LI Vollies-Small Town Service, Big City Prices

[EJS1810 7]

$400,000+ engines and so on.

Unfortunatly a $400,000 Engine is not the Fire Departments fault anymore. That seems to be the going price these days. We just spent $340,000 on our 2005 KME and we have been told that the next one will be more.

[ex-commish 490]

"well all i have to see is the rest of the last 6 parts should be extremely eye opening and it seems they have done a ton of research. lets all wait and see what is to come before the typical vollie vs career issue starts up."

I do not feel this is a volunteer vs. career issue nor should it become one. The firefighters themselves are not under attack if anything I think the series praises them. It is an objective look into the system in Long Island and how spending is getting (or has) gotten out of hand. There is no need for bars or trips to the Bahamas. I became a volunteer in the fire service 25 years ago to help out in my community and be part of an elite group of people who are ready to serve. That's what attracted me, not the benefits or perks. I agree it is an eye opener not only for LI but for the rest of the country. Just go to any parade in Westchester, look as the rigs and ask yourself was that rig really needed???

Andy Mancusi

Asst. Chief

[ajsbear 11]

Not true.....I worked for 3 years as a paid Dispatcher full time in Levittown, I have never heard anyone say that they have 2 ladders for mutual aid to Bethpage.  They have more then 1 building over 2 stories...in fact they have a few 4 or 5 story buildings, multiple garden apartments, shopping malls, car dealerships ect...

The police station fire was more then several...maybe 15 0r 20 years...that is true but around 98 or 99 they entered into an automatic mutual aide procedure with Bethpage, where the closest stations will be alerted....a first on long island I admit and way over due.........they have 3 stations, and if i may say so...their "drill" team for competition was never that good....they did it for fun, and did not spend more time doing that.  Their drill policy was more then most departments when I was there 4 sunday drills and 4 night drills during the week and u had to make 4 a month.    Your info was way off.

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The quote about M/A was a Capt. from the fire house on Wantagh Ave. back in the mid 90's and was about East Meadow not Bethpage who has their own ladder. I have a good friend who went to join back then and every Sunday all they did was train for competition. I didn't even mention when the truck in that house was 10 years old they replaced it with a new one.

[aowen 0]

There was a new york times article about a year ago, I'll try to find the article and link it, that did sort of the same piece about EMS in Long Island, It went into detail about 45 minute waits for an ambulance to get to the scene, it cited a time that an ambulance just never showed up, and interviewed several police officers who said that on multiple occasions they got tired of waiting for an ambulance for patients who needed to get to the hospital and put patients in the back of cop cars and rushed them to the hospital.

Something really needs to be done about the volunteer emergency services in the whole area, not to say that there aren't any good departments or volunteers there, but the system is not working.

[spin_the_wheel 460]

The quote about M/A was a Capt. from the fire house on Wantagh Ave. back in the mid 90's and was about East Meadow not Bethpage who has their own ladder. I have a good friend who went to join back then and every Sunday all they did was train for competition. I didn't even mention when the truck in that house was 10 years old they replaced it with a new one.

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Ladder 626 is a 1998 Pierce 100ft. rearmount 10 man cab...it replaced a 1986 seagrave 6 man cab rig......12 years for replacement. Also at the time 626 was one of the only trucks in the department to not have a full 10 man cab rig. They were not able to ride the back step and wanted more room for manpower which they do get. Also the seagrave was a single axel truck with alot of wear and tear on it.

[IzzyEng4 427]

Ummm Has anyone taken account that some of the suff in the firehouses such as crew and social quarter stuff may not be from municiple / tax funds but from other means. I have a feeling that if it was, it would have been brought up a long time ago. I think this is a distortion.

How many fire companies / Departments, paid or volunteer actually get to use funds to furnish the whole fire house?? I know up here for vols, usually it comes from the membership fund raisers mostly and that certain things such as bunks would be provided. The usually don't come out of the operating budget. As for a lot of the paid departments, there are a lot of them that get donated couches and chairs, though the cities do provide for much more. News media always assume that everything is paid for by the district / municipality and they never ask how much comes from funds the individual company / department raised for emenities.

There is a lot that has to be looked at before you go by what a news artical says. Trust me, I was on the receiving end once with my department and it is not fun trying get your words corrected and acusations retracted when they are not true.

