Engfire

I am a huge Smeal fan and have long waited to see them bring a TDA to the market. We have a Smeal rescue engine and a Smeal rescue quint on a single-axle with 75' aerial, and nothing beats the quality of thier steel ladder construction or the ease of operation of thier aerial device, we are so pleased we will eventually replace our whole fleet with Smeal apparatus.

This topic was started from a discussion that started out about escape ladders on aerialscopes people got off subject and started in about maintance issues, so I wanted to see how many depts in your area have a local guy just fixing stuff, or they actually have an EVT that works for the dept and does all the regular and routine maintance.

In my dept the city has 2 fulltime mechanics that service the whole city fleet and they are both desiel quailified, and are pretty good with small engine stuff like a saw, but when it comes to any pump issues or major aerial problems we use outside quallified professionals that come to us or we go to them, such as the case of yearly pump testing.

Everyone around here pays a fee to the local EMS council and together with the hospitals we have drug bags that we exchange out at the hospital when we use something. In those bags we have Mark 1 kits that are thier just for are use if their was a WMD attack, anything else you would have to get a chempack released from a stockpile and that involves alot of redtape due to the cost of the chempacks.

Here in my neck of the woods we cover a few miles of I70 policy is just the district medic, and the crew is to load the Pt asap and go to the first exit if you want to stop and do anything, sometimes you will get the State's FIRST team, which is much like the help trucks you guys have.

A question for all of you NY guys do you guys have a spinal clearance checklist that must be followed before you can clear c-spine. I my local standing order it is an optional skill that our medical director is not comfortable with us partacing and I can understand why, and even if we did their is a approx 12 step checklist that the local EMS council has developed, and I am pretty sure that even if the Pt has self extricated themselves that not a reason for not backboarding.

During a recent lecture in my medic class our instructor who is a hospital EMS coordinator told us of a story about a local dept that did not board a gunshot Pt who was shot side to side because the bullet was in and out. Not to mention they did not take this Pt to a trauma center, but thats a different story.

Horton all the way sorry to hear that the dealer did not work well with you. Horton is a good quality product, but your gonna pay for it, we are expecting our second Horton later this year, ture I may be bias because Horton is only an hour away from our dept and any problems can be corrected by the factory in a timely fashion.

The dept was formed when a large Township dept seperated and it created 3 depts one being ours. Yes our MA is up because of our staffing plus a large majority of this is our automatic AMR, and When I say AMR its on the same dispatch. Our website was done by a member who also is an IT professional for his dayjob. Yes we are a Smeal dept, we really like the product and the service we get from the local dealer is fantastic, in 2007 we had our apparatus in the local dealers calander. We love Smeal so much that here in the next couple of years when we replace the 91 pierce it will be with a Smeal more than likely. We are well funded, with much of your money comming from property taxes as well as the City's income tax, we have a very mixed district with a good amount of industry and commercial property. I don't think the website stated our staffing levels but each station is maned with 3 24/7 and support comming from guys off duty and comming from home.

Here is something off the beatten path for all of you northern guys my depts web site, some of the stuff is dated but the staff numbers and call numbers are updated as well as the apparatus.

http://www.englewoodfirerescue.com/index.html

ALSBear, firefighter fallout in Ohio wont be seen for alittle bit because the law has just gone into effect, but give it a year or two and then you will start to see the fallout, and like i said in my last post you will weed out the hobby firefighters.

Being from Ohio I can tell you that this is a sore subject for some people. I konw last year when this law was in the pipeline my dept was very proactive and held a 48hr FF refresher for our dept personal, witch is in addition to monthly shift training and our monthly EMS training, I can only imagine that con-ed will be comming for inspectors, witch I can't really see how they are going to make that avalable since a code update is only done every couple of years being only offered in certain locations. All and all I think this is a good law and step in the right direction and hopefully get rid of some of the hobby firefighters.

Hey i know its not local for most of you Northeast guys but here is a site I look at and listen to regularly.

Scanmiamivalley.com, it has many news alerts for incidents in OH but also for upper PA and Upper NY on the lake, it also has links to several online scaners for all of OH manily the major cities.

http://www.scanmiamivalley.com/index.php

Here locally in OH I's are allowed to push 17 drugs that include morphine, but it is to only be used for pain management. I's can place a Pt on a monitor but are limited what they can do. In this area we are P heavy and only have a handful of I's floating around. The biggest problem we becomming and I and then becomming a medic is that very few medic programs give you and credit towards medics.

Quick question of you NYS guys is your I program 200+hrs or more like the 400+hrs program.

Not local to you guys but my dept did approx 2650 with 90% being EMS and we do EMS transport, and we are a combo dept with 6 guys on all the time between 2 stations.

We have 2 quints and frequently serve as an engine more than a ladder, and yes your staffing is low 6 between 2 houses, but we have strong mutual aid agreements and good POC responce from home, but by no means we have no money problems what so ever, and we a steady increase in calls we are looking into adding 3 more additional people on duty, on a side note we handle all our own EMS at an ALS level.

Moring Pride all the way.

P.S. it also helps that the factory for Morning pride is right in our backyard.

Its not to early and Seth has a point Private ambulance companies work their employees to death and want the most out of thier employees for the least cost. It is a business and the owners are out to make a profit. I mean no disrespect to this guy or his family.

I am kinda partial to Smeal we have and engine and quint, but we have a 91 Pierce and it is a fantastic engine and have not really had any problems except having to replace some orginal parts earlier this year. The Smeal quint is great but they wish they got a tadem axel big stick rather than a 75' stick, because the chassis is overloaded, but I love having the steel stick. Its fairly certain that from hear on out we will be buying Smeal mainly because its a good product and we receive outstanding support from the dealer. To comment on E-one our other qunit is a 75' 97 E-one no major problems with it. Lastly I will say that the condition of our apprartus is so good because we don't run it constantly and have a good maintance dept.

I like that idea thier are some really cool houses out there.

Pretty cool houses, but see why the other post on this site talks about the dis-repair and filth of the stations from the pictures.

Speaking of CFs my dept has the first one off the line, however it is not in original condition, and now rarely makes calls.

How many people work in fire dept based EMS system that provides ALS level transport service and all members are Fire and EMS qualified. Second is your run volume. My dept is Fire and EMS and we do both jobs when on duty and our run volume is approx 2700 calls with 90% being EMS, and we are staffed with 6 personel at all time out of 2 houses.

Thats a pretty nice gift, it was pondered in our local area, but they said that if one hospital gave a dept a monitor it would be considered them trying to get that particular dept steer thier Pts towards that one particular hospital and we have 5 within resonable transport distance. One a side note our area is LP12 heavy and they few depts that have Zolls hate them too, but don't have any experience with the Phillips.

We are in the process of adding Motorola laptops to all of our vehicles and they are directly linked to our dispatch and we receive information such as FDC location or Knoxbox location in the call screen. Eventually we will have our maps and pre-plans on these laptops, and GPS mapping for our community and the surrounding areas. The only vehicles to have printers are the Chief vehicles. Lastly we have Motorola because the county 800 trunked system is motorola and it is much easier to make motorola products communicate to one other.

Just was wondering how many of you guys opperate Aerial only trucks vs Quints and if you opperate a Quint what is its primary assignment in your alarm cards.

I know that on my depts cards the ladder is first due in its own district and first job it to park in-front of the structure and begin fire attack unless otherwise ordered by command.

ALSfirefighter, we have a very large amount of ranch homes plus our chiefs don't subscribe to opening up the roof unless its absolutly necessary. It the fire would happen to go defensive and there were no hazards prohibiting the ladder from deployment it would get used on residental jobs.