Photos From Rochester NY Second Alarm 4-24-14

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Rochester NY

0915hrs 4-24-14

E. Main St C/S Laura Ave

Heavy smoke from a 3 story wood frame not-supposed to be occupied dwelling

2nd Alarm, quick knockdown, awesome work.

All photos by me.

[M' Ave 1,466]

What are the Rochester Protectives?

[SECTMB 612]

What are the Rochester Protectives and who manufactured that truck?

[STAT213 332]

Protectives are a volunteer Rochester Fire company that operate along side the career crews. They perform salvage operations.

Have you heard of google? First hit on a web search of Rochester NY Protectives.

No worries, I'm from the government, I'm here to help.

http://rochesterprotectives.com/

[x635 4,066]

What are the Rochester Protectives and who manufactured that truck?

The Protectives are very similar to the now defunct "New York Fire Patrol".They are all volunteer, except for a career firefighter from RFD is detailed to it each shift as a driver. Members wear beige turnout gear and a red helmet, and are trained to NYS FF II with in-house emphasis training on salvage and overhaul. They pickup 1 or more in house night shifts a week, and crews range from 1-4 members. They respond to a couple hundred confirmed working fires a year.

They have only that one rig, and it responds from RFD Headquarters. It carries basic firefighting tools, tarps, fans, trash pumps, generators, lighting equipment, extra SCBA bottles, etc.

In addition to fires, they respond to water conditions, etc...anything that would cause damage to property.

The rig is an HME, the chassis is a 2005 "SLE" model. I believe the replacement has been ordered on a Commander chassis from Rosenbaeur.

The history on how they came about over 144 years is fascinating:

http://rochesterprotectives.com/index.php?l=t&pageStewardLink=2253

[SteveC7010 58]

Great photos, Seth! You must have been close by to catch some of those shots with a lot of smoke still showing.

It was my great honor to have been a Police/Fire/EMS dispatcher up there for nearly 30 years. Dispatching RFD was some of the best of the best.

What you doing up there so far from home?

[x635 4,066]

Great photos, Seth! You must have been close by to catch some of those shots with a lot of smoke still showing.

It was my great honor to have been a Police/Fire/EMS dispatcher up there for nearly 30 years. Dispatching RFD was some of the best of the best.

What you doing up there so far from home?

Thanks!

RFD is such a no-frills "keep things simple" yet progressive, skilled and aggressive departments when it comes to firefighting. I am always very impressed when I see them operate.

From the traffic I monitor, sounds like dispatching is the same way. When did they switch over to Monroe County? Did you work for them or 911, or both? I assume Fire Dispatch used to be at HQ. I always wonder what the city was like when Kodak and Xerox were at their height, and I wish I could have seen how the Quint/Midi concept in action.

For this fire, I was just exploring the city with my camera and happened to drive by HQ to see if anything was out or around to take a photo of, when Car 99 and the Protectives doors were opening. I cracked my window and heard Q's coming from all over the city. Then saw a plume of smoke. Arrived right after Truck 4, but parked down the street out of the way. Took me another minute to get to the scene, and Engine 9 already had the hydrant and lines stretched, and Truck 4 was performing the primary and setting up the aerial as smoke pumped from the attic. If that fire had one more minute, it would have taken the entire house. They knocked it down real quick. But they had three aerials up and operating, and four engines plugged into hydrants and then into the ladder pipes and hoses, so they were ready to go if it got worse. House was also condemned, but known to have several squatters living inside. I guess you know better then I, but seems to be just another routine job for them.

The cops had a young boy cuffed in the back of a patrol car talking to the Arson unit when I was leaving, and another "resident" showed up on a lawn down the street having chest pain (can be seen leaning over in my shot of R11).

I moved up here temporarily for a job that fell through because of my declining health. Don't know what my next step is going to be yet, but finally enjoying some nice weather up here! So different then the rest of NY, I feel like I'm in another state. It's definitely a great city to be a buff.

[SteveC7010 58]

Thanks!

RFD is such a no-frills "keep things simple" yet progressive, skilled and aggressive departments when it comes to firefighting. I am always very impressed when I see them operate.

From the traffic I monitor, sounds like dispatching is the same way. When did they switch over to Monroe County? Did you work for them or 911, or both? I assume Fire Dispatch used to be at HQ. I always wonder what the city was like when Kodak and Xerox were at their height, and I wish I could have seen how the Quint/Midi concept in action.