Why doesn't someone ask someone from the districts, such as the commissioners, chiefs or line officers or past officers that hade 25+ years and ask them why such the growth.

I'm not sticking up for anyome or making accusations, just ask and doen't ask someone who has less that 5 years in, they might not know everything about the dept yet and are srill learning, or they might, but as a lot of people. There it that long island forum.........

[spin_the_wheel 460]

Ummm Has anyone taken account that some of the suff in the firehouses such as crew and social quarter stuff may not be from municiple / tax funds but from other means.  I have a feeling that if it was, it would have been brought up a long time ago.  I think this is a distortion.

How many fire companies / Departments, paid or volunteer actually get to use funds to furnish the whole fire house??  I know up here for vols, usually it comes from the membership fund raisers mostly and that certain things such as bunks would be provided.  The usually don't come out of the operating budget.  As for a lot of the paid departments, there are a lot of them that get donated couches and chairs, though the cities do provide for much more.  News media always assume that everything is paid for by the district / municipality and they never ask how much comes from funds the individual company / department raised for emenities.

There is a lot that has to be looked at before you go by what a news artical says.  Trust me, I was on the receiving end once with my department and it is not fun trying get your words corrected and acusations retracted when they are not true.

Why doesn't someone ask someone from the districts, such as the commissioners, chiefs or line officers or past officers that hade 25+ years and ask them why such the growth.

I'm not sticking up for anyome or making accusations, just ask and doen't ask someone who has less that 5 years in, they might not know everything about the dept yet and are srill learning, or they might, but as a lot of people.  There it that long island forum.........

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This is true, like some houses in Westchester Im sure, many on LI are owned by the companies themselves. My company does an annual Easter Plant sale, sells chance tickets 2 times a year, and does a third activity of something new during the year, we last tried a murder mystery dinner/show. We as a company buy that large screen tv, or a playstation system. Company jackets were last bought half the members $$ and half from the company who we bought our truck from..they include money for a "wet down" in the contract. We do our own work to decorate our clubroom .... we dont have a tiki bar theme but if we wanted to decorate it that way who cares? Our Bar B Q is donated from a member and so on.... Newsdays Beef should be with the Fire District Commisioners...the 5 elected officials who choose to spend in a ridiculas way....my problem with this whole series is that they are making a blanket statement which make the rank and file back step Fireman look like he is guilty of the crazy spending. Not so at all.

[Guest]

I find it a tad difficult to believe the numbers of apparatus (more than FDNY, LAFD, AND LACoFD combined!?!???......even with Chief's vehicles included, I think that may be a stretch) but there's no doubt that there's some serious money tied up in some of those rigs. 

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I belive the number that they showed the LAFD running is a little off. They stated they had 155 emergency apparatus. I can tell you they have a little more than that! Check out the stats:

http://www.lafirephotos.com/lafdhistoricallist/lafdstats.htm

[27east 19]

I AM NOT LOOKING TO START ANY DEBATE OVER PAID/VOLLY......but....

Am I the only one who thinks that sooner rather then later there will be paid FFs, probably EMTs/paramedics out on the island in combination departments?

[JohnnyOV 2]

I AM NOT LOOKING TO START ANY DEBATE OVER PAID/VOLLY......but....

Am I the only one who thinks that sooner rather then later there will be paid FFs, probably EMTs/paramedics out on the island in combination departments?

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i agree. I also think that this will also start taking over some westchester Dept as well

[27east 19]

i agree. I also think that this will also start taking over some westchester Dept as well

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I agrew with you on that EMSJunkie

[BFD1054 1,552]

I agree with many of you in saying that this article should be aimed at the commisioners and others who allow the ridiculous spending to go on!

They talk about $400,000 fire trucks, but as stated, thats not all that expensive anymore!

I'm not knocking them, but the Coram firehouse definately seems out of control! Having a gym/work out equipment is one thing, but their gym is bigger & better than many of the athletic clubs around here! And a tiki bar in the gym, come on! 4 fire poles throughout their hoouse is nuts too. To have one in the bathroom...that just shows how pure disregard for spending IMO. I thought fire poles weren't being installed in firehouses anymore for fear of injuries? The apparatus bay is huge, which is nice, but is it really needed? I won't even begin to comment on the whole bar situation! Again, not knocking them, just seems that their spending is way out of whack!

