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He does look a little salty but could never give an interview on TV as well as Snotty could.

The career fire service in NYS tried to get one standard and FASNY said NO. So they got a career standard and a volunteer standard and everytime OFPC has tried to add a few hours to it, its been shot down as it will be a death blow to the VFD's.
If the volunteers want the same standard all they have to do is accept it. ANy VFD can do that right now, they do not need the career service to do it for them. Why have they not already done it Or as you put it "is it against their DNA" to bring themselves up to the standard that most of the nation uses?
If we offered training by company (which is how we train) at the hours that we train (Monday - Friday) how would they cover their districts? Do you really think we would get a large interest, particularly when many depts can not even get a company on the road at those times for a call?

Since civil service in many cases does not and in some cases the federal courts will not allow "farm teams to feed the system" your analagy needs to be rethought.
How many of the county instructors at the FTC are career? Last I looked it was about 65-75%, Sounds like they are mentors and are trying to raise the standards in Westchester.

That would require a regional approach to planning and training. We would rather spend our emergency service dollars on big stations to house expensive apparatus that will never have the staffing to get out the door.

Things must be pretty quite around EMTBRAVO land to throw that hand granade!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah it would have made a huge difference. You would have had someone who didn't win a popularity contest actually in the position and who was trained to an exact level.

I recall a couple in Yonkers that were huge and water was a problem -Oak Street where about 14 buildings went and of course the carpet shop fire off Lake Avenue with all it's exposure problems
Now in New Rochelle NRHS fire in 68 had the advantage of Mutual Aid units drafting from the lakes out front. that was one of the largest fires in the USA that year. Also in New Ro the Crabtree explosion that killed folks, injured scores and destroyed several large commercial buildings.
We often take water for granted,at the World Trade Center who would think water would ever be a problem, but it was when the towers fell and broke the water mains under the street and uncontrolled fires became a real problem, fireboats came in real handy both active and retired vessels.
With Homeland Security funding Jersey bought three huge pumping units with very large diameter hose,way bigger than 5in., these units were called Neptune Systems and could produce huge amounts of water for long distances, wonder if they were called in.

Still bothers me to this day after many years, watching the ceremony on television brings a lot of it back, went down to Ground Zero 9/11 at night for the last eleven years , good time to go when all the hoopla was over and still many wonderful and appropriate things going on. Easy travel and parking, I recommend it

Its not the same outside of NYC. Guy I was carpooling with stopped at firehouse I believe in greenburgh, it was off 119 about a block in on the right side of the street. We asked if it would be ok to leave a car there as we both were driving to work together. What were we told? Ask the chief?! Ask the Chief? We were parking a hyundai or an infiniti not a motorhome 24/7. Ironically, went to Greenburgh PD, were told by a sgt there, NO PROBLEM, if you have any issues come inside. We had a guy who was on his Harley stop at firehouse who rode in from Cali for 9/11. He wanted to obviously go downtown, we insisted he leave bike in quarters as we couldn't guarantee parking or safety of the bike downtown, smaller firehouses etc. He was extremely grateful. I was taught you always treat anyone who isn't assigned to your firehouse as a guest, the mechanic, the radio repairman, even the exterminator all given the offer of coffee something to eat, some heat or ac, anything so when he remembers YOUR firehouse he says those guys are great!

Brotherhood Test:
Here's how you test a firehouse to see if they are Brothers or not.
Send your daughter to a firehouse at 0200 with a flat tire and explaining that her father is a firefighter and he is working tonight.
If they point to a 24hr towing service down the street or give her the number for AAA, they are not Brothers.
If they tell her to pull around back, change the flat, change the oil, rotate the tires, wash the windshield, and give her a cup of coffee and a piece of cake. Then they are Brothers.

LTNRFD, I know for sure that you remember back when the BFIRS used to differentiate between a "Structure Fire" and a "Fire within a structure." A "Structure Fire" had to actually damage the structure. Then, I guess people wanted to look like they had a lot of fires so they got things changed to "everything's structure fire."
Malfunction/activation for steam from the shower? It's an activation...the detector didn't malfunction, it did what it's supposed to do. The only malfunction in this case is that the installer shouldn't have hung the detector outside the shower door.
A run that was reported as a possible structure fire turns out to be steam from a dryer. The reporting party didn't malfunction. He did what he was supposed to do.

While I am not making excuses for his actions, I do know that in the 80's & 90's in more than 1 Westchester combo dept. that only staffed "paid drivers" if the "paid man" ever left the pump panel, he got put on dept charges. In otherwords, if he arrived at a fire and the volunteers had yet to arrive and he stretched the line past the front door, he was yelled at because "only the volunters are allowed to do it". I saw this on more than one occassion and I know of it in more than one dept.
Once that s*** developed, I'm not surprised the "union" mic stuff came next.

