helicopper

This comes across more as an opinion to me than an actual question. And frankly, I would not normally dignify comments and opinions coming from an 18-20 year old (whether career or volunteer) with a response. It is basically impossible in my opinion for you to have adequate expertise in this area for anyone to take your opinions seriously. I do not mean this as an insult- it just is what it is...you have not had enough years as an adult on this planet to have accumulated adequate
e or experience on this subject to engage in debate. If you were a career Firefighter it would already have been explained to you in no uncertain terms to keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut (or in this case keep your fingers off the keyboard) until you have some time on the job. This is for your own good most of all...how can you ever learn if you can't humble yourself to just be quiet and listen for a while?
That being said, since you raised the point and others out there may be wondering and it gives me another opportunity to get the message out (thanks for that, BTW)...the history of the existing career team is clear...I cannot speak for the various Fire Commissioners / Chiefs of Department of the various teams which make up the career task force but there is an established history of the Southern Westchester Career Depts. responding when requested to Northern Westchester. I have no doubt that if there were an incident anywhere in Westchester requiring the response of USAR assets, and if the Southern Westchester Career Task Force was requested, that they would arrive in force and be operational long before anything even approaching an adequate response from this other "team" showed up. The shane is that we would not be called immediately most likely...there would very likely be a delay while the other team is called and responds with a completely inadequate number of trained and capable personnel.
But, you have apparently confused my posts on two different threads young man. I do not believe the Westchester Tech Rescue "team" is a duplication of resources...I believe they are an illusion and are not actually a viable resource at all. Further, many years ago, as I have stated previously, the Southern West Spec. Ops. Task Force had offered to have a squad or squads established in Northern Westchester which would include volunteers, however this effort was killed politically by the volunteers because they wanted their "own" team....
Thanks for throwing me the softball. I'm sure you are a great guy and have wonderful intentions but I would strongly advise you to stick witht the basics for a while...concentrate on hoses and ladders and all that stuff...

State Fire administrator has authority to create additional teams
NYC = NYTF-1
Capital District Team = NYTF-2
They have not designated any additional teams because they claim they do not have the resources ($$$$$)to validate any others at this time.
The Career Chief's have a template which utililzes over 9 dept's - The Yonkers team as well as the Squads from other career dep'ts.
Yonkers recently deployed over 50 personnel with a squad from Greenville (for a total of just under 60) to the Buffalo area for operation Vigiant Guard for a 4 day exercise. Outside of the 2 teams mentioned above there were no other NY resources there that were even close to our capabiltiy.
Why do I point this out - it is becasue of the politics on the County and state level of pandering to every little group out there that wants to be a State team. The state knows if they acknowledge any additional groups it would create a "me too" effect and they would not want to stir up that hornets nest state wide.
The career depts in Westchester have trained, have a "real" track record and the resources to be designated a state team - It has always been my contention that these other teams are a drain on the system and create unneccessary duplication and competion for the limited resources available ($$$$$)
All the nice tales of training twice a month and having been activated (????) all sound nice but we all know the the truth - but no one wants to hear it or say it
But it all boils down to they don't want to hurt any ones feelings by telling them they are not needed or especially never going to be capable of measuring up to what they say they can be.
"The Emperor has no clothes", Don't upset the apple cart - that is the underlying message
Maybe the new C/E Rob Astorino if he is really concerned about cutting ($$$$$$) will realize that the County Hazmat & Tech Rescue team would be nice to have but are really a waste of resources that are already provided through other dept's - they all want to talk about sharing resources but they certainly don't want to offend anybody. Especially all of of the volunteer (aka voters) team members and fire fighters.
So go ahead and bang my post with the negative rep points - the more attention that is brought to it maybe the truth will finally surface - and that is all I have to say about that!

The members of Yonkers Rescue 1 updated the appearance of their rig to honor FF Patrick Joyce

Yeah, yeah... I want numbers prominently displayed on ROOFTOPS. And while we're at it, we need to standardize roof numbers on police cars. Some are too small to see on the ground let alone
from 1000 feet.

I think that the point system is beneficial to the forum. It encourages members to contribute positive, constructive posts. It also encourages some members to put a little more thought into their posts, and these posts should be recognized by other members of the forum. So far, the majority of the posts I have seen with positive rep points have been excellent posts, and well deserved by the poster.
The benefit I see to the negative rep point is it might keep certain posters "at bay" so to speak from posting certain things in the forum that could be construed at utterly ridiculous. I haven't seen too many negative rep points given out. I have been on the receiving end of a negative rep point for two of my posts, one which I can understand, but the other I felt wasn't necessarily warranted because my post was not in any way "ridiculous", but instead quite factual. But am I going to lose sleep over it? No, I have more important things to worry about in my life.
Perhaps the EMTBravo group can somehow design the negative rep point so in order for someone to give a negative rep point, the rater has to #1) Identify themselves, and #2) Describe why the negative rep point was issued to the member.

