ptwatson

In my opinion fire parades should not be about the trophy I mean who really cares about it. It should be for the enjoyment of the public especialy the kids. I think there should be a requirement that you must have your lights on. The trophy is nice for about a day then it does onto a shelf and is just another thing to dust. Put the lights on, give the siren an occasional yelp and a tug on the air horn. Seeing the wonderment and excitment on a kids face is enough trophy for me!

In my opinion fire parades should not be about the trophy I mean who really cares about it. It should be for the enjoyment of the public especialy the kids. I think there should be a requirement that you must have your lights on. The trophy is nice for about a day then it does onto a shelf and is just another thing to dust. Put the lights on, give the siren an occasional yelp and a tug on the air horn. Seeing the wonderment and excitment on a kids face is enough trophy for me!

In my opinion fire parades should not be about the trophy I mean who really cares about it. It should be for the enjoyment of the public especialy the kids. I think there should be a requirement that you must have your lights on. The trophy is nice for about a day then it does onto a shelf and is just another thing to dust. Put the lights on, give the siren an occasional yelp and a tug on the air horn. Seeing the wonderment and excitment on a kids face is enough trophy for me!

This was SUCH a big deal...we caught this bad boy taking off!

Nice job Brothers!
http://mytownreport....:news&Itemid=53

It is beyond me how you have to operate. Nice job fellas.

450 members. Today there were 110 on the ground in line plus 2 marshalls for each of the 5 divisions, 11 apparatus drivers plus riders, 3 chief car drivers plus riders, grand marshalls car, grand stand announcer, dispatcher, plus a crew at the park for the food and refreshments. I know I'm missing somebody but....

There are many ways that lightweight construction endangers human lives as opposed to "legacy" construction.
Trusses: by now we should all be very familiar with the dangers of lightweight wood trusses. These along with sheathing act as a system to form roofs and/or floors. The trusses themselves by nature allow for fire travel and spread, are thinner and smaller dimensionally thus allowing for faster burn through/failure, and generally fail as a system. The truss holds up the sheathing, the sheathing holds the trusses together and in place, it's like a house of cards.

Light weight carrying timbers: large dimensional wood is expensive, so we have engineer lumber using small chips and particles pressed and glued together to make large carrying timbers. Under normal loading conditions these allow for greater spans between walls and hold up very well. Under fire conditions their surface to mass ratio along with the glue allows them to fall apart and burn far more rapidly than dimensional lumber. Also since they can allow for larger spans, we're seeing larger rooms and less compartmentalization in far greater numbers, as what was once a sign of the rich is now affordable to far more homeowners.
Cheap sheathing: OSB, chip board, particle board, you name it, it's cheaper to stick little pieces together with glue than use true boarding boards or even plywood. Money saved on sheathing which the homeowner never sees can be used to reduce costs or allow for upgrades. This stuff fails under heat faster than legacy materials again due to surface to mass and glue failure.
Vinyl siding and worse yet, soffits. A very quick way for fire to get from floor to attic today is vinyl soffit covering. With modern construction knowledge demanding ventilation from soffit to ridge, the open air space in the soffit used to be plywood or boards with screening between to allow air travel, Now, to make that worse, we use vinyl covering as it's preformed, fast, doesn't need to be painted and cheap. This allows fire from failed windows or outside fire to rapidly extend into the attic space with some fuel at the entry point to speed the process!
Energy efficiency. Tighter houses heat cheaper, which also means they heat faster and hold heat better leading to faster flashover if there's enough air to support the combustion, if not, it can lead to greater backdraft potential.
And of course, while not part of the construction specifically, the fuel load of today is far more than ever before. Nearly everything we buy today is made of petroleum based plastics and far less natural materials, allow for far faster heat release rates and greater BTU's per pound.

In all our stuff burns much hotter, much faster and in far less safe homes, than ever before. The only viable answer in sprinklers.
I don't beleive the insurance lobby is against sprinklers, they protect them from much greater payouts and in our state they've found that 99% offer a reduction in fire insurance premiums(5-15%), though in the grand scheme it's not enough to be a selling point. The fact is, and I'm sure BNECHIS can speak far more eloquently on the subject, that insurance companies, crazy as it sounds are heavily regulated. That is to say they can't just start charging everyone more for not having sprinklers, they can offer reductions in cost, but that's taking money away from them. If they could charge more for those failing to build new with sprinklers, that'd be huge.

Here is an article from 2007 in Firehouse on how light weigh truss are built.....
http://www.firehouse.com/article/10499153/how-the-lightweight-truss-is-built
As we know they are quite dangerous!

Here is an article from 2007 in Firehouse on how light weigh truss are built.....
http://www.firehouse.com/article/10499153/how-the-lightweight-truss-is-built
As we know they are quite dangerous!

Here is an article from 2007 in Firehouse on how light weigh truss are built.....
http://www.firehouse.com/article/10499153/how-the-lightweight-truss-is-built
As we know they are quite dangerous!

Coming soon to DPW workers everywhere, helmets and safety belts... I hope he pulls out of this, my wishes to him and his family...

