FireMedic049

The same way you would explain wrecking any piece of equipment on the way to any call. You simply explain what happened. Accidents can happen at any time. After the safety of our personnel and others, the main concern should be about whether or not the apparatus was being operated in an appropriate manner at the time of the accident. The actual nature of the call is somewhat irrelevant. **** Now I think the question you were trying to ask is something along the lines of how do you justify responding your most expensive piece of fire equipment to any EMS call after the vehicle was totaled in an accident while responding to one while also trying to imply that EMS calls (in general) are not worthy uses of this apparatus. I'm not familiar with this department's operations and the article doesn't give much detail on what happened, but it does state that the unit was responding to a reported heroin overdose. Having responded to more than my fair share of OD calls in my career, I can safely say that they can easily be a life threatening situation. Since we're supposed to be about saving lives and property, I have to ask, is this person's life somehow less worthy of assistance from that unit because his life is possibly threatened by heroin rather than being threatened by a fire?

That was satire, right? I know that it wasn't, but stuff like this is typical of where we are these days. People expect a prompt, professional response from EMS when they or a loved one is experiencing a medical emergency, but they don't want to actually put up the money necessary to put that in place. The problem isn't so much the increasing training requirements. The problem is that too many are still trying to look at this in terms of what's convenient for the providers and not what's best for the patients. EMS has progressed significantly over the past 4 decades in the care that we can bring to a patient's doorstep. This increased capability necessitates increased training in order to effectively provide it. We are no longer "ambulance drivers" scooping patients up and racing to the hospital. We are now pre-hospital medical professionals bringing the ER to the patient, particularly at the Paramedic level of care. If the requirements for providing this level of care have reached the point where the care can no longer be reliably provided by an all or largely volunteer staff, the solution is not to lobby the state to decrease the amount of medical training for providers. The solution is to start treating EMS as the medical profession that it now is. If that means a tax increase to do so, then suck it up buttercup.

Transcare in Pittsburgh apparently missed payroll this week and appears to also be ceasing operations.

The article you linked doesn't say anything about firefighters in pick ups. It specifically mentions putting spare ambulances in service using overtime. The CFR-D statement sounds like the reporter may not be understanding something correctly.

Depending on their funding and organizational set up, the argument can be made that they technically aren't really a government entity, but rather a private entity. As a private entity, they can more of less do whatever they want to within the law. Within that, if it was a democratic decision within the rules of the organization, then the concept of "majority rules" applies. Not everyone always agrees with every choice an organization makes. The phrase itself does not actually endorse any specific religion since the term "God" is pretty much common across most religions. I agree that there would be an uproar if one of the other phrases you listed were put on the apparatus. We can certainly debate the appropriateness of marking their vehicles in this way, but it's a far cry from ramming it down anyone's throat. At it's core, it's advertising and there is little functional difference between seeing the message on a fire truck vs a billboard vs a sign in front of a church vs someone's POV. Additionally, the phrase "In God We Trust" is a nation motto and printed on all of our money. As such, it can also be viewed as a symbol of patriotism similar to displaying the American Flag on apparatus. Disclaimer: My religious affiliation is Recovered Catholic and I support an individuals right to practice their religion of choice or none at all, as long as it doesn't violate our laws. I prefer that others afford me the same consideration.

I've heard just the opposite. I've heard from some in my area that have a Terrastar that they don't turn that great. Or at least not as good as the larger Durastar or Freightliner chassis. As for the wheelbase, the only way to shorten the wheelbase on that chassis would be to lose the extended cab and/or lose the extra compartment at the front of the body. Since they designed them that way, my guess would be that there was a need for both of those areas. As such, the only other option to shorten the wheelbase in any meaningful way would be to move to a custom chassis like the Spartan Metro Star RT.

Serious about what?

I'm not aware of any places in PA that provide fire protection via subscription. Could you provide some examples that are doing this in PA?

As I understand it, they still only have 5 full-time, front line rescue companies. Rescue 6 is staffed as needed, like special events and severe weather situations where they anticipate the need for it.

