jcoppola

I recently completed the promtional process for Deputy Chief. Came out 3rd overall with no jobs expected over the course of the 2year list. Good learning experience anyway and not really looking to get into a car anytime soon. I like the truck co. work and still enjoy going into workers.

I look forward to reading and posting good stuff here.

Joe

Been a while but I just checked in and the site looks good. As always, lots of good info. I will try to be a little more active. Studying for the upcoming test has taken a lot of my attention away from normal routines.

Joe

Was this obtained through a grant?

It was. It was the US Port Security Grant. Based on this fact, the boat can be summoned to any reasonable location within the waterways around us. I believe Bridgeport's vessel was obtained in the same manner and Stamford is also getting one.

JVC

Great looking ship, good luck to all thoses who crew it.. a question ? the Storz connection off the back deck ? is that a suction or discharge ?

Thats a 5" discharge for running a feeder line from draft to land.

Beautiful piece of apparatus. Best of luck with her. It looks well thought out just based on the pictures. I would love to see some of the specs/capabilities if someone could post them. Great pictures.

I'll get a spec sheet together for you. Stand by...

On October, 9, 2012, The City of Norwalk Fire Department took delivery of a 42' North River Marine Fire Boat. The boat has been named "The Robert Bedell" in honor and memory of one of our own who died in the line of duty several years ago.

Quick question, will the new HQ house any other Special Units other than Engine 2, Truck 2, and Car 2(Deputy Chief)? Also, is Tac. Rescue 2 now paired with Rescue 1 at Broad River, or is it still with Station 2?

As part of the force realignment plan put forth by Chief McCarthy a few years back, Station 1 will be the permanent home to Rescue 1. The final destination for the Tactical Rescue is still not clear, but it could be married to T2 at the new HQ. Once the remodel is done at Station 4 on Westport Avenue, T1 will go there permanently, giving us 3 multi-unit stations in the city and possibly a Captain at each one. Its a great plan, we support it and it has worked well so far.

I have a schematic of the training wall designed by Captain Markowitz, once I can find it, I'll post it up.

Joe

One of the replies to the article about the councilman ripping the project is from yours truly. The building is awesome and we cannot wait until it is finished and we can move into it. The training wall that will be in the center of the building will be impressive and I believe it will eventually be an article topic in the trade journals.

The guys there acted exemplary for sure!

Great mix of shots Seth! Ending with the little one is priceless! Hope all is well. Hoping you would have got to Norwalk to shoot the new tiller...oh well, maybe next trip!

JVC

Just wondering where this was taken.?

She shure is pretty though!

You seem to be saying you condone Stamford volunteers operating off city rigs if they arrive on a scene without a rig but with their turnouts and SCBA (under the assumption they are qualified to at least FF 1 and EMR [MRT] of course). Is this correct? Are you speaking in terms of your opinion or is this SFRD policy? Seems like this might be a good start at turning things around and this development would clearly show that SFRD does indeed want to work with Stamford's volunteers to best serve the public.

Cogs

No one, and I mean no one, other than my own members are grabbing anything off of my apparatus unless I know about it and give it approval. That is preposterous. What company officer is going to allow equipment to "walk" when he might send one of his own company members back to the rig to get something and expect it to be there?

To me, this just promotes freelancing.

He probadly should have studied alot harder in school and be able to become a Career Firefighter.

But lets think about this. Any pay or benefits that ANY Fire Dept has been given was given with the full knowledge city officials at the time. It was a give and take game. Each step of the way was a battle and it took years to get anything that was given to them. It wasn't just out of the Goodness of some politicians heart. It was negotiated fair and square.

When I went on the fire dept in another city in Connecticut, people thought I was CRAZY. I started working for one third of what the average factory worker was making. The benefits were not as good as the rest of my working class friends of people. People tried to talk me out of the job because of the very low wages, and terrible benefits. While I worked my share of the holidays, most people enjoyed EVERY HOLIDAY. At the time, I loved the job and about the only thing I had more than those factory workers was job security.

Nothing has been handed to any IAFF Firefighters no matter where they come from. Stamford or other. Now as the tables have seemed to turn, Firefighters appear to be "Letching Off the System".

After reading that letter, its no wonder there are serious problems between career and volunteer firefighters. I was a volunteer firefighter in Fairfield, Ct for several years before becoming a Career Firefighter. I would NEVER consider insulting those guys. I sure wanted to be a part of them, BUT I never let jealousy take over. I had respect for them. And by the way, all my Volunteer buddies from Fairfield got on a Career Fire Dept. Most have now retired.

