16fire5

UL has a free online course on the subject. http://www.ul.com/global/eng/pages/offerings/industries/buildingmaterials/fire/fireresearch/pvsystems/

These boards must be full of KME stockholders.

I think a lot of people have jumped to conclusion on a report done by Fairfax County Communications Section. The report was sent to their command staff for as a recommendation. Somewhere during this it got released to general public and people are treating it as a scientific study for the whole country. Were all bands and radio types tested? NO. There is a lot to learn and an honest discussion can be had but this report was in no way intended to recommend a nation best policy on where to place your portable radio. What I'm surprised is that no one has mentioned is NFPA 1802 in the works. NFPA 1802: Standard on Two-Way, Portable (Hand-held) Land Mobile Radios for Use by Emergency Services Personnel Current Edition: Proposed Standard Next Edition: TBD

I have serious doubts that these engines will be as durable as the engines we currently have. More scene lighting that we've ever had previously which is not a bad thing. There is no need for all the suction hose. In the rare event that it will be needed there is no reason that every engine needs all those lengths. Hopefully there's some more room in the front of the cab than the rigs of the last 5 years. And the whole process is way to far behind schedule with a decent percentage of the engine fleet operating with rigs over our 10 year service life.

Along the same lines is the active911 system where the dispatch generated email leads to navigation responding and on scene tracking, hydrants, and preplans which checking out their prices seems very affordable. Many of these systems are giving the functionality that previously came only with toughbooks, AVLs and expensive software at fractions of the price.

Sad thing is it really does not have to be this way. Even if you have no money you can train on giving maydays. Teach your members to shut up when there is one and run command officers through scenarios. I think a squared away IC in today's environment should be using a tactical worksheet and on the back or on a separate sheet you should have a MAYDAY checklist. All you need is some people with radios and a simple MAYDAY scenario to run the IC through the procedure. In reality if you never ran through one there is little chance for you to run one smoothly during an emergency.

Recently there was some back an forth between the union and the director (chief) about closing companies and a fatal fire. While reading about it I came across the boss's resume. Appears pretty light in the experience category. How does this relate? If the boss really had no use for working in the field it's hard to believe he will take any interest in what goes on there. http://www.memphistn.gov/Government/FireServices/Administration/AlvinDBenson.aspx

Once again you are using this forum to bash Mobile Life. Did the change occur because of poor quality by the former or was the service put out to bid? Or was it the all to common our members work for ABC ambulance so lets hire them? I can honestly state I have no stake in the game do not and have never worked for Mobile Life but I have found on the whole they are a professionally run company that provides excelent service.

I think it's good that they are striving to cut down on call processing time. I think all public safety agencies should have to give a report card on performace quarterly. Call processing time, turnout time, travel time, and total response time. With that you can have honest conversations about the real essentials. Do we need some paid staff? Is the dispatch entity performing as well as they can be? Closing that firehouse would have this effect.

I couldn't agree more. And with that we are teaching firefighters the wrong thing. We are teaching firefighters that the high heat environment is ok to operate in. In reality the we can get a concrete burn building much hotter than would be safe in a regular residential fire setting we are in real danger of flashover. With all we have learned in the last 15 years (Andy Fredericks and Black Fire to Mondern UL/NIST Research) we need to respect the voitility of todays fires. I'm not sure we're doing that with our current mehods. I'm not talking about throwing out the baby with the bath water here because live fire in a controlled environment is priceless. We just need to take a hard look at our methods.

If the town found reason that the ambulance service needed to be shut down either temporarilty or permanently then it would be entirely appropriate with them to meet with providers to ensure that coverage was continued in at least the interm. Mobile Life is a well established commercial service with a long track record. They have an continue to provide service like that Chester has secured. If I was a town in Orange County needing stop gap ambulance coverage they would be the top of my list. Meetings for professional services on the municipal level are rarely negotiated in open regular board meeting so that too is perfectly understandable. What has been refered to as secret can easily be looked at as proper "closed" door negotiations. I have personally been tasked with hiring professional services for a town and I met with companys in this format. As for the shutting of the agency again it would appear that most reasons that would warrant this type of action would allow the board to deliberate and make such determinations in executive session.

