Dinosaur

What's the weight of the new truck?

Can all the old bridges in Putnam handle it?

The irony abounds.

It is amazing how we criticize everyone about calls at assisted living facilities while we don't cover all our own calls and have our own system problems.

Glass houses!

If it is a tax-paying facility in your community, you have to go there when they call. Even when it is often and for what you consider minor or unwarranted calls.

Here is an interesting point to consider.

The city I had mentioned in reply # 16, the one with 15 pumpers, 3 ladders, 3 heavy rescues, and a population of 40,000 people, just put in an order for $800,000 for new air packs. Almost One Million Dollars just for air packs !!!!

I don't know what the average price tag is for a new air pack these days. But as a taxpayer, that sure sounds like a lot of money for air packs in a city of 40,000 people.

What about buying bunker gear ? How many sets of bunker gear are required here ? What about minimum training and medical exams required ? That adds up too.

Are 15 Pumpers really needed in a city of 40,000 people ? Why is it that other cities with 3 to 4 times the population have less. Bridgeport, Ct, the largest city in that state, has only 9 pumpers serving 100,000 more people (145,000 pop total). What is the average yearly cost for one pumper or one ladder truck over a 15 or 20 year period ? A one million dollar fire truck I think comes out to be about $50,000 a year, per truck.

So as we look at the larger picture, we may begin to see a much different cost involved. Can we make a similar comparison to a place like Westchester ?

Is there a better way to do it if saving taxpayers money is the big concern ? Can the younger, future leaders of our fire service make those right choices ? What about today's fire service leaders ? Can they make those tough choices just as those that introduced the first female firefighters into the all male dominated fire service ? Or the leaders that stood strong saying; "If we can send a fire truck to a trash can fire, we certainly should send a fire truck to a medical emergency".

Those are just a few of the examples of "The Dinosaur Era", where strong leadership in the fire service led the way.

We could absolutely compare this to Westchester. The costs of emergency services are staggering and we don't have any idea the true cost because there is no transparency.

As for the 800K for "air packs", that raises a red flag to me. Rounding very high, not considering any discounts or economies of scale for a large order, I come up with about 675K for 100 new packs and 250 new masks. Maybe they are all personally engraved and have gold regulators?

Interesting. Can't wait to see the report.

Big surprise. Get funding legislation passed using one hot-button topic and then reallocate the funds to other projects that wouldn't get the same level of support.

Typical Albany!

To be clear I am far from defending anything, not sure where you got that from.

My apologies. I misinterpreted your message.

"THEY'RE ESSENTIIALLY PAID DRIVERS". You are kidding right! Is that some kind of joke? Besides the fact that calling a career firefighter a " paid driver " is insulting what insight do you have in the Rye Fire Department that allows you to make that statement ?

Rye's career firefighters are quite often the first firefighters on a scene, what do you think they do when they arrive, sit in the truck and wait for someone else to show up ? In case you are wondering the answer is NO. In 2015 Rye had 12 working fires, in everyone of those fires one of the guys working was on the first line in.

In 2015 Rye started the year with 18 interior qualified volunteer firefighters by the end of 2015 that number had dropped to 14. In 2016 Rye's interior firefighter list is starting the year with 13 volunteers on it, those 13 will need to complete some very minimal training in order to remain interior qualified. Only time can tell where we will be at the end of 2016.

The average response in 2016 was 5.58 firefighters per call. Now if you want to drill that down a little. There are approximate 88 days in the year when there will be four firefighters working(due to schedule and vacation). Monday thru Friday the career lieutenant works 9 to 5 and responds to all calls. Additionally anytime there is a incident of any real significance there is a automatic recall of career staff. So that 5.58 is not even real but that is the best number there is to answer your question.

I am not trying to take anything away from the core group of volunteers we do have, they are a good group of guys that have busy lives outside the firehouse. i am not going to attempt to explain the dynamics of the membership, they are there to provide a service to the community and they do it to the best of there ability.

Needless to say when the stuff hits the fan we are severely lacking appropriate manpower. The hope would be that the Mayors group takes that into account and takes whatever action may be needed.

If you're actually defending the notion that 5.58 FF responding to a fire is acceptable, due respect, you're part of the problem. Read NFPA 1710 or 1720 or whatever applies to that thing you call a fire department.

I am continually amazed that people continue to defend grossly understaffed departments as if what they have is acceptable. This is 2016 in one of the most heavily taxed counties in the country and we still send 5.58 FF to a fire call.

And the icing on the cake for me is that's the AVERAGE. Meaning half the time you respond with less than that. Pathetic!

Ya think?

Most of the membership and officers were at Pleasantville's installation dinner during this call.

Fail.

What can happen sometimes is that a driver might not be available during the 7a-7p to get that paid EMT to the call. The problem ends up being that people aren't around or don't show up to get the bus out.

Then maybe they should hire the other half of the crew. This is ridiculous.

Does anyone know why they would hold onto the call for so long when they couldn't muster a crew?

Even with a paid EMT from OVAC working, they sometimes still cannot cover their first due calls.

How is that possible? Do they only have one person on duty? Sounds like a failure to me.

Where's the County EMS Coordinator or State EMS Bureau of any other responsible party in this?

You should get a job in the media.They pay top dollar for sensationalizing things.

Where does it say that EMS crews shall use force to remove homeless to a shelter?

