STAT213

Rest easy brother. I enjoyed bantering on here with you. RA

Has anyone in New York heard about the grant funded training that is going on up here yet? Apparently all of the money left over from all of the AF grants is available somewhere and someone here in New Hampshire figured out how to access it. We now have in the range of 4 MILLION dollars that has to be spent by this fall. Take a look at what is being offered for classes: http://www.nh.gov/safety/divisions/fstems/training/schedtrdates.html All of the ones listed for grant funding are being offered as overtime for career firefighters and call guys get paid a stipend. In addition, they pay for your coverage and the class itself. It's like training Christmas. People are lined up at the academy hours in advance like its a line for Bon Jovi tickets. If we have access to 4 million here, I can only imagine what New York state has available. Our association of professional firefighters led the charge for this, I hope someone in NY is doing the same.

Absolutely we will go help a homeowner with their detector. We exist to help people. Period. They call us for help, we go. It may not be the sexiest part of the job, but be nice and people remember it! I saw a great mission statement online recently. "Our mission is...to help."

What was the incident and the exposure? As for the gear, why wasn't it deconned at the scene? Why would you even want to bring back dirty gear? How many sets of gear are you talking about?

Seth, Look around some more. Old R4, and a New Roc Chief's car are also in a number of the same types of books. My son has a number of them. Sometimes they block out the department names, sometimes now. My parents got a kick out of it because I was born at New Rochelle Hospital. RA

Chief to Fire Alarm (at the scene of a working fire): Fire alarm, Car 1, gimme a second. Fire alarm reply: Take all the time you need chief.

Yes, any airport can be used as an LZ. But, access to the runways can be an issue. There has been a big effort lately to secure general aviation fields so without preplanning for access i.e. Putting keys on the ambulances this could be a challenge.

Wow. That's just plain stoooopid. Doesn't matter where it's from. The ONLY way that it would be okay (and just on the front of playing with electricity) is if there were power guys that they were operating with who told them face to face that the power was off. But even then, it's still not the best of plans. The fire doesn't need to be put out. Where's it gonna go? But hey, at least they are wearing the federally mandated vests. They apparently made it to THAT class.

What about ground ladders? Didn't see 'em, or anyplace where they are hidden. I get that it's a rescue pumper, but it's still an engine.

Anybody heard rumors as to why Life Net up and moved from their pretty nicely built quarters at Kobelt to Stewart? I have my ideas, but was wondering if anyone had heard anything. Thanks!!!

I think most states do this. In NH, all ambulances are inspected. Same for MA. Might just be wording.

At the time of that pic and your encounter with the prop wash, most of the STAT pilots were Vietnam Vets, used to landing in tight places. VERY tight places. Always amazed me the control and the precision they developed. You can always tell the natural pilots, the machine becomes part of them. The first pic posted by Rockland Fires is the second BK Stat flew, started out as N202HN, then after a refurb became N118NY. Both were great machines and very easy to work in.

Anybody know the details of the RFP? A major city near me recently put out one that had payment TO the city by the ambulance service, to the tune of 300,000 bucks per year. They based this sum on the fact that the city was providing the dispatch services, MDTs and radios so the ambulance services would have to kick in money to cover those items. The year previous this was a zero dollar contract. AMR was awarded this years contract, having come closest to the dollar amount requested by the city proposal. This is a very interesting turn of events in my mind. Anybody heard of this happening elsewhere?

That pump panel is very interesting. I also like the wheels for the gates, and right at the discharge itself. Great idea. Our engines are set up very similarly. We don't always have the luxury of getting the truck to every call, as its cross staffed with an engine, so our pumps have to be able to do it all. There is very little on the truck that isn't on each engine. In fact, our truck is not as well equipped as our engines. Always good to see how other departments skin the cat in their own way.

In my department (career, 15-17 members per shift) probies do count. They are hired with a minimum of FF 1 and EMT Basic ( preferably paramedic) and then complete a three week recruit school. They are then placed on the line and mentored through their first year. They have a year to complete FF 2, though usually most have that ahead of time. We just don't have the luxury to have them ride as an extra.

All good discussion about the pros and cons of sir medical transport. I am a big proponent of getting the patient to the RIGHT hospital, regardless of mode. Having flown the friendly skies above Westchester for a number of years, I can tell you there were some rediculous calls I shouldve told the ground crews to drive in themselves, or at the very least called them to talk about the math mentioned above. I'm not gonna comment about the use of AMT in general as that issue is one that needs to be sorted out nationally. I do think there are far too many helicopters in certain parts of the country and overuse has lead to the current mess the air medical industry is in. One thing that's stood out on this discussion is a few people railing on calling helicopters or placing them on standyby based on dispatch info or early info. As someone who flew for years, I can tell you that early activation makes a HUGE difference. It gets the a/c to you that much sooner. It also helps prevent the desire to transport to a small hospital not equipped to handle trauma. The research on getting patients to Level One Centers is clear. They do WAY better when transported directly to a Level One. So, calling the a/c early to ANY call where you need the them will only help reduce times.

