firebuff08

Not sure if it is true of all Passport trunked systems, but in general, each user of a Passport trunked system has a "Home" frequency, at least on the user's "Primary" tower site. And in general, all of that user's transmissions will be on that "Home" frequency unless that frequency is in use by another user, in which case the Passport system will distribute the transmission to another frequency at that tower site. A heavy user, ie an ambulance service with many units,may in fact me the ONLY user of a paticularly frequency as its "Home" channel. This explains why another poster stated that he has entered one frequency for a Passport Tower site and is hearing the transmissions he wants to hear. I have done the same here in CT for a service I monitor that is on a Passport trunked system. The only problem I have encountered it that on my newer scanners, the constant "popping" sound the Passport System emits causes my newer scanners to lock up on that channel. My older scanners do not seem to be affected in the same way. Strange! The great thing about Passport systems is that they usually cover huge geographic areas with many tower sites, giving users coverage they could never afford with a dedicated two-way radio system of their own.

Here is the problem. The fire service has for years done a very poor job of conveying to the public WHY a certain number of firefighters are needed to protect the community and even with all the layoffs across the country it continues to do so. The vast majority of the public and most elected officials believe, mistakenly, that the fewer fires that occur, the fewer firefighters that are needed. They make that mistake because they can only see things as they know them. Where they work, in a factory, or a restaurant, etc., if there are fewer customers and less work, then fewer workers are needed. They can not comprehend that it takes a certain number of firefighters to extinguish a single fire, safely, while also rescuing persons who may be trapped. So even if there is only ONE fire per year, it will take the same number of firefighters to extinguish it as it would if there were several fires in a year. Where I live I have gone before the local fire commission multiple times to request additional staffing when other citizens and members of the commission were calling for cuts to an already understaffed department. Each of them was making the point that the district is small and has few fires and the number of fires has gone down substantially over the years. So I asked them to accompany me to a Board of Education meeting to make that same argument relative to High School athletic teams. I used their argument, the school district is small and the teams play far fewer games than professional teams do. I proposed that perhaps the football team should play with 7 or 8 players on the field. And maybe the baseball team should play with 5 and the basketball team should play with 3 on the court. Every one of them shot back that you can't do that. They all said it takes a fixed number of players to play each game. You must have the same number of players on the field as the opponent. To which I replied, exactly my point regarding the fire service. It takes a fixed number of firefighters (players) to beat the fire (the opponent). Most of them understood the analogy. The other problem the public has is why are there so few people on a shift. Again this relates to the fact that 60 percent of the public can only understand things as they personally know them and where they work, most of the employees are there at the same time...5 days a week. They just can not get their heads around the concept that equal numbers must be there, not only 24 hours per day but 7 days per week. One citizen actually suggested increasing shift coverage by going to three 8 hour shifts. Of course he forgot that weekends have to be covered as well because where he works no one works on weekends. I believe the fire service needs an ongoing education campaign to drum it into thick public skulls that a certain minimum number of firefighters MUST be on duty at each station and that a certain minumum number of stations MUST be staffed to effect an effective and timely response should a fire occur.

Texting to 911 PSAP's is a major part of the Next-Gen E-911 systems currently being planned at the Federal and State levels. Some states are further along with Next Gen E-911 than others. There have been many hurdles to overcome. Ultimately, rather than piggy back new technology onto the existing E-911 systems, E-911 is being redesigned from the ground up. The present E-911 systems were designed around the wired phone system. the new technology is being designed around the mobile phone system. Text messaging and mobile video will be a part of Next-Gen E-911. Text messaging is becoming vital for E-911 because so many of the hearing impaired have migrated to texting from the old TDY/TTY systems. The major obstacles have been accurate location technology for wireless systems and how to accurately interface dozens of different wireless technologies from multiple vendors into the wired E-911 system so a 911 call ends up at the correct 911 PSAP. Cost is a major factor particularly for states where every local jurisdiction has to have its own PSAP. For states like New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont with a single or a half dozen PSAP's the cost of Next Gen E-911 is far less.

