petervonb

I am waiting to see what the investigations actually turn up before I start throwing accusations or other negative comments around willy-nilly.

I heard somewhere (sorry) that there was a motor vehicle accident on the Taconic/Bx River Pkwy near the train incident and that Valhalla FD was already on the scene? It was said to have been a cause of a backup on the highway, leading people to use Commerce St. as a short cut. Can anyone confirm (or plausibly deny) that for me? Thanks

Simple version: Town Board creates a Fire Protection District and then contracts with some firefighting entity to provide the protection. Mt. Hope contracted with the Village and its FD and the residents of the Fire Protection District paid taxes to the Town (on a separate line in the tax bill) for the amount of the contract. Now they want to create a Fire District, which is a municipality and will have power to tax. The former Otisville FFs have created a fire company and that company will still exist, but the Fire District will create a Fire Department and it will likely consist of all the people in the new Mt. Hope company. The District's Fire Department will be the operating entity - the Company will involve itself in related matters (including recommending a Chief to the District, which recommendation the District will accept or reject) and raise funds and do other stuff. The majority of the cost of firehouses, fire trucks, equipment and lots of other things will be borne by the District (and not the Town government) and they will be able to float bond issues to borrow money to pay for it all. The taxpayers will still be levied for the funds and it will still show up on the Town tax bill on a separate line. There are a number of actions the District takes that will require voter approval. The District will be governed by Commissioners - usually five - who will probably first be appointed by the Town Board and then will stand for election within a year. The one with the most votes will serve 5 years; the one with the second highest vote will serve 4 years; and so on to the one who came in fifth, who will serve for one year. After that, one Commissioner will stand for election each year, so you can't throw them all out at once, except in that first election. The Town Board will have no more say in the operations of the District or its department or its taxes. It is possible that the District might be a Joint District between the Village and the Town, but that doesn't appear to be in the works as it appears in the Record. This story reminds me of what I have been told about the formation of the Philipstown North Highlands Fire District, which covers an area that used to be covered by Cold Spring FD - though I think the problem was more with the Town Board than the Village Board - and the residents used the petition process instead of having the Town create it. (If anyone has better info on that old story, let me know.)

So maybe we should come up with a SPOT-FILLER badge, a SPOT-FILLER helmet front piece and SPOT-FILLER lettering for the back of the turnout coat. Maybe the design could be like a circle, partly filled with some sort of material, and a putty knife sticking out of it. Appropriate level numbers could be written on the handle of the putty knife, to show whether the person is a Level 1 SPOT-FILLER, Level 2 SPOT-FILLER or a Chief SPOT-FILLER.

In the City of Peekskill earlier this year, they had a major fire at the top of a hill and the hydrant system failed. They had to rely on a 5 inch hose lay and multiple tanker shuttles. They laid 28 lengths of 5 inch with two relay pumpers in the setup. (They probably could have used a third, or even a fourth relay pumper - the lay from source to first relay pumper was 16 lengths, all uphill, and 6 lengths between first and second relay, another six to site, where they dumped it into tanks and pumped from there.) No way should they normally have to carry 3,000 feet of 5 inch in a hydranted city but .....

Yorktown Ambulance (and associated Medic) are also on 154.400 MHz

Sig Sauer is a Swiss and German company founded as a wagon maker in 1853 (go figure). The company was smart enough in the 1980s to invest big bucks in the U.S. to manufacture and sell all kinds of arms. See more at http://www.sigsauer.com/AboutUs/History.aspx

