abaduck

Just one thing Cap... plenty of Muslims born here these days... Nation of Islam and their ilk? So that don't always apply.
I have to say, I've never heard about Jews rioting at Playland because they can't get on certain rides with their hats & skullcaps.
As for immigrants, I'm one of them. I still get my balls busted at times for the Scottish accent. But I'll tell you this, I'm American now. Not Scottish-American or some other damned hyphenated thing. American. I came here for a reason, maybe some others need to remember why they came here. And if I don't like the rules or system I'll do what any American does; b**** about it, and get involved in the political process and try to change it to how I think it should be.
Mike

Just one thing Cap... plenty of Muslims born here these days... Nation of Islam and their ilk? So that don't always apply.
I have to say, I've never heard about Jews rioting at Playland because they can't get on certain rides with their hats & skullcaps.
As for immigrants, I'm one of them. I still get my balls busted at times for the Scottish accent. But I'll tell you this, I'm American now. Not Scottish-American or some other damned hyphenated thing. American. I came here for a reason, maybe some others need to remember why they came here. And if I don't like the rules or system I'll do what any American does; b**** about it, and get involved in the political process and try to change it to how I think it should be.
Mike

Simplicity and efficiency. We all know we run more BS and less fire then the guys of the elder years did way before my time, and a lot of places do no have the training capabilities to consistently train on automatic and combination nozzles. Most departments do not cross train either, so when you have department x, coming to department y, who has never used a combo nozzle before, you're asking for someone to get hurt.
In my opinion, the smooth bore is the perfect nozzle for initial, interior structural attack purpose. There are no rotating bumpers to worry about smacking around and turning to a fog pattern; there are no GPM selectors that can get rotated to flush greatly reducing your GPM's, there are no fingers in a rotating fan that can get jammed up with a pebble the size of a rats n*ts that will ruin your day, there is just a simple bale for open and close, and enough room to expell any crap that makes it through the pump to the nozzle.
Fog nozzles are great for exposure protection, overhaul and Christmas tree fires at the training center. Leave them on the rig until they are needed, and apply them as such.
Again, this is just my opinion. unfortunately, its not the opinion of my department. Depending on the engine in my department, there are a few 1.75" with smooth bores, and all 2.5" lines have smooth bores. Like I've said before, leave the combo/auto nozzle in the chauffeurs compartment for when it is needed, and leave the handlines with a smooth bore preconnected.

With the hurricane expecting to reach a Cat 1 or 2 when it makes land fall, coastal communities can expect anywhere from 0-6ft of storm surge along with significant rainfall. Make sure your pumps, saws and any other mechanical equipment you need are gased, oiled, and ready to run.
If your department is going to run flood water evacuations, or other types of water rescues without calling for a water rescue team, be sure to follow the following guidelines (and by no means take this as "Ok, we're good to go for flood water and swift water response").
- NO turnout gear in or around the water - turnout gear, especially pants and boots WILL DROWN YOU. It is impossible to kick and try and stay afloat wearing it.
- Wear your life jacket anytime you are within 6 feet of water.
- Do not wear neoprene rescue suits in flood waters, this includes ice rescue suits. Gas and other petroleum based products that are found floating in the flood waters will break down your suit eventually reaching your skin giving you a nasty burn. They also not water tight, leaving room for water contaminated with sewer waste, oils, and other nasty stuff to get inside the suit and fester up against your skin for the duration of you wearing it.
- Always walk in flood waters with a prod pole that reaches feet in front of you (not directly in front of where you are standing), much like sounding the floor when VESing a room. Manhole covers, sewer drain lids and other items will be forcefully removed by the water, leaving a hole in the road filled with downward flowing water. You will get sucked in, and you will drown; it has happened many times before and a fireman recently drowned in Colorado.
- Swift water constitutes any water moving faster then 1kts.
- Remember the adage of "REACH, THROW, ROW. GO." Any rescue where we can stay warm and dry, is the most successful type. If you are unsure, call for a swift water team, in fact call for the swift water team anyways, it is far better to have them in route, then realizing 20 minutes down the line you need them in rapidly rising waters.. They have the training and knowledge on how to preform this most difficult type of rescue. The GO portion, should only be performed by individuals who reach the Technical or Operational level of swift water. Any member can stand on the shore and throw a rope, or shove a pike pole to the individual. DO NOT tie your entry team off to a rope that is tied to a shore, if they slip, they will be pulled under water by force and drown.
Again, this is by no means a training module or any release to say you are good to go for swift or flood water rescue. Use this as an awareness tool.