Seth, Bell doesn't really make a decent, tested EMS airframe right now. The 407 is nice, but its little. The 429 is brand new and there's only one flying EMS in the states right now that I know of. Augusta Westland is a European Company. They also make the previously mentioned NYPD a/c and a few other platforms. Life Flight of Maine flies two of them. I am not sure why MSP went with something SO big, other than they could. I used to hang out with some of their guys at conferences and they were insistent that they had to have something bigger than the Dauphin. Everybody else in the country does EMS and police work in small machines like Westchester's 407 (which I think is a little too small for EMS) and Life Net's A-Stars (also too small) or medium machines like Life Net's EC135s. NJSP uses the S-76. As a comparison, the AW 139 is rated for 15, count em 15 passengers, while the Bell 407 can carry 6. The Bell's rotor diameter is 35 feet, the AW 139 is 45. BIG difference in helicopters. Hey, good on 'em, but to me its overspending taxpayers dollars.

What I find interesting is how the city thinks it's acceptable to let other towns taxpayers pay for their fire protection. If I was a town administrator or selectman in one of thevtowns that suddenly got added to every box, I'd be telling the city to pound it, and keep my trucks and people in the town that funds them. Not a good situation.

http://www.wulfsberg.com/Flexcomm_Products.htm When I was flying with STAT, we used an older model of this radio. The newer models are fully user programable. As in, you get dispatch to Loony Tunes FD in Disney County for one call and they operate on 453.800 with a PL of 121.0, you simply punch those numbers in and you operating on their frequency. Enroute to the Mickey Mouse Shock Trauma Catholic Memorial Regional Holy Medical Center you need to talk to them on 155.340 with a PL of 136.00, you simply punch in their info. Takes a little bit of training, but even the nurses were able to figure it out! You also have up to 200 presets available to you. You can pick how many bands you want to be able to talk on and buy that radio. We didn't have LOW band VHF capabilities in NH because no one uses those frequencies any longer up here. Expensive, but well worth it, especially for flight programs that end up in three or four states routinely, as STAT and later when I flew with DHART did.

We have drastically reduced our lights and siren useage here. We almost never transport with lights and sirens. In addition, we have adopted the pro qa system which assigns one of six levels of priority to each ems call, ranging from minor (alpha) to life treatening (echo) and other (omega - lift assists, etc.) The calls are coded by the statewide 911 center and we now respond with traffic to all alpha and bravo coded calls. We also send only the first due engine with lights and sirens to alarm activations, and service calls are 99% of the time responded to with traffic as well. Alarm activations for us have a standard response of two engines, the duty chief and a truck or tanker depending on the district and hazard.

So those little laser pointers used for presentations have good enough range and power to hit something hundreds or even thousands of feet away? Really? Or are these toolbags using something more powerful?

I worked in Syracuse for Eastern and Rural/Metro for about 10 years. SFD is a top notch organization. The Rescue is one of the greatest assets of that department. Seven guys who step off at MVCs and fires ready to go to work. On an MVC, you get handed a fully packaged patient. For fires, they generally responded(while I was there) in Rescue 1 and Rescue 2. The Rescue Truck is a 135' straight stick (only stick in the city) and rolls on certain target hazards and at the Rescue officer's discretion. They had an ambulance for their Rescue 2 for a number of years. It would respond city wide on cardiac arrests to assist the mini and ambulance (they would usually ride in to the hospital freeing the mini to return to service) and would transport injured firefighters. A few years ago, they switched to a light rescue/pickup and the ambulance got shuffled out to a substation to run as the Mini. From what I understand, two of their "minis" are now ambulances and are used to back up Rural Metro when they have no rigs available. Two firefighters will take the mini, leaving two on the engine. Syracuse for years ran with a Maxi pumper and a Mini pumper as the engine company. The mini started out as a vehicle to handle nuisance fires, and evolved to doing mostly EMS calls. Somehow, the minis were at one point almost as large as the Maxis. They downsized to the current pickup truck and these are used mostly for EMS calls. I left just as they were starting to integrate these into the running order, so I am not sure what they handle alone other than EMS calls. A great series of pictures of SFD apparatus are found at cnyfiretrucks.com. Click on Onondaga County then Syracuse.

Why is a three or four year old piece getting replaced? I wish my department was that aggressive with replacement!

Seth, you keep doin stuff like this and all the fun, joy and entertianment will be gone! What will we do with ourselves man?!?! Have you no pity on us mortal souls?!

Those are some unique looking antennas along the roof of the vehicle. An interesting ride, for sure.