cbfire25

Thank you gentlemen! Thats what I was looking for. I did not know that MTA had units like this that will travel this far for responses.

Hey All- Yesterday we had an incident involving Metro North rail lines, and as part of the MTA response this 'MTA Police ESU' vehicle responded. The incident turned out to be minor in nature, but I was wondering what this unit is for and what its capabilities are? Is it designed to be similar to NYPD ESU units? Does it have an rescue capabilities? Where is it coming from? My company covers a stretch of rail and we seem to get incidents involving the rails or trains on a yearly basis, so it would be beneficial to know what resources are available and their capabilities for response planning. Thanks in advance!

I am going to have to agree with firedude... This is an "awesome" video, but perhaps not for the reasons stated. Lets face it, runs are up for all of us but fires are down. The vast majority of us will only see a fire or two a year, depending if we happen to be working a particular shift or happen to be able to respond to the firehouse that day. Most firefighters, especially the younger members in our ranks, simply do not and can not have the necessary fire experience to be effective, intellegent firefighters on the fireground today. I see a disturbing trend, especially among the volunteer fire service, of increasingly young junior and chief officers that do not have the benefit of heavy fire experience. Whenever we do have a fire, we need to allow the majority of our fellow firefighters from our own department to gain some of the benefit of the experience that the members on scene had. The helmet cam is a very powerful tool that we have at our disposal for training. Hear me out for a minute. I lived at a firehouse while I was at college, and last year was a lieutenant for my last year of service. One of my fellow live-ins aquired a helmet cam and we made a pact among ourselves that we would use the footage for training and that none of it would find its way to the internet. We were trying to get as much experience out of each fire to benefit ourselves and to improve our quality of service to the community. We did, after all, join to provide professional, quality fire protection to the community. All firefighters share that common goal, and it is our duty to constantly improve ourselves throughout our careers. We managed to get several fires on video from the perspective of the backup man on the first due engine where I was the officer. This was a very important tool for my self evaluation to observe my actions from someone elses point of view so that I could improve my own effectiveness at crew managment and fire tactics. For the guys who missed the fire, these videos became a great tool for 'coffee break' training any time around the fire department, as they could see the conditions presented to the first arriving units and understand what they should be looking for, the decisions that were made, what worked, and what didn't work. Before I go on, I will openly admit that the helmet cams do have some downfalls, especially when interior on a job. Helmet cams can't give you the experience of high heat, how to feel your way through a smokey job, or the pucker factor of having a floor sag on you. That is what good, quality hands on training and real fire experience give you. However, there are many little things that you can take from these videos. Tactics aside, lets take a look at this video. It is from the perspective from the first arriving special service officer, who takes initial command. Now, hopefully, when the boys went home after this one, they weren't still patting themselves on the back. I think we all agree that this video was a cluster. Thats not my point though. Lets take the officer's control of his men under inspection. I am in no way a Monday morning quarterback, rather this is the way that I would evaulate myself if I was the officer in this video. Lets take for example his giving orders around 2:50. He gives the order to 'Go VES upstairs'. This order lacks specifity, we can all agree that is not an effectively communicated order. VES is a directed manuever, you are supposed to narrow your search down. Blindly VESing may or may not get the desired result of finding a victim. So this officer takes away from this video that he needs to more effectively communicate with his crew. They can sit down afterwards and go over what they need to improve on so that next time their customer service will be better. These are the sort of things that should be taken away from these videos. The most effective members to have helmet cams are company officers and the IC. Heres an example of quick training that an instructor can make from helmet cam footage to help instruct future IC's on what to look for at a fire to help them develop their own strategy. Again, we have to face the fact that most of our officers, unless you run in a major city department, dont have a great deal of experience learning first hand how to be an effective IC This sort of training can be run through quickly between runs, and can be very effective. I will say, however, for all the firefighters who post these videos up so that they can feel like bada$e$, they are clearly missing the point. We are in this line of business for the good and protection of the general public, no matter what department we are employed by or volunteer at. Posting these videos on youtube is just asking for a kick in the rear, the rest of the world doesn't care how great of a firefighter you are or the things that you've done. We have all been there, keep it to yourself and learn from the footage. Help yourself and your brothers become better at what we do, don't post these for personal gain. And for all the internet firefighters who take their time to pick apart these videos for PPE violations, etc, please, the rest of us are not stupid, we see all see the same things. I feel that this is where helmet cams get a bad rap in the first place. Thats just my 0.02. I'm young, and clearly invincible, so I would welcome if someone could knock me down to size on this issue. Am I missing something, or is this not a great tool to improve our customer service?

Do any departments around the area run duty chiefs? This usually clears up the issue of who is command at minor incidents and usually clears the radio of all unnecessary chatter... Chiefs x, y, and z don't all sign on the air for wires down. It also clears up who goes to the scene and who doesn't; if chief x has the duty than everyone else goes to the station to staff the apparatus, so there aren't 5 fire SUVs and no fire engines on scene.. This also allows some of the prospective chiefs and senior officers to get command experience. If you give the duty shift to a captain or lieutenant, a chief can keep an ear open for calls that may need a more senior officer in charge but allow a captain or lieutenant to run most of the minor incidents. This way you breed more independent line officers who can gain some confidence in themselves so one day they don't get caught up in the fact that they are in charge of 'the big one' and forget that they need to focus on decision making. A lieutenant or captain should, by nature, be able to handle most minor incidents and common emergencies without a chief's supervision, else they should never have attained that position. Of course, we all know that the popularity contests don't always lead to that, but I digress...

