AFS1970

It looks like the buffs are trying their best to search their own groups for the suspect.

This letter is only one of two times I ever say all five departments actually agree on something in writing. So if there is a silver lining maybe that is it. That being said, I read the letter and got a totally different feeling from it. I got a feeling of frustration with the city. This is something that the union knows all too well. The VFD's were told certain things and many of them have not been realized yet. I think that to some extent they feel that settling the union contract, regardless of specific language, while not really working at the integration plan is a slap in the face. I don't agree with that but I can understand it. I can also see how they are upset at having a command structure become part of labor negotiation, because while it is certainly a work rule issue, it will effect the VFD's and they see it as a deal between the city and the union with no input from them, despite being told they are stakeholders. As we saw with the Springdale agreement the city has no problem promising the union one thing and the VFD's something else, and letting the courts sort out which contract is more important. The bottom line is that the city is the one dragging its heels on this. There could have been an integration plan in place quite a while ago. That plan could have involved participation from all involved, but it has not happened. To some extent I thin the union has become a convenient scapegoat for the volunteers because of years of animosity.

We can debate the cost factors until the cows come home. The fact is that the bulk of the budget (as FFPCogs said) in a career department goes to salaries. The bulk of the budget in a volunteer department goes elsewhere. Sure there may be more expensive apparatus but then again how many in a career department complain about their low bid apparatus. You can't have it both ways. We all know cities have been trying to be both career and volunteer for years. What really troubles me about this study is the statement that volunteers have increased. This would not normally be a concern except that much of the recruitment efforts of the past few years have been focused on how few volunteers there are. Which is it, more or less? If it is more then great, that is wonderful. However then we probably don't need any recruitment grants. If it is less then fine, we can work with this, but we shouldn't claim otherwise in a study that is released to the public. Whichever the real answer is, let it be what it is and let's work positively with that answer. I have seen similar on a local level with two sides using the same facts to argue two very different opinions on apparatus / manpower deployment. We will never solve anything if we do not figure out what we are solving first.

Best forum answer ever!

This is no different than when the Council of Mayors paid Tri-Data to say there was no increased cancer risk to Firefighters. In my city Tri-Data was considered to be the most amazing and knowledgeable and super fantastic fire experts that ever walked the earth. Then it came out that they simply do what they are paid to do. I never trust any study like this because I don't trust the research.

This is much more than a social media problem. In this case the message means more than where it is posted.

I wave seen similar, mostly because old rules do not adapt well to experienced members. In my old station drivers started on the Rescue (because it was the smallest) went through the two engines and ended up with the truck. In order to drive the engines you had to memorize nearly all the hydrants in the small district. This worked fairly well for years. This however could not adapt well to two situations: A new member joins who had previously been a member of a neighboring department. That department was a frequent automatic aid department for water supply. So now you have a member who yesterday was your supply engine driver and now could not even drive your rescue, let alone an engine. A member with experience from a career department (with multiple driving assignments) has no way to be fast tracked through the process so despite a couple of years driving at a truck company, he is not considered able to drive a truck, because he didn't drive both of the engines yet. One senior member told me a story of being in driver training, and being strung along for what he thought was too long. He drove to calls but only with the Chief present. He pumped at calls and drills but still was not certified. Then one night a parade came up and he was the only driver there. The chief told him to drive to the parade. He said he couldn't as he had not been certified as a driver yet. He said he was certified that night, went to the parade and drove to calls for many years after that. If I knew the secret to honoring our history while still adapting to various situations, I would probably be the fire king by now. Sometimes I think there may not be a way to do this at all. Too many personalities involved.

I will help out where I can. My biggest problem will be that I tend to hear about incidents and think them not interesting enough to rate a shout.

I will be the first one to say that I don't really get wet downs. I am not sure about any formal department event that requires me to wear shorts and flipflops. Why do they always devolve into hose fights? I thought wetting down a new ladder with master streams from other ladders was a nice touch, but there was at least one hand line that seemed to be doing nothing other than waiting for the inevitable water fight. What are the historical roots of wetdowns anyway? Does anyone even remember anymore?

