AFS1970

I have been consiously trying to change from saying accident to colision at work, I am not always successful, especially when thinking about the abreviatiuon MVA and not MVC. Several of our Police Officers started doing this and that is what got me started after some explanations. I have heard from these officers that colision is a statement of fact, in that we know that two objects colided. Accident is a statement of opinion, as we really do not know prior to the investigation what the driver(s) intentions were. This has come up in court cases where a good defense attourney has been able to ask how an officer has been able to find someone at fault for an accidental occurance. I am not a lawyer so I can't tell you if this is all true or not, but it actually does make sense, which is why I have been trying to make the change personally.

After reading the article, I see what the Firefighters are upset about. Aparently more than half are below 250 GPM and are required to be Black, but the utility district has decided to paint all of them Black that way they can not be held liable for a low flow from a hydrant that previously was at or above 250. Due to this, the Firefighters will not be able to simply bypass the Black hydrants for the Red ones, as there will be no red ones, each and every hydrant will have to be tested on scene (yeah right)or abandoned in favor of tankers or drafting.

INDIANAPOLIS -- The National Fallen Firefighters' Foundation has filed suit to protect its "Everyone Goes Home" copyright and domain. The measure was taken against Fire & Emergency Training Network (FETN) that has produced a training program entitled "Everybody Goes Home". Read the full story here: NFFF Sues FETN Over Everyone Goes Home Name I just read this news story and had to wonder if this sends the right message to our service. If the goal of such programs really is to educate and to increase safety, why is it so important who owns what catch phrase? My department is just wrapping up a Firefighter 1 class, and throughout the class we have preached the message that the goal is for everyone to go home to thier families at the end of every fire. I never thought that such a concept was owned by anyone other than the fire service as a whole. While I am not a huge fan of the various commercial training enterprises that have cropped up, I do understand them. The Fire Service is allot better off than my career of Public Safety Communications is in the regard. In communications almost all training above the basic mandates is private sector pay as you go. In the fire service there are at least state and county agencies that subsuduze advanced training. Then there are the private training companies, many of which have a very good product. Then there are the various foundations and associations that seek to put on low cost training for the brothers becaue increasing knowledge and safety is (or at least should be) the ultimate goal. But when one training entity, especially a non-profit foundation, sues another over ownership of a class title that we should all be doing out best to spread throughout the fire service as a timeless concept, I have to wonder what message we collectively send here. Is the goal about who owns what, who can make the most off of our fellow firefighters, or is the goal that in reality everyone (or everybody) should go home?

This is the only radar I am concerned with, as this is really a non-issue to the general public. I would just hate to see that firefighter safety is more about marketing than it is about firefighters. We all own our own survival, and in that regard we are our brother's keepers.

I had not heard about the Child Molesters, but I had heard about burglars knowing that a child's room offered less resistance in the event of a break in. Perhaps that is an updating of the same fear. I have also seen the new white stickers that go on the interior door, but I wonder if those are even less likely to be changed, as peeling those off will take off paint where as the sindow stickers pretty much come off clean. I know that growing up, my brothers and I changed rooms often among the three bedrooms we had, and I know my oldest brother (who was a Firefighter) ended up in the room with my tot finder from when I was younger. Plus, our tactics in a residential fire are going to be to search all the bedrooms not just the ones with signs on them. The search is not likely to start at the door with the sign, but either the first door we come to, or the door closest to the fire (depending on training and SOP). So I am not sure ofthe value of these stickers at all, and wonder if they create a false sense of security for parents.

One of the districts in my City came up with an interesting soluntion for chained off driveways, which are used to close off certain city parks and sometimes parts of school grounds, as well as some private properties. They ordered a bunch of padlocks all keyed alike, and painted them red. When they were preplanning these areas, they simply put thier padlock at the oposite end of the chain from the owner's padlock. This way the chain can be dropped from either side, by either key.

Really why would you challenge an employer over this law. Since being a Volunteer Firefighter isn't something that any of us try and hide, your boss probably already knows you are one. If there is a call that you need to go to ask and you will probably be allowed to go. Using the law if you are not will be a legal victory but will take time away from the response anyway and probably make it a moot point. We used to have a big company in town that would let anyone go to calls as long as you notified your immediate supervisor. I know of one day that they let people go for an MCI drill, after it was explained that the purpose was to see how fast a crew could assemble. I have never heard of a company that flat out forbids such responses, but we all probably need to use a little common sense and not turn this into something adversarial.

