JohnnyOV

Absolutely heart crushing video... http://statter911.com/2011/12/19/firefighter-in-flames-bails-out-of-brooklyn-brownstone-five-from-fdny-injured-in-crown-heights-fire/

Speedy recovery to the injured firefighters.

There was an Officer of Daytona Beach Fire Rescue who was also of the shorter stature (not sure if it was actual dwarfism or another medical issue) but he was well respected by the guys on his job. Biggest thing is if you can do the job well, you can do the job. Someone's smaller physical size does not directly retract from the capabilities of them physically performing the job well. Hell, there are even amputees who are using prosthetic limbs while OTB.

http://www.time.com/time/

Looks like the police can now have to worry about more people who think the "cool thing to do" is to protest everything since Time decided to put a Protester above any other individual in the entire world.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the protests of governments who torture their people, and protesters who actual fight for a legitimate cause that benefits the masses, but I can see this backfiring in the Untied States face and more "OWS's" popping up everywhere. Stay safe to the brothers in Blue.

Holy wheelbase Batman

Looks like, as I'm sure most of us assumed, that the Police were totally justified in the use of pepper spraying the protesters, and gave them ample warning to vacate the area they were "occupying" before the use of force was applied. Video is about 15 minutes long, but it's worth it to watch it all.

Cadpage would be awesome for the iphone....

Agreed, I looked into it, but their licencing agreement will not allow them to make the move to the iPhone.

If you're considering a Droid over an iPhone just for the use of CADPage........ . I just got the iPhone less then a month ago and absolutely love it. Best device I've ever purchased. Guys who just bought the droid I know, really wish they went with the iPhone instead.

Remember that story from a year ago about the TN department that watched a home burn, well it happened again and the community is up in arms about it again....

http://www.wpsdlocal...-135069773.html

The way the law is written seems pretty simple to me, and I've only briefly read up on TN's law. You have two different tax agencies, the city of South Fulton, and the unincorporated county tax regions. The City of South Fulton has a fire tax associated with it, and it's residents are required to pay. This ensures adequate fire protection for the city limits, and ensures a prompt and guaranteed effort to extinguish the fire. The unincorporated areas of the county (meaning they do not fall under any town or city limit lines) have 0 fire tax to pay. There are no fire departments, or other services in that area, unless there is a specific county tax for that service. People choose to live there because it is considerably cheaper, but do so knowing that many of the services the cities and towns have, they will not receive. As strictly a courtesy, the City of South Fulton has put a program in place, that for a nominal fee of $75 a year ($6.25 a month [less then a 6 pack of your finest canned beverage]) your home will be protected under their fire department. The department has no legal responsibility to respond or provide any type of service otherwise. Apparently, however, if there is a severe life safety issue of someone trapped, they will actually attempt rescue and suppression.

The people down there know about the fee, but feel that fire protection is a right, and not a privilege. Not being from the area, and never having to deal with this, I'm not sure how I feel about the entire situation.

On the one hand, it simply comes down to fire protection being a service. Service costs money, and that money is needed to be collected somehow. If you fight just one fire where the property owner didn't pay, it sets a precedent for the other owners of "Well if Mr. Jones didn't pay and still received the service, why should my family pay if they're still going to come out and do it for free? Sure you can suggest an "after service fee" of some amount that would cover costs, but if a homeowner isn't willing, or is unable to pay $75 a year, why / how would they then pay to cover the more exorbitant amount?

On the other hand, I signed up to perform a service to my community, and those who truly need help. It's what I enjoy doing, and want to be able to ensure the trust of those who we protect. I have serious doubts if I could respond to someone's home burning, and not set up something that at least gave the appearance we were doing anything to assist the situation. Luckily we're never going to have to deal with this in our county, and it's quite clear who gets fire protection... everyone. I understand why most of the people are upset at the situation, you dial 911 and expect someone to arrive and help you, and it is a real disheartening feeling when they arrive and only standby and watch.

