SmokeyJoe

Agreed. And yet that is exactly how we run EMS in NYS, except they get no pension benefit from working the 80 hours+ per week.
Interesting how EMS agencies are not physically safe or healthy for their employees. Which in turn makes it less safe or healthy for their patients.

All the power to them. Remember that California is only place with worst tax and higher cost of living than hear.

I agree with everything you said. My point is that YFD is understaffed, but NR & WP are running with 3 per rig. when 1 remains in the street to pump. That leaves the officer and ff to lay hose from the standpipe to the fire apt. Now who mans the valve, the officer or the ff and what if the ff is a probie (do you send him in alone?).
In either case 1 in an IDLH atmospher is a problem.
The study shows that pairing up 2) 3 man units (6 members) is less effective than 5 man companies.

Article is spot on......3 guys per crew can't be expected to work a high rise properly.

Yeah, having "VAC" all over your bus and fundraising letter help bring in all the dough for all the guys n gals not responding!

Yeah, having "VAC" all over your bus and fundraising letter help bring in all the dough for all the guys n gals not responding!

Yeah, having "VAC" all over your bus and fundraising letter help bring in all the dough for all the guys n gals not responding!

My mistake, I misread. They were ones strongly supporting the bill and did not ask the pork to be removed. Not the same thing. An amendment was brought forward by the GOP to remove that part and it was unfortunately voted down.
All these politicians from NY/NJ/CT should be more angry with the fact that their fellow members threw in all their pet projects instead of just passing the money for Sandy relief. Clearly helping the people of this area isn't enough for them. And yes, I know BOTH parties do this all the time, but that doesn't make it (or them) right. They put this bill out there, added a bunch of crap to it, then dared the GOP to vote it down, knowing that they would and they could use it to score points in the media, saying the Republicans don't care about Sandy victims.

Two ways to fix this.
Give The President line item veto power.
Or
Bills need to be singular in nature ( no more pork, the Sandy Relief bill would about sandy relief, not Alaska fisheries)

Good luck with that. NYS law requires an environmental impact statement on all new projects. In it must include how the project will effect FD, PD, EMS, Water, sewer, noise, traffic, etc. They must also state how it will effect the services currently being provided to the existing community.
We said the highrises and New Roc city would put a strain on FD/EMS, The developer said: "No impact"....City council said we need the development.
Next project and the same developers say No impact, we show impact and city says, we need development. Now city still wants more development and they want to reduce cost of FD, they ask why so many calls at these developments? How can we cut the numbers down?
You can't charge them extra, either you are billing the patients (if allowed) for transport or you are taxing them. If you tax them extra, they will fight it and win.

http://www.yonkersstrong.com/

John - I re-read this whole thread, including my own comments, and I want to clarify - I was not bashing the YFD or it's men..although reading my posts it would seem otherwise. Not my intention.
I have always had the greatest respect and ADMIRATION for the YFD, as many know..I have seen some of the ballsiest firefighting, and most compansionate caregiving from your members duiring my tenure at Empress..I would love to one day go back, but as you posted, so many of us move on...But the YFD is nothing but professional. The first responder program has saved countless lives, no doubt, and I hope it does not go away...the residents of Yonkers are blessed to have it. I always enjoyed calls i would do where Roone, or Eddie R., or so many others were on scene, because I LEARNED from them.
I have an in-law who is retired from your job, and I love BS'ing with him about the 80's and 90's in Yonkers, even if I cant understand his hispanic accent when we have a few cold ones and he really gets going..LOL
Thanks for taking the time and energy to post the information you did - I know there are things you would rather be doing, but it shows your pride in your men, and the JOB.
Merry Christmas to you and the entire YFD...stay safe.

Part 3.
Disclaimer- my apologies for spelling and grammatical errors in previous and future posts- there is a lot to cover here and I don't have time or emergy to dot the i's and cross the t's- I hope I am making some sense to most of you nonetheless.
Here we go...I agree with the poster who stated that Empress is "clinically progressive" and who espoused the value of Empress' EMD pre-arrival instructions. However, I should point out that the "Haz-Mat Special Ops support to YFD" provided by Empress is done with equipment purchased with federal grant money (UASI and MMRS), and training conducted by YFD. The nature of this support is generally to provide a secondary technical decon only.
One point that was made by a brother YFD member, above, should be emphasized. Empress has so very many dedicated and professional members. However, the majority of these individuals do not spend the majority of their working lives in EMS, and particularly not with Empress, although some do. Many Empress employees move on to Fire or Police Department careers, elsewhere in emergency medicine, or on to other careers altogether. The Empress work force is nowhere as stable as YFD. This is just reality and I believe is pertinent. I won't give my opinion regarding the effect of a stable vs. a more transient workforce because it is just that, my opinion, and we all know what those are worth. However, these facts should be provided so that all of the stakeholders (particularly city residents) might be able to deternine relevance.