My point exactly was that FDNY is not doing it with 5 rescues. Oddly enough for two reasons. First is, like I said, the fact that the trucks do much of the extrication, so they are really doing it with around 149 companies. This does not take into account the similar duties of NYPD ESU. Of course reason two, as others have said is that the FDNY rescue companies are not really the same thing as the similar looking trucks elsewhere due to duties and equipment. Part of this is due to not calling things by the same name everywhere. In my city there is a rig which by Westchester standards would be a Utility. The department that owns it calls it a Unit, but in dispatch we call it a Rescue, simply because 3 CAD systems ago the career firefighters setting up unit designations had no concept of something that was not either an Engine, Truck or Rescue. Then again in CAD we label Tankers as K, because having two types of T's was deemed to confusing and we had a police sergeant who was an airforce veteran so adopted K for Tanker from USAF. I have a friend who is a past chief of two EMS agencies in NJ. He calls his ambulances Rescues or Squads, both of which mean something entirely different to FDNY. Getting back to Nassau, I don't know enough about the area to say if they have too many or too few of anything. However as community borders and automatic aid have increased over the years, it certainly seems that fleets could be trimmed down a bit without a reduction in staffing or services. There is also a matter of perceptions. A few years ago I ran informal run surveys through our CAD system (two systems ago, when things were easy). I stopped when too many Chiefs started asking for them. It was fun when it was a buff project to talk about with a few friends. When it got to be work, and had deadlines, it wasn't fun anymore. However what was interesting was two perspectives I encountered about rigs called Rescues or performing Rescue functions. All of these rigs ran on different responses so were hard to compare except in raw numbers. The company that was always #1 saw the vast difference in stats as them needing a second Rescue to split the volume. The department that was number 2 (mostly due to EMS runs) saw it as being able to absorb #4,5 & 6 and run lots of automatic aid, as those rigs didn't run very much. Oddly enough #3 was pretty much left alone due to some geographical factors. However #1 & #2 were not that far away from each other most months to really matter, yet they had such different interpretations of the stats. Several years ago I visited Colonie NY for a dispatch conference and one of the classes was in a fire station. They had lots of equipment. One member there explained that they had 12 departments, some were districts and others were not. There was also a Fire Marshal's office which was part of the town and responded with some but not all of the 12 districts. Seemed confusing, and I come from a city with 6 departments.

Duplication of services is always going to be an issue, but so is geography. Depending on call volume and population also may justify more apparatus when factors are combined. I recently had a discussion with a career officer, and we both agreed that a staffed ladder company needed to be added to an area, not because of call volume or even fire load, but because of the distance the area was from other staffed ladders, all of which are in areas that are heavily populated and thus make relocation a bad prospect. As for the rescues, if you are going to compare apples and oranges to make a point, go right ahead. However the functions that most of those rescues in Nassau County are set up for are handled by truck companies in NYC, so to compare a truly honest example you would have to add in every truck company to those 5 rescues. You might even need to add in the Tac units and the Haz-Mat / Squad companies also. The numbers might show a little difference then. Why are T-Shirts a bad thing? Don't they show company pride, just like having unit specific shoulder patches or even multiple variations of a union sticker for the same local? The fire service is nothing if not proud. How many guys have firematic rooms at home? Lots. I have seen more than I can count. Why do we cry out about Quints as manpower killers but love Rescue/Engines? Why do we never look at the historical reasons for all the departments & districts, some of which are certainly outdated? Many FDNY companies can cheerfully tell you exactly which volunteer company they trace their roots to. There is an example of a department that has certainly modernized but has not done it by totally eradicating history. NYC is a neighborhood oriented city. I think if efforts to consolidate did more than talk about what is broken they might be more successful. Nobody like to hear that they are the problem, even when they are. Coming in and announcing you can do it better or cheaper, while technically true is the proverbial vinegar that catches fewer flies. There is work to be done, and identifying the problem is certainly a key step. I read about a career department (I forget where) a few years ago that closed and consolidated several companies because of a geographic feature in the city that no longer existed making the department have a great deal of duplication. I do not remember if the companies were closed via attrition or if they laid off, but it was a single department that took steps to modernize operations. However the article I read did not shy away from the area history and why things were the way they were, how the city had changed and it presented the department in a very respectful way.

