, especially in a world where most fire responses are under 5 minutes.

You most certainly can deny someone membership. Most people who say otherwise are running scared from the title and not the text of laws like the ADA. Most volunteer departments are private corporations and guess what, even in so called "right to work" states nobody has a righ to work at any specific company. Courts have ruled many times that nobody has a right to join any private organization. However in this case, this young man was well known around town, the article even jokes about him knowing so many people that he was called the Mator of the Town. My city has a bunch of well known people who wander the streets during the day, noby has any doubts as to their fitness to be firefighters. I personally think it is cruel beyond belief to let someone like this think they have a chance of being a firefighter, let them join, not do well at drill and fail out of basic training. How nice it must be to pat yourself on the back when that happens and think to yourself what a wonderful person you must be for letting them try. For the 13 years I was a volunteer firefighter, I know that the people who counted on me and the other members would not have cared how forward thinking or socially aware we were if we pulled up with a crew who couldn't tell one end of a hose from the other as their house burned to the ground.

Wow, there is allot to say on this one. First closing down the entire department because of one incident that involved a guest and not a member of the department is outrageous. Personally the level of overkill in place here makes me think that the borough leadership might just need to face charges for jeopardizing public safety. However politics being what it is, I bet this was just the chance that some local officials needed to try and shut down the department. That is just a theory, but I can think of no other reason for such a level of action. I wonder how long the other towns will be willing to provide free service? THat being said, I think whoever was responsible for passing the buck and letting this applicant get to the point he did needs to be considered for discipline, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Can you imagine this happinging in law enforcement, that after a complaint against one lone officer (or applicant for that matter) the department goes out of service and another town is brought in? Me neither. Second, what is the deal with even letting someone with obvious and well known developmental disabilities which would most likely preclude them from ever serving as a firefighter apply. Volunteer companies need to realize once and for all that they are not social service agencies that exist to make people feel good about themselves. The job of the officers is to recruit firefighters, not to let someone hang out and be a danger to themselves or others. When I was in my Firefighter 1 calss back in 1996, there3 was a member from another department that had some sort of disability and could not grasp any of the material. He would frequently show up to class with broken equiipment. He once said his "job" at the firehouse was to sweep up after the trucks left. I later found out after that he was a member because everyone knew him in town and his father made a substantial donation to the department. Yet chiefs wonder why we sometimes have a bad image. As for background checks, remember this, they are only good at identifying repeat offenders. For someone with no arrests or convictions they will show nothing. Yes there are departments, both volunteer and career, that will let in anyone. THere are also departments that are affraid to throw anyone out after a conviction. Even small issues, like letting someone drive department vehicles after an arrest on motor vehicle charges, seems to pass over the heads of some departments. I don't think a background check would have helped in this case as the suspect seems to have lived a fairly protected / sheltered life. However the domino effect of his actions have now damaged the reputation of the entire department and each of the members.

Well, it would appear that the Captain is not as smart as his name implies. Buffs have been around since before cameras, I doubt they are going away anytime soon. Although they can at times be quite annoying, most departments seem to either ignore them entirely or at least tacitly accept them at scenes. Based on the begining of the video, I would say that the firefighter shown to the rear of the engine in the roadway was responsible for maintaining the perimiter, which he seemed to be doing. By the fact that he was in the same video as the rest of the incident it was pretty clear that the buff was outside of this perimiter. This was also clear by the multiple cars that passed between the camera and the LZ. If for some reason the perimiter needed to be expanded, I would think that the firefighters on the perimiter would have been notified and been responsible for shutting down the roadway and notifying any pedestrians there. When the captain and the other firefighter approiached the buff, the first guy motioned and said to stop filming and then before any question could be asked, the captain became beligerant, rude, and demanding. He lied on the radio when he described the buff as "combative". He then seemed to use excesive physical force to more the buff. In some cases , although this video was too limited in view to determine, this could have been an assault. I also notied that while pushing the buff he was wearing goiled gloves with the patient's blood on them. Dangerous and not too classy. I also noticed that he kept yelling into the radio and speaking over the buff thus creating a recording of his side of the argument but due to his yelling and the normal background noise of the LZ probably no recording of how calm the buff was. I am sure that Capt. Smart is the exception and not the rule when it comes to MDFR, I hope that he is not used as an example of the right way to interact with the public, and frankly I hope he has to explain why he should keep his job after such a performance. At the very least he should not be treating patients or supervising anyone with that kind of behavioral issue.

Date: 05/28/2013 Time: 04:37 Incident Type: Single Truck Colision on I95 District: SFRD/CSP/MTA PD Location: I95 Northbound between Exit 8 & 9, extension to Northeast Corridor RR Tracks Units: E3,R1,M1,E1 (Special Called), Stamford Police, CT State Police, MTA Police Frequency: Stamford Trunked Weather Conditions: Warm & Clear Reporters: AFS1970 Description: Passerby reported truck vs pole colision on I95 N/B, with a pole down. Units initially unable to locate scene due to wrong exit numbers given. SFRD units arrived and confirmed multiple poles down, with pole falling onto MNRR catnary wires. Hood of truck had also fallen onto tracks. MNRR Chief's office confirmed they had power outage on two tracks with unknown cause. MTA Police notified due to incident impact on upcoming rush hour / peak comute. State Police reported a 30 foot section of concrete hanging over the side of elevated highway over surface roads, Stamford Police blocking surface roads and some entrance and exit ramps to highway. CTDOT Bridge Inspectors enroute. MNRR Electrical Crew enroute. Tracks 3 & 5 shut down from Stamford Station north. No train service on the New Canaan branch.