If a warrant is signed by the "homeless intervention team" (I'd like to hear more about who they are and how they sign warrants for this) and the NYPD executes the warrant, the EMS crew is really nothing more than a ride.

I'm not a fan of all this "executive action" but it is being sensationalized a lot and misrepresented. I imagine that there are lawyers lining up to challenge this the first time it happens too.

Used to be that the EMS agencies changed in the big cities on a regular basis. It was kind of a joke every time the contract was awarded. Most of the EMS crews would just change shirts and move into a different vehicle and voila, new agency. I guess it was when the contracts became zero bid and relied solely on billing (?) that the tenure of an agency got so much longer.

With things being the way they are these days, I don't know how successful a "Mount Pleasant" EMS would be. You already have three different BLS/ALS providers in some of those communities. There are already contracts with these groups and I highly doubt anybody wants to lose out on money. Sadly, that's what it comes down to these days, it's never about the needs of the community.

You're making your own case for it. Consolidate the five or six different agencies within the town into one and now you're paying one insurance bill, you can probably reduce the size of the fleet, you have all kinds of economies of scale, and most important - all the members would be able to respond to any calls anywhere in the town. Paid personnel could be strategically based to cover the most calls efficiently and volunteers could be used to augment.

I don't really see a downside. As for losing out on money, who's really making any???

What's a "notable incident"?

How about asking how many times apparatus responded without a full crew of properly trained personnel?

Do numbers tell us anything at all tell us about what we do????

Does the article go on to mention how many times Metro called for mutual aid into their area?

5

The best and largest fire department in the world just put out a GARBAGE TRUCK FIRE without even having SCBA's on their back, just yesterday!

Photo from: http://www.silive.com/northshore/index.ssf/2015/12/garbage_truck_fire_at_west_bri.html

garbagetruck.jpg

Your point? Does their doing it wrong somehow excuse the prior performance by the neighboring department?

I'd love to see where the money went and to who. $1 million is far more then poor accounting. I heard they had a funky way for funding their apparatus.

More than $1.00 is more than poor accounting! This is allegedly a fire protection district and under contract to the Town of Patterson. They are accountable, albeit indirectly, to the taxpayers of the town who fund their operations. The days of ignoring things "because they're volunteers" has to be over!

$6M from two Putnam FD's. Uncovered at roughly the same time. That speaks volumes about the over-budgeting and complete lack of fiscal responsibility in these two organizations. It's a disgrace and gives the entire fire service a black eye.

$6M would fund many years of operations and/or procurement of new equipment/apparatus. To think that it is "gone" is inexcusable.

This is pure gross negligence. What I wonder is if a few years down the line, these guys get cancer, who's fault is will it be? God forbid, and I hope this is not and never the case, will it be considered an "LODD"? Are the same taxpayers who funded the SCBA's to prevent this also going to have to pick up the tab for the consequences of not using them? Sure, there's lots of other ways firefighters can get cancer, but any way we have to lower the risk, we should utilize.

The Chief smoking a cigarette while watching his guys do this, that is just horrible. Aside from no discernable sequence of the actions, how can you just stand there, smoke a poison stick, while watching your mostly young guys clearly suck toxic smoke? It appears to be a hair salon in a taxpayer, who knows what kind of chemicals are in that smoke? I agree, he needs to be held accountable for that, and his leadership needs to be seriously questioned before more lives are put in danger by this gross negligence.

It goes to show how organization is becoming a more and more rare phenomenon. If these guys had riding positions and knew the job and their tools of the trade, there wouldn't be so much back and forth and wasted time and effort. Why didn't someone have the can as soon as they got off the truck? Where's the primary search beyond the doorway of the store?

I'm guessing that this was a truck company and that's why there was no hose line but the tactics were weak at best and the leadership/organization was abysmal. Of course, this is just from a short YouTube video so take it for what it's worth...

He didn't have a fiddle...

NYSDOT in Westchester is an abolishion! Just today I was on the Taconic at around 12:30 pm southbound near Underhill Ave. A small dump with a quad cab with no snowfighting equiptment was crawling at 30 mph creating a TRAFFIC HAZARD! Seems like I see alot of "quad cab" NYSDOT trucks crawling everywhere around the county...nobody ever gets out..except for one hour breakfast breaks in the morning...one and a half hour lunch breaks at noon...and one hour drives back to the yard for a 45 minute washup at the end of the day? Is anybody monitoring these crews? You do know that when they are called in for overtime they are paid from the minute the call takes place...then given at least a one hour window to show up and then guaranteed 8 hours pay even if the storm fizzles out! WASTE OF MY TAX DOLLARS

What is an "abolishion"?

Nysdot in the process of testing them on I84

Why? They're just going to close 84 anyway. Only interstate I've seen that has barriers at all the on ramps. It's not even the worst highway in the state but it gets all the attention from Unkle Andy.

http://news.hamlethub.com/brewster/publicsafety/1040-patterson-fd-finances-under-scrutiny

If you look at the findings of the NYS Comptrollers Office and all the reports they prepare, there is a a recurring theme. Poor oversight and accountability relating to finance. When are we going to address the problems associated with having unprepared and unqualified people running multi-million dollar businesses?

How a knotted napkin "knocked him off his chair" is another question. Must have been a BIG knot. LOL