I have to lean more towards my original thought though. These people knew, which was clearly stated in the article, about the service fee and refused to pay it. TECHNICALLY speaking, this home fell out of the jurisdiction of South Fulton, and is not part of their community, but what really makes a community? Town lines, common factors among people, school rivalries, fire tax lines?

Obviously I'm torn between the two lines, hence my wishy/washy last paragraph. I have no right answer on the situation.

What's your take on it?

Edit: POLL UP... Thanks Mods

He was trying to write this article for months. He was calling me and I was calling him and we couldn't sync up. I need to pick up a copy and check it out.

You would think that being he is the brother of a firemen in one of the departments, he would have had an easier time contacting someone....

I'll be picking up a copy later as well.

I honestly read this as "How do we get rid of Eggo's in the fire service"... (I need to get out of my office more often.)

Simple, don't shop in the frozen food aisle.

The positives of EMS?..... lets see.

There are a whole bunch of positive items that are referenced in EKG's, the influx of positive ions NA+ and CA++ cause the depolarization of the heart, causing it to contract and beat. The hexaxial reference system refers to half of the orientations as positive, and the left side of the body is referenced as positive when placing the leads.

When the diaphragm relaxes, it places positive pressure inside the lung cavity forcing exhalation. When ventilating a patient, your forcing positive pressure air into their lungs.

...I could go on for days

It has happened where a VFD member moved a PD Veh and the VFD member came very close to being arrested.

Obviously there is a difference if the RMP needs to be moved, the Officer is tied up doing something, the FD guy asks for permission and the cop grants it, and the Fd guy just getting in and moving it without permission. I'm guessing the latter of the two occurred, which I could see your thought process of almost arresting the guy stemming from.

I have always believed that people and especially volunteers rise to the challenges demanded of them. Maryland has become the gold standard of volunteer fire service because they demanded that members be available in house and be well trained. There is no reason why it takes 150 BLS units to cover Westchester. An actively staffed volunteer system supplemented by paid personnel is absolutely viable. In my experience the only thing more cancerous to volunteer response than BS runs is no runs. Shrink the number of units and make them all busier and you will have volunteers jumping at the chance to give a few hours where they actually get to put in some work.

However, some agencies who run 1200+ runs a year in their first due alone, are relying on 5 people to take in 90% of the runs. Sure 60% are BS runs, but if you reduce the amount of ambulances they have, 1/2 or more now get transferred to other agencies responding to BS runs. They get burnt out and it sometimes turns them into miserable people to work with. It's no fault of their own, just the situation that they've been dealt with and choose to stick with. No one wants to volunteer their time hundreds of times a year, to take 1.5 hours out of their busy lives, when they're not on duty, to respond to someone who's stubbed their toe.

No matter how you look at it, less people think about the community as a whole, and are more in tune with themselves over others. It doesn't matter if you do 500 "awesome" ems calls and 5 bs calls throughout a year, or 500 bs calls, and 1 awesome ems call a year, people just don't want to volunteer their time anymore. The ONLY reason that places like PG county work with the live in system, is because there are multiple LARGE universities around to support a live in program for students who want free room and board. There is nothing like that around here, with the added amount of "exciting" runs.

I couldn't get through reading the first page when this jumped out at me....

If proactive steps are not taken to improve service delivery, there will be an unnecessary loss of life event or an inadequately managed isolated emergency (e.g., mass casualty event) that will create community scrutiny and dissatisfaction leading to forced change.

Just wait for any large scale incident... see medium / large aircraft down on final approach or immediately after takeoff coming out of HPN on the northern area... and all hell is going to break loose, both during the accident, as well as afterwords with the post-accident review, as well as the communities view on how unprepared we really are. It's disgraceful.

In my opinion they are different. In your example, the victims didn't create the underlying emergency. They only made an arguable unwise decision to reenter a burning building. In the Croton incident, these victims knowingly choose to put themselves in a precarious position, completely unnecessarily. Again, as no hard and fast rules apply, we can only discuss opinions on these matters, but in my personal opinion, those two scenarios are in fact different. To equate returning to building to try to save people/pets/cherished belongings seems very different to looking for the next thrill.