Part 2- Now, to some of the misinformation that has been posted on this site in regard to the YFD First Responder Program.
Misinformation response # 1. This work constitutes a large majority of our responses, or our overall work. This is not accurate. First Responder runs account for approximately 55 % of our incidents. However, each of these incidents requires the response of only one Engine Company, and the Engine Company is generally back in service in 20 minutes or less, sometimes longer of course. Obviously to anyone familiar with the Fire Service, the typical incident any Fire Department responds to (the other approximately 45% ) involves many more apparatus and personnel for significantly longer periods of time. A First Responder run with utilizing one apparatue and 4 Firefighters for 15 minutes is one incident. A 3 Alarm Fire utilizing 14 apparatus, other vehicles, and a total of 63 or so Firefighters for six or seven hours is also one incident, kapeesh?? Furthermore, the "workload" of a Fire Department is not only responses, but also the necessary training, inspections, cleaning, maintenance of vehicles, equipment, etc.
Misinformation response # 1a. Therefore, although the rumored elimination of the First Responder Program may (not my area of expertise) allow certain contractual minimum personnel levels to no longer be adhered to, it will not obviate the necessity to have adequate Fire Companies and personnel available for Firefighting and other emergencies. Sure, no FD is as busy as twenty years ago with fire duty, and certainly not as busy as 30 or 40 years ago. Nonetheless, fires do still occur, and adequate personnel and equipment is necessary for this. There is a very valid reason that similar sized city FD's all over the U.S., and in fact the industrialized world conduct First Responder Programs- the very nature of a Fire Department requires Firefighters and their equipment to be readily available for guess what, fires! However, this ready availability of individuals who are trained to handle emergencies and have apparatus to quickly respond allows city sized Fire Departments to have personnel available to supplement the primary EMS response with First Response capability. This supplementation is able to be done by Firefighters who, for the most part, will need to be there, available, anyway! The Firefighters do not get tied up with transport (generally), transfer to the medical facility, PCR's, cleaning the ambulance, etc. So, they are able to go right back into service as soon as the patient has been placed in the ambulance, or in many cases, sooner, right?
Misinformation response # 2. Oh, here's an easy one- we have 4 Firefighters per apparatus (3 Firefighters and a Company Officer), not 5. That is the manning we have had per apparatus for over 30 years. It's hard to understand how any individual who would purport to understand the situation in Yonkers could state that this is all about reducing manning from 5 to 4 per apparatus, or words to that effect.
Misinformation response # 3. The majority of these runs are nuisance runs. Well, that depends on what you consider a nusiance run. The fact is that if we know in advance the situation is not a true medical emergency, then neither the Fire Department nor the emergency ambulance service shoud respond, right? The problem, which has been studied at the highest levels for many years, is how to deduce from the initial phone call what is and what isn't a "nuisance call"..I don't know how to quantify how many of these runs that YFD (and Empress) responds to are not true medical emergencies, but admittedly the number is significant, as it is in EMS systems almost everywhere. No one wants to respond on any type of alarm where we are not needed, and as soon as someone can find out how to deduce true emergency from nuisance run every time, please let us know!
END OF PART 2 TO BE CONTINUED