This thread, which started off well, has become disgusting. A bill was proposed and passed and signed into law that will help make it safer to work on the roadside at an emergency incident and it has devolved in fewer that a dozen posts into the age old debate about courtesy lights. The phrase courtesy light does not appear in any state statute, it only exists in the mind of a few career firefighters who want to remind the public that only some firefighters are entitled to come home alive, that only some residents and communities are entitled to a timely response. Sometimes I wonder if every time someone does not pull over for a blue light (extending courtesy as some would call it) it is because they have been told they do not need to by a bad element of the fire service.

Date: 07/17/2016 Time: 10:49 Location: 300 Merriebrook Ln, Mianus River Park Intersection of Fisherman's Loop East & Fisherman's Loop West (foot trails) District: Turn of River Channel: Tac 3 Weather: 82 (Real Feel 97) Partly Sunny Units: SEMS: M1, M901 (Supervisor), M902 (Special Operations Supervisor) with M-CAT (ATV), SFD: E3, U4 (Command) TRFD: V616 (With ATV) SPD: 3P226 (Parks Police) Writer: AFS1970 Description: Report of 74 y/o male who fell from a horse inside park. Minor injuries reported but additional units sent due to location. This is a large park that borders Stamford & Greenwich with a large network of trails. M901 advised M902 would be responding in 10 minutes with M-CAT. U4 Special called for consultation with M901. V616 (TRFD Lt) responding with 2nd ATV. M902 advised after patient contact was made, approximately 400 yards up trail from entrance in private right of way, that extrication from woods would take approximately 45 minutes, due to distance & terrain. *** Main entrance to park had a bridge that is out of service due to construction. FD has equipment staged across bridge in case of fire inside the park or the houses across the bridge. Temporary Pedestrian bridge is in place to reach that apparatus if needed. ***

Kudo's to Belltown for the new livery, I am surprise it got approved. I would also like to say Kudo's to Bedford Hills VFD for going dark at Mt. Kisco Parade, too bad that from what I understand parade rules require a band. I might have been tempted to only bring muffled drums.

Since the Tribal FD was called for a FAST, it must not be purely a volunteer vs career thing. The Tribal FD being a career department and all. It seems to me like the Norwich units would have at least been a better choice for a FAST considering the distance, even if there was some good reason (which it does not sound like) for not calling them on the fire. Out of curiosity, what is the historical reason for the split? Was Norwich once separate towns? Was it once all volunteer and half developed a career department? Is there some natural geographic boundary like a mountain or a river that divides the sections of the town?

I get the feeling more and more that this was a knee jerk reaction to the budgeting failure, that was done with no research into background data. Sounds like the typical sort of thing politicians do.

My old department was very proud of our truck and wanted to take it to parades, however we were on everyone else's run cards as the automatic aid truck. We finally convinced our chief to let us bring the truck to a parade, and he said he would coordinate with the other chiefs to make sure we were not stripping our city of trucks. I got to the station early and even called our truck out of service on the radio. I even called out early while we washed it so everyone would hear me. So we go to the parade, it was only in the next town, and we could come back if we really needed to but there would have been a significant delay. So we are sitting in the staging area and I start seeing other trucks come in. I see 3 of the remaining 3 ones come in. All the departments claim they never heard of any effort to coordinate this. 1 truck was being driven by a chief. As luck would have it, one of the other districts did get a chimney fire while we were all pulling into the lot for the end of the parade.

WOW. This morning I had heard it was 20 dead, now the body count has risen dramatically. When I woke up they had already said this was a terrorist attack, my wife disputed this saying that it was a shooting, because the news was coming in so rapidly that new developments were not reaching all outlets and making it out to people at the same rate. At least if there is any sort of silver lining, the FBI has said there is no apparent continuing threat to Orlando. As we have learned from France, this does not mean there are not going to be multiple coordinated attacks. Stay safe and remember that even routine sounding calls can turn into something very different.

