M' Ave

Interesting find.....since dummies are exactly who they're aiming future exams at. They'll have to change the title to: Firefighter Exam a Test for Dummies

I think you need to clarify exactly what you mean by a "lift assist". To me, a lift assist is an EMS agency needing assistance moving a larger individual. If that's the case, why do the "lifters" need training. If you have PD of FD respond to help EMS, then all you are asking for is a little muscle. If an engine company comes to help carry someone down several flights of stairs, or a ladder or rescue responds to move someone via cargo-net (happens more than you might think) because they're that heavy...why do they need any medical training? It would be nice for everyone to have some basic medical training, but that's a whole separate issue.

Ah the lift assist! This run varies for us. The engine is often sent on an EMS assist when the bus is already on scene. This is not an EMS run for the engine, as they are not requesting any EMS services. These seem to run the gamut. Sometimes it is some who is so large that the two EMS workers cannot lift the stretcher from it's lowest position to one that will allow them to get the patient into the bus. Other times it's a person who has been placed in a stair chair, but they project elevators aren't working and they need help carrying this person down 20 flights. I've even responded to assist the M.E. with a 500 lb corpse. You never know. This run, at least for the FDNY, turns us into simple, reliable grunt labor. Which is fine! EMS has it tough out there sometimes. They carry a lot of heavy equipment and it's often two people left all by their lonesome. 95% of the time, we're happy to help them out. You get the occasional person who hands off the patient and vanishes until you've arrived at the bus, but that's rare. As for liability....well, if we didn't help do what had to be done to get them out, they'd be in deep trouble. So....

Before my brief time.... I have seen a few of the '94 TL's around as spares (44 Truck and 17 Truck were kicking the same spare back and forth...). While they're total rust buckets, the set-up and maneuvering of the aerial was much faster and smoother than even the MOST recent rigs. What have they changed? The newest Aerialscopes are as slow as can be.

There is one thing that grabbed me about this video. It demonstrates something that is talked about a lot. Tower Ladders are F'IN SLOW! Something to note and consider when there is one assigned. They're a little more complicated to set-up and move a lot slower once in operation. With a rear-mount, both out-riggers are down and the stick can be put to the roof in well under a minutes. The TL, for all it's pluses, is slow!

I was a real Bloomberg supporter for years. I though, "Here's a driven, self-made man who can run this town. He's not a politician, he's a worker. He's above politics and nonsense. HOWEVER, now I see that he's just plain above everyone. He does have the financial know how to keep the city going through this great recession, however he's a little too far removed from the lives a actual New Yorkers to keep me feeling positive about his time as mayor. He's gunned for the FDNY every year since 2008 and with no good reason. WE'RE CHEAP! We have a fairly high Fireman to Civilian ratio and we're a great tool box for a big city. You can't buy a better insurance policy for this kinda dough. Stop cutting us off at the knees

If you watch as the video progresses, you'll see an engine arriving on the left hand side of the screen, on the other side of the intersection. I'm going to bet that was where the air horn was coming from. Probably had the fight his way into the intersection and push a car (figuratively) off the hydrant. EFD, you are partially correct! It was Squad 252.....but they're just an engine anyway!

He's correct, in so far as trying not to take a hydrant before the fire building. However, this is more of a preferential move rather than rule of law. It's one more step, having to stretch around the rig and towards the fire building. However, this building was pretty close to the corner and it looks like the next hydrant was across the perpendicular cross street. You're better off stretching around the rig than trying to stretch a line across a two way street and an intersection. If this were a building or area that guys responded to a lot, the chauffeur might know to respond up the block from the other direction. However, we so many streets and hydrants, it's unlikely that you'll have the luxury of that knowledge. Who know's, might be a detailed ECC from another borough, or maybe that was typically that engines 2nd due area. All in all, it does look like the job went well in a pretty text book fashion. Those dopes running looked a little silly, but the engine was bringing the line in in a steady professional manner. This was a bread and butter kinda fire. It was already vented, you didn't have to go hunting for the seat and the door couldn't have taken too long to force. The roof was laddered within a minute of the trucks arrival. There was water on the fire and the main body of fire was knocked down in under 3 minutes. I'm sure that there were 2 roof-men on the roof and at least one O/V had gotten up there. With a top floor fire in a building like this, the second due truck woulda sent a couple of guys to start checking the top floors of the adjoining buildings.