Interesting, ok yes SAFER is supported by everyones tax dollars, but lets look a little closer at SAFER. Prior to this year this was one of the 2 main components:
2. Recruitment and Retention of Volunteer Firefighters Activity. The goal of this activity is to create a net increase in the number of trained, certified, and competent firefighters capable of responding to emergencies likely to occur within the fire department geographic response area and safely. The primary focus is the recruitment and retention of volunteer firefighters who are involved with or trained in the operations of firefighting and emergency response. Volunteer, paid-on-call, and combination fire departments as well as local and statewide volunteer firefighter interest organizations are eligible to receive grants in this activity. With proper justification, applications for assistance in the Recruitment and Retention of Volunteer Firefighters could include activities that would require as many as four years to complete. There is no local match requirement for this activity and there are no maximum federal share limits.
What are some examples of incentive costs that are eligible under the Recruitment and Retention of Volunteer Firefighters activity?
Applicants who propose to initiate a recruitment and/or retention plan as a part of their application will receive equal consideration for the recruitment activities and the retention activities. Proposals in this activity may include providing incentives for volunteer firefighter members to continue their service in a fire department. Examples of the type of initiatives that may receive assistance include but are not limited to the following:
Accidental death and dismemberment insurance
College education cost reimbursement
Reimbursement for lost wages while attending training
Marketing program costs to recruit new volunteer members
Staffing needs assessment
Explorer, cadet, and/or mentoring programs
Initial entry physicals
Tuition assistance for higher education and professional certifications
Workers compensation
Length of service awards and other retirement benefits
Now here is the kicker if a VFD applied for SAFER and spent federal money on all of the above activities and the department lost members and did not recruit anyone then oh well no loss (except to us tax payers).
The career side of SAFER requires an 80% match by the local department so SAFER was just a 20% sale. In addition if you laid off the hired members for any reason you had to give all the money back.
Now lets look at that money, the 20% that SAFER paid equals $100,000 over 5 years, each of the new employees is now paying federal (and state) Tax. at the current rates they will payback all of the money in about 8 years. But to meet the goals we hired 8 ff's under SAFER and agreed to staff 2 seats 24/7 which requires 10.5 positions (on OT) so we actually generated additional taxes. If we maintain the additional staffing over 20 years we will more than triple the Feds money.
So yes you are helping to fund career ff's but they are returning the money in income tax.
And everyone has been funding the volunteer side of SAFER and can we measure what that has done for retention and recruitment?
Lets fast forward on SAFER to fall 2009. FEMA was ordered to drop the volunteer side of SAFER and concintrate on the rehiring of laid of career FF's as part of the overall jobs programs of the Obama administration. This is no different than how they have hired contractors for road projects to generate incomes to stimulate the economy.

Don't the Police Departments have enough to do without doing extrications. I don't think a single Canadian Police force does this, it is all handled by the fire service.

Everyone is so caught up on the idea of extrication. I highly doubt this truck is going to be carrying nothing but rescue equipment. ESU is not just a technical rescue team. Yes, that's an aspect of it, but primarily they are a tactical response team, and the amount of equipment needed for any decent sized tactical operation is incredible:
Weapons
Ammo
Armor/Helmets
Shields
Non-Lethal systems
Surveillance systems
"Throw Phones"
Communications gear
Forcible Entry equipment
Medical gear
Crime Scene Gear
Command and Control area
HAZMAT gear (Yes, there IS a reason for PD to do HAZMAT, welcome to the 21st century boys and girls)
Tactical Operators carry a LOT of equipment on their backs, I've you've ever worn it before you know what I'm talking about. All that stuff has to go somewhere. Only so much is going to fit into one of those Odyssey ESU wagons that YPD ESU cruises around in When "the big one" hits, having a war wagon with enough gear to sustain your team is critical.
Let me ask you this, how do you feel when at a fire commissioner's meeting the taxpayers challenge why you need a $500,000 rescue truck or $1 million tower ladder to conduct their operations. I'll bet you get defensive because you don't like people who don't DO your job telling you how THEY think you should do it. So why would you do that to our Brothers in law enforcement? Besides, we don't even KNOW for sure what is on the truck, how about waiting to find out before filing a grievance on behalf of a fire department you don't even belong to.
Best of luck to YPD ESU on their new rig.

Alpine: Is this "Stamford" information coming from Stamford City Fire sources or is this scuttlebutt from people from outside Stamford Fire and Rescue who have like to start problems by manufacturing their own stories and history (there is quite a bit of that going around.....)
I am pretty abreast of most SFRD and Union issues and I have NEVER heard about a concern whether SPD takes the old Mack R2 and makes it into an ESU truck.

