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Another equipment efficiency technique I've seen is for the FAST company to gather all of their equipment, place it in a stokes basket, and deploy it all together to the front of the structure. This saves time; instead of having each member carry individual tools for their deployment, and possibly having to go back and forth to the rig multiple times until all FAST gear is available and at the ready. A rapid checklist at the rig also ensures the team takes everything they might need.

All members who have fought a working fire in the upper floor/s or on the roof of a multi-dwelling know what a challenge it can be to get equipment to and from the fire floor; especially if you lose elevators and need to utilize the stairwells exclusively. This problem is exacerbated within departments that have limited manpower, during prolonged operations, as members grow weary from fighting the fire. The last thing a firefighter feels like doing is humping more equipment up nine or ten flights of stairs after having already gone up those stairs to battle the blaze, then down those stairs to take a blow and have a drink of water. Yet, fire floor command is calling for more spare bottles, additional hose, more hooks, tarps, fans, portable radios, fresh batteries, fresh handlights, etc. We came up with an efficiency evolution simply called "Stairs Support." You take a company or combined group of firefighters. All of the equipment being called for from the rigs or on the street is gathered by this team, and placed at the bottom of the stairwell to be used. When ready, one member stays with the equipment cache, and the other members ascend the staircase, each one positioning themselves on every other landing going up; levels 3,5,7,9, etc. The number of firefighters can be expanded or contracted to suit the number of floors. To start, the member on the ground at the cache takes a tool or spare SCBA bottle in each hand and ascends two flights and hands off to the member on the level 3 landing, who ascends two flights and hands off to the member on the level 5 landing and so on, until the equipment has reached the fire floor or the roof. Through testing at the training center tower, we found this to be a very effective and efficient way of moving gear up ten flights using 5 members, rather than having the 5 members each take two items and each ascending the full ten stories, time and again. The need to only ascend two flights once in place, gives each member a blow as they descend for their next load to carry up. This company is dedicated to the stairs support ops and stays in place. Now as more and more SCBA bottles are exhausted, or whatever further equipment needs arise, it all can be moved both up and down the stairs efficiently by this dedicated op. For volunteer or combo depts, being that the stairs are usually not part of the IDLH environment, this can be a very useful way of utilizing "exterior" members.

In my opinion a "simple" fire would be a room and contents involved in fire, in an unoccupied, single story, type 3 or 5, private dwelling, with no extension, and no water supply issues. Before I retired, to my knowledge my job never as a practice put a FAST company, particularly a mutual-aid FAST to work, unless as required for a firefighter in distress. It should be illegal (even though it is a violation of the Standard, it doesn't have the teeth it should) to put a FAST company to work for other than FAST purposes with no other company on scene to IMMEDIATELY take it's place. If a firefighter is killed or injured because no FAST is available, the lawyers are going to feast on the IC, and the department. Just my opinion.

Some of the short comings of the Mohegan FD have come to light with this recent spate of working fires. Among them, 7 positions apparently left vacant, 3 fire stations staffed with one firefighter alone in each station, and the apparently consistent practice of putting a mutual aid "FAST" company to work as a means of supplementing their inability of adequate fire attack. For starters....... You lost me after the word "monday." But WHAT has changed if a department cannot field an adequate number of firefighters for a working fire (if this is the case)? The answer is apparent is it not? That community might be in serious trouble if it cannot field a firefighting force effective enough to suppress a "simple" working fire. What about (as someone already pointed out earlier) a school, an elderly care facility, or another place of public assembly? There have been multiple threads of discussion regarding fire emergencies within Westchester County on this board, and manpower has and is an ongoing issue in this forum. And sometimes, even in the fire service, with adequate preparation and an effective workforce; things can go right. Peoples' lives have/can/and will continue to be saved, peoples' homes and businesses shall continue to be saved, and that is no fantasy.

Yes, thanks for sharing that website. The crew-cab K-Whopper looks just like the one I designed on the eztruck designer!

That's a pretty neat site. I drove tractor-trailers, and always wanted to see Kenworth cabbed fire engines.

If the dept. is down 6 firefighters and an officer, sounds to me like the budget has been reduced, or spending is being kept below the appropriated funding that the Board has in place. As you said, the average citizen would vote for keeping taxes down, but a Board of Fire Commissioners is not supposed to be average citizens; they are supposed to be able to understand the basic fundamentals of firefighting requirements for their district, and perform their duties not only with their fiduciary responsibilites in mind, but also with the safety of the district's residents and firefighters being paramount. This is why Fire Commissioners are supposed to be apolitical; nobody should be playing politics with public safety, yet it happens every day. With the amount of work Mohegan FD has been getting lately, sounds to me like the BOFC is playing with fire not filling vacant slots, let alone expanding the job.

