TXCHIEF

Unfortunately, several emergency responders and West residents have died as a result from the West plant explosion earlier this evening. As this time, there is an evacuation zone around the plant. 15+ medical helicopters have been called from all over Texas, including all CareFlite helicopters, as well as additional units from Fort Hood (about 40 miles south). The state has mobilized to assist and coordinate mutual aid resources and personnel. Severly injured are being flown to trauma centers south (Austin and Temple) and North to Dallas and Fort Worth

Arrangments have been made for Rich.. Wake will be held at Balsamo Cordavano in Lake Carmel Thursday and Friday the 27th and 28th of December both days 2-4 and 7-9... The funeral will be Saturday the 29th at 11am at the Holy Communion Church in Mahopac.

It is with deep regret to announce the passing of my brother Richard "Rich" Stiller past chief of the Lake Carmel fire department, a former volunteer member of the Mt. Vernon fire dept and many of you also knew him through his work with the Westchester County Dept. of Transportation.

As funeral details become available I will post

RIP FF Townes. Our thoughts and prayers are with your family and fellow Fire Fighters

In Fort Worth, MedStar who is the EMS provider has a similar program which was started in 2009 and was geared towards those individuals identified as high system users and developed individual care plans for each of those patients. As part of that care plan, the enrolled patient receives regularly scheduled home visits by one of their Advanced Practice Paramedics. During those home visits the paramedic provides a medical assessment, ensures the patient is taking their prescribed medications and is following up with an assigned primary care provider. They also provide some often much-needed social interaction for these patients

The goal of the Community Health Program is to reduce the unneeded 9-1-1 calls and EMS transports

From the link Seth provided.

Seth,

It reads like Texas is rapidly burning Bro. No disrespect intended, but I see your Governor Perry quite a bit these days in the news, he's running for President. What is he doing, as Chief Executive of Texas to help Emergency Services get a grip on what is going on up there? I don't know anything about how the chain of command works in these complex situations in your state, but it sounds like he needs to be more involved in helping get more resources into these areas to help contain these wildfires. My God, 700 homes burned? How many hundred thousand acres? Governor Perry should suspend all campaign activity and get his butt over to IC and find out what they need. Obviously they need more than they are deploying, no?

Capt,

Gov Perry did cancel campaigning and returned to TX and is making requests as needed from the TX EOC. Attached is briefing from this morning and I believe

on page 30 shows deployment within state of Fedral and State Forest Service Teams. This does not include the deployment of various FD and military teams which

are also engaged

TX Forest Service 090611 Briefing.pdf

Thoughts and prayers to his family and to the members of the Department

Link to Dallas Morning News

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20110814-firefighter-dies-after-battling-blaze-at-southwest-dallas-apartment-building.ece

Kudos to a fire department having some Type III's. It is so incredibly rare that anything but commercials have Type II's and, let's be honest, they do the trick for at least 90% of EMS patients and cost sometimes as much as half as much.

I'd be interested in the financials of such a department.. i.e. where the $ from transports goes and if it effects the $ received from the municipalities served etc.. It sounds interesting nonetheless considering so many Fire/EMS combinations are very much a Fire Department who also "happens" to run EMS.

By law in TX the revenues are placed in the General fund for the City. But in looking at Burnet's budget they in turn

allocate the revenue ( 2011 est $1.7M) right back to the FD, as well as funding received for their county coverage, etc. So in short the coity council puts that funding at this time right back into the FD to provide emergency services

Haltom City, Texas, has a fire station like that. Set up in a water tower. It's home to Engine 473, and I believe Engine 475 (a reserve). It has two bay doors, and I don't think they have a water slide in it though.

Here is Haltom City, TX station 3. It was built in 1983.

Well any word on how many Guard units are being mobilized? They are there for a reason.

Alabama activated 2000 Wednesday and they were on the ground working yesterday morning, with additional units being called up. 1700 deployed in Arkansas and about 600 in Missouri numerous air assets as well are deployed. Also you

have numerous Texas units deployed working on the wildfires . So I think the Sates are mobilizing their assets as they need them

If the states don't request, FEMA can't act. How is this one FEMA dragging their feet?

FEMA started the ball rolling on the 27th with activation and deployment of their resources and Maxwell AB in Alabama is being utilized as their incident support base. In addition as mentioned above National Guard resources in all states affected have been called up as required by the Governors. Also some of you may or may not be aware Ft Rucker AL is

the US Armys Aviation center and has lots of resources to deploy... All coordination is being performed between appropriate State Agencies

It has been great seeing a lot of these units in use out here as part of the TIFMAS Program activation for the wildland fires out of west of here. Now only if the rains would come to help

Units first focused on rescuing the driver who was in the cab dangling over the bridge and they repelled from one of the ladders on the scene to get him out first, prior to performing extrication on the persons in the car pinned underneath the water tanker.

Texas is a right to work state. PD's have unions and civil service protection.

But overall, unions are not a big thing in Texas.

X635 In Texas... Civil Service protection for PD & FD must first be voted in by the citizens of the municipality and in addition although the employees may join or form a union , again citizens must vote on allowing them to negotiate contracts with the municipality... commonly refereed to here on the ballot, as granting Meet & Confer

Ed, it's statewide. My power's already gone off three times today. Statewide Emergency for the Republic Of Texas due to insufficient online generator power, and the operator of the statewide grid is rationing out electricity to cities. I wonder if this has anything to due with space heaters?