Ok, so I'm not sure why the difference between the two stats you have. Was it just because the the time period studied or were there different criteria in the search? The "Selected Special Analysis" is throwing me off. But we'll go with what we got. From 92-02 Career ff's made up 9.9% of the deaths and from '00 to '10 they're up to 18.8%. Since the two over lap this is terrible statistics, but when I average it out we get 14.35%. As of 2010 All career and mostly career FD's only represented 14% of the firefighters nation wide. Arguably even in mostly volunteer FD's the career guys still probably do the lion share of the apparatus driving. That more than doubles the number to 32% of all firefighters.
All of this however could mean nothing because take yonkers for example. Your dept has how many apparatus on the road available to respond every day? A quick google search came up with 20 including the battalions. If you take your typlical westchester volleys responding from home to fill 18 rigs and two chiefs (lets assume only two members on each rig because its a beautiful tuesday afternoon) you're going to wind up with 56 separate vehicles being driven. You'd have to do 3x as many runs in yonkers to cover the number of trips taken by the vollys. Then there's the number of miles driven. What's the average distance for urban paid depts vs suburban and rural volunteer depts? Chief, you're over simplifying some very complicated statistics just to make a point. Without the proper data how can people not take this as a biased attack? It makes it seem personal no matter how much you insist it is not.

PD or FD riding the trains are two separate things. IF PD is riding undercover, off-duty and the train peoples say they ride for free, that's that.
FD; how many guys have gone on a Metro ride through the years in their Class A's going to a funeral? IF the ticket-taker decides to respect the uniform, that's it. It's not YOU that is getting a professional courtesy, it's the respect for the uniform. Do not expect that courtesy to be extended to you on St. Patrick's Day or any other day in your civies.

Would it be feasible for MTA PD to staff each train with one officer. If something goes down there would be a least one officer on scene with backup responding. Does budget prevent this or are there other reasons. Curious to hear what you have to say.....

There will be a time ahead to ask the critical questions that must be asked of the circumstances that lead to two of Philly's Bravest being struck down.
Right now however, may their families and Bro's/Sis's from the job find comfort in that God has welcomed Home his valiant servants, who were doing what they loved and did best in service of the people. Doing God's work here on earth.
May the deceased Brothers Rest in Eternal Peace, joining the countless others from these jobs, who rest before the Father that sent them to life here to do great things. To set the example for humanity of having lived a meaningful life.

If you wanted to fix the next crew because they complaned that you did not clean the rig good , you pledged the seats !

If you wanted to fix the next crew because they complaned that you did not clean the rig good , you pledged the seats !

Oh that's funny! Yeah that whole bench felt like a potential launching pad. How about the "air-ride" driver's seat...the boing boing up and over bumps in the road. How many times did you crack your head on the ceiling liner?
Not all bad in the interior though. The brake pedal was great, the location of the dash controls made those easy, the battery switch on the side of the driver's seat, all good stuff.
The sliding window between the cab and the jump seats.....

Retired Eastchester Engine 28 which was a 69 CF. She served 40 years from 69 to 2010. In the late 90's she was refurbished when the jump seats were enclosed. The encloser made riding in the jump seat incredibly loud. She had a sister which was originaly Engine 27 then became Engine 30 when the 86 Mack became 27 later Engine 29. Eastchester also had early 1970's Mack CF's which were Engine 29 and 31. They served until they fell apart and were replaced by the American LaFrance Eagle pumpers around 2000

Retired Eastchester Engine 28 which was a 69 CF. She served 40 years from 69 to 2010. In the late 90's she was refurbished when the jump seats were enclosed. The encloser made riding in the jump seat incredibly loud. She had a sister which was originaly Engine 27 then became Engine 30 when the 86 Mack became 27 later Engine 29. Eastchester also had early 1970's Mack CF's which were Engine 29 and 31. They served until they fell apart and were replaced by the American LaFrance Eagle pumpers around 2000

Retired Eastchester Engine 28 which was a 69 CF. She served 40 years from 69 to 2010. In the late 90's she was refurbished when the jump seats were enclosed. The encloser made riding in the jump seat incredibly loud. She had a sister which was originaly Engine 27 then became Engine 30 when the 86 Mack became 27 later Engine 29. Eastchester also had early 1970's Mack CF's which were Engine 29 and 31. They served until they fell apart and were replaced by the American LaFrance Eagle pumpers around 2000

Just a couple of photos taken last Sunday in the Bronx

We idolized and memorialized Whitney Houston, yet looked the other way concerning her well known substance abuse and tumultuous life with singer Bobby Brown.
Charlie Sheen is 45 and his story is all over the news because he is a
substance abuser, an adulterer, sexually promiscuous and obnoxious.
Lindsay Lohan is 24 and her story is all over the news because she is a
celebrity drug addict and thief.
Something as frivolous as Kim Kardashian's stupid wedding [and
short-lived marriage] was shoved down our throats, While........
Justin Allen 23
Brett Linley 29
Matthew Weikert 29
Justus Bartett 27
Dave Santos 21
Jesse Reed 26
Matthew Johnson 21
Zachary Fisher 24
Brandon King 23
Christopher Goeke 23
and Sheldon Tate 27...
Are all Marines who gave their lives last month for you. There is no
media for them; not even a mention of their names.
Young Men who most likely came from rural America seeking a chance
to better themselves and to serve this county.
Rest In Peace, and THANK YOU,TROOPS.
This was an email i got and wanted to share it

As it turned out, Quad 8 found us before we could find her. A few of our members made the trip to South Harrison Township, New Jersey after the heir to the estate of a private collector offered to return each piece to their original owners before going to auction. We were happy to bring her home and we're looking forward to sharing her with the public soon. Look for more information on Quad 8's return at www.purchasefd.com soon.