Here is the problem....and why the troopers are upset. Would you want State Police or Safety markings on your PERSONAL car? Each and every one of the 1200 member CT State Police has a PERSONAL vehicle paid for by the taxpayers. They use it for police work, for 9 hours on each of 5 days out of every 8 days and then as their personal car the remainder of the time. They do not want to have to drive a vehicle with State Police markings or chevrons when they go to the store or go out with the wife! That is why the Whelen Light Bars and the State Police Emblem above the rear bumper can be removed in a matter of a couple of minutes. I say hooray for the Governor. If I had my way they would be driving Black and Whites with Connecticut State Police in Bold Reflective Letters on All Four Sides of the Vehicles. I'll bet that would limit their personal use of state owned cars. Most other states that allow or require troopers to take their cars home, do have fully marked cruisers. Vermont is a nearby state that comes to mind. Many other states, like NY do not have take home cars. Troopers drive to work in their own personal cars just like local police officers do. While they are working they drive one of the Marked Cruisers assigned to that Station. Take home cars at taxpayers expense are a perk that the CT State Police are not likely to give up easily. Just think how inconvenient it would be on their days off for troopers to have to drive to a barracks to get a car and then drive to a Highway Construction Site to earn Pension Boosting Overtime and then back to the barracks to return the car at the end of the overtime shift!

For the record, Middletown is somewhat different. South District and Westfield are independent districts created by the Legislature. The Middletown FD is a Department of City government but it is NOT funded from the City's general fund. It is funded by a special tax district created by the City. Only property owners within the district pay the tax and receive fire protection from Middletown FD. All 3 depts provide automatic mutual aid as necessary.

Izzy - you need to do more research. A City Charter change will not make the Allingtown or West Shore Fire Districts go away. They are independent municipal entities created by Special Acts of the Connectiut General Assembly. To disolve those districts, the respective Boards of Fire Commissioners would have to adopt a resolution calling for such action. Then, the matter would have to be approved by a majority of district voters at a referendum after which the State Representative in whose district the particular fire district lies would have to bring a new Special Act before the State Legislature. Only after the Special Act was approved by the House and Senate and signed by the Governor could the Districts be disolved and only then could the districts stop collecting taxes and stop providing fire protection. It is a lengthy process requiring specific legal documentation regarding how the financial affairs of the district --payment of all debts including unfunded pension liabilities and sale of all assets (fire trucks/buildings etc) are going to be handled. If the three Districts were to be merged each district would have to follow the steps outlined above. If the City chose to create a municipal fire dept the City would have to assume all financial obligations of the individual districts and would assume owership of district assets. If the decision is to form a consolidated fire district then it would be the new district that would assume the liabilities and assets of the individual districts.

In my lifetime I have been an emergency responder for over 20 years (paid and volunteer), a 911 dispatcher for 15 plus years and President of a large Volunteer Ambulance Corps who had to deal with crashes involving ambulances. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Lights and Sirens are way over used. The problem with the use of Lights and Sirens is not only the tunnel vision effect and the adrenaline effect on the emergency vehicle operator but the effect or lack of effect lights and sirens have on other motorists. How many pull to the right and stop? Some will stop in the middle of a travel lane. Some will not pull over but slow down. At intersections I see drivers all the time trying to beat an emergency vehicle through an intersection. Many of the comments I have read on this thread from those who don't get it and still want to respond lights and sirens to every call, are very similar to those that have been heard in community after community over the last 30 or so years when it was proposed to remove False Alarm Boxes from street corners. In every community, a close examination of alarms from street boxes for multi year periods, showed that there NEVER was a working fire reported via a Street Alarm Box that wasn't also reported via landline phone and or cell phone. 99.999 percent of all call from street alarm boxes in each community, for many years prior to their removal were FALSE and yet the fire departments continued to respond lights and sirens with a full assignment because they always did it that way. Never mind firefighter safety, public safety demands that the response be in relation to the seriousness of the event. I know of fire department in my area of CT that will respond to the same automatic fire alarm -- three times in an hour - with four pieces of apparatus with lights and sirens. That is insane. In this day and age where working fires are few and far between, there are not too many calls that warrant lights and sirens unless the purpose is to provide the apparatus operator with a woodie! As for the argument about caller not giving enough information....it is not the responsibility of the caller to "give enough information" .. it is the responsibility of a well trained 911 dispatcher to elicit enough information to determine the classification of the call... 99 percent of the time, that is not a problem. Of course in Westchester (where I lived for 20 years) I know there are still villages where a police officer answers the phones and feels he or she has done their job if they simply find out "fire" and "address", the heck with kind of fire, size of fire, exposures, call back number, caller's name, etc, etc.

Always through.com. Makes it easy to find out what is new.. to see new photos, etc.

Late this afternoon I had trouble again..... Couldn't even get the blank white page....just the message that the page I was looking for could not be found. Same was true with emtbravo.net. Now, both seem to be working fine.