I see your point of view, and while the reasoning for entering the situation are different, both parties need rescuing. Taxes pay for costs associated with the rescues. The equipment has already been purchased, the insurance is already paid for, the crews have already been trained. All of that sits idle on the tax payers dime, whether it is used or not. Everything is already paid for. Insurance can pick up the cost of the damaged equipment.

I'm not advocating billing victims in general, but I also feel like there is a fairly obvious line. Whitewater rafting during such a monumental storm, for me personally, is a considerable foreseeable danger.

Same with running back into a burning building for anything, which people do. Should they be billed if we then have to pull them out as well? Both made it out of the "initial storm" alive, but chose to do something dangerous and life threatening to themselves, in return for another type of reward.

We all pay taxes which supply our emergency services units the opportunity to be ready to respond to these types of incidents. That money would otherwise be sitting idle in a garage or on a helipad.

from 23 CFR 634:

Workers means people on foot whose

duties place them within the right-ofway

of a Federal-aid highway, such as

highway construction and maintenance

forces, survey crews, utility crews, responders

to incidents within the highway

right-of-way, and law enforcement

personnel when directing traffic, investigating

crashes, and handling lane closures,

obstructed roadways, and disasters

within the right-of-way of a Federal-

aid highway.

http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2008/aprqtr/pdf/23cfr634.1.pdf

Normal traffic stops and criminal investigations do not fall under this.

I'll let you know if i see it around, and maybe ask some of the locals what the plan is. (I live in Volusia)

It looks that Volusia County Fire Services, which provides fire protection for the unincorporated areas of the county, is starting to transport patients now? Back when I lived down there, EVAC (a private company, not a VAC in any of the sense) was the sole EMS Transport provider for the entire county (with the exception of the International Speedway). I know in May that the county counsel decided to absorb EVAC into a county run department since they were already subsidizing them almost $1.5M a year for unpaid medicare costs. There has also been a huge push for Fire based transport in the recent years, but I haven't heard anything coming to fruition. I'm sure the city departments who are huge proponents of the FD based EMS (and have been denied time and time again the ability to transport), are going to, or are already having a field day with this.

Google for it, .ppt is the file extension, you be amazed is what out there for free.

10 seconds of search...

http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/canutec/guide-training_ppt-229.htm

So does this mean that for every wires down call a circle of caution tape, spanning 2 telephone poles, needs to be secured?

This is simple physics, and a dumb idea. The point at which your center of gravity passes over the moment (the feet of the ladder acting as the pivot point) the object is going to tip in that direction. Any idiot could have realized this, and these guys obviously are mo-rons.

If this were to be bought by a company, and an employee were to actually violently fall off the ladder, it would have never stood a chance of holding him up. The momentum of the employee would pendulum swing him out and away from the moment, causing the ladder to fall even harder then it did in the video. Although, it would probably be a little bit softer then just free falling to the ground.

A majority of ladder accidents come from over extending the person out and away from the moment of the ladder. This device is completely useless since it works best in a vertical fall, directly down the center of the ladder, and not to the side.

Beer Response Team.

Oh thank god, for a second I thought we were going to have to bring it ourselves...

BRT = Big red truck?

There is a Dept in Northern Westchester that has given out over 50 portable radios so they can call on scene. Yes somebody is on scene. No they cannot do anything but call on scene. I do believe that this is slanting the RESPONSE TIMES.

Lemme guess.... they all sign on responding too

How few Firefighters can you get away with? What is the minimum number that should be on every response?

For those who have never seen it before (either in class, or out on the streets....)

edit: this is just for arrival on the initial alarm... not for a full operation

Even when dealt with a massive county wide emergency such as this weekend, you are always calm cool and collected on the radio. I personally would like to say thank you for making this storm run as smoothly as possible, even with the upwards of 120 backlogged calls you received on Saturday and the numerous working fires you were handling at any given time.

So, thanks guys... Be on the look out for a gift basket this winter