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Yes, this is absurd. But really, it shouldn't be about unions or representation. The overwhelming majority of firefighters/EMS are not members of a union, nor are our military. This is about what kind of country we have become. A country searching for loopholes to avoid responsibility, that can't distinguish right from wrong, knows no ethics, adheres to no moral code. I don't know how all these things work, I just think if you lose your life in the service of your country or community, your surviving spouse should receive your paycheck and benefits, adjusted as if you remained on the job, until he or she re-marries or takes on a permanent significant other. And, that's in addition to whatever lump sums are provided as the initial death benefit. Same for all the military coming home missing limbs and minds. The cost of caring for these people can't be more than a rounding off of a line on a budget. Some gave some, some gave all, and they or their survivors should be compensated properly. Thank God for programs like 'Wounded Warrier Project' and the generosity of the public. But we shouldn't need these and similar programs in this country. We should take care of those who served without reservation for as long as needed. That we need these programs is a disgrace and a national embarrassment.

In over 30 years there are so many. - Drowning, pool was like milk, couldn't see anything in the water, started a grid search. On second pass swan right into victim, scared the sh_t out me. Got him to surface. DOA w/broken neck. - Victim cut in half by train, half the body facing one direction the other half the opposite direction. - Working to extricate two accident victims from an overturned car with my brother as it starts burning and hoping the engine arrives quickly. - A deliberate hit and run at a bar, the victim had visible tire tracks across his body like you see in the cartoons. He had minor injuries. - Advancing a line and having the ceiling cave in with me on one side and the rest of the team on the other. - An EMS call to a seemingly normal, well cared for house with a BMW in the driveway, met by a stylishly dressed woman only to find it like an episode of hoarders on the inside. - The actual and attempted suicides by drugs, guns, stabbing and hanging. - The EMS call for a young man with an orifice impaled by a boat oar when he fell from the step ladder he was on while 'utilizing' the oar. - Having to wrestle down a doctor with the police who became an EDP when he missed his meds for a condition no one knew he had. He cursed and fired all his staff on the way out. When we got to the hospital there were scores waiting to help him. - While at work, alerting the residents of a triple decker apartment house and carrying out a child as fire raced up the back staircase, going back to try to access an apartment with a potential victim, fire too advanced, she wasn't home. - Responding while on the rear step. - SCBA for only a few. - Getting one of the first Hurst tools in the County. - Being there as my nephews came in and up in the ranks. - Being in the station when a distraught and lost deaf woman came in for help. We calmed her down and had one of the guys lead her back to her house. - Lots more, you forget more than you remember, but over the years you've helped a lot of people, most you didn't know which makes it all the better. I once told the nephews, we're a small town, but be here long enough and you'll see just about everything, and I have. There is no better calling

According to the story, once the call was upgraded an engine was dispatched. There are response protocols in place and just because she is the council leader you don't get to jump the line. By the time she finished calling everyone she could and throwing her inflated position around, there was a surplus or resources tied up for a fainting. Not a heart attack, stroke, seizures, etc, a fainting. She is a fine example of what is wrong with the political class today.

Quinn is like all the other politicians. They feel they are special and therefore deserve special treatment not accorded the masses. Yea, why not put her in the SUV and drive her to the hospital yourself? How hard was that to figure out. Did they really need to tie up a paramedic ambulance for a fainting? Though I have moved South, I still get my NY Post every day. I look forward to reading the forthcoming stories of the decline of NYC post Bloomberg and Kelly. The inmates will be running the asylum come January and it won't be long before they undo everything accomplished by Giuliani and Bloomberg. Public Safety wise anyway. Between the criminals in Albany and the clueless in NYC, by the time they finish accommodating all their personal and special interests the tax rates necessary to pay for it all will be simply staggering.

