AFS1970

The story I have always heard is that the TL-157 designation was because when Belltown bought the rig there was a roster from that company in the cab. Not to long ago someone researched the VIN and found out it had actually served TL-138. So the roster may have been from a time when it was covering as a reserve truck. Based on the information at the time, the members of TL-157 were invited to the wetdown, and they were nice enough to bring the picture. As for the 1963 open cab C-85, it is indeed owned by a Stamford Police Officer who is working on its restoration. He brought it down to our Block Party last year.

The peace protesters should ask themselves one question, but we should all pay attention to their answer. Would they be complaining if the district owned “shiny red pumper truck” that “sat on a grassy spot along Route 59”, had been on the same side of the street they were standing on? It seems to me that they really can’t understand why anyone would want to peacefully disagree with them and support our troops. So is this issue really about the war or is it more about which side of the street is more noticeable to passing motorists?

The same reasons that most of you mentioned, is exactly why I like the non judged parades, like Memorial Day and Saint Patrick's Day. It is all about morale and pride, but I can be just as pround of our 1949 Mack that has yet to be restored but is still fun to march in front of or ride. I can appreciate the joy the kids in the crowd get seeing us come by, and I like the fact that i can march down the street without some judge deciding the interior of my compartments weren't dusted after the last fire. I remember watching these parades as a kid when my Brother was a member of a different local department, and it always looked like he was having fun. Once I joined, and saw the lengths some guys go to, with the wipers walking next to the engine to get that last minute spot off, I realized that I much prefere washing the rig, and going down the main street to honor the veterans and make the crowd happy, all while usually staying in service or on a delayed response. I for one will stick to the local parades and maybe a few out of town parades if it is a big event, like a 100th aniversary or such.

My sympathies and condolences go out to their family and brother firefighters. Rest in peace, Brothers.

Before I saw this topic, I had posted the following in the current arrest thread: I am not sure that there is a simple solution to this. Since nothing in this story mentioned previous arrests or convictions, I can assume that there are not any relevant ones. So while I am generally in favor of background checks I am not sure that they would be of much value in the majority of cases we read about. As I was reading this thread there was a news story on TV about a Priest in another part of my state who was arrested on similar charges. The spokesman for the church said that they do background checks and annual revies of all priests. The story also stated there were no known previous complaints against this priest. I am in favor of doing a background check, and I know that here in CT the State Police will do one for Public Safety agencies. I am not sure if there is a fee. It was covered when I took my last NCIC recertification at work, because they were warning us not to do checks personally and to refer requests up to the state. I will have to look up the full info. We currently have a question on our application asking about arrests and convictions, and another one asking if the applicant has a problem with us verifying their answers. But that is not really enough. I know of one applicant that listed an arrest without conviction in another state and another who very likely had a sealed juvenile record, a CT background check would not have provided information on either of these cases. Most often we talk about this when we read about an arson case. Most of these people are first time offenders, which also would obviously not show up on a check of previous incidents. Perhaps a Psych test would be more to the point, but I have no idea if these conditions have any warning indicators that would show up on that kind of test, so a psych test might be just as worthless.

I previously served on CT's CISD team. I think there is certainly value to reaching out to peers, especially those outside of your department, but I also share the concern that a publicly viewable internet forum is probably not the best way to do this. I have a couple of friends who have called me personally to talk about bad calls, they do this mostly because I am thier their friend, but also because they know I don't know anyone else from their agencies and that I am trained to the basic CISD level. I'm not sure if there is a way to coordinate an internet based CISD effort, but just the same I wouldn't turn away any such E-Mail or PM. Anything we can do to keep each other in good condition to do the job, is a good thing to do. That is really the main point of calling the various emergency services Brotherhoods.

There is no more Pasport Office in Stamford, it moved to Norwalk a couple of years ago. The Ferguson Library in Stamford has a Pasport desk, but I think all they do is accept the paperwork and fees and mail it to DOS for you.

After following the links in another recent thread, I ended up watched a few random recruitment videos from other departments on Youtube, which has made me wonder something: Do these videos actually work? Has anyone with one of these seen a large spike in recruitment? Has anyone joined solely because they saw the video? I also notice that they seem to dwell on the things we as members of the fire service think are cool, and I'm not sure that those are always the things a prospective member might think was cool. I'd love to see one that had a nice mix of action shots with the softball games or picnics, or parades, or even the christmas party or annual dinner. But I still wonder if we as a service are aiming for the right audience with these. Just some thoughts.