Great post my Brother, whoever you are, lol- please let me know your identity if you don't mind. Thanks to you and Capt. Smith for the informative posts and to all of our members for not discrediting ourselves or our department by engaging in name calling and nasty, unprofessional language. Of course I would never expect our guys to sink to the level that some others on this thread have sunk to, but thanks nonetheless...
I will add a bit from my perspective- please bear with me as I am exhausted and pressed for time do I will bang this out quickly and it may be a bit rough around the edges....
I am nearing the end of my career, and frankly, I don't really think I will be personally affected if in fact the YFD First Responder Program did end, although I sincerely doubt that will happen for long, if at all, and I will explain why below. In fact, I certainly have more to lose by posting on this topic rather than remaining silent as this will likely piss some people off...oh well...
I have been a member of YFD for almost 25 years, since before we had a First Responder Program. As a very junior Firefighter I was a member of the committee which some at the time said "ruined the job" by convincing first, Local 628, and later, with the backing of L-628, helped to convince the City Fathers that this program was a good idea. The union did not come up with the idea of this program or push for it at first. You see, years ago, YFD only responded on medical runs when there was a confirmed cardiac arrest and Empress Ambulance either was not available at all, or did not have enough personnel available to perform good CPR. We responded on those fairly often. We had only very basic first aid training and CPR. There were numerous times when we performed CPR for very long periods of time before the arrival of the ambulance. Sometimes a Paramedic fly car would arrive and we would wait, and wait....sometimes not even the fly car. The Empress employees were almost always professional, dedicated, and we had a great working relationship. It sure wasn't their fault that the number of ambulances available didn't meet the need at that moment. One day, at Engine 306 where I worked, a family ran in with a baby in respiratory distress who had actually turned blue. A senior man /EMT opened the airway and started Oxygen. The baby wound up being ok. The family was irate that they had called over 20 minutes before and we had not responded (we checked the times and this was accurate). We explained that FD did not get sent to these type of calls unless it was a cardiac arrest and Empress requested us. It was very upsetting to me/us to know that people who we were sworn to protect, particularly children, could be having a life threatening medical emergency that we would be able to assist with, yet we would not be called.
I really never wanted to do emergency medical work back then- I thought of myself as a Firefighter and my idea of a Firefighter was different than what it is today. Nonetheless, because of situations such as I have described above, I agreed with some other Firefighters who advocated for us to go on these runs more regularly as was being done in other parts of the country, and seemingly very successfully. It took a couple of years, but eventually the program began. At the time, approximately 22 years ago, it is my understanding that Empress was charging the City of Yonkers a flat 1 Million per year for their services plus the ability to recoup from billing. Almost as soon as we began the First Responder Program that ccontract was re-negotiated and Empress then waived this 1 Million dollar fee. Also, there was no minimum number of ambulances that were required to be dedicated to City of Yonkers- almost as soon as YFD began going on these runs,it was noticed how very bad Empress' response times were- not due to any fault of the overworked Empress EMT's and Medics, but again, because of a lack of appropriate resources. So, very shortly because of YFD complaints, Empress agreed to keep a minimum number of ALS and BLS units in the city and this was put into their contract. I also think that it was at this time that a certain maximum average response time for Empress BLS and ALS units was placed into Empress' contract which improved things dramatically. I guess if prior to YFD involvement no one was really paying attention to ressponse times, why bother having a lot of ambulances available- the number of billable patients was not dependent on response time- they would all wait as long as it took for the ambulance so why incur the expense if no one was complaining, right?
Admittedly, I haven't gone on a First Responder rum for almost 7 years now, but I did respond on very many over the years. Almost always, I found Empress employees to be fantastic and I thought we had a great working relationship, even if there was a bit of uncomfortability at times- egos and jealousy and just basic human misunderstanding on both sides creeps in of course, however in my opinion we were mostly all regular working people who enjoyed the adrenaline rush and especially, helping people. During the approximately 15 years that I went on First Responder runs with YFD there were very many times that we arrived significantly before Empress ambulance. The large majority of time we arrived at least a couple of minutes before Empress, and often, especially when I worked on the East side of Yonkers, more than 10 minutes prior to Empress. As Captain Smith was, I was involved in 2 successful childbirths (the Moms did basically all of the work of course but they were sure glad that we were there nonetheless) before Empress arrived (not the same ones), and I and my crew initiated CPR COUNTLESS TIMES before Empress' arrival. END OF PART 1 TO BE CONTINUED

There are thousands of examples across the country where volunteers report to a career chief. It can work and will work for the volunteers who want to serve. If your sole motivation is preserveing your fifedom then this is bad but unfortunatly it's worse for the taxpayers.

I cant believe that this topic is still here after 4 years! Then again, i still cant belive that Stamford has such a screwed up and inefficient system. The fact is that it is one city, so why not one department with one chiet and one fire marshal?? I have no beef with volunteers being a part of a single department as long as they are properly trained to recognized standards. But anyone who says this is nothing more than a battle over turf, budgets, and petty little pockets of power is drinking some supercharged Koolaid! I know guys on the job in Stamford and worked witha few who started out as vollies there, so while no expert, i have some idea of what is going on. The sooner the politicians do the right thing and consolidate the better for all, especially the brothers on the line (paid or vollie) who will operate in a safer and more functional situation.

