191SH

I find it very hard to believe that you have any concept of what goes on in the real world. The only thing you've done on this forum is sound off for career firefighters and ridicule volunteers. What you don't seem to understand is a single thing about how the law really works. When people have told you within this thread, all you have done is continue with your anti-volunteer rhetoric.
The Board of Fire Commissioners holds the responsibility for setting the standard within their district. If they wanted background checks, psych evals (which are not required of any career FD that I know of), and a full length fire academy, they COULD set that as their standard. Most volunteer or combo departments have commissioners that understand the sense of fiscal responsibility and realize that they can provide a certain level of fire protection at the least burdensome cost to the taxpayer.
The Board of Fire Commissioners has the final say on all membership applications and all officers of the department. They have the final say on all training and continuing education requirements. The taxpayers sign on to the standards required by the Board of Fire Commissioners by electing them. As such, the taxpayers should bear the burden of indemnification of the firefighters and officers that are acting within the standards that are completely in control of the municipality. The commissioners are responsible for providing a level of fire protection that a reasonable district of the same size would offer and they hold the sole responsibility to make changes if that standard is not being met.
In the event of gross negligence, indemnification does not apply. All of the cases you mention are gross negligence and the firefighter(s) would be on their own.

I believe your area is covered by battalion 18. I see your agenda chief it is written all over your post you are clearly anti-volunteer and no matter how you feel or your commissioner of Yonkers feels remember 1 thing while you career guys are at work we volunteers are in the burbs protecting the property and families of said firefighters.
maybe if Yonkers didnt have tunnel vision they would recognize that Westchester county is 75% volunteer and we do an outstanding job with minimum resources.
i respect your hard work I do and you becoming chief is something to be proud of but we have plenty of men/women in the volley departments that work 40 hours a week and still put in a full day with their department whether training , paperwork so dont belittle their dedication.
Never heard of a westchester battalion chief ??? you heard of it you just dont recognize it.

I'd say that's reasonably well-trained. I'm still fairly new to the fire service, and the day I stop learning they can put me in a box!
Thanks Chief, that's all I really wanted; some opinions on if it was reasonable to treat two firefighters performing the same task differently, just because one was career and one was volunteer.
It's certainly not going to happen at my department, and I respectfully suggest it's extremely unlikely to happen at any department; if an 18 year old is the only Chief they can scrape up, then they must be pretty much a one-man department, and they've got FAR bigger issues to confront than debating indemnification!
Again I can't relate to that; we don't do parades, except in our own district. If departments do do that, I suppose they must arrange for cover with their neighbours.
Chief, I've not attacked anything you've said, and I resent the accusation. I simply declined politely to take the debate in the direction you seemed to wish, and confined my interest to a particular question which, as it happens, related to my own department - it being a combo department. And it brings out the essence of the debate: should you treat career and volunteer firefighters in a combo department the same with respect to the issue at hand? If you argue that you should, that provides a basis for arguing the case in departments which are exclusively career, or exclusively volunteer. If you consider that 'unreasonable' or 'attacking' then I suggest... qtip :-)
Mike

are we not held to the same standards ?? we have to take our yearly physicals and you fail anything you are removed from the rolls. In my volley dept we train 4 hours a week on drill night and sometimes more on top of our county or house training. Most members in my dept have over 250 hours of training at the Westchester Training center. We take our yearly OSHA very seriously and safety is priority. The standars are there and we follow them because we dont want to leave ourselves open to lawsuits so my question is what standards does career have over the volleys ? If I am missing something let me know I am always looking to improve my skills and that of my fellow members and I mean that im not trying to be wise . This job is inherently dangerous and it does not discriminate , it will kill you just the same volley or not , a fire in Yonkers is no different from a fire in Tarrytown and if you think differently than you have a bad case of tunnel vision. I have been trained (393 hours) by the same guys that teach the carrer academy and I trust those instructors with my life and I know they feel the same because they trained me and they do fail people or remove them if necessary . Volley or carrer we all have men or women who we feel are dangerous and we want to see retire or transfer but to say the standards are different , I need examples. I Have 5 FDNY guys that volunteer in my dept 1 is a former chief and battalion chief for westchester and all I can say about them is we train together and we share our knowledge with each other without prejudice and because of that we all work great together and KEEP EACH OTHER SAFE _ EVERYONE GOES HOME.

Chief,
I don't know how the details differ, CT vs. NY. I work in a combo department. Are you saying that, if I'm working alongside one of my career colleagues, and we screw up (or even if we don't!) and some smart lawyer decides to come after us, the career firefighter should be indemnified, but I should not? What's the basis for your distinction? We're performing exactly the same duties under the same command.
Mike

The first thing that stands out to me is the laddering of the building- great job