Tickfighter

no your not roberts.

Called him right out!

I think it's great that the PFD still honors these brave souls after almost a century has gone by

No it's the fact that people are tired of listening to naysayers. Nobody knows the response time of any department no matter staffed 24/7 or not to any incident. Shhh it happens. How fast can you make it up to northern Westchester at rush hour? You won't know until you try. I for one hope we never have to see you try. Help yourselves, help others, do whatever you want to do. You might be nice people but you are here for one reason in this thread, to cast doubt. Casting doubt in this biz can kill someone and if that happens I hope you can look yourself in the mirror.

Again Congrats to the TEAM. Thank you and stay safe.

Note: a number of additional FD's were asked to participate including: Lake Mohegan [of which 10 members were trained], Yorktown & Somers, also the leadership of the technical rescue team was invited to participate, but the "leadership" did not even advise the "members" of this offer.

The reasons given for not joining included: "training standards to high" and "we want to be incharge"(which included "I want the county to give me a response vehicle as the team chief").

Your post has 2 flaws in it and helps highlight the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness of volunteer "management" in combo departments.

To cast doubt or to look at something realistically instead of through the volunteer rose colored glasses?

Actually most departments with a CAD and that use the RMS system know their response times, I'm willing to venture the ones that don't know their response times or know it and as I pointed out look at it through their rose colored glasses are also the ones who don't get out on their first hit.

I don't see what our point is about traffic. The Greenburgh team is about the same distance as the truck (unstaffed) sitting in Valhalla. How much time is it going to take for people to come in from all over in their POV's?

If it wasn't for the control issue you would have had a team to cover the northern Westchester region. Everything was moving along well until not just the training standards came up, but the department "managers" of Mohegan and Peekskill were told that the career staff would be involved and that's where the gears came to a grinding halt. So tell me about "helping people" there, because in combo departments with volunteer "management" it all about service right? That is where you are correct when you say "help yourselves" in your post mcfuzz. God forbid if everyone in what is supposed to be a "department" operated together, especially your best trained and often best experienced personnel. But its all about "service."

Maybe, the members of the Paid depts, who see this as a threat to them, ( why else would they complain so much ? ), should step up to the plate, with all their experience, and join the team .. Help out your county, your friends and famlies and make this team the best, " WE " can offer the People of Westchester County ... this way, if it was ever to be called into a paid dept, or any other County, they would know the help coming would be able to assist them... or are they only willing to help those in need when they are being paid for it ?

A threat? LOL. I doubt it...we all know who views who as a threat...so lets not go there.

I don't know how it works, but can you tell me why a volunteer has charge over a career firefighter in the first place? Who has more training, who is at EVERY CALL? I'm just asking so don't be mad.

Interesting that these posts were deleted, being that they were in response to a question that someone asked in relation to promotions for the Career staff. This happens in alot of the topics posted on here and remains posted, not deleted. Maybe you should let people read the posts, especially when they do relate to the topic at hand and let the truth be read, instead of trying to hide it.

I answered a question and was deleted too.Maybe I was to close to the truth or not the answer they wanted to hear.I'm still new to the site but I GUESS IT'S WHO YOU KNOW...

MOD Note: Unnecessary comment and off topic post deleted by jack

You have a good point, but historically people don't normally sign up to volunteer to plow streets, pick-up trash or clean schools, however there is a long history of citizens volunteering to fight fires as it's an immediate life/property hazard. Afterall--as I'm sure you'll agree--the fire service was initially founded by volunteers!

People can't volunteer to do these things because it would interfere with the municipal services unions. They protect their jobs just as fire unions protect their jobs. And as history will show, all of these jobs were once done for free, and eventually didn't have enough people volunteering to do the jobs. Hence the reason for the labor unions, and fire unions, to guarantee the services, not hope for them.

The heck with that pink elephant in the middle of the room! God forbid municipalities do something to better its people, they might step on someones toes or hurt their pride! Better hope the call for the automatic alarm that noone shows up to isn't a worker and a home is lost or worse someones life, because they can't change what happened- but they could have done something to prevent it. You can't go on the premise that "they will come if its a fire", its just ignorant.

Fifteen out of 250 are active firefighters? That's 6% of their membership who are active firefighters!

What a pathetic display of a dept. And as someone asked if it could happen here, I would think that municipalities would take a better look at their fire dept's, and how many "firefighters" they really have, and where the money goes If you want a social club then have one, don't try and hide as a fire company. Alcohol has its place, and its not at a fire or any other job.

I'll state that I know next to nothing in regards to trunked radios vs. the conventional kind, but communications seem so much clearer and more reliable whenever I use the trunking system. I don't know why department hasn't adopted it.

LOL. From what I hear they don't even have an understanding of the radio system they have been using for nearly 10 years now. Do you guys even know what a fireground channel is there? You have to understand how it works and its benefits before even thinking of the above. Remember if you don't know anything about it, then it must not work.

They should give it to the fire department so the person on the BLS engine can either complete the crew when they only get a driver or go get the ambulance when no one signs on after 11pm.

Yes a consultant was hired, Charles Jennings, I believe was his name, to look at exactly all of that. He looked at response times based on the different locations proposed, the companies that are now within those areas, etc..... he gave a detailed presentation to the Mayor & Council and then also gave a public presentation at a recent common council meeting. The downtown area did fit within a 3 minute response accoding to his diagrams. I believe this gentleman has performed the same service for Seattle and several other large cities around the country. He lives in Peekskill currently.

And the committee( Volunteer & Career together) did take into consideration what this department may look like in 20 years, with additional career staffing and probable females amongst them. We also looked at what additional equipment may be added, maybe a second ladder or ambulance should the FD take over EMS from the VAC somewhere in the far future, which led to additional staffing thoughts for the ambulance. The career staffing quarters were oversized, as was their locker area just for that reason.

Did this survey say anything about ISO? And wasen't it more so to determine a proper location for the central firehouse?

Pretty funny how rumor has it that the building was offered to company members for 1 dollar back when they moved the engine out of there and nobody had any interest in it at all. Now all of a sudden there is a slew of people that want to save the building they had no interest in years ago. And most of them aren't even firefighters. Now the city and state are going to waste all kinds of money on saving it. Then the taxpayers are gonna foot the bill to maintain it! Sounds great to me..........

I think Raz has said it best! If you can hold someone accountable then people take things alot more serious.Who better to do the job then someone who is there monday to friday,and gets paid to do so.Then you know things would get accomplished,because if they didn't then their job/career would be in jeopardy.And in this situation you would be ensuring professionalism,which is how it should be across the board.Good job Raz!

It helps tremendously to understand how your radio system works. Repeaters should not be used for fireground operations unless it is extremely critical due to issues like high rise's. Line of sight simplex is the best for most operations. We've had a repeater for nearly 8 years now and still can't get the "management" to understand its operation. First to criticize about it...last to want to understand how it works. Then again isn't that the management style many of us are subjected to...."if I don't understand it, or don't know anything about it..its terrible or doesn't work or won't work here. If I don't agree with it or it doesn't fit into my philosophy I'll ignore it...or blame the union.

I'm all for understanding justifying the need for a boat. But half a million for a new boat? And there are those that say that having career staff is too expensive. Gonna get a lot more for a half million's worth of staff then the half dozen times a year you'll need a boat.