ny10570

I just ask for facts. You clearly don't have them in this specific instance. Maybe no one has made the effort to track accidents per mile for firefighters career or volunteer. Maybe you have the connections to get the NFPA to look into this. I don't know how to make this any clearer. I don't give a rats arse who is more dangerous behind the wheel, I only want to see the statistics proving it. Lets look at NYC. I can't find a single instance where a volunteer fire company was involved in a fatal collision. I know of three involving FDNY. Now maybe the volunteers don't even have enough road miles to make a statistically significant comparison to FDNY, but on the surface it sure seems like the volunteers are safer. No one in their right mind would consider that a fair comparison. Similarly the MTA is the deadliest city agency. They've killed far and away more civilians than anyone else and are always governed by VTL. Their drivers receive more training and have more time behind the wheel than FDNY. But their road miles are so high it would be impossible for me to just guess at which agency is statistically more dangerous.
Do career fire departments actually put more road miles on than volunteer FDs? They absolutely have more calls, there are stats documenting that. But do they have more miles? I'm still can't find anything addressing that. What I can find shows that far more land area is covered by volunteers.
Absolutely every paid firefighter must first get to work, but unless I am mistaken, those accidents are not included in these numbers. Volunteers responding to their station for a run are included. Similarly volunteers headed to the station for a parade, meeting, drill, etc are not counted.
Again, you are correct that volunteers do not meet the same standards for selection, training, and accountability. However there is NOTHING demonstrating that volunteers are crashing more frequently than career firefighters and even less proof that the training gap has anything to do with it.
So you're just going to pout and go home? There are a lot of flaws in the volunteer fire service. First and foremost that it is an inferior level of service than you would receive from a paid department. The deciding factor between the two is cost. If you could get a functional paid department or reasonably close to what you're paying for a volunteer dept you'd stick with the volunteers?? You'd be a fool. That being said there is still a very large need for professional volunteer fire service in this country. The key is professional and that starts with addressing flaws and inadequacies within your own service.

You said the overwhelming majority of these wrecks are on the volunteer side. Do you have the stats? With the sheer number of volunteer fire departments I would expect more volunteer accidents than paid. Add in that every volunteer is driving to the scene or station, are volunteers more reckless. I don't have any real info on this, but would be curious to see the breakdown of accidents per firefighter or even department. I doubt its out there, but per mile driven could also be really interesting. I'm sure the bias towards younger firefighters and older equipment bumps up the rate of accidents for volunteers. All in all a comprehensive review of this would be very interesting.

I disagree. Most people do not know if they are being driven off a cliff. They vote right down the line, Dem, Rep or other. On a larger scale how do you get rid of the problems in Albany or Washington? The politician who keeps screwing the state or the country will keep getting reelected as long as his/her district is happy with him/her. Consider Speaker Silver, all he needs to do is keep lower Manhattan happy and the rest of the state has no say.

How fighter jets are made! LOL

Absolutely unions frequently include minimum staffing levels and NYC Sanitation is one example. However NYC Sanitation is not the only ones hauling garbage in NYC. In fact throughout the tri state most communities are covered by commercial haulers. If single man operations were actually more cost effective commercial haulers would have embraced them. Blame unions all you want, but the free market does not substantiate your claim that unions are preventing their implementation.
Cities don't want to put up the initial cost because they will not recoup their investment. Savings made by smaller crews are cut into by slower operations, more expensive vehicles, more expensive maintenance, and maintaining the refuse containers.
So the unions are at fault yet, you admit the trucks simply will not work in many cities?

I was with you right until the dig on unions. The system you mentioned has substantial upfront costs. Figure the free market would find the cheapest and most cost efficient way of garbage hauling, right? Then why do all of the commercial haulers still do it this way? While some municipalities sacrifice speed in exchange for forbidding employees from riding on the back, I don't see any commercial haulers that ban the practice.

Who is paying for tens of thousands of gallons of water if it's coming off a municipal hydrant ?
(*)

If its that murky, it means they are not flushing the hydrant properly and the water is coming from the same main that feeds your house.

For better or worse, the city will choose the least costly option, as long as it meets the spec. There is no "choosing quality". It doesn't work that way. As for who's the "best of the best", well, I really don't think the maker matters. In my house we have a Seagrave engine and a new Ferrara ladder. The build quality on the Ferrara is fantastic. Heavy welds, heave materials and the fit and finish seems to be quite good. It's laid out well and the ride is smooth like a Cadilac. Time will tell. The Seagrave is a rough riding rust bucket that has it's share of problems. Many of the recent Seagrave apparatus have spent plenty of time O.O.S. Some of the 2006-2007 tower ladders have more time in the shops that on the road, so lets take it easy on lavishing praise on Seagrave.
I can say this until I'm blue in the face; the builder matters very little compared to the spec. My experiences have shown me that when building a large apparatus order to a particular city spec, the builder matters less and less.