I too have been having problems....yesterday and just now, this morning.....page starts to load but doesn't finish...I just end up with a blank white page. The forum link seems to work ok and yesterday, I was able to get to EMTBravo.com by using the link on the EMTBravo.net page.

Very fast load here and everything looks good. Sure was nervous late last night when I tried to log on....nothing. But, this morning it looks great.

Seth -- Great site. While I don't post often, I visit just about every day. Great source of information. I just sent you a donation via Paypal. I would hate to see this site and its sister sites go down. I hope you get broad support. You shouldn't have to shoulder the burden of paying for this site all by yourself, especially now while you are out of work Ed

Several times over the last several days, Bravo.com has failed to load or has loaded slow or has given me an error message. Just now it worked fine. Have not had any problems with Bravo.net.

The bookmark in my browser is set for EMT Bravo.com... So I always go there first. And I check in once a day, generally. I find the list of the latest forum posts in the left column to be an easy way of checking whats new, without checking each of the forums on EMT Bravo.net. Also like the list on the right of most recent incidents in the various areas. As others have posted....more pictures would be better....Seems there was a time when a lot of people posted a lot of pictures of apparatus and working fires.....I like picture. Also it seems to me that in the past there were more prominient links to features of the site... such as Department information, apparatus that once served the county, etc.

It is quite refreshing to read that there are Volunteer providers who know when it is time to get out of the EMS business. As the former President of a Volunteer Ambulance Corps in Westchester, my hat is off to the Fire Trustees in Hyde Park for recognizing that a lack of volunteers is a proper reason to stop trying to provide the service. The problem with EMS in Westchester has a lot to do with far too many ambulance providers. Somehow, the public seems to have a false sense of security that they are better served by an un-manned volunteer squad just down the street in their mile square village than by an ambulance staffed by paid professionals responding from a nearby community. They don't seem to get the fact that the paid ambulance from one or two towns over can respond, treat and transport them to the hospital while the local volunteer squad is still toning out trying to get a crew. And this is not a new problem. Long response times, repeated toning for a crew and repeated toning by the mutual aid department for a crew, was common when I was involved in EMS in Westchester more than 20 years ago. Nothing has changed. The town where I work here in CT as a 911/police dispatcher recognized the problem several years ago and hired a commercial service to provide ambulance service during the day (6:00 am to 6:00 p- Mon-Fri). The Fire district paid to have the commercial service station rigs in the firehouse during those hours. Two years ago, the district hired 6 fulltime EMT/firefighters who now provide EMS during the day and staff the first fire apparatus out when there is the occasional fire call. The town still uses the Commercial Service as a back-up, especially nights and weekends. No reponse to the tones.... call goes to the commercial service which is located in the next town over. The commercial service also uses our local EMS as its back up. Seems to work quite well. Again, the Fire Commissioners took steps when they recognized the volunteers couldn't handle the calls, especially during the daytime.

While a simulcast system has high start-up costs and higher maintenance costs it is a very good way to go to cover a large geographic area. The key to a simulcast system is the microwave system linking dispatch with all of the transmit sites. That is a lot more equipment to install and to maintain. The transmit signals at all of the sites MUST be synchronized to a finite degree to keep them from beating against each other and that can only be done with microwave or fiber optic. Phone lines are not stable enough. If the sites get out of syncronization, it would sound the same as when two units transmit on the same channel at the same time as one would cancel the other out. The CT State Police Trunked system is simulcast. Each Zone of that system has as many as a half-dozen tower sites or more, all transmitting simultaneously on the same frequency.

Having spent the first 30 years of my adult life as a broadcast journalist, radio station manager and radio station owner -- I have wondered for years why no one thought of this before. In a large metro area like New York, who gets home at 5:00? And you can't watch TV while riding the train or driving your car on the way home. When you get home, the news is over. 7:00 pm should be a dynamite time for NBC4. They should do very well.

The volunteer fire companies in Stamford may very well be autonomous under the City Charter, but City Charter's can be changed. Perhaps when the average Stamford homeowner residing in an area covered by a volunteer department realizes the level of fire protection he or she has versus what they could have with the City plan, there will be a call for Charter Revision. In Connecticut Cities the City Charter can be changed through the following process; the governing body appoints a Charter Revision Commission and gives the Commission direction on what needs to be changed. The Commission hold hearings and comes back with recommendations for specific changes to the Charter. The governing body then puts the proposed revisions up for a vote at the next general election or at a special election. The Stamford Charter could be changed to eliminate the Volunteer Fire Departments if the voters are angry enough and put enough pressure on city hall !!!! As others have pointed out, Stamford Volunteer Fire Companies appear to be more concerned with maintaining control over their "clubhouses" than they are about providing the taxpayers with the highest level of firefighting capability at the lowest cost.