This will be the one to follow. The appointed administrator for the City seems to have the right stuff to address the serious problems in Detroit without letting the politics get in the way. I am betting that his first priority will be in strengthening the Citys' basic services like police, fire, teachers, sanitation, etc., get them on firm footing and then address the pension issues that have crippled the City. There simply are not enough people, properties and businesses left in Detroit that are capable of paying enough in taxes to fund both current necessary services and the pension and benefits of those who have served the City and retired. I am sure there are still people receiving benefits who worked in Detroit during its' renaissance period ( think Renaissance Center ) when it was thriving. But for the last few decades its been all down hill and now there is not enough money to continue to pay them and sufficient numbers of existing and new workers to make the City function. I'm not advocating throwing anyone under the bus, I'm just saying it will be very interesting to see how they deal with all of this because as was previously stated, this will be the model on which many other Cities will rely on to address their own looming fiscal cliffs.

Retirement? Don't you have to have worked in order to retire? It will seem a little less like home monitoring 60 and not hearing the familiar voice of 607.

While maybe not much was happening in York, not regularly a hotbed of criminal activity, I do empathize with the firefighter. My Cairns New Yorker was stolen years ago and while I have had many other helmets, that one in particular was with me at some of my most memorable fires. I would have preferred to have it on my shelf when I stopped answering the alarms.

When it's all completed and delivered, what is the final cost for a custom apparatus such as this?

It's rarely about what the department needs, its more about what certain members want. Somehow I don't think this story has anything to do with height or reach regardless of her naive comment.

Personally I find it comforting to know that Canadians are as willing to dodge responsibility as are Americans. There, like here, the first thing to do after a screw up is to find someone else to blame for it.

When I joined up almost 40 years ago, the physical amounted to 'turn your head and cough'. Today its a full on physical less x-rays. Things have progressed in a positive way. Maybe there could be a simple, yet probing, multiple choice type personality profile questionnaire that would provide some insight into the person and which outcome could be scored against known arsonists to give some idea of the persons propensity to commit an arson crime. If, of course, it doesn't violate someone's rights or some other politically correct nonsense. Maybe the fire service could get Dr. Neil Clark Warren to work up a profile to use.

What were you doing out at 1:00 am on a school night.

I wonder if insurance has anything to do with it. Fewer sprained ankles walking down the stairs. The response protocols these days seem to consist of 'hurry up and slow down' so what's the rush from bunk to apparatus bay?

Their protest location would be a nice location for a chemical retardant drop from a air tanker.

That is one ugly building. The stapler analogy is spot on.

I have to laugh at the new logo in that it claims Public Safety * Public Trust. I guess we're supposed to place our trust in the agencies of government instead of God, whomever you believe that to be. That they have to claim it within their logo shows just how much there is a lack of it in the perception of the public.

Wouldn't it be nice if maybe some day the proper size crew was able to respond sooner rather than later for all incidents. I doubt it though. Certainly not anytime soon, if ever. I don't think there will ever be enough money to do it right so it will always and forever be do the best you can with what you have, adjust your SOP's accordingly and everyone will just have to accept the outcome because there is only so much money to go around and more and more programs that want it. There doesn't seem to be the same priority placed on police and fire service lately, not like there used to be anyway. You can do all the studies you want, but in the end you are more likely to lose a team member to balance the budget rather than gain one to achieve optimum crew size.

For all the reasons IzzyEng4 mentions and more, I always found a hard booster line a convenience as much as an asset. Then I left for a few years and when I came back the new engine no longer had a hard booster reel, it had a reel with 600 feet of forestry hose that snags on every twig it meets. I miss the hard booster reel.

I have to say that I was pleased to be involved in the fire service long enough to see a major shift, generally, in attitudes about drinking at the firehouse. When I joined in the early seventies there was a bar in the firehouse and it was quite popular and unfortunately in one case quite fatal after an individual left in his POV and mowed down two residents. After a parade the beer pit was always the popular spot, as it is today, but less beer soaked it would seem. Before I 'retired' I was able as a fire council member to vote to shut the bar down once and for all and most people seemed to be drinking more water than beer after the parades. The driver of our apparatus would never think of driving after a drink, nor would any of us let someone who had. I was an Assistant Chief when I was twenty, but that was a college department so we were all that young and I had been involved at home with one ambulance corp and another fire deptartment for three years, so I was 'experienced'. I don't know what training this young Chief has had, but regardless, he missed the lesson that you don't drink when you are underage, representing your department and certainly not when you are operating it's apparatus or directing it's personnel. They may have membership issues requiring the need for such a young officer, but if he is not set down for this incident, I would think their issues go well beyond those of membership.

