FireMedic049

Part of the reason that the aviation industry has high standards is linked to the survival of their industry. Anytime a commercial jet crashes, there's typically significant casualties and likely causes at least some people to think twice about traveling by air. If a particular airline has a series of crashes over a short period of time, I'm sure it'll have an impact on airline choice by consumers as they'd likely choose an airline with a better safety record. Additionally, for the most part, there's alternative modes of transportation available if a person doesn't want to fly. As a result, they have a vested interest in making things as safe as possible because ultimately it affects their bottom line. The fire service on the other hand has a captive customer base, a service monopoly and therefore little external motivation to improve. There may not be a formal show titled "Firefighting Disasters", but there's certainly not a shortage of firefighting disaster videos out there.

The short answer to these questions is yes, yes we can. The more important question is will we do it? Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure the answer to that is at best, maybe. I think there are probably some departments out there that are already applying at least some of it, but I know the vast majority of departments in my area (volunteer & primarily volunteer combination) won't even consider it. It's hard enough getting them to follow the best practices of our industry, let alone another.

I believe "all hands" is only used in reference to fires.

Exactly. In my area, one of the local TV stations did a multi-part story about fire response in the metro area (multi-county) last year. There's only a handful or so of fully paid departments, a number of combination (mostly volunteer) departments and the vast majority are all volunteer. The story covered things like response times, scratching calls, lack of manpower, mutual aid choices, mandatory training, funding and a number of other things. Overall, the stories were met with very vocal disapproval from the volunteer side who were very defensive and labeled it as bashing them. IMO, there were some flaws in the story, some things needed more explanation to better understand the information and there was a little of the typical sensationalism mixed in, but overall it was a fair report. However, each topic that they covered IS an actual problem in our area and the volunteers didn't help themselves out by refusing to comment on incidents that they were directly involved in or tried to not answer some questions. The response from the volunteers, aside from calling for a boycott of and protest at the news station before the first segment actually aired, was pretty much, the reporter doesn't know what he's talking about, there is no problem and people shouldn't comment unless they join their local VFD. Ironically, in the middle of this, there was a working fire in a mid-rise apartment building (6-7 stories) in a community served by 3 independent VFDs, early evening on a weekend if I'm not mistaken. All 3 companies were due on the call along with a Tower from a neighboring community and possibly 1 other mutual aid company. The Tower is the 2nd due truck to this location and the most distant unit from the scene (about 10 minutes depending on traffic). The Tower arrived as the first unit on scene by several minutes, in part because they have live-ins and other members at the station almost all of the time. This is not an unusual thing to occur. The Tower's Fire Chief took command of the incident as no one else was there yet and stayed the IC thru pretty much the whole incident. The first due company (no more than a mile away, if that) arrived late enough that they were parked out by other apparatus. They had to park on the main road running past the building rather than being in front or in the rear of the building since other apparatus were already there. Of course, there was a lot of patting each other on the back online after the incident about how great a job they all did, but no realization that they failed to live up to the expectations of their community. Instead of taking advantage of the opportunity presented to them, acknowledging that the things covered are in deed problems and going to their community and leaders and saying this is what we need to better serve the community, whether it be direct financial support or admin help, recruiting help, career staff, etc. Instead of using the news stories and the media in general to get their message out there so people know they need help, they chose to "punish" the reporter and station by snubbing them. Instead of using the situation to try to shift more of the funding burden off constant fundraising by the volunteers themselves and onto the citizens they serve via a fire tax or increasing an existing one, they squandered it. We're a year plus past the stories and the only thing we have to really show for it is occasional snide comments on internet making reference to that news station and how they hate volunteers.

You and I might ask those questions and demand answers, but we are looking at this from an informed perspective based on our years of fire service experience. Most of our citizens do not have that experience to draw from when assessing performance of their local fire department. It's basically a real world example of Pavlov's theory in action. The citizens have been conditioned over time that when a fire occurs, the fire department shows up at some point relatively soon afterwards, squirts some water at it, the house is a loss, everybody goes back to the fire station to pat themselves on the back about how great of a job they did and the public praises the FD for their efforts (since the whole block didn't burn down I guess). The community has been conditioned to expect that when a fire breaks out, the building will burn down and stopping it short of that is the exception rather than the rule. It's not really their fault because they don't really know the results could be different. I've had the opportunity to observe numerous FDs in action (primarily VFDs) while working on the ambulance over the years. I've witnessed many R&C fires that gutted the whole house because of the FDs actions. I've witnessed some fires that despite the FD's best efforts, the fire still went out. The public simply has no concept of what a "good job" actually is. The incident I described above is a prime example of this. The post incident focus was on the water supply problem being the reason most of the building burned down, but the FD's shortcomings/initial actions/decisions all played a role in the fire getting as big as it did. I've used this analogy a number of times regarding this and it applies regardless of the type of department, hamburgers can be pretty tasty, curb your hunger and leave you feeling satisfied, but if you've never tasted a quality steak, then you don't know how much better that steak can be compared to the hamburger. Once you know, that hamburger may not be as satisfying as it once was.