Here is my two cents worth on the issue of complacency. It is a bad thing. If you are going to respond to an alarm, automatic or not, you must make the assumption that it could be the real thing and be dressed for the the potential that there will be a job at the end of the run. Responding to any fire alarm without full turnout gear makes no sense. You wouldn't respond on a pumper that didn't have a hose load in the bed, would you? Then why not don your turnout gear before leaving the station. Of course there is one area of full turnout that now is being re thought by fire service leaders across the country and that is donning SCBA while in the apparatus. There now is mounting evidence that it was a mistake to install seating with SCBA equipment inside the apparatus cab. It is believed that SCBA's have been responsible for serious injuries and deaths of firefighters in apparatus crashes. It appears likely there will be some reform coming down that will put SCBA equipment in a cabinet outside the apparatus cab and the fire service will return to the old practice of donning SCBA AFTER arrrival at the fire scene, strictly for safety reasons.

As a recently retired 911 dispatcher, I would like to note a couple of things that no one has mentioned in previous posts... 1 --- Over the last 5 years, 10, years (pick a time period) how many automatic alarms did your department receive? How many of those automatic alarms turned out to be actual fires? And of those automatic alarms that turned out to be actual fires, how many of them also resulted in phone calls to dispatch (911 or regular line) reporting a fire and how many did not result in a phone call? Until you have that kind of information in front of you, you can not make an informed decision about whether a reduced response to automatic alarms is the correct way to go. 2. --- The risk factor. Once you have the information about real vs false alarms from automatic alarm systems, then you must weigh the risk factor for the department and the public, of several apparatus responding with lights and sirens to every automatic alarm. There is a body of evidence regarding apparatus accidents while responding to alarms that shows there is signigicant risk every time there is a response. If the study in your fire district produces the same results that studies in communities elsewhere in America have produced, the finding will be that an automatic alarm, with an actual fire, that is NOT accompanied by one or more phone calls, is a statistical oddity and therefore automatic alarms DO NOT warrant a full structural response. So far, all of the comments in this thread have been based on anecdotal accounts without any hard evidence and not one person has mentioned whether any phone calls were received in connection with those alarms that were for actual fires. In those communities where studies have been done and call-by-call data is reviewed on a regular basis, a limited response to automatic alarms (those NOT accompanied by a phone call reporting an actual fire) has proven to be the correct way to respond. Placing firefighters and the public at risk 100 times a year with a full structural response to automatic fire alarms not accompanies by a phone call reporting a fire, when your department's records show such alarms result in an actual fire once every 5 years or 6 years or never, is gross mismanagement of assets, a waste of taxpayer dollars and could be a major legal liability if an apparatus is involved in a serious crash while responding. It is these same types of studies that have led most forward thinking fire service managers to eliminate street alarm boxes. They are a throwback to the days when people did not have telephones. The cellular telephone made the street alarm box un-necessary.

After reading all of the posts in this thread, one thing is abundantly clear. Manyof people posting on this subject have either never taken a course in basic economics or they flunked the course. NOTHING IN THIS WORLD IS FREE! For every service that is provided by government, without charge or that is provided by the private sector at the mandate of government, someone else MUST pay either through higher taxes or higher fees or premiums. For example -- one post states "ambulance service has to be guaranteed....Medicare/Medicade need to start paying out an honest dollar amount for what their users utilize". Great idea! But the Federal Government will have to taken another $50 bucks a week our of YOUR pay and the pay of every other worker to cover those costs. The money has to come from somewhere. And its a proven fact that when taxes go up, to pay for more socialized services, working people at the margins leave the work force, adding to the numbers of those receiving the "free" services, thus requiring even higher taxes from those who are working. Another example -- one post states "I think that what should be regulated is denial by insurance companies of ambulance trips to the ER". Another Great idea, but who is going to pay for it. Perhaps if the majority of stupid Americans would take the time to read their health insurance policies, they would know what is covered and what is not. Insurance companies do not deny claims just to piss people off. They do it because the claim is for a charge that is not covered in that particular policy. So let the government enact more regulations regarding health insurance and no one will have health insurance because the cost will be too high for employers and employees to bear. Right now, government mandates are a large part of the reason why health insurance premiums are so high. If insurance doesn't cover something, what ever happened to paying for the service out of your own pocket? Another part of the cost problem is over use of health care services because most people believe it is free...either because their health insurance is paying the bill or the government is picking up the tab with only limited copays. Insurance was never meant to cover first dollar costs. An analogy would be this -- imagine what your car insurance would cost if every time you took your car in for an oil change, you paid a $5.00 co-pay and the insurance company picked up the tab. And of course, while the car was there for the oil change, the mechanic would run every test imaginable because the mechanic knew your Insurance company would pay for it! Well that is the problem with health insurance. Yet another example ---"Hospitals used to be charities". This is correct and as charities, the portion of their operating costs not covered by payments from patients or their insurance companies was covered by DONATIONS from people in the community. When was they last time one of you gave $1,000 or $2,000 to your local hospital? Probably never and therein lies the problem. Money doesn't grow on trees. Hospitals stopped being charities when the cost of treating welfare patients outstripped the declining donations from the community. They had to find a different business model to survive. Yes our health care system has problems -- many of them created by adopting socialist programs over the last 50 years. Adding more socialist programs is not the answer. Reducing government regulation, not increasing it and making everyone more responsible for a greater portion of their health care costs is what is needed to bring the costs down.