Forget helmets and safety belts. The practice needs to stop. Hopping on between properties or across the street is not enough of a time saver to justify the risk. We hear about the catastrophic injuries, but what about more minor ones that still result in lost days or even permanent injury?

The city owns the truck. If they want ads, the trucks get ads. They just need to be aware there's an added cost. Firefighters generally take a lot of pride in their trucks and put a lot of time and money into them. Take away that pride and maintenance costs will absolutely go up.

I've removed Incident Alerts from the "Recent Topics" list found on the Board Index, since the can now be found in the Shoutbox.
This is due to some members flooding the Recent Topics list with IA's, which distracts from other threads and pushes other topics out of the way.
This is a trial only right now.

Forget helmets and safety belts. The practice needs to stop. Hopping on between properties or across the street is not enough of a time saver to justify the risk. We hear about the catastrophic injuries, but what about more minor ones that still result in lost days or even permanent injury?

I just ask for facts. You clearly don't have them in this specific instance. Maybe no one has made the effort to track accidents per mile for firefighters career or volunteer. Maybe you have the connections to get the NFPA to look into this. I don't know how to make this any clearer. I don't give a rats arse who is more dangerous behind the wheel, I only want to see the statistics proving it. Lets look at NYC. I can't find a single instance where a volunteer fire company was involved in a fatal collision. I know of three involving FDNY. Now maybe the volunteers don't even have enough road miles to make a statistically significant comparison to FDNY, but on the surface it sure seems like the volunteers are safer. No one in their right mind would consider that a fair comparison. Similarly the MTA is the deadliest city agency. They've killed far and away more civilians than anyone else and are always governed by VTL. Their drivers receive more training and have more time behind the wheel than FDNY. But their road miles are so high it would be impossible for me to just guess at which agency is statistically more dangerous.
Do career fire departments actually put more road miles on than volunteer FDs? They absolutely have more calls, there are stats documenting that. But do they have more miles? I'm still can't find anything addressing that. What I can find shows that far more land area is covered by volunteers.
Absolutely every paid firefighter must first get to work, but unless I am mistaken, those accidents are not included in these numbers. Volunteers responding to their station for a run are included. Similarly volunteers headed to the station for a parade, meeting, drill, etc are not counted.
Again, you are correct that volunteers do not meet the same standards for selection, training, and accountability. However there is NOTHING demonstrating that volunteers are crashing more frequently than career firefighters and even less proof that the training gap has anything to do with it.
So you're just going to pout and go home? There are a lot of flaws in the volunteer fire service. First and foremost that it is an inferior level of service than you would receive from a paid department. The deciding factor between the two is cost. If you could get a functional paid department or reasonably close to what you're paying for a volunteer dept you'd stick with the volunteers?? You'd be a fool. That being said there is still a very large need for professional volunteer fire service in this country. The key is professional and that starts with addressing flaws and inadequacies within your own service.

I just ask for facts. You clearly don't have them in this specific instance. Maybe no one has made the effort to track accidents per mile for firefighters career or volunteer. Maybe you have the connections to get the NFPA to look into this. I don't know how to make this any clearer. I don't give a rats arse who is more dangerous behind the wheel, I only want to see the statistics proving it. Lets look at NYC. I can't find a single instance where a volunteer fire company was involved in a fatal collision. I know of three involving FDNY. Now maybe the volunteers don't even have enough road miles to make a statistically significant comparison to FDNY, but on the surface it sure seems like the volunteers are safer. No one in their right mind would consider that a fair comparison. Similarly the MTA is the deadliest city agency. They've killed far and away more civilians than anyone else and are always governed by VTL. Their drivers receive more training and have more time behind the wheel than FDNY. But their road miles are so high it would be impossible for me to just guess at which agency is statistically more dangerous.
Do career fire departments actually put more road miles on than volunteer FDs? They absolutely have more calls, there are stats documenting that. But do they have more miles? I'm still can't find anything addressing that. What I can find shows that far more land area is covered by volunteers.
Absolutely every paid firefighter must first get to work, but unless I am mistaken, those accidents are not included in these numbers. Volunteers responding to their station for a run are included. Similarly volunteers headed to the station for a parade, meeting, drill, etc are not counted.
Again, you are correct that volunteers do not meet the same standards for selection, training, and accountability. However there is NOTHING demonstrating that volunteers are crashing more frequently than career firefighters and even less proof that the training gap has anything to do with it.
So you're just going to pout and go home? There are a lot of flaws in the volunteer fire service. First and foremost that it is an inferior level of service than you would receive from a paid department. The deciding factor between the two is cost. If you could get a functional paid department or reasonably close to what you're paying for a volunteer dept you'd stick with the volunteers?? You'd be a fool. That being said there is still a very large need for professional volunteer fire service in this country. The key is professional and that starts with addressing flaws and inadequacies within your own service.