I remember reading about their rigs after 9/11/01. I know that they were surprised at the fact that they had one damaged but ended up with three. But what I found strangest about this recent story was that they kept the oldest rig, and got rid of the two new rigs. Now if they really did not have the resopurces (manpower, storage, funding, whatever) to keep that big a fleet, then why not keep one of the newer rigs, like that demo rig. I understand tradition, but even the most traditional departments update equipmnet occasionally. I also wonder if this was not criminal so much as inexperience and careless spending. Having that kind of money in the bank with out financial experience could have lead to bad spending habbits, that future fund drives couldn't keep up with. I hope he did not take the money for himself or his failed ventures, but I wonder if he paid far too much for what he did buy, simply because he wasn't thinking about the future.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but since they list a date that the prison transports started, was that not always the case in this town? Did there used to be a seperate service for each? Then I think it would be a matter of if the town's contract requires a dedicated ambulance or not. It could be that the service has two contracts that together only amount to enough call volume for one ambulance, although it would seem that both clients should then only be paying for half of it.

And while looking at those I found this one: Doesn't anyone remember that horrid cartoon?

You won't see them at HQ very often, unless they are there for an arrest of paperwork. They are stationed at the Operations Vehicle Maintenance building on Magee Av. I think that they may even be kept indoors, but I'm not sure.

I think EMS definately is the more professional title than Ambulance Corps. I think older titles are like squad and corps go back to the pre certification days. But if the goal is to retain the word volunteer in the name, what's wrong with Volunteer Emergency Medical Services, or at least Volunteer EMS? Who says it even needs to all fit ont he same line.

Regardless of drinking and responding, this must be stopped. Let’s not forget that the quote about hanging out waiting for calls is the words of the REPORTER not a quote from anyone in the service. We all know how accurate the average newspaper reporter is. My station doesn't have a bar. I have a friend who used to be in a department in another state that did. When I was visiting him, he took me to see the station and the bar was closed but he told me about all the rules they had in place, and I have to say that at least from my perspective they seem to have addressed all the problems we keep talking about in that one station. I do think it is interesting that they reason for shutting them down apparently had nothing to do with being a Fire Station but had everything to do with violating liquor laws regarding private clubs. I think that this is just one more case where a Fire Department or Firefighter comes under scrutiny for something unrelated to the Fire Service. Just goes to reinforce, you have to watch what you do all the time; you never know who else is watching.

Not to long ago on these forums the story was posted about someone calling for an ambulance from the E/R. The headline was something on the line of DISPATCHER DENIES CALL FOR AMBULANCE. So why not let some idot sue us for not sending the police to rescue him from the police. Some day people will realize that sometimes the public is wrong and not the emergency responders.

Thankfully I can't imagine any way that the person who wanted to donate their house will be responsible, so maybe people will still want to donate houses. However I can absolutely see some "forward thinking" politicians and Chief's banning this type of training. I don't know how the mistake was made and I hop there is a good explanation. I also hope that the city/department comes up with some way to compensate the owner, but since it was a vacant about to be renovated, I really don't think that will amount to much. That really depends on what the extent of the original fire damage was.

This is a funny story, but it does bring up an interesting issue. Multiple 9-1-1 calls from the same location, even if not intentional, do take up some service that should be reserved for those that need help. Now in this case, since it was all from one child, they were able to work towards locating her, and solve the problem. A few years ago we had someone at a company program a fax machine wrong and it kept dialing 9-1-1 all weekend, several hundred times. The only person in the building was a security guard who had no way of locating which fax machine it was. I know that a print out of all the calls was brought to someone at the company and the math was done for what the fine would be if they were charged with falsely reporting an incident but the apologized and no one was ever charged. I don't know if they ever found out who actually programmed the fax machine. Either way it took time away from real emergency work, since our 9-1-1 system gives you the highest priority line that has been ringing the longest, so you can't even use ALI to screen out the calls. We still to this day have a company where people misdial 9-1-1 so frequently that it's almost a running joke with the dispatchers if you take a real call from the building. Most of these are people misdialing when they try for 0-1-1 to make an international call. Even a little public education might make an improvement here, but everyone shrugs it off, like it doesn't really take all that much system resource to answer the call and hang up. I think we actually get into a "Boy who cried wolf" situation, where when you see that address come up on ALI, you expect it to not be a real call, so that when it is, it takes a second to readjust mentally and work towards getting the public the help they need. I have even heard coworkers say, “It’s your job to answer 9-1-1 so it doesn’t matter if it is real or not. Just take the call”. While technically true, that doesn’t make these calls right or even harmless.

Let me echo the sentiments of other here is wishing that Brother Dembski Rest in Peace, and extend my heartfelt condolences to both his family and his department.