Glad to see you back posting here Capt.. Clearly you are not continuing this discussion because you are 'excited' by vehicle fires, rather you [as do I] fully realize that when firefighters start to get comfortable [complacent] with so called 'routine' responses the potential for injuries, uncontrolled fire extension, etc. is increased.

Functionality over Aesthetics... if it looks like a train wreck, acts like the champion of the world strongest man competition, and assists the firemen in successfully rescuing people out of a 6th story window, I'd say its done it's job. But if it wins 30 trophys, is OOS for 1/2 its life and operates like a drunk/stoned cripple, that to me is an ugly rig.

Disclaimer: I'm not a boater, never have been. But i'm reading this with interest, and will open my big mouth with some thoughts.
I can see both sides here.
People kill themselves and others doing dumb things and drunk things in cars. People kill themselves and others doing dumb things and drunk things in boats.
So we enforce certain laws to try to prevent that.
I drive every day in Westchester. Thousands and thousands of miles a year. In eight years I've been stopped for checks or inspections maybe three or four times - usually just a five second stop while a cop checks the registration and inspection stickers on the windscreen.
If law-abiding people on the river - people who aren't drunk or doing anything to suggest they're breaking any laws - are being stopped regularly, or even occasionally, three or four or five times a DAY, something is very wrong. No harm in aggressive enforcement and 'showing the flag' as LEOs - just like the deterrent effect of parking a cruiser somewhere visible. But if that extends to excessive actual stops - which it sounds like has been happening - then I'd have to wonder if the enforcement is being adequately targeted.
JJB531 is right, enforcement is clearly needed, otherwise the people who don't give a s*** will have a free-for-all. ny10570 is right too; it sounds as if the enforcement is sometimes happening in a way and at a level that would NEVER be tolerated on the roads - civil disobedience would be the result, people would simply stop consenting to be so policed, and start refusing to stop.
Maybe the answer IS legislation and consolidation; a single PD for a single river sounds very much like the natural way to go. Maybe until that happens the river users need to engage with all the LE agencies collectively, and come up together with some way to minimise the number of times law-abiding boaters are stopped - the USCG sticker, or some similar scheme, sounds like a good start, for example. That's good for the river users, who have less hassle, and good for the cops, who spend less of their time dealing with the law-abiding.
Mike
Mike

Right place right time...

Life for arson boys and girls, remember that... and they've just arrested three for attempted murder of an LEO, I'm hearing.
Mike

Right place right time...

Life for arson boys and girls, remember that... and they've just arrested three for attempted murder of an LEO, I'm hearing.
Mike

At a recent parade, I sat directly opposite a NYSP Trooper on a traffic post.
EACH and EVERY time, the stars and stripes passed by, he saluted with the most crisp salute I have ever seen. Many of the bystanders commented on it as well...all were impressed by his actions.
Well Done Trooper, remain safe.

Congratulations to The New Haven 20!
From the New Haven Register.
http://nhregister.com/articles/2011/07/28/news/new_haven/doc4e31811a50508474206087.txt

While I was driving through Armonk the other day, I noticed a building that was under construction on their main business strip. Being the closet buff I am, I figured I'd share what I found. If construction continues with this route, make sure your department knows that venting these fake dormers, will provide ZERO ventilation for the building. These are here for aesthetic purposes only. Feel free to share with anyone.
edit: More then likely, if windows are installed on these, they will be inoperable ones, with no sliding glass. That hint could point to a fake dormer as well.