What's up bro, you got the seat or something? Typical, bitter ECC....pissed because they have to hook-up and look-up Kidding aside, it's very true. The importance of the ECC that is. A lot rests on one guys shoulders, in terms of finding a good hydrant, getting close to it without blocking out a truck's front-of-building access and getting water. If you gotta go hunting for an often hard to find standpipe connection, you've got even more to worry about.

Here is a link to the NY Times article: New York Times We have been hearing murmers about trouble with theses gloves for a few months. It's too bad that it seems materials were changed, making these gloves dangerous. When they first arrived at the Quartermaster, guys were psyched about replacing the blue "oven-mitts" that we had before. Hopefully a new, safe glove can be found quickly. We needed a decent glove with improved dexterity, but not at this cost. It was known that the new gloves did trade some thermal protection for dexterity, but it was thought to be a fair trade. Obviously, if the manufacturer substituted polyester for cotton, this trade-off for dexterity becomes dangerous. The Blaze Fighter was a better glove in terms of comfort and use. I, along with many of the guys I work with, had purchased our own gloves from various manufacturers. However, it's a big expense when it's something that the job should be issuing. Since these gloves came out, I'd been using them and not the pair I'd purchased. Looks like I'll be going back.....

The control man, while not the most glamorous, is the most important position in the engine. When the nozzle-man, Back-up and doorman(no longer) run off with their lengths, the control man continues to pull hose until enough has been pulled to leave a length for the fire floor. This must be done quickly while counting the number of lengths as they come off. One must estimate how many lengths are needed to get from the outlet to the interior stairs, then figure out how many floors they are taking the line up. Then, are they stretching in the well if the building has one? Once enough has been pulled (you have to figure this out, odds are the nozzle team isn't going to tell you when they're in place, they have enough to do) break the line off from the bed and give it to the chauffeur, telling him how many lengths you have out. Hopefully he's had enough time to get on a hydrant and is ready to go. Estimating the correct number of lengths is essential to being able to swiftly perform the rest of your Control tasks. Flake out the line and chase the water up, pulling out kinks and flaking it out. If you have too much hose pulled, you're going to have a hard time will all the spaghetti in a tight tenement hallway. Of course, this is better than having too little....obviously stretching short is pretty much the worst thing ever. The absence of a door man makes double work for the back-up man and the control man. One can no longer take up a good position at a doorway or turn in the hall to help advance the line. The two positions behind the nozzle must jump around a lot to insure that they line can advance. Once advancing steadily, the back-up is no longer free to leave the nozzleman, so this leaves the control man humping a lot of hose. Hopefully the normally assigned second due engine isn't on another box, or you're looking at a bit more time operating that line alone! It doesn't take much more than one other box out in the area to delay incoming companies by several extra minutes. LONG extra minutes.

Well, sadly this won't be possible because truckies will have their hands full with a short handed company. With the elimination of the 5th man on all engines, there is a depleted pool with which to cover medical leave. On and average tour, about 1.5% of working members will take medical leave. This means they became ill during a tour or were injured at a fire. When this occurs, that members spot has been filled by taking the 5th man from one of the 5 man engine co's. Now, that member will be taken from a near-by ladder company. There goes the O/V! This created quite a discussion at the kitchen table on Tuesday night. We were kicking around how our tactics would change without a man in this position. Does the roof-man complete his duties and (as long as it isn't a top floor of cockloft fire) drop down and VES opposite he hose-line? Well, now you have a vacant roof, not to mention the fact that it could take many minutes for him to get his work done on the roof. This would be opening the bulkhead door, taking skylight glass and doing a full perimeter report for the IC. The second due O/V might be 30sec. to 2 min. behind. And thats a best case scenario. If you get a tower ladder as a second due unit, there won't be an O/V coming to the rear as they are in the bucket. Perhaps if that company was aware that you were shorthanded they could send a guy to the rear, but thats tough too. What if they O/V gets sent out at 3am and the job comes in at 3:30am. No time for notifications then! This reduction in man-power throws us a curve-ball that we're still trying to work out. The O/V effects 70% of fire rescues. Pretty hard on the general public if that goes by the wayside.