For this fire, I was just exploring the city with my camera and happened to drive by HQ to see if anything was out or around to take a photo of, when Car 99 and the Protectives doors were opening. I cracked my window and heard Q's coming from all over the city. Then saw a plume of smoke. Arrived right after Truck 4, but parked down the street out of the way. Took me another minute to get to the scene, and Engine 9 already had the hydrant and lines stretched, and Truck 4 was performing the primary and setting up the aerial as smoke pumped from the attic. If that fire had one more minute, it would have taken the entire house. They knocked it down real quick. But they had three aerials up and operating, and four engines plugged into hydrants and then into the ladder pipes and hoses, so they were ready to go if it got worse. House was also condemned, but known to have several squatters living inside. I guess you know better then I, but seems to be just another routine job for them.

The cops had a young boy cuffed in the back of a patrol car talking to the Arson unit when I was leaving, and another "resident" showed up on a lawn down the street having chest pain (can be seen leaning over in my shot of R11).

I moved up here temporarily for a job that fell through because of my declining health. Don't know what my next step is going to be yet, but finally enjoying some nice weather up here! So different then the rest of NY, I feel like I'm in another state. It's definitely a great city to be a buff.

Dispatch up there is one of the top 911 centers in the country. They hold every accredidation possible for comm centers. When I retired in '03, there were 178 employees. They're up to 220 and growing. I was hired in '76 as one of the very first civilian replacements for police officers by RPD. (I made the jump to Dispatcher II (police/fire/ems) in '87 or '88.) That was the start of forming up 911 since RPD dispatch was the largest dispatch group in the county and we already occupied the site of the planned 911 facility. RFD dispatch moved over from HQ and joined up in the first half of the 1980's. We jumped to our first CAD system, turned on 911, and began absorbing other dispatch operations from around the county in the mid 1980's. We moved into our own custom designed and built stand-alone 911 facility in 1994. Today, typical on-duty staff is a shift manager, 3 supervisors, a dozen police dispatchers, a dozen calltakers, and half a dozen fire/ems dispatchers. Our center manager ranks with the police and fire chiefs. 911 is funded mostly by Monroe County but operated by the City of Rochester.

Quint and midi was controversial, but had its good points. The two man midi's were great for ems runs and service calls. Since the midis were Class A pumpers, they used them extensively for water supply at fires. The firefighters felt the midis were a way to reduce manpower. They were a dispatcher's bad dream because of the complex rules for response. Sometimes they could go alone and other times they were treated as just part of the quint and not counted as a separate unit.

RFD uses one of the slickest dispatch systems I've ever seen. The city is divided up in to hundreds of small areas called nodes. There's a huge database of response time to each node from each firehouse and other RFD facilities. When a job comes in, CAD automatically determines how many of what type units are needed, and recommends them based on who is in service and where they are currently located. For most runs, the dispatcher reviews the CAD recommendation and makes the dispatch as recommended. Occasionally, there's variations from the recommendation but not often and always with a good reason.

I moved east to the southern Adirondacks a few years ago so I don't get back that way as often as I'd like. But I was there last Wednesday for lunch with the retirees and then the annual awards presentation at the center. And, yeah, western NY has a lot going for it, particularly the Rochester area.

BTW, 911 is continuous recruitment and they are constantly hiring. I am not sure what the starting pay is these days, but you can stop by Rochester City Hall and pick up the job notice and application. IIRC, there's no residency requirement except to live in the county.

Sorry to ramble but you asked some great questions...

[x635 4,066]

Thanks for all the info, Steve! I always pictured Monroe 911 being much smaller. Are they all in that small building across from Nick Tahou's? Or maybe it's larger then it looks from the street. Westchester County should use their entire system as a model, but that will never happen because everyone wants their own sandbox when it comes to dispatch.

Another question.....what is a "2:2:2" I know the fire was a second alarm, but is there anything more to the number?

[SteveC7010 58]

Thanks for all the info, Steve! I always pictured Monroe 911 being much smaller. Are they all in that small building across from Nick Tahou's? Or maybe it's larger then it looks from the street. Westchester County should use their entire system as a model, but that will never happen because everyone wants their own sandbox when it comes to dispatch.