I think Firemoose827 it's because of the World we now live in where like many have said you can't offend anyone anymore and have to constantly be "politically correct" for fear of being sued and labeled a racist. Tradition in the F/S is practically dead which is sad. Like one member posted in the other forum also, everyone now receives a trophy and as a result can not accept failure and to be told their no good at something and if they are will head right to the powers to be to complain. This all trickles down to the moral on the job where nobody wants to participate in anything anymore. Another big reason why I see the Brotherhood disappearing is because of the quality of individuals Depts. are hiring. Depts. now seem to be more concerned with "Quantity" then "Quality" for fear again of being labeled racist/biased towards certain individuals and groups and have lowered their "STANDARDS" to attract these individuals. As a result those members who are 100% dedicated towards their Profession get discouraged having to work with these incompetent individuals who for the most part are just there for a paycheck and don't want to associate with them either on or off the Job, especially when these individuals don't get reprimanded for their unacceptable actions/mistakes on and off the Job but almost seem to be rewarded and left alone. After awhile it gets discouraging to those who really do care and try and do the" right" thing and as a result everyone is out for themselves and the "Brotherhood" is now in the toilet. JMO

Whats next non multiple line engine companies or truck companies that are not pitched roof qualified.FAST is for our protection, US, if your not trained in it then well i find it hard to call you a firefighter.

We have 58 Fire depts. in Westchester and many have trouble getting enough trained firefighters on scene. Many have more equipment then they can ever manage to get out the door and this situation puts the public & firefighters in danger.
I suspect nothing will change until a multi fatality fire AND a lawsuit against the fire dist /municipality and/or the chief(s).
Its really sad that depts are not willing to solve this problem.

In New Ro the lights went out about 4 something in the afternoon. We had many stuck elevator calls immediately and did scores of service calls thru the night. All available rigs were manned and units drove around in their district with all warning lights on to reassure the citizens and be a beacon for those needing help and having no phone service, all cell phones were out and cordless home phones died after a short period. ALL WENT WELL UNTIL ABOUT 500 AM with the sun coming up we had a train crash and a good structure fire at the exact same time.
The train was a diesel train crashed in to a stalled commuter train occupied by railroad workers, mucho injured.
I think we did pretty good with no time to prepare. Certainly so close to 9/11/01 we were anoxious until we heard it was the whole east coast

Keep rende out of the drivers seat!

Very early response to the World Trade Center, nothing will ever compare to that

The article cited in Fire Engineering was written by Billy Fitz of Yonkers and mistakenly credited to Doc Kiernan of New Rochelle by the magazine editors. Billy did a great job on that article .Which proves very informative

just had 4 guys from Detroit Fd in last week not a lot of surround and drown, more like 3 - 5 fires a shift and get your ass kicked. And for no money, and now no city pension. More like a 401-k. Shame what the city has done to that dept. And you don't try to be a firefighter for a couple of years, it isn't like buying a car to see if you like it.

The question is why in Westchester do we throw so few?

From the dispatch persepective I have always wondered why we send agencies to other agencie's calls. In my dispatch center a call for a structure fire automatically goes to both the police and fire dispatchers. By the very nature of police being out on patrol and fire waiting in a station for a call, it is almost impossible for the police to not arrive first. I often ask this question, why are we sending the police. Most often I get the nebulous answer that they might be needed. By this theory we should send police, fire and EMS on all calls because they might be needed. Do we send EMS on all buglaries because someone might have cut themselves on a broken window? I have been criticized for not sending the dive team to a car partially in the water with the driver standing looking at it, based on the idea that there might have been a body in the trunk. If that were really a concern then fire should be responding to all abandoned cars for the same reason.
Now there are concerns that the police need to deal with at many fire scenes, but none are critical enough that we need to send them well before we have alerted the fire department. THe old joke about the first car having to get there in time to block the hydrant is only sometimes a joke, but I was on a call once where one of our guys had to get out of the tower ladder and move the unattended police car at the end of the block, because the officer parked it across the street then walked up to look at the fire. I get that there are sometimes traffic concerns and there are even times when fires become crime scenes, but I also think that we are sometimes putting our responders in a no win situation by sending them unequiped for the situation.
The example of the police officer on scene when a civilian brigns out a victim needing CPR is one thing. But the public expects all responders to just do something. They do not understand why that police officer is not running in and trying to rescue all those people. This has lead to a culture where we have trained police officers to disregard their own safety. Why do firefighters wear turnout gear? Because years of science have told us it is the best way not to get burned. Why do police run into burning buildings? Because the fire department was not there yet. To this I will ask why were the police there? As a dispatcher I can wait a few seconds for the fire department to be alerted before sending the police to a call where their main function will be support, especially in a world where most fire responses are under 5 minutes.

Truckies VS. Engine....
I can beat you all on this one, I happen to go both ways...
Your not a fireman until you are an "Iron Man Firefighter" and have to do both jobs at a moments notice.
Stay Safe out there...(truckies)...

The Horses s*** in the Station cause the Truckies never left quarters and the only time they shut the door after the Engine goes out for EMS is if it's before 11pm! It's all good though buddy!