firemoose827

I was going to venture to add that his records, as a charity, should be public records and available upon request or FOIL. He should have paperwork tracking where he "spent" all the money he received and where it went, which should be to any and all 911 charities for the fallen and their families. Takes a real scum bag to do this kind of thing to the memory of the fallen. I sincerely hope he isnt a past volunteer firefighter, or if he is I hope he gets wahts coming to him...

Just a few observations and additional items to think about; If this had been a robery/hostage situation and 2 off-duty firefighters ran in and rescued the hostages without incident, would we call the firefighters Heros? Pat them on the back and say "Atta boy"? Granted, its human nature to want to go and help (for some humans anyway) and there will always be someone that will "run in" and try to help wherever or however they can, we cant and wont be able to stop that. But with this instance, these are professional police officers who should know better then to try and enter an "Unknown" situation and put themselves in harms way, and possibly add themselves to the problem. Im not a cop and have no police training but I am sure they have had some training to that effect that adding more victims to the scene just adds to the rescuers problem, especially since they firefighters will want to save the police officers first, making the original victims wait that much longer before receiving the very much needed O2. Brain damage occurs after 4 minutes without oxygen?

Thank you, but I was mainly concerned with posting the square miles and population as a time factor in our response, I just got ambitious and posted the rest of the information as well for further discussion. I am aware that PT's condition affects what hospital you transport to. I just wanted to paint the picture for all that are not from my area to see what we face outside of the Westchester area with large travel distances to the scene and to the hospitals taking our crews hours for just one call. The average time spent on EMS call here is about 2 1/2 hours from tone out time to leaving the station to go home. (Factors that affect our membership and high turn-over rate)

Good points you bring up that I forgot to mention to give a better perspective for our times. Our town, according to the last census taken in 2009, is 9.2 square miles with roughly 2500 people. Our department; 32 members (Including life, exempt, auxilliary, and administrative as well as fire and ems), 9 of which are interior qualified (Firefighter I or equivilant training) and 2 EMT's, Engine, Engine/Tanker, brush truck, Rescue, UTV Brush/rescue, and Ambulance. (I am in the process of making some GIS type maps of distances to other mutual aid departments, travel times to each others districts, and travel to hospitals) Our county runs paid EMS coordinators, three, all paramedics with flycars, and they take shifts in different parts of the county for a quicker response. We have a local hospital (more like first aid station) in the town to the south of us with a small ER, and a 50 bed wing, small OR that does basic operations (Like my shoulder repair), they have clinics, lab and xray unit but nothing special and they cant offer much to the PT. They are a 15 minute ride for us depending on what part of our district we are in. The nearest trauma center is a Level II trauma at Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown NY, which is a 30 minute ride for us. There is Albany Med, a Level I Trauma center and cardiac/burn units as well, where Life Net is based out of, they are a 45 minute ride for us. Ellis Hospital is a decent medical hospital with cardiac cath lab, OB unit and a good ER. They are 40 minutes out. AO Fox Memorial is a decent hospital with a newly rennovated ER, OB, Psych, and orthopedic services and they are an hour for us. Nearest Burn Units for us.....Westchester or Syracuse. (Albany is only basic treatment until they can be flown out by Life Net.)

Thats a whole other thread in and of itself...lol Believe it or not, they do have heat detectors in place, BUT, (theres always a but, mine bigger than most) in order to meet a full NFPA 72 compliant fire alarm system to get extra points for Life Safety Code you are also required to have a smoke head within so many feet of the kitchen that is hard wired. I dont make the laws, just have to enforce them. My homes can follow NFPA 101A guidelines for Fire Safety Evaluation System or FSES, where they gain so many points for added fire protection features to over-rule some of the Life Safety Code Requirements...long story that I am trapped in. I would rather they just be forced to follow fire and building codes with Life Safety Code enhancement, but if the state were to spend the money to totally convert all of the homes they are buying to fully compliant homes I would be getting a lot less in my check. I offered them to have someone like Emeril or "Iron Chef" come in and teach all of the staff how to cook but... We are also looking at the "Safe-T-Elements" for the stoves as well as the "Safe-T-Sensors" for microwaves, or the Gaurdian Range Hood Fire Systems as possible safegaurds to prevent them from burning the place down, but that still wont stop all of the false alarms. I guess its fast food only...lol