If Mayor Bloomy could bill for emergency services, he'd have credit card swipers in all patrol cars and fire engines faster than you can say Bloomberg News Corporation.

Sounds kind of retro, billing for fire services. Maybe they should study their history a bit and learn about the fiascos that occured regularly when "Fire Insurance Wall Plaques" determined who might or might stop at your working fire to extinguish it!

I'm feelin' for all y'all.

http://fire.lacounty.gov/SpecialOps/SpecialOps.asp

I predict the Saints will beat the Colts.......31-17.

I vote for a medivac chopper dropping you both off at the reception....

Unlike many of the new fire engine photos that grace the pages of emtbravo, this series shows an engine actually pumping at a working fire. We can read a lot into these photos, it's amazing what a rig can reflect about a department if you have some knowledge of that dept. Good luck brothers of the FDMV!

Nice looking apparatus designs. Good luck to Ossining FD; I lived there in the 1970s and always have had an affinity for the area.

Came across this piece of video while looking for info on Miami/Dade Fire Rescue. It's dated January 17th. I remember how this topic came up on BRAVO after the earthquake and what we were all thinking and posting about in this thread. Seems like a long time ago. I keep thinking about Haiti, because in my location here in Florida, I checked a world distances map and found this spot is 750 miles to Haiti. A days drive if you could. 150,000 people killed. American flags flying right here on the island of Upper Matecumbe. So close, yet so far. A world away. How does one comprehend 150,000 people killed in a disaster? Fire departments in Westchester get a fire with ONE fatality and it's big news, as it should be. Two 10-45s one confirmed in the Brooklyn 2nd alarm Incident Alert Beta. Very sad news, yet something we can comprehend. And the humanity of our system, and the value we place as a society on each other. Emergency services protecting and caring for all. The story quotes a firefighter who stated "there is ONLY ONE fire station for the entire city of Port-au-Prince." One fire station for 150,000 dead. So this video is just one snipet of the ongoing situation, and it's dated material already. But the Rock Star guy has some good information that he shares about the USAR situation and the camp at the airport for apparently 48 teams, how they worked side by side with some other countries' personel and such. A firefighter has family in Haiti and gives a heartfelt thanks to his fellow responders. I don't know much about the organization that put this together, so that's it. http://browardnetonline.com/2010/01/south-florida-rescue-team-returns-from-haiti-after-rescuing-four-survivors/

Aside from the children standing on top of the aerial as it rolls down the street?

There is a little Wizard sitting in the jump seat who presses four siren buttons with his feet, uses a theater lighting board with his hands, and pulls two bell cords with his teeth....a seal operates the air horns....

Hmm....something is missing from the list of incidents they will respond too........... All kiddin' aside, best of luck with the new pumper.

Nobody got off the rigs to check the structure. No walk around, no knock on the door, no look through the windows. Nothing. Nadda. Disgusting. End.

That is to protect his X-Ray vision......sun sensitive

Oh heck no bro, it's all good! You know when I was in EMT refresher that Barry ran, I coulda swore he had a cape on inside his uniform......NOW WE KNOW IT'S TRUE!!!!! lol

Yes at the least. Should be more than that; from my memory of living on Centre Ave for a good ten years I was thinking what New Rochelle has rolled on some companies in the past. Also counting the seats in the cab. did I miss a couple? I thought the command board slide out and cabinets took two seats out of the cab. Should have an officer, absolutely. That's why they call the front seat the officer's seat. Maybe Captain Nechis wants to update us as to how they've been getting the rig out on alarms. I think what you are saying is you don't think they are responding the company with enough members right now? Based on what you're saying they rolled, yes.

They don't hire for OT bro, they call members in. If your opinion is the Rescue should be staffed with 3 members, I'd say optimally the rig should roll, 1 officer and 4 firefighters.

I know one member here was peeved that the discussion has as much of, if not more to do with FAST/RIT than the actual Mohegan Lake fire title at this point. Well, the board is a bit short on information about this particular incident right now, maybe more will come in. In the meantime, to see this much discussion and interest in FAST/RIT work, is in my opinion FANTASTIC. Not so many years ago, I remember many Incident Commanders grappling with the concept of RIT; being resistive of it because in many cases the arguement was there wasn't adequate manpower for the fire attack, let alone dedicating members to "do nothing" but stand-by, watch and the key ingredient "be ready." The OSHA standard has been effective in that the discussion has evolved to this point; where being RIT qualified is actually additional training, a different mindset on the fireground, and departments have moved up to, and are maybe still challenged by the standard. Firefighter Survival has become "mandatory" for RIT, as has the actual RIT training. It has been incorporated into the standard curriculum for firefighter training. Tools, techniques, improvements, have exploded from being rare, to being standard. I'm glad I lived to see this day.