No. Don't know of any specific studies, I am just assuming that there are industry recommendations regarding minimum staffing and apparatus needed to accommodate area, population and call volume. Obviously responses of pesonnel and equipment may vary, but my point was meant to be that this it 2013, we waste so much money on frivolities that it shouldn't be so difficult to provide minimum levels of emergency response to all our citizens, if it takes a while to get there because you live in outer Oshkosh, so be it, but there should be a level of confidence in the public that someone will come to their aid, and not be told to call back tomorrow when someon might be on duty. I remember the old TV movie in the 70's "Pine Canyon is Burning" . Out in the sticks California, Kent McCord (Adam-12) played a fire Captain who was the sole firefighter 27/7 living in a remote station with his family and responding to any calls in his huge response district and backed up by a 'regular' station that was about 20 mile away. It may have taken him a long time to get there, but at least someone was on the way to help when called. Of course regulations probably prohibit a single person response today. I guess its a matter of priorities and despite all the money thrown around after 911 we still seem to be stifling the basic needs of our emergency people.

I am sure I am going to be terribly naive, but here goes anyway. I have always thought that one of Governments primary functions was to provide for the general well being of its citizenry through some very basic services like education, public works, fire and police. There are enough studies out there as to what constitutes the minimum staffing levels for these functions in relation to the size of the population being serviced. So on a Statewide basis, compute the cost of providing the basic level of service for each of these necessary functions and dedicate and adjust a portion of the State's sales tax to cover it. Every person in the State or travelling withing the State from outside will be contributing to offset the cost of the basic services necessary to the citizenry as a whole. Nobody wants to pay more taxes and lately we are seeing just how wasteful our tax money is spent. But it is easy enough to calculate the minumum level of basic service and figure out how to pay for it and spread the cost equitably. Its great to pay low taxes until you need the cop, the medic or the firefighter yourself and there isn't anybody to show up.

Been there, done that. When I was young and not always using my main brain to do the thinking I went into a tree to bring down a cat for a very fetching co-ed. We did not have a ladder truck so I went as far as our extension ladder permitted and then it was a free climb. I went far beyond my comfort level but was ultimately succussful in reaching the cat and bringing it down. A job, unnessecary, but well done was my only reward.

Some of the volunteer departments are fortunate enough to have some adjacent property that would be large enough for a gathering. Perhaps a get together could take place at one of the firehouses if the local gov't doesn't restrict it and if the paid guys don't mind a function at a voly house, ha ha. Otherwise the County might have a park with an area that could be reserved for a specific function (like the big one in Lewisboro) since it would attract many FD members from around the County. What about utilizing space at the Training Center on a Sunday?

I just relocated to the Ocala area having been in Palm Beach County. Everything up here is E-One as the factory is in Ocala. I plan to stop by some time and see if they give tours. I saw a Quantum pumper before moving that Palm Beach (City) purchased and it was very impressive. They had just started to switch over to the Chicago black over red paint scheme from their prior piss green/yellow.

There have been a number of these Aerialscope refurbish and re-mounts. Taking a 1986 tower, refurbishing it an mating it with a new Quantum could not be cheap. My department was all mack until the last one in 1978 which was recently replaced by a Seagrave, the one before that by a Pierce. Why did Mack get out of the business and why doesn't anyone offer a new version of the Aerialscope. You would think that just the business from FDNY would have been sufficent to keep the division in operation. I must have missed the memo all those years ago when I was away from firematics for several years. .