In Stamford due to the two highways that cut across town, we have alot of these dual response areas. We have standing orders in most cases that whoever gets the call first on a border area calls the next town for a dual response. The first units on scene go to work and determine who's district the call is in, they will usually cancel any units that are not needed pretty fast. But we also have a policy that applies off the highways also, that if you find yourself operating in another district you notify that district and leave it up to them if they want to respond. Since there is some legal responsability to respond within your own district, usually at elast one unit comes in. In these cases it is important to be very descriptive in what type of situation you have and what if anything you need.

Rumor has it that this week, possibly tomorrow, Stamford's Parks Police will finally get new cars, for the first time in close to 10 years. There have been quite a few internal issues over the cars, what color they would be and what the markings would look like, and what the car numbers would be. The oldest ones I remember were the unmarked light blue dodge omni's with red dash lights. The first real police cars they got were the dark blue with white lettering and red lights. These later had white stripes added to them, and then half the lightbars changed to blue. These were numbered 243 & 244 Then came the white ones, which originally had a green stripe and a very small door decal. The lightbars went back to red on these, but later were changed back to red & blue. The markings were changed to green versions of the regular SPD markings (the red & white ones on the last series of light blue cars). These were numbered 93 & 94. There was also a newer one numbered 98, that I think may have been an ex SPD car, and a terible one that was an old SPD staff car and not really suited for patrol that was repainted and numbered 95. The two existing ones are 94 & 98, but depending on who you listen to they are now 694 & 698, but were never remarked. Then two new cars were ordered just after SPD went to Black & White, with the Blue lettering. These were going to be either identical to the regular PD cars or I have heard that the Blue "POLICE" was going to be green. Those never made it to the parks dept. and are currently on the road as SPD cars. The two new cars that are comming in, will look similar to the SPD cars, but be darke green & white in stead of black & white. (for those old enough to remember SPD briefly used that color sceme, after the now defunct Auxiliary PD had started with it). I believe the markings will now have the small black "STAMFORD PARKS" above a gold/yellow "POLICE". The light bars are going to be red & blue. There is no word on car numbers yet, but they may get the plate numbers that the Parks Dept. put on them (which will likely be higher 3 digit numbers) as car numbers, as SPD has already reissued 98 and I think 94 too.

Not being able to see the future I can't be sure what will happen locally, I am sure that there will be both positives and negatives over all as this all plays out. Our situation is only similar to Home Rule in the Fire Service as there is one municipality which runs Public Works, Police, ect. 1 Ambulance Provider. There are 6 Fire Departments, largely due to the way Stamford was settled. Interestingly enough I have heard a story that there was talk years ago of the City helping to organize another Volunteer Company in a neighborhood but that there was not the community interest. Way back when neighboring Darien was part of Stamford. If history hadn't happened the way it did, we might have 10 departments in one city.

Why could't you run such a competition but only allow actions that would be allowed in Real World Ops? It has been brought up that training should reflect the real thing, could not competition reflect good training in the same way? As for set up time, If you had a large enough area, could you not set up multiple colisions far enough from each other that they could either be worked simultaneously or in sequence, with the judges and audience moving from area to area, kind of like a golf game? I have never seen one of these compititions but I think the potential is there to make this an excelent training tool. The key is to train towards real life operations, not to train towards competition rules, otherwise the event looses it's most important value.

Not being from Westchester, I don't think it is so much the Home Rule that is the problem, but like in so many other issues, the personalities and egos (both individual and community) that are involved. A county wide oversight or merger isn't entirely a bad idea but everyone would need to be careful that it wasn't just a power grab in the other direction. That's probably the biggest fear of all and what drives the resistance. One thing I can't understand is why any community would be exempt or allowed to opt out of a county wide system, Including the Bigger Cities would seem to be of more benefit to the larger system than not.

In Stamford we are not organized by apparatus based companies, but by geography based districts. But this is a great question. For me it was partially based on where I lived and partially based on what I saw as an outsider. My Brother and Father were members of the department near where I grew up but I didn't join anywhere until I was in my 20's and already living in a different neighborhood. Since I had been dispatching for 8 years already, I knew a fair amount of the guys (at least by voice). At the time I had a good friend who was in one department and two co-workers who were in another, so I was being recruited by both although more aggressively by my coworkers. Hanging out with my friend often meant tagging along when he got a call. After visiting both stations extensively I finally joined Belltown. Oddly enough the coworker who was the main recruiter, isn't a member anymore, since moving out of state, and doesn't work with me anymore but I stuck arround.

One additional detail about Springdales T56, is that is was refirbished in the 80's (I think 1985) and now has a differend cab on it that it originally did.