As far as some of you talking about some departments possibly going in the way of career staffing, I could definately see it happening, not only on the Island, but here in Westchester too! If they have all that money to spend on ridiculous things, they could afford to have at least partial career staffing IMO. If departments/communities want to hire career staff, i have nothing against that, in fact its a great idea. I have plenty of friends who are on the job, so i am in no way anti-career. If communities can afford it, why not have some career staffing? Hell, if Buchanan ever decided to start a career staff, i'd be the first to sign up lol!

Unfortunately, i haven't been in too many firehouses in Westchester, but i can speak for the few i have in saying that i haven't experienced flagrent spending. Hell, our firehouse is quite old and very small. Instead of specing trucks for our needs, we have to spec them according to our bay's size. When we took delivery of our new Utility-12 (in 2003), we had to sell our 3rd engine because we had no room for it! We've talked about building an addition, but its just not in the cards for us right now. Most other firehouses that i have been in seem to be quite realistic in terms of size, apparatus and furnishings.

[Stench60 29]

I wanted to wait until the series of articles was finished before I made any type of comment upon them. I am glad that I did.

First let me state that I have been in the fire service for a very long time and I have seen some absolutely insane things in my day, but nothing in my experience compares to the absolutely ridiculous spending that takes place on the “Island”. The amounts of money that are available to these districts are mind boggling to me, and I have seen a lot of waste in both my fire service experiences and in my day to day work experiences. There is simply no way you can justify to me the amount of money that Coram, or some of these other districts, have spent on their houses or on other expenses.

Now, to be honest, there is a slight amount of jealousy on my part. I’ve been to some of these houses for meetings and worked with firefighters from the island on state and regional issues and have had the way things “work” explained to me on several occasions. However it still astonishes me how they do it. It must be wonderful to be able to walk in to a board of commissioners and state that we need XYZ, and then be told OK, just go out and get XYZ and damn the price. My engine company is sitting in a firehouse constructed when Roosevelt (Theodore) was president and has not had any significant work performed since then unless paid for by the federal government. This includes the kitchen that was last renovated during another Roosevelt Administration (Franklin) by the WPA. Please understand that this is not a joke, for the first time since its construction in 1906 we are actually seeing improvements being made and paid for by our village after a years long fight.( It is a credit to our current chiefs that this work is finally beginning) To see what goes on in the districts of Long Island when we have had periods when we had to “ conserve “ resources ( including toilet paper)is, and I hate to use the word again, astonishing .

This is probably because I am from a municipal fire department that not only must report to a village board but must also compete for its share of the tax pie with everything else that the village provides from the Police to the Library. This leads to a great deal of economy when you have not only the village board watching every penny but every other department jockeying for a finite amount of money and putting pressure on you to justify every expense. You cannot justify those chrome rims just because so and so got them, you have to have clear, cogent arguments for your requests and if you don’t have them, someone will be there to point that out. The funny thing is, if you read the articles, the newspaper points out that the municipally run departments (Cities and Villages) are actually the fiscally best run departments. The whole thing screams for some type of reform for the fire district system. The interesting part of the whole series is that we “upstaters” , as we’re called on the island, in Westchester are being held up as paragons of fiscal restraint and prudence. And to be perfectly frank, we are much more restrained than they have been, but let’s use this series as a warning not to let ourselves become gluttons and end up on the front page of our “Local Paper”.

That being said ; I believe the other problem facing the fire service on the Island ,and nationally, is the burnout factor caused by EMS. It’s my opinion that the volunteer fire service is healthy but that the time has come for the fire service to step back from the provision of EMS services and to place them in a separate setting. As one FF/EMT stated to me recently, he can go to the average fire call and be back in 20 minutes, but EMS even with only something minor or an RMA takes at least an hour if not more. An occasional working fire, yes you can justify being gone from work for that hour plus. But an hour plus on a regular basis for the EMS just doesn’t work if you still want to provide for yourself and your family.

Lastly, because it’s getting rather past my time to turn in, I have to state that the men and women that I have met and worked with on the island, from Members of the County Fire Commission to the various county and regional associations, down to the most junior Johnny in the sink scrubbing pans, have been some of the most caring, dedicated and knowledgeable fire personnel I have ever had the pleasure to know.