Separating this into two posts. As for discipline, this is very possible in the volunteer service, but the penalty is going to be different. Suppose you get a 30 day suspension from a career department. You stay away for a month. The actual number of tours in that 30 days is going to be less than 30 because of shift length. There will be a loss of income, which will effect your family. Thus the goal is generally to not get suspended. Now in a volunteer department that same 30 day suspension, includes 30 days of not being on call, and while it may include more days it will likely include less hours of potential working time. There is no loss of money and little effect on one's family. So the penalty is perceived differently. However there is still the general goal not to be suspended because of loss of face. The real reason that discipline standards are not applied evenly is because few if any volunteer chiefs have the stomach to apply discipline. Fewer still have the skills to adequately investigate incidents that might lead to discipline. Look at the topless pictures that nfd2004 has written about. From the way I understand it, the investigation was not as comprehensive as it should have been. Had this not been the case there would have been no charges agaisnt the career firefighters that were clearly out of the station when it happened. However the lack of any charges or discipline in the volunteer department is just as bad if not worse. Maybe discipline in a volunteer department has to include other forms of penalties. I doubt a fine would work, but perhaps not only a suspension from duty but a suspension from the social aspects of the department. Many join for the brotherhood, so not being able to attend the softball game or Christmas party might just be worse than not having to get up for a call in the middle of the night. Maybe not counting suspension time towards LOSAP or seniority might work. especially if time in grade is a requirement for promotion. Penalties have to be meaningful and consistently applied but this is possible.

Common standards are a laudable goal, but I am not sure they will ever be possible. Here is why, no matter what standard you make it will by the very nature be the minimum standard. I know of one nearby combination department where volunteer officers must have Fire Officer 1 to serve. Career Officers have a year from the date of promotion to obtain Fire Officer 1. The reason for this initially apparent inequality is that the volunteers elect their officers for 1 year terms and making the same allowance would effectively allow uncertified officers on the volunteer side. That being said, I heard from several career officers I met in that department that they all went and got the certification before promotion in order to give themselves a leg up in the interview. The end result is that department at the time had never actually promoted anyone who did not hold Fire Officer 1 on either side. Then there will always be those that got promoted for the wrong reason, regardless of test score. This can be due to politics, race, gender, nepotism, ect. This is something that no department is immune from, and while many firefighters will speak up against it, not all will and this will lead to officers that never should have been officers. We all know them, many of us work with them. Some of them not only get paychecks, but really hefty ones. Another reason that common standards will be hard to implement is because there will always be two factions making the standards. One faction will want them to be so hard no volunteer (or other part timer) could ever meet them. The other will want them so weak that thy become meaningless. Then there is the factor of never revisiting a standard until it is too late. It also becomes the departments responsibility to make sure the opportunity to meet the standard is present and remains present. I have seen two nearby volunteer departments set pretty good standards for officers that combined certifications and time in grade, but then end up with few members that meet the requirements. In one case the department rarely hosted the required class in another the department never did. Newer members were never shown how to get the certification. That started the inevitable waiving of requirements or grandfathering of senior members and thus the certifications became meaningless. On the police side, a large number of departments used to have special police officers, which were basically part time but fully certified officers (after 1981). The state used to run an academy rotating among towns at night so those with other jobs could attend. Now they require attendance at a full time academy. End result nobody with another job can attend, leading to almost zero growth of part timers, now need more full timers. Standards set by (you guessed it) full timers. To my mind the goal of training and education should be to help get people to whatever that next level they seek is, but with the understanding that not everyone will reach their goals. If that goal is to achieve a standard or a promotion then so be it. This is why you see so many ads for test prep courses. So no standard should be set at an unreasonable or unreachable level.