There is no hard and fast rule that consolidation of fire companies (in fire protection districts) and/or fire departments (in fire districts) into one larger district will lead to financial savings. If paid employees are involved, and those employees have paid supervisors and paid managers and paid department heads, etc., etc., there is a good chance there could be cost savings with consolidation - that's why it might make sense to consolidate DPWs, PDs, school districts, etc. With volunteer companies and departments - usually with no paid employees, it is a whole different financial ballgame to begin with and the only way to see if consolidation makes sense is to conduct a very, very thorough review of all the groups' financials, operating methods, SOGs, etc., and those financials would include everything plus the kitchen sink - mortgages, leases, investments, equipment ages and other asset valuations, and on and on - along with tax assessed valuations and rates. In the meantime, the smart thing for all those fire companies and departments to do is constantly make extra, extra efforts to work together in every way possible. First thing is to stop worrying about sharing information. Like, how is it really going to hurt if you tell the officials of one company all about how you operate your own? Exactly what really important secrets do you have (especially in this day and age of FOILs)? After getting past the fear of loss of power by sharing info, the next thing is to start planning a whole bunch of things together, especially automatic mutual aid - and that could very well include things like rearranging responses based on closest apparatus, combined with response analyses. For instance, it doesn't do much good to have truck A from company X always be the first due responder to location M in Y's area, because A is closer to M than Y's nearest truck, if truck A can only get manned quickly at night. Along with all those automatic responses, don't forget you have to have written legal contracts with all parties to particular agreed response protocols - not just a verbal deal between chiefs (EXCEPT, the first step WILL probably be a verbal deal between Chiefs and notification by both to the dispatching agency, but many of the response deals will eventually have to involve written contracts or there will likely be many big problems with the taxpayers). These sorts of arrangements will give members of all involved companies and departments quite some measure of comfort knowing there will be quick backup; will give residents more confidence they will get a rapid fire suppression response; and might well lead to improved ISO ratings - in turn leading to reduced fire insurance premiums. (Also, local insurance agents won't have to keep telling little white lies about exactly how far away the nearest fire apparatus that can be expected to respond is housed - often a problem technically because there are no contracts between the fire companies involved - the one in whose district the insured property is located and the one whose equipment is closer.) When the companies and departments work at working together, they can often operate just as efficiently and effectively as might a consolidated district. It ain't easy though, and that's why it so often appears to be easier to just consolidate - truly a cop-out. By the way, when legislation was adopted around 1934 creating the concept of fire districts and fire protection districts, most Towns were rural and the fire protection was provided by - and usually paid for by - volunteer organizations, and the Town governments were not paying them much, if anything at all. The District concept made it possible to create a payment method outside the Town government, and that was often extremely important. Enough on that angle for now though - it is fodder for more study and commentary later.

I hope not. No entertainment value in hearing the same voice 24/7 with no change of any type to indicate realities of situation. OTOH, there are a lot of new dispatchers on the air these days who could really benefit from elocution training - really hard to understand many of their dispatches.

Sounds like some of that crap we had in the "good old days" still goes on. Power trips; Control issues; Inflated egos.

Just got a scanner for Christmas, eh? Well, that's just the first step in what is likely to become a great but expensive activity. To hear more action from the fire scenes, you will need an outdoor antenna, and the antenna should be mounted as high as you can get it. First, with the outdoor antenna you will receive more, period. It will no doubt be a much better antenna than the one that's on the back of the scanner, though it will cost a bit as well. Being outside is better than inside a building, the walls of which are apt to contain lots of stuff to interfere with radio signals. Being higher in the air will mean the ability to pick up more distant signals, but the farther away the antenna is from the radio, the better antenna cable you will need - and it costs more. You're gonna have fun. Enjoy.