I cant believe that this topic is still here after 4 years! Then again, i still cant belive that Stamford has such a screwed up and inefficient system. The fact is that it is one city, so why not one department with one chiet and one fire marshal?? I have no beef with volunteers being a part of a single department as long as they are properly trained to recognized standards. But anyone who says this is nothing more than a battle over turf, budgets, and petty little pockets of power is drinking some supercharged Koolaid! I know guys on the job in Stamford and worked witha few who started out as vollies there, so while no expert, i have some idea of what is going on. The sooner the politicians do the right thing and consolidate the better for all, especially the brothers on the line (paid or vollie) who will operate in a safer and more functional situation.

I cant believe that this topic is still here after 4 years! Then again, i still cant belive that Stamford has such a screwed up and inefficient system. The fact is that it is one city, so why not one department with one chiet and one fire marshal?? I have no beef with volunteers being a part of a single department as long as they are properly trained to recognized standards. But anyone who says this is nothing more than a battle over turf, budgets, and petty little pockets of power is drinking some supercharged Koolaid! I know guys on the job in Stamford and worked witha few who started out as vollies there, so while no expert, i have some idea of what is going on. The sooner the politicians do the right thing and consolidate the better for all, especially the brothers on the line (paid or vollie) who will operate in a safer and more functional situation.

In NYS we have 3 different systems of public fire representation (there are a few hybreds, but thats not the norm): Fire Protection Districts
Fire Districts
Municipal Fire Depts
All can be made up of 100% volunteer, combination or 100% career.
Fire Protection districts are often private not for profit corp. that are contracted and generally there is almost no public input (take the contract or leave it is about all). They also often do not give the public much info on how they are run.
Fire Distrcits have a publicly ellected board of commissioners and they are only responsible for the FD
Municipal Depts are overseen by local mayor/manager and city/village council.
Cogs your debate appears to be that you want something closer to our fire district model and the proposal is more of the municipal model.
From what I have seen in NY there is no real difference in the level of public input between the two and little difference in the performance between the two. There are good ones and bad ones. The public rarely participates with the districts (thus most commissioners end up being insiders or anti tax members) and the public rarely comments on the municipal dept ops (to the mayor/manager/council).
If this proposal goes thru, the public will still be represented by the Mayor and the financial and other boards. Is this so bad? If it does not go thru, and as you put it the financial board has already said no to the money for a 2nd paid "vol" dept., then your left with the same situation you have now (which no one appears to be happy with) until the financial board changes its mind or the next charter revision.
Based on this, is it really the public who would benefit from having a bigger say (if they really care to get a bigger say) or is this really about protecting the Stamford VFD view of the world?
Most importantly, how can the public decide what is in there best interest when there are so many facts being misheld.

I think content and history are bigger issues. >> "Volunteer depts hurting for manpower is not the issue at hand." <<
Then why did they need paid personnel? and why in the 2 dept proposal do they need paid personnel?
>> "Stamford was very fortunate to have a system of paid working together with volunteers for years. So much so that many depts reached out to us to see how and why it worked so well." <<
I recall there was litigation for a host of issues and dept of labor violations over how poorly the career staff was treated by their employer.
>> "If the volunteers were to be replaced by the paid firefighters (assume 100 volunteers just for an example) . The city would have to replace them with 100 new paid fire fighters in order for the citizens to get the same level of service." <<
By standards, if they are replacing 100 volunteers they only need 33 career and thats assuming that the volunteers are responding to 100% of the calls. Also, which volunteer firefighters are the 50 (in the 2 dept. proposal) replacing? volunteers that no longer exist and the plan is to take them from the existing volunteers (so if they need 50 and they get them from 50 volunteers, they will need an additional 50 career, and the cycle repeats).
>> "Glennbrook is not example to follow, look at their records what percentage of call the do their volunteers make" <<
That was the point of the letter he was trying to attack. That the volunteers are no longer available in the numbers they once were.

Vitamin N is a beautiful thing. It has saved many a mutt!

Good cause and great event.
Lets celebrate the life of a fallen brother and support his loved ones.

Excellent interview of Chief Flynn. Always nice when the media gets info from good, credible sources.
Hope for a speedy recovery for the members who were trapped, scary situation.
Looks like another job well done by the YFD!