Call me crazy and being I used to live there I know the crime problem in DC and Fairfax very well...why are firefighters being used as crime deterrents? if something violent goes down what are they going to do but call for help or be victims themselves?

I agree with both of you guys. If you arent doing anything wrong then you have nothing to worrie about. Also, something like a simple wave tells these guys that you see them and are a friendly, same as waving at a cop car on the road, usually I get a wave back and left alone.

Do you know who we need to blame for these troubled 12 year old kids ?.. we need to blame fathers that abandon their families and abandon their girlfriends or their one night stands after getting them pregnant...and people that refuse to work because living off the government dole is easier...
I refuse to take responsibility because I am not part of the problem, my tax money that is taken from my check every 2 weeks is part of the solution.
I would love to volunteer my time but I can't because I am busy working my A job and my B job so I can pay my ever increasing property taxes so the government can pay for social welfare programs for these kids and their families, programs that I or my kids will never benefit from even though I FUND THEM.

Yes, in short, we do. The juveniles are only at Lincoln Hall caused they have already screwed up. To allow them to offend on top of that and go unpunished, serves no purpose. There should be consequences. And no one is going to end up in jail over this.

No, no you haven't. You simply haven't been around long enough to have "seen this and seen that". I gotta tell you, Ike (I Know Everything) your boldness doesn't instill confidence. Be very wary of the person who says they've seen it and done it all....'cause they're in for a wake up call one day. You need to get real. I promise that if you walk into a firehouse in New Rochelle, Yonkers, The Bronx, ect. ect. where each individual Company responds to more emergencies in a year than your department (more importantly, you yourself) you'll have a difficult time finding anyone, regardless of time as a fireman, who will tell you they've seen it and done it all. Better yet, keep it close to home. Go to the senior guy in Harry Howard or Rescue 40 and tell them that, even though you've been around long enough for a cup of coffee, you've seen it, thought of it and done it already. That's surely not going to go over well.
Humility and common sense will keep you alive and learning in our profession. We have a great thing going. Who's better than us? We get to fight fire, help people on a daily basis and it's exciting. You never know what's going to be the end result of that run that just came in. You will never achieve a "know everything" status. That's just not attainable in our field and the smartest person out there learns something everyday in every situation and they also know when they're qualified to perform certain tastk.

I said in my earlier post on this thread:
"You should assign drivers after looking at their record, their experience, their temperament, their personality, and their driving skills"


I'm a Scotsman. I call a spade a spade. I have to say, based just on what you're saying and how you're saying it, I personally wouldn't let you near the driving seat of any apparatus. You're talking too much and not listening enough.


Mike

I said in my earlier post on this thread:
"You should assign drivers after looking at their record, their experience, their temperament, their personality, and their driving skills"


I'm a Scotsman. I call a spade a spade. I have to say, based just on what you're saying and how you're saying it, I personally wouldn't let you near the driving seat of any apparatus. You're talking too much and not listening enough.


Mike

I said in my earlier post on this thread:
"You should assign drivers after looking at their record, their experience, their temperament, their personality, and their driving skills"


I'm a Scotsman. I call a spade a spade. I have to say, based just on what you're saying and how you're saying it, I personally wouldn't let you near the driving seat of any apparatus. You're talking too much and not listening enough.