Right, but there are situations in which it is appropriate for the engine to park in front of the building and this would be one of them. Additionally, the goal of that "standard policy" is to not block the truck from being able to park in front. In this situation, it appears to me that the engine could have taken a position at the end of the driveway to more effectively utilize the deck gun while still leaving enough room for the truck to either pull nose-to-nose with them or parallel to them and be able to operate as needed for this fire. Thus, the functional objective of the SOP is still met, but the engine has the best position for its needs too. The point of the post may have been about how long it took to begin the fight, but the lessons learned includes the how it was fought.

Yeah, most people would say that, but they also say stuff like you should always lay in and some other things that aren't always the best option. In this situation, the best place for the first engine is right in front in order to effectively utilize the deck gun to slow the progress of the fire. From the view provided, it appears that it would be very possible for the engine to take a position along the curb at the end of the driveway and still leave plenty of room for the Tower that arrived to get a good position since there aren't cars in the roadway and overhead wires don't seem to be an issue. In this case, the Tower didn't exactly take the address, so the engine wouldn't have necessarily been in the way anyway. Another possible scenario would be for the first engine to dump their tank thru the deck gun and then move forward to get out of the way for the Tower in front of the house. This is very true. I had a similar experience a couple weeks ago working my side job on the ambulance. Reported kitchen fire late morning on a weekday in a 2 story garden style apartment building. That community is served by a volunteer department. My partner and I were the first arriving unit (aside from police) 5 minutes after dispatch. At that point, I don't believe any of the VFDs alerted for the call had a unit on the road yet. Upon our arrival, there was heavy fire venting out of a 1st floor window, middle of the row. The 2nd floor window above had failed and that apartment was starting to catch and there was some light smoke from the eaves and roof vents of the common attic. I would estimate it was at least 5 minutes after we arrived until the first fire unit arrived. Which was actually the career chief of a combination department responding as the initial RIT, immediately followed by the 1st due VFD. They brought their 75' quint with 250-300 gallons of water on board rather than one of their pumpers with at least 750 gallons of water. This was important since it's well known that their water system in general is poor and known to be poor in this complex. They arrived with 4 on the quint - Assistant Chief driving with 3 FFs who aren't exactly the A team. I made the hydrant connection for them and my partner pumped their unit for the first hour or so (he was a former member of that VFD). The fire was growing, but it was still possible to get a stop on it and hold it to the apartments already affected. Well, 10 hours later as we left the scene, they had burned the roof off 2/3 of the building with significant damage to the living areas. It was only 2/3 because they managed to get most of a trench cut done on the one side before getting chased off the roof, but they also started it about 10-15 later than they should have despite having the resources to do so. They didn't even try on the other side. The poor water supply was definitely a problem, but the combination of a slow response, initial personnel not really up to the task at hand and some initial strategic/tactical decisions that could've been better, resulted in a near total loss of the building (at least 24 apartments) rather than only a few apartments. In the aftermath, the focus of the public and media was the problems with the water infrastructure and linking that to the result of the incident with no consideration about the role that response time, proficiency of the fire department and the decision making played in the result that day.

IMO, the video also shows a deficiency in the areas of training/tactics/experience. The first in suppression unit appears to be just out of view on the right hand side and appears to be an engine. The appear to park a fair bit back from the house and stretch a couple of handlines and a couple of minutes later, what appears to be a weak stream from a deck gun appears. The deck gun is doing little to help since the stream is so broken/weak by the time it gets near the house. It kind of seems like they had the right strategy, but the wrong execution. This fire was begging for the first engine to park directly in front of it and dump it's tank on the fire with the deckgun while a water supply was established and handlines stretched for protection/suppression (assuming the manpower to do that which they appear to have had in this case). While arriving quickly is certainly important, it's equally important to know what you should be doing once you get there and then do it.