Another question.....what is a "2:2:2" I know the fire was a second alarm, but is there anything more to the number?

The 911 building looks small from the street, but inside if seems really big. Primary operations is 90' x 60' or so. Plenty of space for all the consoles and a huge circular supervisors podium in the middle. I'll start a new thread and post some interior pics. They're not new but you'll get the idea.

Over the years, we had a lot of visitors from the rest of the country. They were all keenly interested to learn how we built an all civilian, multi-agency, multi-jurisdiction comprehensive 911 covering the entire county for police, fire, and ems. The key to getting all the 911 phone traffic is call-taking standards plus EMD. When we instituted EMD, all the volunteer and commercial ambulance services int he county shut down their 7 digit emergency lines. There was no way they could train and maintain their staff to the EMD standards as we do. We have two full time instructor/QI people on staff just for EMD. Same for the rest of calltaking. Our system is so advanced, both technology and human, no one wanted the comparative liability of answering emergency calls. The volunteer fire departments dropped their 7 digit emergency numbers for much the same reason as many of them were doing EMS runs.

2-2-2 was the code for a second alarm that was transmitted over the old landline ticker tape and bell systems that were used long ago before radios and such. 3-3-3 meant a third alarm and so on. These old systems were in every city fire house, and there had to be a man awake and monitoring them 24/7 unless the company was out of quarters. Somewhere, I am certain there is a master list of all those old codes. But to this day, 2-2-2 and so on are still part of the working vocabulary. of RFD and 911.

[Bnechis 3,961]

I always wonder what the city was like when Kodak and Xerox were at their height, and I wish I could have seen how the Quint/Midi concept in action.

Quint and midi was controversial, but had its good points. The two man midi's were great for ems runs and service calls. Since the midis were Class A pumpers, they used them extensively for water supply at fires. The firefighters felt the midis were a way to reduce manpower. They were a dispatcher's bad dream because of the complex rules for response. Sometimes they could go alone and other times they were treated as just part of the quint and not counted as a separate unit.

Prior to the Quint/Midi RFD ran 4 man Engines & 4 man ladders. The administration claimed that the switch would allow them to run the less expensive midi's on many calls and the quints, while more expensive than standard trucks of the day would run less, thus last longer. The staffing switched to 2 on a Midi and 6 on a quint, so in the double companies their was no change in overall manpower.

Around 1980 they bought 3 Sutphen mid mount towers, but when they arrived they did not have the funds, so they sold 1 to New Rochelle (TL-11).

On paper the system sounds great. Till administration says we use to run 4 on a ladder and now its 6, so lets drop back to 4. So a net loss of 25% (from 8 to 6) in those double companies.

Years later, they were trying to go back to standard truck / engines because the chiefs said it worked better. So any apparatus cost savings were lost. But the city ended up with a smaller FD.

[STAT213 332]

Seth,

Where are you working up there? I used to work in the area as well.

Family with you? Metropolitan Rochester is really a nice area, and parts of downtown are decent. Always enjoyed my time in Rochester

-Rob

[x635 4,066]

Seth,

Where are you working up there? I used to work in the area as well.

Family with you? Metropolitan Rochester is really a nice area, and parts of downtown are decent. Always enjoyed my time in Rochester

I was working at R/M. No family up here, one of the reasons I will be moving is to be closer to what family I still have. Now that it's nice out, I like the city a lot more then when I moved here last November. It did snow a lot, but it's never really a big deal and I was very impressed by how quickly the city handles it. I live in the Corn Hill area, so I'm really close to just about everything. Just discovered Charlotte, never been that far down Lake Ave before. I don't know how I'm going to do without Wegmans, I love that store. Upstate NY is so different from downstate, I found most Rochester natives to be meaner (up front) then downstate and have a different kind of attitude. I love the history, just was taking photos of what remains of the Rochester Subway (transit not sandwich for people not from ROC lol) the other day. The only downside is there is still a lot of violent crime in the city, and a lot of abandoned house and vacant buildings, and remnant's of big industry, like Kodak, Xerox, etc. Makes for a VERY busy EMS system as you know. But still some very cool and nice areas. Very affordable too, probably one of the cheapest places in the country you can actually buy a decent home in a nice suburb. Would have never thought there was a portion of NY that was not rural that that was possible.