The proposed legislation talked about in this thread will only give public employees a false sense of security. I am a recently retired public employee (retired two weeks) and I am also an Economist by education. The problem that State and Municipal governments are facing is that current pension and health care benefits for public retirees are NOT sustainable for the long term. Here in the northeast we already have Municipalities paying more in premiums for retiree health care than for current workers and each year the gap grows wider. Retirees with 20 years and out or 25 years and out pension plans are living so long they are earning more in pension benefits than they earned during their working years. The point is rapidly approaching when a 100% income tax and a 100% property tax will not produce enough revenue to maintain current services and pay for retiree benefits. When health care for life and guaranteed benefit pensions were first negotiated, many years ago, no one, apparently, looked at what the costs would be 25 and 50 years into the future. Over the years, many municipalities, at least here in CT where I live. found it very easy NOT to set aside the proper amounts of money each year to fund future pension benefits because it would require cuts in services or huge tax hikes. So the unfunded liability has continued to grow and at some point it will bankrupt state and local governments. Within the next few years, there will be more and more reductions in the numbers of police officers and firefighters and cuts in benefits for retirees will be on the increase as state and municipal leaders struggle to stave off bankruptcy. When they try to raise the already onerous taxes that are in place in the northeast, the flight of businesses and residents to the south and southwest will increase dramatically, further hastening the financial collapse of local and state governments. A grim picture? Yes, but that is reality. And as for "Sicko", it is in my opinion, an advertisement for the Socialists and their plan to bring Socialized Medicine to the US. Free health care sounds great, but when your take home pay is reduced by 60% from what it is now, Yes that is correct, because that is how much TAXES will have to be raised to pay for FREE Health Care, it won't sound so great! TANSTAAFL "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch".

It is my understanding that cross border mutual aid occurs with some frequency and yes the border crossing station must be notified and I believe the firefighters must stop and show ID. Things can get complicated at the border. In Newport, VT, for example, the town library and "Opera House" (theater) is built on the border. Part of the Library is in the United States and part is in Canada and there actually is a line across the floor of the Library. In the theater (part of the same building) the stage and the first couple of rows of seats are in Canada and the remainder of the seating is in the US. There also is a large factory that is part in the US and part in Canada and a home in which the living room is in the US and the kitchen is in Canada and occupants can choose to sleep in Canada or the US simply by moving their bed from one side of the room the the other!!!! Also there is a Fire Dept (and I can not remember the name at the moment) that covers a district that is part in Vermont, part in New Hampshire and part in Canada.

This is one I am planning on adding to the collection. I was wondering if anyone has a photo they could post of the original apparatus. I remember the real truck from when I lived in Westchester, but I would like to see a photo to compare with the model.

Currently I have 430 Fire/Ambulance and Police Car Models. The majority are fire. 100 of the models are Code 3 --primarily FDNY, Boston FD and all of the Westchester County models (even though I have lived in CT for more than 20 years, I did spend 20 years in Westchester). Also have most of the Funrise models, all the Franklin Mints, most of the Yatmings, a lot of Corgi and models from just about every other company that has ever made a model fire truck including the recent 1:18 scale pumper from Highway 61. A lot of kit bashed stuff, including several Ford C pumpers and rescues using the old Hubley Ford C cab&chassis. I also have over 100 model cars and truck (non emergency) mostly cars of the 1950's when I was growing up. Collecting is not a sickness...it's more like an addiction!!!