A similar study was done in PA several years ago with a similarly "large savings" attributed to the volunteers. Unfortunately, the study had some significant flaws, but it is still mentioned from time to time. As I recall, some of those were....... A large part of the "savings" was in salary costs, but the way they determined and sold it was flawed. It was described as the cost to replace all of the volunteers with career personnel, but it didn't fully take into account some important factors. They essentially took the number of people on the rosters of the volunteer departments and multiplied it by a per-capita cost. So, to replace X number of volunteers with X number of career firefighters would cost Y. Anyone who knows much about the volunteer fire service in PA should be able to see the problem with that. For those unfamiliar, many VFD/VFCs over report their membership numbers. Rosters can include life members (retired volunteers), social members, associcate members and so on and not accurately reflect the true number of active members who are trained and routinely responding to calls. I've seen ones where they have 100 on the roster, but only 20-25% actually respond to calls to some extent. Additionally, we have a number of areas which have way more individual fire stations/VFCs than are necessary. For example, my department covers a small city of just over 5 sq mi with 2 stations (down from 4 in its prime) operating 4 large apparatus and 3 support type vehicles. A nearby group of 3 communities that comprise a school district collectively comes in at just under 5 sq mi. Until a year or so ago, they operated from 7 stations (6 now) with at least 14 large apparatus and 7 support vehicles. Collectively, they run less total incidents per year than we do, a percentage of which are automatic mutual aid responses outside their area. We do very little mutual aid (not by our choice). We run far more working fires in our city than they do in their collective 1st due. The study didn't really look at "right sizing" the delivery of fire services. County wide, we average 1 fire station for every 3+ sq miles. For comparison, PG MD and Fairfax VA average 10+ sq miles for every fire station. The study didn't really take into account the fact that a more regionalized approach to delivery would reduce the total number of stations & apparatus needed and also result in not needing to replace volunteers on a one for one basis. It didn't really account for other economic factors like you mentioned, insurance ratings and property loss and how they are impacted by volunteer and career delivery models. So while there clearly are savings realized with the volunteers, they aren't necessarily as large as claimed by the study for the above reasons and others.

Because many fail to see the bigger picture and context involved when Quints are introduced, particularly on a larger scale like what St. Louis and Richmond, VA did. I think there's a tendency to blame the apparatus' existence rather than the people making the decision to make cuts to the department. As I understand the St. Louis history, the decision was made to make cuts to manpower and companies due to financial needs. The Total Quint Concept (TQC) that they pioneered was born out of trying to achieve the necessary reductions without closing stations, ensuring suppression capabilities at each station continued and not severely hindering operations. I forget the exact numbers off hand, but I think they had something like 30 stations with 30 engine companies and lets say 10 truck companies. This would give them 10 double houses at the time. They needed to cut something like 6 companies. So they were looking at either closing some houses altogether or potentially having some houses with only a truck company in order to not close the house. They deployed 30 engine quints and 4 truck quints from those 30 stations. It's easy to look at the raw numbers and link quints to their loss of manpower/apparatus. However, it wasn't the quint that killed their manpower with the closing of 6 companies or whatever it was. The City did that with the decision to make the cuts. The adoption of the TQC allowed them to keep all stations open, kept a suppression capable unit in each station and provided some increased operational flexibility. Was it ideal? Probably not, but was it a workable solution for the situation? Seemed like it worked. As for the rescue engine, it seems the tendency with them is more about enhancing the engine's capability rather than replacing the Rescue Company, thus they don't have that same correlation with manpower reduction that the quint does.

Not a hypothetical. I can't put hard numbers to it, but it happens in my area at times.

Perhaps we should since some in the fire service insist on misleading the public about their department's capabilities.

It's hard to argue against the increased age cutoff itself with age related health concerns when you have guys already on the job working who are in those same age ranges and working at what is essentially the same rank and job duties. Now, the reasoning for it may be dubious, but I don't think it'll have the desired effect. The age increase may attract more minority applicants, but it'll also attract more non-minority applicants too. So the net effect may be a slightly older class of recruits rather than a more diverse class unless the process is manipulated to achieve the desired diversity.

Uhm, the headline says the Mayor was arrested, but there's nothing about it in your post. Why were the tickets thrown out?