Mike

I'll contribute this. My dad never had an accident in his life. He never had a driving lesson and never passed a test. He started driving heavy vehicles (dump trucks etc.) near the end of WW2 when he was 14; he was just told to get in and drive it.
There are idiots and bad drivers and people who shouldn't be trusted with a lawn mower of every age. IMHO older people, some of them anyway, just tend to be better at hiding this.
You should assign drivers after looking at their record, their experience, their temperament, their personality, and their driving skills - all over a good length of time - and you should be assigning them prudently and erring on the side of caution. You shouldn't be looking at the calendar.
If there's a problem, or perceived problem, with younger drivers, the problem is in their selection, training, and supervision, not in the drivers themselves; the military manage to teach younger drivers to drive all kinds of vehicles in combat.
Mike

Chevrons and similar patterns have been standard on British, and other european, rigs for many many years; I don't buy 'marketing', I think they're playing catch-up and perhaps to a degree dealing with issues of 'tradition'.
Me, I don't give a damn what a rig looks like so long as the rig works. Paint it pink with purple chevrons on it if some credible studies show they're marginally the most helpful colours.
In the UK battenbergs are also widely used. Here's a paper giving some background to this stuff:
http://theheap.net/files/14-04-high-conspicuity-livery.pdf
Mike

abaduck - Mike Ross, he doesn't hide is name, is, for the record, a registered Republican, more libertarian than anything else. Certainly not a liberal. He didn't respond earlier because he's spent the day at the FTC doing rescue tech, and joined in the good-natured banter involving one of the other students, an LEO.
He's so anti-police that he was in the in the middle of joining the police, as a volunteer cop in the UK, before that was cut short by our moving to the USA. He's given serious thought to joining the volunteer PSEF here in Westchester, but has back-burnered that due to too many other commitments.
Yes, sometimes I debate - I have questions and opinions about police actions on occasions. About the only time I think I could be said to have been out of line was the recent thread on the Philly open carry guy, and enough LEOs here told me how and why I was wrong I manned up, said OK I was wrong, and apologised.
All I wanted to do was update people on what was happening; a lot of people discussed this case, and a story on the latest developments caught my eye. I often end up reading something and someplace down the line it's 'I wonder what happened about X? How did that play out?'
That's all there was to it. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and JJB531, I respectfully think you're out of line here.
Mike

abaduck - Mike Ross, he doesn't hide is name, is, for the record, a registered Republican, more libertarian than anything else. Certainly not a liberal. He didn't respond earlier because he's spent the day at the FTC doing rescue tech, and joined in the good-natured banter involving one of the other students, an LEO.
He's so anti-police that he was in the in the middle of joining the police, as a volunteer cop in the UK, before that was cut short by our moving to the USA. He's given serious thought to joining the volunteer PSEF here in Westchester, but has back-burnered that due to too many other commitments.
Yes, sometimes I debate - I have questions and opinions about police actions on occasions. About the only time I think I could be said to have been out of line was the recent thread on the Philly open carry guy, and enough LEOs here told me how and why I was wrong I manned up, said OK I was wrong, and apologised.
All I wanted to do was update people on what was happening; a lot of people discussed this case, and a story on the latest developments caught my eye. I often end up reading something and someplace down the line it's 'I wonder what happened about X? How did that play out?'
That's all there was to it. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and JJB531, I respectfully think you're out of line here.
Mike

abaduck - Mike Ross, he doesn't hide is name, is, for the record, a registered Republican, more libertarian than anything else. Certainly not a liberal. He didn't respond earlier because he's spent the day at the FTC doing rescue tech, and joined in the good-natured banter involving one of the other students, an LEO.
He's so anti-police that he was in the in the middle of joining the police, as a volunteer cop in the UK, before that was cut short by our moving to the USA. He's given serious thought to joining the volunteer PSEF here in Westchester, but has back-burnered that due to too many other commitments.
Yes, sometimes I debate - I have questions and opinions about police actions on occasions. About the only time I think I could be said to have been out of line was the recent thread on the Philly open carry guy, and enough LEOs here told me how and why I was wrong I manned up, said OK I was wrong, and apologised.
All I wanted to do was update people on what was happening; a lot of people discussed this case, and a story on the latest developments caught my eye. I often end up reading something and someplace down the line it's 'I wonder what happened about X? How did that play out?'
That's all there was to it. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and JJB531, I respectfully think you're out of line here.
Mike