What response actually is does need to be defined. EMD has changed allot of that perception. Since one of the original goals of EMD was to get a qualified person on the phone to help the victim that kind of takes care of that first part that starts with the initial call for help. But there are at elast three other sections to response time. The time it takes the dispatcher to get the call out to the department, the time it takes to assemble the crew (regardless of crew size) and the time it takes to go to the call. As a dispatcher I would hope that the time it takes to get the call out is miniscule, but I know better. While the responders have no control over this, it definately effects patient care as well as incident stabilization on non EMS calls. In a fully staffed department the assembly time is measured in seconds, if at all. Obviously in a system where the staff is not all together and must meet, this is longer. The last is the actual on the road response time, which I would bet in most agencies is under 10 minutes, probably more like 3-5 minutes. I have seen where response times are started from different points depending on the desired result. I got the chance to see an EMS department in the South West that would call units on a different channel and "pre-alert" them to an address then tone them out on a common channel with the FD and use tone out to arrival as the basis for thier response stats. I have also seen times start when the call is processed but not yet dispatched and these statistics used to make the responders look slow. No matter where we get our numbers from, once we average them together we obscure the really long response times anyway. Remember if I have two calls, one takes 1 minute to respond to and the other takes 15 minutes to responde to, I still have an average of an 8 minute response time. If I have two calls and one take 7 minutes and the other takes 9 I have the same average respons time but noone had to wait 15 minutes for service.

What really stirs up this subject, and it is something that is 100% totally controlable by us as posters, are the ones that follow the legitimate questions. I have not read the thread that this one is about yet, so I will make up a hypothetical one. Someone posts about an incident handled by a department, one with a long response time. Someone else questions the response time. Discussion ensues. Almost always someone who wasn't yet involed will post one of two things: Your's just saying that because you hate (either Career or Volunteer) or Oh no, lets not let this turn into a Career vs. Volunteer issue Maybe the way to keep a lid on this, is to not make a legitimate question into this age old argument, by making posts like that which do nothing to further the conversation. Lets just discuss each issue on it's own merritts and not go looking for conspiracies, that may or may not exist. We should all realize that for the most part, if someone has signed up as a member of a forum, they are willing to discuss the issues and in most cases not looking for a fight. If people are looking to start fights, that is a fairly easy fix for the moderators. The best thing we can do is not take the bait, and not give them the fight they want.

Stamford does use the cruise mode, it is to make the vehicles more visible, especially at night. CSP has used this since at least the Early 70's. Stamford's lightbars are California spec, which means when in emergency mode there is 1 steady burn red in the front (one of the two takedowns) and 1 flashing amber in the read (the traffic director counts).

I had to laugh at the answer that came with my score, it said to go down to Radio Shack and buy the latest scanner with all the bells and whistles....but the funny thing is that the scanner question was one I probably answered the least buffy of them all, as I only own one (that works) and I haven't turned it on in months. But I did get an 84% on the test, so I guess that could be either good or bad.

My deepest sympathies and sincere condolences to Off. Morelli's family and department. I worked very briefly with his brother Dan who was a Stamford Police Officer when I first started in dispatch in 1989, although I didn't know him very well and he lef tthe job soon after I started as a dispatcher. Today I worked in Stamford 9-1-1 as we sent officers to assist Norwalk PD, and it was strange knowing that something like this has not happened in our area in a long time, if at all.

Although this is dangerously off topic from FDNY, thinking of K being an alod telegraph made me think of the Q codes that are still in use in the Ham Radio field. These also translated into verbal radio codes, and I know that Miami PD still uses them.

I believe that the steam or other gas mistaken for smoke is only for a visual mistake, if steam were to set of a detector it would be an "unintentional smoke detector activation - no fire". Also I would think that overcooked food was not good intent, unless you are a seriously bad chef, that would be coded as "cooking fire confined to cooking vessel". Since I am not infront of the FD computer right now, I may have some of the exact wording wrong, I am typing these codes from memory.

I am active on two non-fire/ems forums, and they approach this issue in different ways. One has several titles, that are automatic and are tied strictly to post count. The bad part is that the highest is set at 600, which from the looks of it, would be hit by a great deal of people here. The second does not use any specific titles and post count does not mean anything, but the board owner conveys personalized titles to individuals which are often meaningful but also quite funny. As for renaming the verified title, I have to say I didn't think this had much at all to do with post count. Other than needing 25 to show that you intend on being an active participant, I had thought that a verified member was one who provided the information that could be used to verify one's identity. Since this is the case, there really doesn't need to be anything more for real names, as the members that want to post must have provided the forum staff with that information. I do fear that we are getting too much into different ranks, when things seem to be running fine without them. I think that to many different ranks will lead to allot of meaningless posts in efforts to drive up post count. I also fear that any system that relies solely on the moderators and staff scoring the posts will be far to subjective and leave the site open to potential blacklisting of members, which is something we do not want to get int by any means.

How is it that you can go for that long without someone from your department checking your status? I know we use the states website to keep track of the various different expiration dates, so I would think that at some time the lack of a listing or an expired listing would be a red flag.

Even though the flag motif is clearly inspired by the United States flag, since there are 9 stripes and not 13, it is different enough that I don't have a big problem with it. There are other flags that have some of the same features. I also think the color choice is not the best, and there are enough green rigs out there that they could do a couple a year if they really wanted to. As for the parade boycott, that might just make this more collectible.

It looks like a mongrel half breed of a closet hook and a halligan. Things like this always run the risk of doing neither tools job as well as the original. I am not really sure about the strap either, I think that will end up left behind on the fireground somewhere, and the toold will get carried by hand.