Yes so am I. When I heard the call come out I was home and knew there was a meeting at that time and expected to hear them call out immediately yet it took over 5 minutes. Apparently they had the tables set up in the garage in front of the rig and had to move them (Nice weather and they wanted to have meeting outside) Then there was confusion on whether EMT was taking call or not...typical backwoods junior high BS...

We have the same issues in my county, but a lot of it here boils down to pride and ego. I have argued countless times with the EMS in my department because its the same EMT and same Driver that show up to every call, and they both take over 10 minutes to get to the rig and the rig takes 15-20 minutes to roll out the door; this includes Delta and Echo calls. I have brought up automatic mutual aid with 2 of our nearest agencies to be simultaneously toned out with us and the first rig to roll gets the call, and it can be a mix-matched crew if needed, like our driver with our rig but with an EMT from the other agency. The answer I got? "Well, we should be allowed to answer our own calls, its our town and we should get the chance to roll to the call before anyone else does"................... I have timed our EMS several times for Charlie, Delta and Echo calls and the best time I have seen is a 6 minute time (for the rig to roll after initial tone out time) and that was because they were at station for a meeting. The best time otherwise is 15 minutes...UNACCEPTABLE for any call you respond to. As mentioned and well known already, it only takes 4 minutes for brain death with lack of O2. It may take 4 minutes for the family to call EMS, talk to the dispatcher and get the tones out...then you make them wait another 15-20 minutes for a rig to show up? And then its only staffed with an EMT fresh out of school with minimal experience and no ALS support????? Yes, this system is flawed beyond repair and its being ruined by volunteers with extremely large egos and personal pride. People are putting their pride before the needs of the patient and it needs to stop. Very well written article and i am from Suffolk County originally, I was raised in Northport NY. Its hard when you are a volunteer that started in a larger, well run agency with a large call volume and more volunteers than you know what to do with ending up in a small town agency, with a handfull of volunteers and a small call volume. You try to offer advice and they instantly get defensive and insulted because "The big city man is trying to push his way in and run our squad thinks he knows it all, trying to boss us around..." yadda yadda yadda. Pride. Ego. Need to put those things asside and put patients first. I dont care if its an ambulance from 10 miles away that just so happens to be driving through our town returning from hospital; if they are staffed they should be able to call the dispatcher and say they will go to the scene and assess the patient and give an update. If the other squad still has not answered tones then they SHOULD be able to transport; no arguments or petty attitudes, turf wars, "this is my call what are you doing here" BS that most volunteers display. (And to end the pettiness right now, I have been in volunteer EMS for 18 years now as well as career EMS for 11 years, I have been a volunteer EMS lieutenant, Captain and training officer. I have specced out a new rig, and applied for our squad to become ALS certified all at the age of 19) I too am not a volunteer basher, I am a proponent for the patient. I have been a patient and did not want to wait 20 minutes for a rig. My child was a patient and I almost grabbed her and ran in my car instead of wait for the rig to finally decide to arrive. I too used to have that disgusting attitude of "Its our call, dont let XYZ agency take it, lets get a crew and respond even if it takes 20 minutes and 4 tones of our pagers"......That was wrong and I know it now. We need to get the proper care to the patient within minutes. Period. End of rant...sorry! lol