After giving it some thought, I probably reacted to the letter to the editor from Mr. Maonis rather knee-jerkedly. I have worked on negotiations committees and assisted in negotiating 2 contracts for my Local so I take any attack on the benefits we have very harshly. Like you said, the benefits we enjoy today were obtained by members who served many generations ago. We are in the fight of our lives to keep the benefits we have and we don't need some jackass telling the public that we are assaulting the system and getting carte blanche benefits. It sickens me.

I have no ill feelings against volunteers. Just some of the systems they may have in place to promote their own. Mr. Maonis' attack on our benefits is out of line. I know that they are all involved in a quarrel in Stamford and its none of my business, but this garbage spewing big mouth needs to knock it off and go back to his job and let us do ours.

And...for the record, I do hope that he sees my comments here.

He should have known that his identity would be called out for who he is or claims to be.

The following is a letter from a volunteer chief of the Turn of River Volunteer Fire Dept that was submitted to the city's Board of Representatives. This personal attack on union firefighters has pretty much ruined the relationship between union firefighters and TOR volunteers. Also it should be noted that when TOR had paid drivers that were union members, they received the exact benefits that this individual is now attacking. In fact, most of these benefits (i.e. night differentials) were first created in the TOR dept, only to later be added to the contract of the downtown firefighters. One other point this individual seems to have left out is that the average union ff logs 6 sick days a year- the lowest of any dept in the city, and well below the national average. This letter was copied and pasted (gramatical errors and all) from the city of stamford web site.

Members of the Board:

Below are some facts about Stamford's paid fire fighters that you may be surprised to hear.

Stamford Fire Rescue work schedule: With the exception of the Chief and 2 Assistant Chiefs, all other officers and Firefighters work a 24 hour day, then have 3 days off then work another 24 hour shift. What does this really mean? SFR Firefighters work on average 7 days per month, yes 7! That's only 84 days per year. There is 104 weekend days in the year. So they are work fewer days than the average person has off from work on weekends. This is before any vacation days or sick days are used.

Over the course of that 24 hour shift, they are allowed to sleep. So theoretically they can sleep for 1/3 of their shift and maybe even more while getting paid to do so. There another perk they get paid extra money to work at night. This is called a night differential. This dates back to their old schedule when they worked 3 days on, 3 off, 3 nights on. Then it was deemed a "hardship" to work nights. But now working nights is anything but that.

Unlimited sick time with pay, yes, I said unlimited, even if it's not job related. For example, a firefighter tears their ACL while skiing on their paid vacation and needs to have surgery and rehab and end up being out of work for 1 year; they get paid their salary for that whole year.

The contributions they make toward their medical benefits are lower than the national average for unionized workers and the average union workers contributes less than the average private sector worker.

Let's talk about pensions now. A fire fighter who has at least 15 years of service is entitled to receive a pension. Let look further into this. A firefighter who came on the job in 1999 would make contributions to the pension fund. By the year 2014, their 15th year, they would have paid in approximately $55,000. For that $55,000 payment they could start to receive their pension as early of an age of 48. The amount they would receive is approximately $27,000 per year for the rest of their natural life and if their spouse outlives the firefighter they collect it until their death. Hypothetically, if a firefighter and /or their spouse can collect for 30 years; that's $810,000, at 40 years or age of 88, that's $1,080,000. So I ask you what is that benefit really worth? One thing I can tell you it worth a lot more the $55,000.

These are just some of the perks SFR firefighter's have. Their work schedule gives them the flexibility to work more than one job. Other things like getting time and a half for overtime, 4 hours minimum pay overtime even if they only work for 1 hour, and paid vacations and holidays make this job very lucrative for them. Remember, we are all tax payers in this town and we pay for these benefits. Most of the members of Local 786 are not residents of this town and their only motivation, though under the guise of public safety, is to protect the finical fiefdom they have created over the years.

These are just some of the reasons Mayor Pavia's plan should be implemented. The tax payers deserve a more fiscally responsible and efficient system.

Sincerely,

Matthew Maounis

Resident & Tax Payer

Sounds to me like someone is jealous.

All the aformentioned "perks" that we as career, professional firefighters get are called compensation for doing things during a career that should really not have to be explained to a chief or on a FD blog. Hold on a minute, how did this "chief" get his rank? by default because nobody else was qualified for the job, or maybe all his buddies "voted" him in at a "meeting"?

What a freaking joke! You want to publicly blast career firefighters...be prepared for the backlash.