I just ask for facts. You clearly don't have them in this specific instance. Maybe no one has made the effort to track accidents per mile for firefighters career or volunteer. Maybe you have the connections to get the NFPA to look into this. I don't know how to make this any clearer. I don't give a rats arse who is more dangerous behind the wheel, I only want to see the statistics proving it. Lets look at NYC. I can't find a single instance where a volunteer fire company was involved in a fatal collision. I know of three involving FDNY. Now maybe the volunteers don't even have enough road miles to make a statistically significant comparison to FDNY, but on the surface it sure seems like the volunteers are safer. No one in their right mind would consider that a fair comparison. Similarly the MTA is the deadliest city agency. They've killed far and away more civilians than anyone else and are always governed by VTL. Their drivers receive more training and have more time behind the wheel than FDNY. But their road miles are so high it would be impossible for me to just guess at which agency is statistically more dangerous.
Do career fire departments actually put more road miles on than volunteer FDs? They absolutely have more calls, there are stats documenting that. But do they have more miles? I'm still can't find anything addressing that. What I can find shows that far more land area is covered by volunteers.
Absolutely every paid firefighter must first get to work, but unless I am mistaken, those accidents are not included in these numbers. Volunteers responding to their station for a run are included. Similarly volunteers headed to the station for a parade, meeting, drill, etc are not counted.
Again, you are correct that volunteers do not meet the same standards for selection, training, and accountability. However there is NOTHING demonstrating that volunteers are crashing more frequently than career firefighters and even less proof that the training gap has anything to do with it.
So you're just going to pout and go home? There are a lot of flaws in the volunteer fire service. First and foremost that it is an inferior level of service than you would receive from a paid department. The deciding factor between the two is cost. If you could get a functional paid department or reasonably close to what you're paying for a volunteer dept you'd stick with the volunteers?? You'd be a fool. That being said there is still a very large need for professional volunteer fire service in this country. The key is professional and that starts with addressing flaws and inadequacies within your own service.

I just ask for facts. You clearly don't have them in this specific instance. Maybe no one has made the effort to track accidents per mile for firefighters career or volunteer. Maybe you have the connections to get the NFPA to look into this. I don't know how to make this any clearer. I don't give a rats arse who is more dangerous behind the wheel, I only want to see the statistics proving it. Lets look at NYC. I can't find a single instance where a volunteer fire company was involved in a fatal collision. I know of three involving FDNY. Now maybe the volunteers don't even have enough road miles to make a statistically significant comparison to FDNY, but on the surface it sure seems like the volunteers are safer. No one in their right mind would consider that a fair comparison. Similarly the MTA is the deadliest city agency. They've killed far and away more civilians than anyone else and are always governed by VTL. Their drivers receive more training and have more time behind the wheel than FDNY. But their road miles are so high it would be impossible for me to just guess at which agency is statistically more dangerous.
Do career fire departments actually put more road miles on than volunteer FDs? They absolutely have more calls, there are stats documenting that. But do they have more miles? I'm still can't find anything addressing that. What I can find shows that far more land area is covered by volunteers.
Absolutely every paid firefighter must first get to work, but unless I am mistaken, those accidents are not included in these numbers. Volunteers responding to their station for a run are included. Similarly volunteers headed to the station for a parade, meeting, drill, etc are not counted.
Again, you are correct that volunteers do not meet the same standards for selection, training, and accountability. However there is NOTHING demonstrating that volunteers are crashing more frequently than career firefighters and even less proof that the training gap has anything to do with it.
So you're just going to pout and go home? There are a lot of flaws in the volunteer fire service. First and foremost that it is an inferior level of service than you would receive from a paid department. The deciding factor between the two is cost. If you could get a functional paid department or reasonably close to what you're paying for a volunteer dept you'd stick with the volunteers?? You'd be a fool. That being said there is still a very large need for professional volunteer fire service in this country. The key is professional and that starts with addressing flaws and inadequacies within your own service.