[HFD23 37]

well I also waited for this article to run its course before commenting, I want to say that as a FF I in no way shape or form see this as an attack upon the FF's on long island and I think that this article was written with taste giving the facts and basically is designed to point out that the members be it commissioners or what not who have the power over the department funds are putting the money to a disgraceful use, I am a major believer in going out and getting training, how ever Caribbean trips, cruises come on there has to be a better and more qualified course and instructors some where on the mainland U.S.

also as was stated in one article that they need 10 man cab engines come on some depts. out there have appox 5-6 engines, they have rescues n at least 1 truck are you seriously telling my they can fill 50-70 seats on all those apparatus and in the next sentence they are complaining they need more vollies, the bottom line is its not how the personnel gets there its that they do get there so if you have a 6 man cab like most Depts. and all 4 or 5 or 6 enignes roll with any where form 24-36 people if all 6 were full then you take your personal vehicles, come on how often would this really happen, and ya a CAF system is great on a engine but all the extra LEDS and gold lief and chrome is it necessary no way.

the fire houses are a totally different issue, they are ridiculous and if tax payers are funding your pool and gym well then let them all use it, rent out the Hugh meeting/banquet room for residents n help replenish the money you just wasted on this at least then the room isn’t wasted.

As for the volunteers no one can doubt they loyalty and the amount of time that they show/give to their depts. and there will always be those members who go way above n beyond, and there will be those who do it for the benefits who do the bare minimum. I would honestly love to see outa the numbers the long island depts. list their active members just how many alarms that these members responded to, but this is also a issue every where not just long island. But the perks on long island that seem to be done for the majority of those who control the money or who are high up in the command chain are just ridiculous.

Further more this brings about the operating expenses of some of the districts have yearly operating coasts over 5million? for a vollie dept? And long beach a combination dept with the lowest response time on the island only coasts 3.6 million.. I think this article serves to show that for what the residents pay in taxes they are not getting the fire protection they deserve, with those kinds of operation expenses response times in the area of 10 minutes are ridiculous, paying janitors to go on fire calls is ridiculous, you mise well just make it civil service hire a few career drivers form a residents list so basically you probably end up hiring you own vollies this benefits some vollies, encourages more to vollies who seek future jobs, and well benefits residents in making sure a rig gets out thus decreasing response times. also these career drives would get further training with the career academy, and this all would still probably coast less then some of the depts. budgets now once they take away the trips and lavish spending on race cars and fancy all dressed up trucks... trucks are to carry water, a ladder, or hose, they are to get people n tools to a scene safely, what make it look like a museum piece or light it up like a x-mas tree.

all I can say is that many volunteers work hard at their jobs n find time to serve the community lets not knock them... its mainly about long island n the commissioners who let this stuff happen out there they should be accountable to the tax payers n hopefully they do... bottom line is long island as well as many places need to look at the facts the number of vollies is down and response times are up so something needs to be done and out there with budgets that they have well its unacceptable how things are in many departments out there, so changes need to be made and people need to be held accountable.

[ajsbear 11]

I remember seeing on the news (think NBC) while about the vote in Setaurcuk (SP) about voting on a new elaborate firehouse. Included was a 600 seat auditorium. For a 150 person department! It was voted down. Even the members campaigned against it.

[spin_the_wheel 460]

I have posted a few times on various threads as a LI firefighter.....the bottom line is the Newsdays attack should be against the commisioners who are doing the crazy spending.....the rank and file back step firefighter really has nothing to do with it....we play within the rules that are set......the guys who have been around along time have seen the spending in someplaces get out of hand, and the new guys, well they just think this is the way it is. When you go and start a truck committe and the Board of fire commisioners tells you you have a 600,000 budget for a truck, why not spec out a 6000,000 truck, wouldnt you? We should not be brought down in a blaket statement. The problems with Newsday stem back many many years...its not just this article. There are close to 200 departments on LI. Newsday has sited only a handfull that are way out of bounds with examples that get even LI firefighters disgsusted. Again I invite any questions you may have.

also a good link to LI fire chat http://www.fireemsli.proboards26.com