Oh for the good old days .... To begin with, back then FD, EMS and PD all had their own phone numbers. The FD was dispatched by a police agency, and always treated like the poor stepchild by the agency and the dispatchers, who were POs doing penance for some screwup. The EMS was dispatched by a private answering service (we are talking pre-911, of course). If PD got a call for an accident with injuries, they would dispatch their unit and then call the answering service (AS). AS would tone out the ambulance; the members would get out of bed, get dressed, go to the rig or the scene ... and discover extrication was needed. (Sometimes on-scene PD would come to the same conclusion.) EMS would call AS, who would then call PD dispatch, who would tone out FD for extrication. Imagine how much of the golden hour has already passed by now. Anyway, FD members would get out of bed, get dressed, go the the rig and drive to the scene to begin extrication. We're into the second half of the hour by now. If the original caller called AS instead of PD, AS would tone out EMS and advise PD dispatch. We figured it would be better to have FD and the extrication equipment on scene available for use if needed same time EMS got there, so we set up an arrangement with AS. If AS got the initial call for an accident involving injury or possible injury, they would dispatch EMS and then call PD (using the FD phone number), identify themselves, and ask PD to dispatch FD. PD dispatch would assume the request had come from EMS via their AS, so they would dispatch FD, and FD would be on the road same time as EMS. If PD got the initial call, they would call AS and ask them to dispatch EMS. AS would do so and then tell PD to dispatch FD. Same result. AS was the key here because PD dispatch would not have gone along with the idea of having FD dispatched automatically to a PIAA (personal injury automobile accident) because they would rather have their own guy let them know if FD was needed. If EMS asked for FD, they would go along with it. PD POs at that time were notorious for not trying to find out if there were any injuries. So the system worked great: FD got dispatched on all PIAAs (and not on PDAAs - Property Damage Automobile Accidents). PD POs on scene would keep wondering why the FD was arriving. (Some of them took umbrage and tried to stop FD from providing proper scene safety, threatening to arrest them if they closed a lane or the road itself.) Most PIAAs did not involve extrication, but for those that did, FD was cutting 10 - 15 minutes off the golden hour. One day someone actually told the FD chief what was going on (it had been worked out with an assistant chief because the chief would not have understood what was being attempted or why). Enough positive comment came from this setup and its results that eventually PD dispatch was brought into the loop as well and was given formal instructions to dispatch FD on all PIAAs (needless to say this required OK from Coordinator, who was of the same mentality as the FD Chief and it took a long time for him to be convinced). The PD Communications Supervisor regularly conveniently forgot to make sure his dispatchers followed the new protocol, but eventually he came around too - sort of. Many of the older POs were never happy, but the newer ones were less into Control Issues and appreciated the traffic help. There were also still POs who would not report an injury because it would screw up traffic - let someone else call for EMS. One time one of those die-hards tried to turn the FD around as it approached a scene with the comment "No injuries, FD not needed - no one is injured". FD continued in anyway and EMS ended up using 5 ambulances to transport something like 11 injured. Things have improved. FD response to all PIAAs is one rescue (with 2 sets of jaws and lots of traffic control stuff) followed by a pumper (with another set of jaws), and then a utility truck with more traffic stuff. We don't use the term "MVA" because it does not distinguish between injury and non-injury.

Does the VA make any payments in lieu of taxes to the local jurisdiction (City or Town of Canandaigua)? Does the City or the Town provide any services to the VA? Big, non-local property tax paying institutions can often be a burden on the small communities in which they are located. I don't begin to know how it plays out in Canandaigua, but I wouldn't complain about my federal taxes being used to help the City. Every dollar in Federal taxes we can get back into New York State is a plus. New York gets back from the Federal government only around 80 cents for every dollar its citizens and businesses pay in Federal Taxes. The rest goes to other. "needier" or "poorer" states - including Alaska, where there is no state sales or income tax. <http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/266.html>. Leaving the VA "unprotected" is another matter worthy of more study.

Hey, they could co-locate with the TMC (Traffic Management Center) at the State Police Barracks.

It is unusual, but maybe this bit of info from the Department's History page will help: "In 1933, Weaver Street Fire Company #1 changed its name to The Town of Mamaroneck Fire Department, and on June 1, 1936, New York State Governor Herbert Lehman signed a bill that incorporated the fire department. The Town of Mamaroneck Fire Department covers an area of 5.17 square miles, an area known as the unincorporated area of The Town of Mamaroneck. This area is also known as the Town of Mamaroneck Fire District #1 and was established by the Town Board of The Town of Mamaroneck and became law on March 21, 1939." So it would seem there might have been special legislation involved.