We face this issue where I work for the state. I cover a large area (9 Counties in my primary and 6 in my secondary area) of residential homes for the developmentaly disabled. I receive notifications from the homes constantly of burnt food on the stove activating the alarms. It happens too often and I fear the local FD's that cover these homes will start to fine us if we do not correct the issue. But the issue we face is this; you have a DD home with 4-12 individuals living there with varied levels of need for assistance, and only 2 staff members to take care of them all as well as the day to day chores in the home. Chores include laundry, cleaning, cooking, bathing the individuals, taking care of the yard and the snow shoveling etc etc. When they start to cook a meal sometimes, there will be an episode with an individual that requires both staff to remediate, and the staff never turns off the stove...We train them and train them, when you leave the stove for any reason turn it off until you can come back to it but they never think of that, just whatever is going on in the other room. So they end up with multiple false alarms and responses by FD to clear the home. Our homes are instructed to evacuate every time the alarm goes off, and NOT to investigate the cause or call the FD off even if they know its burnt food, because they never know whats really going on or if the fire in the stove is truly out. I will be reaching out to the local FD's to touch base with them and see what we can do for their specific sites that have frequent nuisance calls and how to remedy them. I have tried all, I am the Fire Safety Rep and they never listen to me until its too late or if they want to blame me for it...

Im going out the week of July 28th to August 2nd, but I guess that doesnt help you...sorry Im taking FSI 1 for work, what are you looking to take?

Hows the hose look on it Rob, any pics with the bed dressed out? Were you able to use the turnouts we gave you for it? Looks great and congrats on the trophy!

The guys that run our FB site made it a requirement that all photo's and content that anyone wishes to be posted be emailed to one of the sites managers so they can screen the material for appropriateness and content. The managers are the only ones that can post content other than the chat box but they quickly remove any pictures "attached" to the posts that are not appropriate or violate rules.

Thats why I chimed in on this, to give you guys a broader look at things outside of Westchester County area where you all, for the most part, have large memberships with enough manpower to do this. In my department though, we have 9 interior firefighters, 6 of us are officers, you take 2-3 of us away and make us FAST we have 6-7 FF's left (IF we all show up and are available) to work. Now, to further whittle that away, some of us are the only MPO's we have to work the engine and the engine/tanker so there goes 2 more. We face this issue all across our county so thats why we did the county-based team concept. A majority of our FAST members keep their turnouts with them in their POV's and have special air packs at their stations they can grab and run with already fitted with the "FAST" reflective sleeve over the air bottle. Our county Cascade truck carries additional air packs for their use if they happen to be closer to the scene then their stations so the team assembles relatively quickly. Most of our fires in my town we have had FAST presence within 5 minutes, sometimes getting there before my first-due engine does. So this concept works better for us than other areas. There are still some departments in my county that have a large membership and respond to large call volumes and they decide to keep their own FAST in-house, they train like the county team and maintain their level of training, if called for they can respond as well.

Department FAST are hard to operate unless you have lots of interior trained firefighters. They tried it around me, but each department only has a handfull of interior firefighters, if there is a fire you will be fighting it, and there is no manpower left for the FAST. You need a dedicated rig for them to use as well, be it an engine, or utility/SUV truck they can carry their equipment in and respond. When called for mutual aid fires our manpower is used to fight the fire, and we cant provide enough for a FAST as well...so they went to a county wide team. They got members from around the county and split the county into divisions. If the fire is in "ABC" area then one set of FAST responds to the scene, if it is in "XYZ" area then the other team responds. This has worked well for us and we have a fully equipped and ready to act FAST on scene within minutes. A majority of their equipment is carried on the county Cascade truck which they pick up and respond in, the rest is taken from trucks on scene as agreed upon by the chiefs at the inception of the team. They have air packs with ID sleeves on them, and a TIC and rescue rope with hardware, they take tools, saws, ladders and whatever else they need from the trucks on scene. Our FAST will attend all training held at the training tower, especially live burn training, and they will train with us as individual departments as well so they get real-time training and experience. They have their own drills as well. They are also used for any Firefighter 1 classes during the practical portions. Another thing you need to look at if forming a department based FAST is this; say 5 of your interior trained firefighters respond to a neighboring district as FAST for a mutual aid fire, then while they are there you get a working fire as well, and you dont get enough firefighters to operate for the initial attack? I know there are a lot of "What if's" and I am aware of that but its just something you as a department will need to assess prior to forming a team. Wish I could offer more useful advice, but my experience with forming a FAST is limited. I was on our county team when it was first created, was on the initial trainings we received as a team and went to a majority of the county meetings while they discussed our inception yet I have had 6 dislocations of my right shoulder, surgery to repair it and tons of PT since, and I am only at 90% with my right shoulder so I had to step down from the team. Im now one of those overweight crazy people with a white hat and a radio that causes all the grief on scenes and tells the FAST where to go instead...LOL

