Parade Coverage?(Non rhetorical)

[Dinosaur 844]

Actually the department im referring to is a career Dept. There are a handful of vollies that do nothing. The driver is career and was on overtime. Rediculious? Its only rediculious when vollies do it.

Nope, its just as stupid to hire a guy on overtime to drive a truck in a parade when their first-due companies are understaffed all year long.

Are there still departments that take a front line piece out of service for a week before the "big parade" to clean, wash, wax, polish, shine it?

Do these "work details" count for LOSAP credit? Why?

Don't try to tell me we dont do stupid stuff like this. Ive lived it.

[ONEEYEDMIC 68]

Parades are a waste of time and money! Unless of course you are in the bar business! Lol

[antiquefirelt 994]

I guess I must wonder why if you can send manpower and apparatus out of town on a given day, why can't you do without the same 24/7/365? Some of you say you have better coverage? Sounds like the town council should take advantage of this type of automatic coverage system fulltime? A system that allows for parades and other outings without sacrificing services tot eh taxpayers is a system that probably has overspent the taxpayers money.

[GAW6 66]

Just because you "don't like parades" doesn't give you the right to criticize those that do. I don't like to eat lamb, but I don't complain about people who do.

I disagree with you that only "volunteers attend parades". What about all the St. Patrick's Day Parades? Were there not paid departments in attendance? Yes, I know, they were not working or probably banged out sick. Others were working therefore there was coverage - same as in a volunteer agency, people stay back for coverage.

I also disagree that departments only worry about coverage during parades. You are way off base, and again, should not be generalizing.

[thebreeze 194]

I have every right to criticize people for doing something that I believe is a dangerous and unacceptable practice, that being leaving their communities unprotected so they can attend a parade. I never said that only volunteers attend parades, what I said was that the rigs taken out of service and sent across the county or even state are almost always volunteer rigs. Besides the one instance mentioned by another member I don't know of any other career departments that take rigs out of service and pay members to leave the district and march in a parade. The paid departments experience no change in staffing and have no rigs out of service during parades, the issue was that there are in fact departments that compromise coverage so they can go attend a parade, I don't see how this can not be viewed as a problem. Also I never said that departments only worry about coverage during parades, in fact I will quote myself from an earlier post here;

"I understand staffing in the volunteer service is tough, and you'd be hard put to come by a district that can meet NFPA standards 24/7. I also understand that for the most part we all try to do our best to remedy this situation and whether many of you like to admit it or not we all know its a problem."

So before you accuse anyone of generalizing and being off base try to take a step back and see the issue objectively, maybe from the taxpayers view. Taxpayers who I am fairly sure aren't going to be lining up behind their department to support them when they lost their home or business because the lions share of said department was off parading around someone elses town. Again, maybe during parades your department provides the same adequate coverage it supplies every other day. If so, good for you, but I think you are way off base in claiming that every department can do the same. Especially when numerous other people here have flat out said that they have seen this in their own departments.

[antiquefirelt 994]

Just because you "don't like parades" doesn't give you the right to criticize those that do.

Actually I think we all have the right don't we? We are all especially entitled to our opinion when discussing how our tax dollars are used.

I don't like to eat lamb, but I don't complain about people who do.

That's your choice, you're welcome to bash away, though you might not find the thread wildly followed.

Generalizations may be inaccurate, but often there's more truth to those critical points that make us hot under the collar, than the ones we just click away from.