NFPA 1720 has a table for staffing and response times. Based on population densities (urban, surburban, rural, and remote). It's a starting point. A better solution might be to prepare a standards of cover with stakeholder input (firefighters, officers, elected officials, and taxpayers). These documents are specific to the department and evaluate risk and set goals. Once you have a document with these goals you can evaluate whether you are meeting these goals. If your not then you have a much better arguement of why you need help/staff. These documents are part of the process that a fire department goes through to gain accreditation from CFAI.

There is no simple answer to these questions. The standby in quarters may work if the response time to the areas being covered is reasonable. So if Dept A B and C are commited to a working fire and B's station is somewhat in the middle of all three putting a standby in B's station to cover all three makes the most sense. There was a similar thread recently where some posters complained about relocating into fire stations that get infrequent calls and they thought it was not necessary. If the next closest resources are 20 minutes away then I would say they need a standby. Also in many cases the relocated units then become the next due units on additional alarms. As always a county or regional system works better where a central dispatch center has the authorization and responsiblity to maintain coverage by relocations.

I don't see the benifit of on-spot chains. Added expense, something else to break, and performance that does not compare to true tire chains. Once you learn to put on chains does it really take that long? 10 minutes top to do it completly right. If you had to drive an engine or ambulance through a foot of snow which would you choose?

History once again Prior to ~2002 1 year probation Civil Service title of Chief of Department (Civil Service Exam) ~2002-2006 2 year probation Civil Service title of Chief of Department (Civil Service Exam) ~2006 forward Chief of Department appointed by the fire commissioner from the rank of Deputy Chief and serves at the pleasure of the fire commissioner. As it stands now no one can be tenured in the rank of Chief of Department or any of the staff positions for that matter. They can theoretically be dropped to Deputy which did happen under Von Essen and/or Safir. I believe Kilduff and Cassano served more than 2 years in the rank of Chief of Department.

Ok to clear things up the commissioner is a mayoral appointee who doesn't have any fire experience and we have had commissioners that had no fire service experience. Chief John O'Hagen actually held both positions at the same time but that has since been outlawed. The commissioner never enjoys tenure. The Chief of the Department on the other had was formerly a civil service title was the highest rank in all of NYC government that was tested and all in the rank of Deputy Chief and above were eligible to test for it. Under Commissioner Von Essen the city attempted to change the way the chief ranks were decided because it seemed they were not happy with the pool. They proposed Chief Level I and II. Chief level I would be the rank of battalion chief decided by civil service test and promotions above level I would be decided by the commissioner. I believe they reasoned that all upper level chiefs would owe their allegiance to the commissioner and they would like the pool to choose from better. Step in that pesky union the UFOA. They challenged the proposed change in court. The city attempted to argue that there was no real difference between Deputy and Battalion Chief. The union was successful and the change was blocked but the city was pretty committed to not allowing another man to reach tenure in the rank of Chief of Department. The last man to be tenured was the late Pete Ganci who was tenured because his 1 year probation ran out without any action by the city by their inaction he defaulted into tenure. As we all know Pete the fireman's fireman died with the 342 other brave members on that fateful day in September of 2001. They then appointed Dan Nigro to chief a man who stepped up at an unprecedented time to do a very difficult job. Chief Nigro had always done what was asked of him and had routinely taken on difficult jobs like the EMS integration into the department. As thanks for that they showed him the door just shy of a year to avoid tenure and re-wrote the probation for Chief of Department to 2 years. What followed were a few more chiefs that would get all the way to the tenure point and then let go. Finally after all this the UFOA found it self in contract negotiations that required substantial give backs to meet the pattern set. It was in those negotiations (circa 2005 or 2006) that we bargained away Chief of Department as a civil service rank. The Chief of Department now serves at the pleasure of the commissioner. I believe he or she must be filled from the rank of deputy which is the highest civil service rank in the FDNY.