Please see posting for a position in my company for the NYC area. Contact me for job description and more info, I am currently fire safety rep for the Capital District Area. Fire Rep NYC.pdf

FYI, the address to send your resume and cover letter to is on the 3rd and 4th pages of the job announcement. I was hired provisionally without being eligible on the current civil service list until I was able to take the exam. They make exceptions to training, as long as you have some firefighting, codes, or fire safety/prevention experience to work with. The new guy they just hired for Long Island had no codes classes but was damage control officer in Coast Guard with firefighting experience and they hired him providing he takes the exam, and takes the necessary codes training. Let me know if you need any more information, they need to fill this spot so get your stuff to the address provided ASAP and good luck!!

Color coded tags with scan bars, picture, and list of training classes (abbreviated) on back (also in scan code). Color indicates status; Interior, Exterior, MPO, EMS only. Our accountability officers have the board with rings on it, they take your tag and hang it on appropriate ring with time entered and task assigned. The entire county is using this system and it is regulated by the fire coordinators office, you have to go there to get you picture taken and they make the tags while you wait. The county wide system makes it easier, and less confusing and it works good for us. Our county FAST has special tags as well, and they stage near the accountability officer so they can get the information they need when something goes wrong.

Moose with my Pride and Joy!! Engine Tanker 2031 (1500gpm/2000gallon) Brush Truck 2051 with our new UTV 4-wheeler 2062 Close up of our new 4-wheeler 2012 Cub Cadet with 35 gallon tank and electric pump, trigger nozzle

Sorry, I forgot to mention the other truck in photo 2 of our engine/tanker. Behind the tanker you will see our rescue truck, 1986 GMC Heavy Recue with walk in body, seating for 5 with packs, TIC, 4-gas meter, Amkus Rescue tools (cutter, spreader and rams), air tools and bags, cribbing, hand tools, spare bottles, RIT Pack and light tower. Originally from Orange County NY.

Two guys sit in the cargo area/tailgate and we deploy them to hit hot spots while we hit the flanks with the water gun.

This new 4-wheeler is for brush fire and rescue response, has a 35 gallon tank, electric pump, 25 feet of hose with a trigger gun so we can ride the flanks and get a quick attack on the fire. It carries 2 soft indian tanks, union rake, pulaski tool, broom and an 18" Husqvarna Chain Saw and can carry 4 firefighters to the front. We were going to get a skid unit with rescue body but it was too pricey for us right now so we made due with what we could purchase. The tank and pump unit came from a local FD that bought it and only used it for a little while before up-grading so thank you to the Middleburgh Fire Department for that deal. At the end of the parade, my daughter came with me and we shook the hands of every veteran on a float for them, she was right there with me making me proud as a daddy!

Hey Cogs, I dont know if its just me but the link doesnt work. Thanks!

Looks like its coming together nicely brother, cant wait to see more pictures as they progress.

Rest In Peace Firefighter Wilson...prayers to his families, both at home and the station.

Dont you guys get the chance to take the AVET Course taught by the state or are you looking for something more than that? I have taken the AVET class twice now and will take it again when it is scheduled again to refresh. Im hoping to see a lot more on the Hybrid cars and alternative fuel vehicles integrated into the AVET class.

Thoughts and prayers to both of them on a speedy recovery. I didnt see anything about the driver of the pick-up truck? How did they fair in this tragic accident? Prayers to them as well.