I write this as a proud member of the IAFF. The organization who helps us get and keep the benefits we enjoy for doing this work to support our families.

Any more photos of the H-O-H tiller on how you set up equipment and such on it??

For the most part, it has it's own saws, ladders, hooks and forcible entry stuff. We would take the critical things off of the in-service tower ladder when we went out training on the ALF just in case we happened upon something or were put on a run.

The critical items are the EMS gear, the RIT stuff and our SCBA's. I would also take officer stuff like elevator keys, map books, thermal imaging camera and my beloved rex tool. It has worked well, but now we are exclusively driver training with the new rig. It is being outfitted with more and more stuff as the days go on. It will be in service within the next few weeks I imagine.

They bought it!

We actually traded it to Hastings on Hudson for a old reserve rescue truck that we had (R3). We have been using for training and running calls when out on training. It has been well equipped and hopefully will be a viable spare going forward,

Here are the twins...

I'm very interested in how these Ferrara's are going to hold up in the City. It's wierd seeing a rear mount going to FDNY that is NOT a Seagrave.

Bottom line...there is a enormous duplication of resources in Stamford (and elsewhere too) that are costing taxpayers big money. This hair-brained scheme the mayor is trying to enact only makes that duplication of resources worse! There, I said it. Truth hurts sometimes.

JVC

Admit a deficiency and have to give up that precious white helmet and free ride to cruise around in? No way.

They'll never admit that they can't do it and they'll continue to threaten the politicians as a big block of voters.

If the politicians are refusing to take action on the threat of lawsuits, they're cowards and incompetent. Lawsuits get threatened every day and if the city is right the city will win. If the city's goal is to save money and improve fire resposne and accountability of the departments, they would have a very strong case. What's the volunteers lawyer going to do in court when he can't prove being able to meet NFPA 1920 for a minimum response or produce all the required records and documentation of training, etc.?

Unless the volunteers in an integrated system rostered in house and responded with the SFRD, it will be a tiered response.

Stop spouting off about how the volunteers save money because if they can't put a fire out they're not saving anyone anything.

As long as nobody is holding anyone accountable and demanding action, this is going to continue endlessly and sooner or later someone is going to die while everyone protects their turf.

Totally agreed. Exactly what I have been saying all along.

You may be right that it's time for a reexamination of the Charter but be that as it may the City Charter is a legal document that requires a specific process to be changed and it's provisions must be adhered to while that examination is underway. Should anyone wantonly disregard any of the rules, policies, regulations or procedures of their department if they don't agree with them? Should they disregard them while they were under review? Should they disregard the process to change them? Would anyone advocate simply ignoring the process and doing what they want? My bet would be no. Yet that is exactly what is happening here in regards to the Charter. While the previous Administration may have turned a blind eye or one could argue even encouraged such action, it appears the current one will not.

It simply comes down to this, right or wrong, for better or for worse to the public and for Stamford's firefighters as a whole, the City Charter stands. If anyone doesn't like the way things are then they need to follow the process to change it, but until such time as it is changed we are all still bound by it's provisions. As "tired" as you, I or anyone may be with that or with hearing about it, the fact remains that we don't have the right or authority to disregard it. And that has nothing to do with paid or volunteer, it's just a matter of following the law.

Cogs

I could tell you one person who could legally disregard the process to change the charter...a JUDGE with an INJUNCTION stopping the whole mess before another resident of Stamford loses their house or worse because of incompetency and lack of sufficient fire department structure to handle whatever is thrown at them. If you recall, this was the case several years ago at LRFC station 2.

In the interest of public and firefighter safety, perhaps these "charters" that we hear so much about need to be reexamined and perhaps revised.

Is there anything in this charter that says it's ok for houses to burn to the ground because sufficient personnel are not available to respond?

Explain this charter to the person who has lost everything because of a silly, infantile turf war.

I'm sorry, but I am tired of hearing about this charter that was drawn up in the good old days and applied well then, but clearly not now.

This has nothing to do with paid vs. volunteer, just a matter of public and firefighter safety.

And Joe: this is not so much a paid vs. Volunteer debate as it is a discussion of a turf war. I know I appear biased because I'm a career guy, but there is no place for this type of behavior on the fire ground. It's wrong on so many levels.

You could defend this guy all you want Pete, but the bottom line is the SFRD Chief on scene has a solid reputation of professionalism and 511 has a reputation of using his rank to stir the pot and create a atmosphere of animosity in Springdale. You are going out on a very weak limb trying to defend this mess.

Any build photos? I'm very curious to see the finished product.