Passed on to me from the "sights of FDIC."
It's time we start hitting the gym and not the fast food guys. Cutting out soda, replacing it with water, and sugars/fatty foods for fruits and vegetables will contribute to significant weight loss even without working out. Adding a training regiment of light duty, walks/jogs around a track, or even a stair climb/ decent in your own firehouse/home, will significantly improve your health.
I was always a fit guy, but recently I saw myself starting to get overweight. Went from 5'8" at 155 lbs, and about 10-12% body fat, to 173 with about 16-18% body fat. I immediately stopped eating and drinking crap, and lost almost 10lbs without working out in a month.
Time to get with the program guys. It's totally doable, and everyone should be jumping on this train. If not for you, how about your family.

Why continue to fight the statistics. Instead why not share what your department does to prevent accidents. Do you blanket authorize everyone to have a blue light? Nowhere does it say you have to. Do you police your members when it comes to excessive lights? I'm sure we could do a study and show the guys with 8 lights on his car is more prone to drive stupid than the one with 1. Is there a zero tolerance for unsafe driving with the POV and blue lights? Revoking the privilege immediately would probably set a standard to live by. Plus the guys with the blue light driving stupid is broadcasting to everyone they are not just a stupid driver but they are a volunteer firefighter. Never good PR.
As for the tankers I heard Billy Goldfedder touch on it recently and a friend of his is adamant that tankers should not have lights and sirens. I am prone to agree. They are a relatively small number of apparatus and account for a high number of the fatal incidents.

Everything you've stated explains why I would expect volunteers to have substantially worse numbers. What you're discounting is that the accidents include personal and dept vehicles. With every volunteer driving to the station and only one career firefighter per rig driving, the volunteers have many more miles per response. Does this make up for the disparity in total responses? I have no idea.

Lieu Yonkers didn't choose to start bussing their kids. They were ordered to. That school district has so many problems, they're in far worse shape than PD and Fire.Taking from one to fund the other doesn't work in the long term.

Career Politicians are the Entire problem. Everything was negotiated fair and square with both unions and the city. If there was aproblem then it should have been taken care of. But in good faith, the fire fighters, police officers, or any other union agreed upon what ever deals were made. The politicians had their chance to change things as they saw fit.
If there's any blame here, or in any other city for that matter, BLAME THE POLITICIANS. They are the ones that have the final say.
They are the first ones to pat themselves on the back when things go good, but when ever things start to get a little sour, its time to point the finger at somebody else.
I wouldn't trust any politician anywhere. They are only interested in their own political future, and clearly, at least to me, they use the uniformed services to their advantage when its best for them.
My theory is that politicians are not the answer, "they are the probem".
I wish people wouldn't get sucked into their B/S.

Everything you've stated explains why I would expect volunteers to have substantially worse numbers. What you're discounting is that the accidents include personal and dept vehicles. With every volunteer driving to the station and only one career firefighter per rig driving, the volunteers have many more miles per response. Does this make up for the disparity in total responses? I have no idea.

Ok, so I'm not sure why the difference between the two stats you have. Was it just because the the time period studied or were there different criteria in the search? The "Selected Special Analysis" is throwing me off. But we'll go with what we got. From 92-02 Career ff's made up 9.9% of the deaths and from '00 to '10 they're up to 18.8%. Since the two over lap this is terrible statistics, but when I average it out we get 14.35%. As of 2010 All career and mostly career FD's only represented 14% of the firefighters nation wide. Arguably even in mostly volunteer FD's the career guys still probably do the lion share of the apparatus driving. That more than doubles the number to 32% of all firefighters.
All of this however could mean nothing because take yonkers for example. Your dept has how many apparatus on the road available to respond every day? A quick google search came up with 20 including the battalions. If you take your typlical westchester volleys responding from home to fill 18 rigs and two chiefs (lets assume only two members on each rig because its a beautiful tuesday afternoon) you're going to wind up with 56 separate vehicles being driven. You'd have to do 3x as many runs in yonkers to cover the number of trips taken by the vollys. Then there's the number of miles driven. What's the average distance for urban paid depts vs suburban and rural volunteer depts? Chief, you're over simplifying some very complicated statistics just to make a point. Without the proper data how can people not take this as a biased attack? It makes it seem personal no matter how much you insist it is not.

You said the overwhelming majority of these wrecks are on the volunteer side. Do you have the stats? With the sheer number of volunteer fire departments I would expect more volunteer accidents than paid. Add in that every volunteer is driving to the scene or station, are volunteers more reckless. I don't have any real info on this, but would be curious to see the breakdown of accidents per firefighter or even department. I doubt its out there, but per mile driven could also be really interesting. I'm sure the bias towards younger firefighters and older equipment bumps up the rate of accidents for volunteers. All in all a comprehensive review of this would be very interesting.