I've been a volunteer and career firefighter too. I often work along side of volunteers. I agree that we should be more united and respectful than we are. From my experience and perspective, the volunteers oftentimes are more of an obstacle in getting to that place than the career folks. I often hear claims about how we're all doing the same job, have the same training, etc., but the fact is we aren't and we don't. Unfortunately, when you try to discuss this, the only thing too many on the volunteer side seem to take from it is that career guys are great and volunteers suck rather than understanding that career guys can be "better" by virtue of those differences in training and experience, but that doesn't mean that the volunteers are automatically inadequate. It's a lot like comparing pro athletes to college/high school athletes. The pros are typically better, which one would expect, but a lot of the non-pro athletes are pretty darn good, if not just as good in some cases. And in some cases, their best just isn't good enough. We hear claims about how fires don't care if you're career or volunteer or that the person who's house is on fire doesn't care if you're career or volunteer, but who yells the most about training mandates or being held to any sort of standard? Who thinks it's perfectly ok to give a person a few dozen hours of basic introductory training (or none at all) and then turn that new person loose to respond and actively participate on calls? Who thinks it's appropriate to make a teenager with little actual experience a line officer? IMO, these are the things that are at the very heart of the animosity between career and volunteer from the career side. Too many in the volunteer ranks want to be viewed as equal to the career guys without putting in the work necessary to truly be equal. Yes, there are places where truly providing services on the same level are not realistic (rural areas for one) and they do the best they can under tough circumstances, but there are others where the departments are just not being honest with themselves or their communities regarding the level of service they can realistically provide as a department or as an individual. It's also frustrating to see comments about how career guys only care about the paycheck and don't have the pride in the job because we don't work fundraisers to pay the bills or in some cases don't live in the community that we work in. While there are career guys that are like that, the majority aren't and you'll find people like that in any career and you know there are plenty of volunteers that are all about the t-shirts and image rather than the work and service to the community. Like you said, career and volunteer share a lot in common. Personally, I try to be respectful of the volunteers in my area, but it's very hard at times to view some of them as peers when they do some of the stuff that they do and that includes burning down buildings that should not have burned to the extent that they did.

In terms of total cost, sure, it would probably cheaper overall to issue a single set of gear and have a gear washer available. However, the primary problem with this is the fact that when that single set of gear is being washed and then dries, the person that gear belongs to is essentially out of service during that time period unless they have immediate access to properly fitting spare gear. This isn't necessarily a problem when you have clearly defined off-duty periods in which you will not be needed to respond to calls and can clean the gear then. However, when you are essentially on-duty ("on call") 24/7, this can lead to people delaying proper cleanings when needed in order to available for that next call. The idea behind the second set is to resolve that issue. You use one set while the other set is being cleaned and in most cases, that set will be available by the time the other set needs cleaned. Clean gear is safer from a health standpoint and it can help the gear last longer.

Your answer may be correct, but it may not be for the reason you think. In general, "paid districts" tend to be larger and busier than many "volunteer districts" and as such the number of "burned out hulks" could easily be greater due to having more fires overall. Additionally, even in paid districts, some fires are too advanced upon arrival to stop without the building being a total loss. So, looking at the end result and counting burned out buildings isn't a very reliable assessment of performance. I have however, seen a number of fires in the volunteer districts of my area that should not have been the conflagration that they ended up being. And not just because of how long it took to them to arrive.

That's certainly subject to debate.

I think you may be surprised. There are municipalities/departments that already issue 2 sets of gear per firefighter. This is something I pushed for at my current department several years ago and when we pitched it in contract negotiations we expected some push back from the administration, but they agreed to it with no haggling. We had a number of strong arguments for it and it worked. In our case, each person has 2 sets replaced in rotation so that their primary set is not more than 4 years old and their back up set is not more than 8 year old.

Well, the reality is that the cancer threat is pretty real if you see regular fire duty.