TXCHEIF, you guys are getting it the worst in the state! I imagine the same power situation in Dallas? Perfect timing with the Super Bowl. It's funny that the guys from Green Bay and Pittsburgh are complaining about the weather on the news!!

We are getting rolling brownouts here in Fort Worth , I had one earlier this morning for about 20 minutes but nothing since. Still calls for Upper-50's for kick-off time on Sunday. As they say down here wait a hour and the weather will change.

A mere -4 with wind chill here in DFW

there used to be a nice page with pictures of all Fort Worth fire apparatus, but I cant seem to find it now

Here is a site that has a large number of photos of FWFD

http://www.fortworthfire.net/index.cgi

TXChief may be able to better explain this, but from what I understand, in most areas, they run with Engine companies as a truck. I believe the pump/tank/hose is there as an auxillary tool, so the Quint can be sufficient for master streams, and run as an Engine company when needed.

You are correct Fort worth runs with the engine company/quint combination and has been doing so for many years. In addition they are very specific in their station assignments for the quints using a standard that the station they run out of are typically in areas of concentrations of apartments or garden homes, which allows for quick use of water

and aerial capability for rescue. They are also typically assigned in stations in which the quint runs less than 2K alarms per yr

Here is what Fort Worth Runs

37 Engines, 10 Quints, 4 Trucks, 6 Aircraft Rescue, 13 Brush (4x4) Units, 2 Utility/Light & Air, 2 Water Tankers, 1 Command Unit, 1 HazMat/Rescue Squad.

Seth, station 34 which just opened in September of this year in the Sendera Ranch development in north Fort Worth as you stated is supporting a development that at build out will be about 10,000 roof tops. currently the City of Fort Worth covers approx 300 sq miles (always subject to change). Fort Worth has built several new stations in the past 10 yrs especially on the North & West side where the growth has occurred and have also added on additional Fire companies due to the growth and the requirements of annexation here in TX ( annexation must lay out plan for many things but in particular FD & PD) they currently staff 42 stations, with minimum staffing of 4 per apparatus.

In regards to the apparatus another thing I find very positive down here is the cities abilities to utilize cooperative purchasing agreements for the purchase of among other things fire apparatus and Fort Worth does take advantage of this

in lieu of having to go out to bid individually and based on the pricing already received they can also add on to the base price. This has proven to be a very cost effective solution across the state.

Forth Worth has done pink graphics for Breast Cancer Awareness month on 6 engines also.

Having been involved in a department which was comprised of Public Safety officers, as well as volunteer members there

were pro's and con's to the operation. All career personnel were trained and certified as required under the state for both LE & Firefighter and in several cases officers also were certified as EMT or Paramedic as we also in the at that time as first responder, in conjunction with contracted EMS provider. The PSO's were compensated above their base pay for being cross trained, as well as for enhanced state certifications in both LE or Fire and in their EMT/EMT-P certifications. SOP's were vital in our operations, i.e. PPE for all incidents (patrol officers carried all their PPE in trunk). In addition what we implemented to ensure consistency and to foster better operations was a testing program for volunteer personnel and officers equal to that of the career staff (physical agility, officer testing and candidate review board comprised of career and volunteer staff). The PSO concept was put in place in this community, due to limited budget and tax base at the time and remained in place for 18 years. The biggest concerns that were raised by the PSO's was their ability to maintain proficiency in multiple disciplines. Although all ongoing annual training requirements were met in both LE & Fire. Many of the officers had a preference of which area they liked and when the city's tax base and revenue grew to a point that the city council working with the Public Safety Director and rank and file, made a decision to split the dept back to separate PD & FD. All pay scales were maintained, PSO's were happy and they got to choose which dept they remained in. Additional benefit with the split was that budget wise with both capital and expense in that they could now identify needs for their particular disciplines and not be fighting internally under one budget.

The PSO concept I believe has its place within communities with limited tax revenue, but requires a person or persons at the top who are familiar and trained in both LE & FD in order to make it work, as wll as implementing strong SOP's and ensuring they are complied with.

Just my 2 cents

You can take a look at the proposed exterior drawings of the new facility at the architects website. Under portfolio and than under municipal

http://www.pfga.net/

SENATORS SCHUMER AND GILLIBRAND SECURE $1 MILLION FOR MOUNT VERNON TO CONSTRUCT MULTI FUNCTIONAL EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTER

Funding Will Renovate Existing Fire Station to Serve as Emergency Operations Center in Mount Vernon

New Operations Center Will Enable Emergency Personnel to Respond to Multiple Disasters Quickly and Effectively

Schumer, Gillibrand Secured Federal Funds As Part Of The 2010 Appropriations Bill

U.S. Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand today announced that the full Senate Appropriations Committee has approved the Department of Homeland Security FY10 Appropriations Bill which includes $1 million for Mount Vernon to reconfigure, renovate and construct a Fire Station as the City's Emergency Operations Center. Approval by the Committee is the largest hurdled the funding needs to clear. The bill will now proceed to the Senate Floor as the next step in the appropriations process. Schumer and Gillibrand worked closely with members of the Appropriations Committee to include funding for the project in the 2010 spending bill.

http://schumer.senate.gov/new_website/reco...?id=314799&

Does this give Mt. Vernon the ability to renovate the Fire HQ building?

If I remember correctly they have 1 boat and I believe its located at their station 1 on shore drive