I'll be in tonight......time to see how things go. Snow storm, icy roads and frozen hydrants here I come.......

Agreed. Good point Capt. New Apparatus is interesting and fun to see, but hardly high up in the realm of importance, especially when compared to the topics that Bniches pointed out.

If you're due for an upgrade, I would hold off for a month or two. Verizon will be releasing their new 4G LTE phones very soon. They will all be Android powered from HTC, Motorola, Samsung and LG. If you've made it 6 years, you can probably hold out a little longer, no? If they're going the keep the same data plan pricing, I'm going to get one for sure. If you can't wait, then definitely look at the Droids. The iPhone is nice, but certainly not the MUST HAVE phone anymore. The Droid X is awesome and I've heard that all of the HTC phones have the best user interface, however the battery life is supposedly poor. Maybe it's been improved. There is definitely an Android phone in my future so I've been shopping around a lot. I've had various Blackberry's for years, but they've clearly lost their edge and I'll be moving on. FYI: The EVO is an HTC phone. It is available only on Sprint, however. The Verizon equivalent is the Droid X

Well Chief, I value your opinion, regardless of my opposing viewpoint. What fun would this board be without a little competitive chatter! Gives it a good edge I have some family just south of the Mason Dixen....boy, a little snow sure does stop the world! Enjoy the Cherry Blossoms in April! Hopefully February will take it a little easier on us.

haha, well we don't get much "all good" anything! I have not seen that either though. As for driveways, well, no one in the South Bronx has one of them! That's something I don't see.

With the exception of the "auto drop chains have their place" part, I'm in full agreement with you. For luck of the draw, or lack of luck...I've worked during a lot of snow storms. I worked Sunday night to Monday night of the December blizzard. I worked last Feb for the 20" snow fall in NYC and several other snow storms throughout the last few years. If there was more than a few inches of snow, the chains went on. No big deal. When it's time for them to come off, they come off quickly. Again, no big deal. When it comes to those auto-chains, they fill a useless void. You either need real chains of you don't need anything. Also, this talk about concern over driving on wet, plowed streets with chains, why worry? In the past 30 days there have been 3 decent storms that required we put chains on our apparatus in NYC. That's over 350 pieces of apparatus with chains on. In those collective 72 hours, those rigs probably responded to a collective 3500-4000 runs and I don't recall ONCE hearing about a rig "throwing a chain". It can't be that frequent an occurrence. The auto chain is an expensive toy. Buy a good set of chains, be prepared and put them on early and be adequately prepared for a storm.

We do not have On-spot chains, which is fine because they suck. They're quick and easy, but also lazy and sub-par. They just don't do what a real tire chain does. When it snows enough to cover the roads, we chains the tires. It's easy and takes a few minutes, that's all.

UCT or "U Can't Tell" as we call it daily. That system sucks! Period.

No, no I don't think so. The satelite is a second piece, a hose wagon. I never goes anywhere without the engine. They have to have two ECC's but that's it.

I would say that the bus beats us and we get a 10-92 10% of the time. Of the remaining 90%, I think we are on scene prior to the bus for 5-10 minutes MOST of the time. Sometimes, rarely, it's notably longer and sometimes they pull up right behind us. As for keeping us on scene after we transfer the patient? Maybe 15% of the time for help with packaging, carry to transport and, of course, CPR.

"Goon16" pretty much covered the position. A couple of quick points; the O/V position is usually reserved for someone with more seniority. You might start working this position on day tours and then move into night tours when there is seniority on the back-step to help you out. The o/v is often operating alone and left to make a lot of decisions. It's a real utility position, a lot of variables. In a lot of instances, the O/V is teamed with the LCC (chauffeur). This position will often offer the first look at the "3-side" and will communicate with the I.C. to relay information.

Fantastic