I'm a live-in firefighter in Pennsylvania while I go to school. I am also on the 'investigations' committee for my department which conducts interviews for prospective members. The main thing I alert incoming students to is the fact that when you are here, you are here for school and not the firehouse. We have a strict minimum GPA requirement for both our members and our live-ins. There is just no substitution for an education. I watch many kids come here and waste away when they stop focusing on their school work (the partying takes its toll too). While some aspire to land a job in the fire service, the majority don't. With that being said, being a live-in is doable (I am both a live-in and the rescue company lieutenant), but as an aerospace engineer the many sleepless nights do take their toll and don't leave any time for a social life... Good luck! A word of advice about being a live-in at the PG county departments, if you happen to end up down there, be careful where you tread. I have a friend who spent a semester down there and ended up failing out of school when he lived in at a station; not all of them care about their live-ins academic status.

I just recently responded to a basement fire in a one story residential at a pack rat house, hopefully I can learn from this thread as much as I did from the fire. We were fortunate to have been met by the homeowner and knew where the access to the basement (it was a blind basement with the only access being interior) was so the strech was much easier than it could have been. However, the line was covered/kinked several times due to the junk and made the push into the basement a little dicey. In order to monitor the floor conditions I tried to use both a TIC and sounding with a bar, but the junk on the floor made sounding difficult. It was also difficult to maintain orientation due to the fact that the walls were unreachable and with the piles of junk falling any landmark that you might have had to begin with was sure not to last. However, we knew this was a packrat house before we entered so I strictly kept everyone on the line (we were very fortunate that everyone was confirmed out) which helped. It was very hard to judge what the extra loading on the floor may have been doing to the integrity floor joyce which were involved with fire in the basement, so I kept my engine crew in the bottom stairwell and hit it from there (not ideal for a basement fire, I know, but this was as much a place of refuge as I could find). And of course, the normal basement fire concerns came into play. Has anyone had a similar experience? How should I have dealt with not being able to get a good sound on the floor?

Quick question for the CAFs users: I took a course on foam not too long ago and the instructor mentioned that introducing air into the handline made the line more susceptable to kinking and being choked off if something were to fall on it or a door were to close on it. I have never used a CAFs line myself so I was just wondering if this is a reasonable worry. Granted, even employing the best hoseline management techniques issues will happen, but I am curious to know if this has come into play for any of you and whether there is actually any difference between a regularly charged handline...Thanks in advance!

My department has a set of RJ3s on all of our front line engines and our rescue. These are good struts, quick and easy to set up. The lifting capability is nice, but I'm not sure how much I trust itwith anything larger than a sedan or light truck. I would say you should definitely get the chain and hook set. The lifting comes in handy sometimes, such as when you have a rollover and limited access to the patient compartment. A common evolution we train on is a car rolled over where we need to cut the posts to lower the roof and get the patient out the rear window. The nice thing about them is that you can do this evolution without airbags which tend to get in the way of the rear access. Train often on these, the lifting capability in particular is something that is easy to forget how to do (such as proper placement of the chains and making sure they do not get in the way of what you need to cut.)

We just put them into service here in PA, and I must say that I still need to see the packtracker in action to be a believer. It is a good tool to have, but I am worried that it may be misused. The representitive that helped us put the units in service described a lot of precautions that you must take in order to use it properly in rescue operations. It can give a lot of false readings with the signal bouncing off or being absorbed by certain surfaces, but it also can be a great tool. I hope I can see it in use in training soon to get a better feel for it. Anything can look good on paper but it is a tool like a haligan or a hook and is worthless unless the operator is well trained in its proper use. Other than that the other bells and whistles are great. I like the buddy breather systems especially the low pressure system on the line which could really come in handy in a pinch. All in all I think they are a great pack.

I go to college in PA and live in CT; if you have your NREMT cert you are good for both but the regional ems coordinator in PA also asked for papers on my origional class as well, not sure if thats the same throughout the state or not. Also, the regional ems office in PA wasn't very quick, so just be persistant. I think since NY borders PA it will be easier, as they are more willing to give reciprocity to states that border PA. If you need any other help, just pm me.

The department across town from mine bought one of the electric stretchers about a year ago and most of their members hate it. The idea was that it was going to help save backs and allow members who arn't strong enough to lift patients. However, this new stretcher has only increased the problem as it is heavier than normal stretchers and the members on the call must still lift it down the stairs to the front door/into the ambulance/etc. It is not worth the price tag, in my opinion. It is just another flashy piece of hardware to buy.

Nice! I did not know any of these rigs still existed! Where in Hudson is that??

Those are some GREAT old pictures!! Do you have any more?? How about of that old Seagrave tiller?? There is a TON of history in those photos!