Not too long ago I went to a public meeting about Stamford's Master Plan for development for the next 10 years. Someone actually brought up a monorail (cue Simpsons song here) but the worst part was they said we needed one like Seatle. Having been there and been on their never completed monorail that only has two stops, that is exactly what no city or town needs. The Florida and California high speed rails are similar, in that they were short projects that don't really connect with anything. A few years ago there was talk of a trolley line in Stamford running from our new south end development to the Bull's Head area. Proponants said folks would take it to go shopping. I say why would anyone drive to a parking lot, park the car, take the trolley to say Target then lug packages back on the trolley to the parking lot and drive home? Clearly these short haul projects are being planned by people who have never taken a train before. Amtrak suffers from the same sort of wisdom. I was just talking with a friend about a possible train trip. When I looked at the schedule it included a 6 hour layover to wait for a 4 hour long train. Another option was to take a six hour long bus ride from a different station. Neither one made us jump at the chance to ride the train. This is why the airlines win, they don't make you do the same sort of multi leg trip except to some out of the way places. As for Amtrak costing the taxpayers money, which it does, this is because of the fact that when it was formed in the 1970's an arbitrary date was set when it was supposed to be self-sufficient. Starting as they did with aging equipment and by eliminating all other passenger service there was no option not to subsuidize Amtrak when the magic date came and went. I am always a fan fo small government but this idea that government can run a company is foolish and has never worked. Amtrak sits right in the middle between a bloated government and a failing corporation and falling to either side is not really an option.

Fares are a big problem for Amtrak on most shorter runs, just look at the difference between them and any comuter railroad on the same run. However on the long distance runs the fares become more reasonable. I took Amtrak from Seatle to San Francisco once and the sleeper car with means included was fairly reasonable when you figured what I would have paid for a Hotel and Restaurants plus the train. I too would take the train over a plane as long as it is feasible. Some trips just are not feasible to do because of how fast the plane will get you there. From our area, basically anything north of Boston or South of Washington is not efficient on the train.

Personally I think he should have been wrapped in bacon to send a message to any other would be terrorists that you will not get a paradise full of virgins if you mess with America, but that is beside the point. If that is Terrorist Bashing, then I will wear that lable proudly, as long as those that call me that will wear just as proudly the lable of Terrorist Sympathiser or Terrorist Apologist. The question at hand is about security and who should pay for it. When Pope Benedict XVI visited England there were public protests about the government paying for the extra security and demanding that the Vatican be sent a bill. So yes people do get upset about p[oliticians and heads of state costing taxpayer money. However the idea that since the funeral home pays taxes they are some how entitled to free security above and beyond what the rest of the taxpayers are given is not only wrong based on case law, but and afront to taxpayers. I pay taxes in my city, last year my condo complex had two seperate grafitti incidents. By your theory the police are responsible for that because they were not standing in my driveway 24/7 to ensure that no kids with spraypaint came on my property, after all my neighbors and I pay taxes. THis is exatly what courts have rules against over the years. For that matter why doe the private security industry exist at all? Who was this Allan Pinkerton guy who lied to all those people and said the police would not protect you? Why don't all small towns have 1,000 or more copst so that they can permanently assign an officer to each househjold, or maybe to follow each citizen around in case they might come to harm at some point?

Speed restrictions have been a problem for the Acela also. I have never understood why the acela was not used on some of the longer distance trains like going cross country where high speed would actually save a bunch of time.

Since courts have rules time and time again that the police do not have a responsability to protect any specific citizen, just the community as a whole, I do not think this detail should have been a police responsability at all. The funeral home accepted the body, and I assume that being a business they are not doing this service for free. However even if they are, they made the business decision to take this action. Thus they should have to bear any and all costs associated with that business decision. As they learned from the protestors outside their business, actions have consequenses. I would never condone any violence or vandalism towards that business or their employees and I think they (and by default the Worchester Police) greatly over reacted. I thik that the protestors would have likely gone away had the response not been so overt. The police could have responded in the event of any criminal activity. The news media gave far too much coverage which brought more people up there. However this should not have been a police function and should not be a taxpayer expense (local, state or federal). The Funeral home could have hired priovate security if they felt the need, but instead they decided to see if they could get someone else to pay for it.

Thanks for the pics. I didn't make it down to this one. My wife tried to get some pics on her way to see her Mother on Sunday and said they were announcing 2 hours wait time on line to see the cars. As an aside there was something going on a couple of weeks ago as I was passing through GCT and the EMS cart and the Fire cart were both on display on the ramp heading into Vanderbuilt Hall. Having met the crew of the EMS cart once I know that it is staffed by the Fire Brigade. The crew I met was a ticket clerk and an elevator repairman. They said there is a crew on call whenever the terminal is open to the public. THat was a few years ago but I doubt much has changed.

The strange thing about this is that the GCT event is not listed on the National Train Day website but the events in New Haven and Long Island are.