And in many other states too.

No problem.

That's kind of what I figured. Thanks.

OK. Just wondering since the chassis is clearly a Rosenbauer and the body has a design feature that for the most part I've only seen from Rosenbauer. Plus there's the whole Spartan stopped selling chassis to Rosenbauer thing, so I doubt Rosenbauer would sell a chassis to Spartan to build a body on.

I think you misunderstood my comment. I wasn't speaking about employer initiated discipline, I was referring more to comments from the online peanut gallery. I've seen numerous comments that call for career firefighters to be fired for an inappropriate action or comment that oftentimes really isn't worthy of termination. As for your comment, typically the employee has the ability to challenge the termination via the grievance process. If the matter cannot be resolved via discussion/negotiation between the employer and the union on behalf of the employee, then the matter would go to arbitration. If the employer can't show just cause for the termination, then more than likely the employee would be reinstated by the arbitrator.

What's the Spartan part?

You've hit on what I feel is an important aspect of the career/volunteer dynamic, but is often overlooked and is a significant factor in the "conflict". There seems to be an inability among many volunteers to recognize and understand that being different doesn't necessarily mean one side is inadequate. Anytime the notion of career firefighters being "better" (by virtue of doing the job FT and the training/experience that comes with it) comes up, you typically see a defensive reaction from volunteers with claims of doing the same job and having the same training. While in some cases, individually & departmentally, this may be true, in general it isn't the case. What seems to escape these people is the understanding that I (career) can be "better" than you without you (volunteer) being inadequate. For example, say we both take a test, I score a 97 and you score a 91. Well, I clearly did "better" than you on the test, but it's also clear that you didn't do too bad either. I've come to refer to this as the "volunteer inferiority complex". I think if we could get passed this "misunderstanding", we could make real progress in reducing the animosity.

We have a similar situation where I'm at. We're the only game in our (small) city, but we are completely surrounded by VFDs. Upwards of a dozen or so independent stations in the various municipalities we share a border with in some fashion. We utilize a few of them somewhat routinely for working fires (primarily as RIT initially) and then for additional alarms. Occasionally we work together on border calls. For the most part, we're not on their initial alarms and they rarely call us for incidents. We're physically closer than most of the other companies that do get called. Their apparatus responds thru our city at times, sometimes past one of our staffed stations. We frequently listen to incidents where they're slow to respond or have working incidents were we could potentially make a difference (despite our limited staffing) because we could get there quick with experienced guys, but aren't called. Some of the reasons I've heard thrown around were stuff like our city would bill them for the response (not true), the union would file a grievance over the response (also not true as the union was 200% in favor of responding to the calls, never mind that it wouldn't be grievable anyway) and some other odd reasons despite the fact that on two occasions we've gone to a full recall of off-duty personnel in order to send an on-duty unit and supplemental personnel to a mutual aid fire and cover our stations. Now some of our previous chiefs have done things that have helped contribute to them not calling us, but ultimately I think that it comes down to two things, 1) we'll beat most of them to their calls and 2) we'll make them "look bad" because on average, we're more trained, more experienced and not too shabby at putting out fires. We're slowly seeing some progress though. So, we'll see where that goes.

I think you and AFS1970 may be missing the point. I'm not questioning the value or appropriateness of having/using members in a VFD who are not interior qualified for whatever reason. The description used was "fully qualified, completely trained and certified firefighters" which to me would describe members who are interior qualified and exclude members who previously were, but are not currently able to operate interior whether due to age, physical limitation, having a beard or whatever (i.e. not qualified). I was commenting on the thought process that results in a (former) chief officer describing 9 members of the department who are not interior qualified as being fully qualified, completely trained and certified firefighters. I would think that using "fully qualified" to describe a firefighter would imply the ability to perform a vital, core component of the position, like interior operations. Like I asked, when did interior operations become a bonus skill set for firefighters rather than the standard?

"We have 31 fully qualified, completely trained and certified firefighters, 22 of which are also interior qualified,” said past assistant chief and 53-year member Bob Harford. " I know there's differences from state to state regarding training and certification, but how can a department claim a member to be a "fully qualified, completely trained and certified" firefighter when that person is not "interior qualified"? When did being "interior qualified" as a firefighter become a bonus skill set rather than the standard?

I don't know what the exact charge would be, but it would be something along the lines of impersonating a public safety official since they are no longer recognized as such.