I wonder if any other state forbids fire districts from billing for ambulance transportation. There are a number of instances where the EMS operation broke off fire departments for billing purposes.

Many jurisdictions are now jointly training for active shooter incidents with a new concept of having fire/ems personnel operate in the warm zone. While this may seem too risky for some it is a result of the lessons learned from incidents which indicate a savable portion of victims of these incidents die due to not receiving care. In lieu of a time consuming full clearance of the area fire/ems enters after a primary sweep under cover of LE and removes the victims. Can this strategy save lives? I think so but it will require us to work together, train together, and remember what the overall objective is (Saving Lives).

I think all the Engines assigned to SI have 750 gallon tanks. Technically it's up to the company to set up their hose loads. They are issued a standard ammont of hose and set their beds up accordingly. Some things I have seen. Main bed with less than 6 lenghts of 1 3/4 Main bed with quite a bit of hose up to 1000' and while that may seem odd if you have a first due area with very large 7 story buildings without standpipes stretches in excess of 500 feet are not uncommon. In Upper Manhattan and the Bronx this is often seen.

I threw the 90 secconds out there as a maximum amount of time I could comprehend and to drive home the fact everyone that no one is advocating doing it for long. So thirty seconds sounds much closer to what would be practicaly necessary. If we remember that we not trying to put it out but instead knock it down from the lawn. I don't think anyone is endorsing opposing streams. Changing procedures for fireground ops is never easy. In the case of our recent changes to ventilation there was a month of drilling on it. We now have the ability to push out drill material on the computers which makes it a little easier to get a standard message out especially when you have over 10,000 members. The procedures then took effect on a predetermined date and time. For those that want to sit down and hear/see it from the horses mouth I am providing the link to a UL self paced program that delves very deeply into these topics. http://content.learnshare.com/courses/73/456883/story.html from http://ulfirefightersafety.com/training/

I don't think we are on opposite sides of the spectrum. I've been afforded the opportunity to see the research first hand. Unfortunatly many people are not hearing the true message. No one is advocating full scale changes to our tactics. No one is advocating fog or shipboard firefighting tactics at all in fact venting is advocated and the benifits are supported by the research. I think there's a lot of fear that we are advocating never venting and doing exterior attack as SOP which is not the case.

Plenty of fire departments are going for this change. In my opinion the FDNY, Chicago, and LA County are real fire departments. The fact is we are not steaming victims. The longer we allow the fire to burn un-interupted the less chance the victims have. When water is applied things get better always. As for basement fires attempting to get down the stairs is a very risky tactic. Exterior knock down that is able to hit the seat of the fire actually will make descending the stairs tenable improves conditions throughout the structure. Hundreds of fires have been conducted to test these theories both in the labs and in mutltiple aquired structures throughout the country. The revoultionary tactics outlined in FDNY Ladders 3 written in the late 60s worked very well for our department when natural fibers dominated the fuel loads. Then fuel loads of today lead to fires that are much less forgiving. What's being advocated for the most part is the following. If you can take some of the tremendous energy out of the fire with some exterior application I would say probably never more than 90 seconds is necessary that will aid in your sucess and make it for a safer attack. No one is saying not to vent but coordination and timing is very important now. The research actually validated the benifits of VEIS, horizontal, and vertical ventilation when coordinated with suppression.

But what if it's not black like all the cool kids?

I think that depends on the individual. Some take the job and work very hard to do what is right and go down trying. Others sell their soul to get the top job.

So if a department only has one command vehicle the chief should drive it 20 miles each way to work when they won't respond? I disagree. Leave it for who ever will be command. Plenty of places are forced to share the vehicle because that's what's economically feasable. Too much sense of entitlement for some.