I guess it is all perception. Saturday night my wife and I were in Manhattan. While we were walking around trying to decide on what restaurant to have dinner at, I happened to pass a LI Chief's car that was being parked in front of a different restaurant. Two couples got out, I assume one of the four was a Chief in that department. My first thought was not that anyone was misusing anything, but rather that he was being pretty brave leaving a relatively new, clean & marked vehicle parked on the side of a busy Manhattan cross street. But then such thoughts left my head, as they went into their restaurant and we continued onto ours. I didn't give the whole thing too much thought until I read this thread. I can't even remember the district / department for sure, because it's just not that big a deal.

For thsoe departments that have an organized team for FAST/RIT operations, shouldn't the reason you join the team be to rescue our brothers and not to buff every job that comes in in the region? If the FAST members join knowing that they will be put to work doing non-FAST tasks, and that is OK with them, we will never get to a dedicated FAST because those team members will be tomorrow's Chiefs and this situation will have become the rule and not the exception.

Interesting because a few years ago, I went on a cruise with a group of Volunteer Firefighters from all over the country. We had a presentation from the Cruis Ship's Safety Officer, who is in charge of the Firefighting as well as Security. He was Italian, but was required to speak English to get the job. He said this was because he could have as many as 50 different languages spoken by members of his crews, and English was the only common language that made sense. I guess one of the good things about the cruise industry not having to follow US laws, is that the looney left has (so far) been unable to invade their corporate policies.

If the guys we can see are not wearing PPE, what do you want to bet the cameraman wasn't either? That of course is assuming the camerman was even a firefighter.

This is an area where I think standards hurt us. When the new NIMS came out, we all let out a groan. When FEMA came out with the ICS-100-700 classes we all said OK if we have to. Since the mandatory ones were ICS100 & ICS700, gusee how many we all took? Thats right just the two of them. We met the requirements. Now a few of my departments members took these classes on line and discovered all the various ICS & NIMS related courses they could take, for a while there was a line a the computer for the guys taking classes. That kind of died down as the novelty wore off, but I know of at least one newer member who just found the site and discovered he can get college credit for these classes. Now he's a man with a mission. There are allot of other classes that are just as valuable in terms of ICS. Officer 1 or 2, the MCTO classes, Strategy & Tactics, ect. and in truth, my opinion is that all officers should take at least one new command level class a year. But hey, there is a standard and we met the standard, so we are legal, right !?!

In my opinion, FAST/RIT is a resource that is not taken all that seriously by many in the fire service. These units are not called in because they are good to have, or might even save one of us. They are called in because there is a standard that says we have to. I also think that from the minute this standard came out, some folks set about trying to find all the loopholes, or worse to make their own. I have always heard that operations can start if the FAST is on scene or enroute to the scene. Now this is a huge problem for the departments that call for a FAST from 2 or 3 towns away. In cases like this, enroute is a long time. Second of course is the prevailing wisdom that you don't need a FAST until a Chief gets on scene and says he needs one. This brings up two issues, first of all it delays the FAST further, second of all it makes the definition of enroute a little questionable. Is a unit enroute once the Chief asks for it? Is it enroute when they are called? Are they only considered enroute after they have signed on the air as responding? These can be three very different times, even with fully staffed rigs in quarters, let alone if the members have to respond to get the rig first. There is also the rule that you canenter for a CONFIRMED rescue prior to FAST being assigned. I think allot of people forget the word confirmed, and assume that the primary search can go on to find possible victims. Of course since we really shouldn't be searching without a handline in place, the Engine and the Truck both go in without the FAST. Since conditions are bad, we better get another crew to vent for them, and before you know it, the fire is out and the FAST is canceled enroute or shortly after arriving on scene. Because of the rule allowing the FAST to be enroute, this leads to Chris's initial question. There is a certain "I have this company standing by on scene, I might as well use them" mentality in this service. Which probably comes from the fact that FAST rarely get activated and it can sometimes seem like they are a waste of resources (a false assumption in my opinion). Since FAST can technically be back filled by another company being enroute, the initial FAST gets deployed. Few if any Firefighters will complain about being put to work, The IC gets to hold the call at the current alarm level, everyone is happy.....until you need that FAST inside. As for county teams, I am not sure that would work, at least in Fairfield County. Westchester is about the same size isn't it? IF I have to wait for 4-6 guys to assemble from different ends of the county and then get to the scene, possibly in multiple rigs, I might as well not have a FAST at all. Imagine 1 guy each from Stamford, Danbury, Bridgeport and Norwalk going to Sherman as the RIT. I think you are better off using those crews from 2-3 towns away that might assemble faster.

I've read this on a couple of forums now, and I have to say this. While it is not a city parade or one the mayor marches in, it is one of the most visible events the BFD participates in, and in that it makes an excelent stage for such a protest. But the bottom line is that this is Boston's parade and the Boston Firefighters have made a request of all other departments to stand by their side, so if for no other reason do this out of brotherhood. For me it is a moot point because I have never been to bostons parade, but this is certainly not the year to start going. I remember a few years ago in NYC, when the green berets were first banned, that all of the out of town FF's took off their uniform hats as they passed by the reviewing stand and the protesting Firefighters, this was done as a sign of respect and solidarity, and that was also a privatelly run parade. When in Rome.....