Bottom of Da Hill

Seth, I think using the word "size up" may confuse some into thinking that a detailed report on arrival is needed. While in a perfect world that would be great I believe even a "preliminary report" would be helpful. For example short blurbs such as "engine abc on location, nothing visible" or rescue xyz "smoke showing, building self evacuating" or engine xxx " manager reporting malicious false alrm, investigating".

im sorry but i think some of you are missing the picture here. A Parade is for the community. A celebration of whatever it may be. Celebrating America or troops coming home or something within the community. Its very much American as apple pie. When i hear the "should have used the time for training or done this or done that or the rig should be covering." As long as he dept has resources to cover, go to the parade. Let the people enjoy a weekend and see firetrucks, police cars and Ambulances and bands. I just don't get it. Next parades will be banned because they are too patriotic according to the trend the country is on. Some of you need to get a grip and enjoy life.

you dont have to drink and act like a hero.you can be like the rest of the guys and enjoy your self see what rigs our out there,

you dont have to drink and act like a hero.you can be like the rest of the guys and enjoy your self see what rigs our out there,

Whether or not a paid department would've made a difference here is irrelevant for a few reasons:
1st off since there wasn't a paid department in place in Seaside Heights at the time of this fire, it's impossible to tell if their presence would've made a difference under the conditions present upon arrival. We can speculate all we want about response times, staffing or tactics, blah blah blah, it doesn't matter. Things were as they were and any number of circumstances could have placed a paid department in a position to be unavailable at that moment.
2nd paid departments do not have the monopoly on tactics, equipment or competency and that's a fact. Now if someone here was actually in Seaside Heights at the time and was there on the initial alarm and they know the Chief or officers and they know their backgrounds and competency...well then yeah to an extent, they can comment factually, otherwise it's nothing more than the speculations of Monday morning quarterbacks. I mean let's get real here, many a building(s) has burnt to the ground in career towns too and upon hindsight we learn that better resource management or deployments or tactics could have or should have been used. That's called learning and that's something we should all be doing regularly. The truth is every department makes mistakes or faces situations that test their limits and when faced with those circumstances does what they believe to be the "right" thing at the time. Should we sit here behind our keyboards and fault them for it, or worse revel in the misfortune of others to justify our point of view? No we shouldn't unless we were there to judge based on facts. What we should do is look at the situation for what it was and what it is and do our best to learn from it, lest we find ourselves in the same situation and get the same results.
Lastly, if taxpayers don't want to fund a paid department well then guess what, there isn't go to be one...end of story
Stay Safe

No doubt and as gamewell45 correctly pointed out, those personalities are on both sides.
However, like many things in life, how you conduct yourself can often have a big influence on how others view and treat you. If you are squared away as a volunteer firefighter and/or fire department, then the vast majority of career firefighters will not have an issue. Now, if you act like a clown, don't know how to do the job or won't do the job, act more like a social club than a fire department, then they're will likely be some animosity - especially if you start playing the "we're all the same" card.
I work in a small career department in a small urban city surrounded by a good dozen volunteer fire departments who's districts directly border the city and few more close by. We pretty much have no choice but to use the volunteers if we need assistance with a fire. One is pretty squared away and we tend to call them first. A few more are ok and we use them when needed. A few more are pretty much posers and we've had issues with them when we've worked with them.
We maintain a pretty good relationship with most of the departments around us, but when you show up at our fire and your engine company gives us the "you want us to go.....in there and do....what?" look, we aren't going to view you favorably and you won't be invited back.
We don't get invited to many out of town calls for whatever reason, but when the neighbors do extend the invitation, we expect to work along side of you and not in place of you. We also expect that your IC (the fire chief) will not be drunk and require our duty chief and another mutual aid chief to assume control of the incident before somebody gets needlessly hurt or killed! When this is the case, we aren't going to view you favorably.
And for the record, I spent 9 years as a volunteer before getting hired 11 years ago.

Being a former volunteer firefighter and a career firefighter for the last 23 years (an officer for the last 15), here is my take on it:
Being career does not make you any better than being volunteer. I know some volunteer departments in my old hometown (Dutchess County NY) where everyone is well certified and competent, and they show up very rapidly when the tones go off. Heck, some of those guys are better trained than the people I currently work with.
It all has to do with the following and applies to both volunteer and career departments:
Leadership -- if the department's leadership does not make sure that there is a means to get their membership trained and encourages it, the department will never be functional.
Membership -- if you can't get enough people to adequately staff the vehicles when called, then the department will not be functional.
Political Support -- if you can't get the support of your commissioners or supervising governmental entity, the department will not be functional.
Fire Prevention -- if the department or municipality doesn't take fire prevention seriously and does not have a good inspection program in place where property owners are held accountable, there will be fire safety issues.
I've seen terrible volunteer departments and I've seen terrible career departments. I've also seen great career departments and volunteer departments that would put most career departments to shame. I really don't think it has anything to do with volunteer vs. career as a whole, but the specific area in NJ.
I've seen many departments here in Florida go from volunteer to career and shut down/disband firehouses completely so they could pay the staff of 2 firefighters on an engine for each of the other stations covering a larger area. Yes, you have 100% assurance a unit will respond immediately, but you have less units and longer response times in those areas where the fire stations were shut down.
This is just my 2 cents.

here she is.

here she is.

Looking good, what about the older one are you guys still going to work on that one or is it dead .

here she is.

here she is.

here she is.

here she is.

here she is.

here she is.

County: Westchester
City/Town/Municipality/Dept: Ossining Fire Dept.
Unit designation/identifier: Cataract Engine 97
Chassis & Body (or Aerial) Manufacturer and model: Spartan Gladiator
Pump size, tank size (water/foam), aerial type & length: N/A
Status: ON ORDER
Notes: Replacing the current Engine 97,a 1990 E-ONE