The mere presence of lights does not make a vehicle either a police or fire vehicle. There is no regulation that say after you cross some threshold of lights it is automatically the other agency. As for the number of lights, this is something that should be repealed not enforced. Data has shown lights to be more important than sirens due to the soundproofing I mentioned before, remember the commercial with the champagne fountain on the hood of the car while they blasted classical music inside on the radio? No state that I am aware of has the term "courtesy lights" in their statutes. This was a term invented purely so people could tell the public not to pull over or otherwise yield to an emergency responder going to an incident. Many of these same voices will then say that lack of rapid response by volunteers is a problem. Kind of like complaining of a drought after building a dam upriver. Here in CT different police agencies used to be regulated by color. State police was blue and local police was red. As most agencies went to a combination of red and blue light bars the law did not catch up with this trend for quite a while. At one point Stamford had a car that had red/blue with green cruise lights. Should this have been enforced? Interestingly enough the change that was made was to exempt municipal vehicles from color regulations. This is what allows of traffic light repair trucks to have red and our DPW trucks to have white strobes. The end result is that color has become meaningless. My main point is that the color does not matter. NJ has used blue for EMS for years, CT just started that. Can anyone seriously think that either state can attribute response times or survival rates to the color used by volunteers?

I don't think anyone can be accused of making a car look like another service's vehicle. Lights on personal vehicles for volunteers have been around at least as long as lights on unmarked police cars. Of course with the advent of newer technology, like LED's that draw so little power, the ability to add more lights became an option like it never was before. Add this to the fact that cars are being made more and more sound proof and the light array becomes twice as important as any sire, horn or other audible device will now be. As for the colors, I read an article years ago that said the human brain reacts to any mix of two colors better than it does to any single color. This was because your eye sees the change and registers that even if the colors are not the brightest. This article also ranked the colors in terms of viability, with white of course being the most visible. Here in CT white is only allowed for chief fire officers, except for wigwags which have to be approved on a municipal level by the local police chief. This despite a very popular rotary for the dashboard that mixed your color with white. We used to have a local funeral home that had a blue and amber light bar on one of their vans. I know there was nothing statutory about that one. I have no idea if they found some way around permitting, like hiring a volunteer to pick up bodies. I never say it turned on, just used to see the van driving around.

I no more want to see the police in charge of the fire department than fire in charge of policing. Like it or not when a position of this is created, the likely appointee will come from one of the existing services, that means experience in one and not the other and probably some sort of bias.

Interesting article. I liked the historical details. More and more I am seeing a cross over of colors on various vehicles, to the point that I am not sure we should be separating the services by color any more. All the new fire apparatus in Stamford is coming in with blue lights added to the old standard of Red/Amber. CT just changed state statutes to give VEMS blue instead of green, and to add volunteer SAR & K9's to the list of who can use blue. However I think NYC transit still uses blue for express buses. When I was a kid and visiting my grandmother in MA, I remember a neighbor who drove a tow truck and had a green light bar on it. It was the only one I saw and I have no idea why it had that color. I know in some states security companies use a green/amber combination. I was in Tulsa, OK a few years back and blue was the color for service vehicles like landscapers, much in the way most of the northeast uses amber.

I am not a career firefighter. I am a former Volunteer Firefighter. I do work full time in another public safety sector. I never attended recruit school, although I had the advantage of a work schedule that allowed me to take a number of classes, which allowed me to train along side dedicated career and volunteer firefighters from all over our state. I have dealt with the good and the bad in both career and volunteer departments. While a great many career departments in CT use the CFA for recruit school, still many do not. As a matter of fact the next closest career department to the city I live in (after our own) started using them relatively recently. Before that they required FF1 to get hired. They are a good department and I know many of their firefighters, some of whom I volunteered along side of. So attending a recruit class was not the issue. I just spoke to a coworker who's son took a leave of absence from work to attend recruit school as a volunteer. I think he was one of two who did this but I am not sure, does this make him more of a volunteer than others? A few years ago I read an article that quoted a study on firefighter training. I have long since lost the article and the name of the study. It said that career firefighters had greater initial training but volunteers had more ongoing training. I would personally say that volunteers may have more opportunity for ongoing training but not everyone avails themselves of those opportunities. I would also say that from what I have seen most career departments are working to change any deficiencies in ongoing training and improve training overall. However calling a department over a closer department based on nothing more than payroll status is simply not the best option. There are times when a unit is special called due to a specific resource. like a tanker, a tower ladder, a Haz Mat team, ect. I can remember when the only Haz Mat team in my city was from a combination department. To be fair, I had an argument with a volunteer assistant chief who told me once that a RIT had to be a career engine company, he really couldn't give much of an answer why a volunteer company could not be a RIT. To this day I am not sure we agree on this.