Another avenue that would be interesting to explore would be the impact of more regionalized fire services. My county (in PA) has a lot of small departments covering small districts which results in multiple departments responding to most calls. I looked up some figures a few years ago for comparison and found that PG County Maryland and Fairfax County Virginia both had an average fire station to sq. mileage ratio of around 1 station per 10 square miles. My County was around 1 station per 3 square miles. Additionally, at the time a nearby group of 3 communities collectively had 7 fire stations and at least 14 large apparatus and 7 support vehicles. My city is slightly larger than that area, but with the same population density. We have 2 stations (down from 4 a couple decades ago), 4 large apparatus and 2 support vehicles. We run around twice as many first due calls as that group and a lot more working fires. Why do they need so much more to do less? How much money could be saved if we consolidated into fewer stations with less duplication of apparatus? Could that create the call volume and labor pool large enough that each station could be staffed most, if not all of the time? What would be the impact of that on dispatch to on scene response times and incident outcomes compared to what they are now?

I doubt that you are seeing as many people as you think actually defending "grossly understaffed departments". I think you may be misconstruing explanations of a department's staffing situation as a defense of them in the sense that you assert. I think you'd be hard pressed to find many people, if any (actual firefighters), that actually think that sending only an average of 5.58 FFs to a working fire as being acceptable. Very few of us actually have the ability to determine the staffing levels for our departments. As such, far too many of us must make the best of the less than ideal hand that we are each dealt. NFPA 1710 and 1720 are nice, but unfortunately they're still kind of all bark and no bite on the front end. I can wave a copy of 1710 in front of my Mayor and Council every day, but it's not gonna get my department to 4 per apparatus and 17 on-duty. The money simply isn't there for that level of staffing and we'll be lucky to maintain where we're at now in the next few years. There are a lot of small departments out there just like us and some in worse shape. It's not ideal and it's only "acceptable" in the context that it's our reality and not changing anytime soon. Oftentimes these discussions seem to focus on the limited on-duty staffing of a particular department, but overlooks the total response to a working incident which can result in a far more acceptable number of FFs on the fireground. My department, for example, averages 6 FFs on-duty. However, a working fire will also get a callback of off-duty personnel plus mutual aid. On average, this doubles our own personnel and the mutual aid units easily push us over 20-25 FFs on the fire ground relatively quickly. Many others do something similar.

I thought the video was decent, but I had to chuckle some at the "reassuring" comment towards the end that was supposedly from the home builders association about how "safe" homes are built these days. Pretty ironic considering the prevalence of light weight construction methods these days that do not hold up well under fire conditions and the extent to which they lobby hard against the very thing that could be the most beneficial in them in the event of a fire - residential sprinklers!

One thing I found interesting is that their goal is for the care provider to be able to remain seated and belted while providing care, yet they also incorporate the ability to transport a second patient in a manor which pretty much precludes the ability to do that for that patient. To me, there seems to be an inherent conflict between the two and that means we should probably reexamine whether or not we should even be attempting to transport a second patient under those conditions.

As I said before, if you can afford both, getting both is the way to go. It gives you multiple options, which is typically better than having few or no options if something bad happens, even if some of the options aren't ideal. If you would be in a situation where you have to bail out of an upper floor, having a ladder in place is certainly better than not having one to use and jumping, risking serious injury. But, wouldn't it be even better to have a personal escape system available to deploy if the ladder isn't where you need it or can't get there in time? I don't know about you, but I like the idea of having the option to share air if a RIT pack isn't immediately available rather than have a brother get hurt or die because there was no other option than for them to breathe toxic smoke or suffocate.

When you hook the buddy breather connections together, the two cylinders don't equalize. You breathe off one cylinder, then the other when the first runs out or reaches whatever the "switch" point is for your manufacturer. It's important to know which cylinder you breath off first. Not sure about all manufacturers, but some use up the cylinder with the lower pressure first which can be a big problem if you should have to disconnect at some point. Using the RIT connection will equalize between the two cylinders that are tethered.