Perhaps this is why it wasn't widely posted already. The speculation and rabble rousing in this thread is unbelievable. Does the Yonkers FD consult with the PD before buying equipment or vehicles, probably not because they have their mission and the PD has theirs.
You're all calling it a "rescue" but it will be a POLICE emergency services vehicle and provide TACTICAL support (among other things) to the smaller trucks already in service in the city.
This thread is a prime example of why people don't want to post things here. (shaking head)

No worries and no hard feelings... I was not making a reference as to the curriculum teaching all EMT's to give Aspirin to every single chest pain. I was offering two real life scenarios where EMT's hear the words chest pain and right away they shove aspirin in someone's mouth, or they hear altered mental status and are shoving globs of insta-glucose down someones throat. Instead of having a good knowledge base and good clinical judgement skills, they hear the words "chest pain" or "altered mental status" and that's all that registers in their minds.
When I was teaching EMT/Paramedic students, a few of the EMT instructors always taught their students to "play it safe". Is there anything wrong with playing it safe? No, not at all. But after a while it gets a little out of hand with certain scenarios, and EMT's (and even Paramedics alike), don't do a detailed assessment and obtain a good history of the illness, and instead just follow through with protocol to "play it safe", even if certain interventions are not warranted or indicated. It's like using spinal immobilization on someone who tripped and fell on a sidewalk, and who has absolutely not the slighest indication of a spinal injury. Why do we do it... well usually just to "play it safe".
I think the simple parts of the problem are:
1) Not enough time is spent dealing with real patients who present with a chief complaint, and learning how to differentiate and/or make a field diagnosis of the illness in order to provide the correct and proper treatment.
2) Too many EMS providers are cookbook providers. They follow the protocol from A to Z without utilizing good diagnostic and clinical judgement skills. You can chalk up some of this to inexperience, but when I come across providers who have been through 2 or 3 refreshers in their time and are still following the "recipes" we talked about here without performing a good, solid patient assessment, who do we blame them for their skills as a provider?
3) The curriculum has definetly been dumbed down considerably. As long as an EMT student can run through a very basic patient assessment scenario without getting nabbed for a critical failure for something like not using BSI, most students will pass the patient assessment scenario without any real knowledge of how to actually perform a patient assessment. Now in the field, I see EMT's performing this basic "cookbook" patient assessment on every patient they come across. Why is it that I still see EMT's checking pupillary response on a cardiac chest pain? Because that's what they learned and has been forced into their heads in patient assessment. I would rather see EMT students take the time to learn how to perform vectored patient assessments, where they are actually learning how to assess patient who present with certain disease processes. Check for pupillary response on patients who may present with neurological conditions (AMS, stroke, head injury, etc.), not someone complaining of chest pain.

Which is better time wise could be debated. If you challenge the recert course well it might save some time, however the CME hours aren't "endless" as all providers need 72 hours in 3 years. If you space it out it equates to 24 hours per year and with the lectures, conferences, courses that are out there, its pretty easy. The CME's you do depends on what you do and attend and I'm not sure what your seeing in regard to attending CME's that do not pertain to the duties of being an EMT, but it sounds rather odd if an agency/CIC signing off are seeing such things and allowing it. I'd be interested in some ideas of what your referring to that is being allowed that has nothing to do with your duties as an EMT. As far as the hands on goes that's not entirely true, there are hands on CME's out there and doing courses like PHTLS and AMLS are great ways to achieve CME's in bulk and give hands on. In addition its the agency's responsibility to ensure that their personnel are proficient in their skills and if you look at the CME recert sheets that have to be submitted to the DOH there is a "skills competency verification" section that the medical director or training officer has to sign off that they are proficient at providing their skills and how that has been established either by QA/QI or by direct observation. Even if this wasn't a requirement, doesn't it come down to the agency knowing their personnel's abilities and lack there of? Just because the state issues a card saying their an EMT doesn't mean its equating to good patient care on the street and hence the agency should be helping them with additional training and/or supervision on the road. You can't blame the recert process for that.
As far as attending endless hours of CME's, I guess that's subjective considering you have to spend "endless" hours in a refresher course. I like the flexibility of the CME's versus having to attend a refresher course on set times. I like how I can find CME topics that are a little outside the box or in more detailed then how it is in the state curriculum. Also
I can tell you one thing, if I was a member of your VAC...I'd be going elsewhere to find a place where I can maximize my time to do my recert via CME.

First its not the job of any instructor of any educational discipline to "weed out" students. Its our job to identify students who have deficiencies or issues and work with them to correct them. I always point out to my students in the beginning of my classes that I am there for them and that its not my job to fail them but to to get them to pass. I put my effort into advising them of any deficiencies or problems that are incurring and either work with them to assist them to overcome them or give them advice on what they can do to solve the problem. If they still don't I then counsel them and drop them from the course with appropriate documentation as to what standard they did not meet by curriculum or course policy. "Weeding out" can often lead to inappropriate actions by instructors and create an environment which could cause or actually be discriminatory. You are correct that you get what you put in to it, and after being advise those type of students often handle the situation for themselves and rarely are successful. The ones who may seem lazy who actually may have a learning disability or another issue or event that is causing the problem. Those are the ones who need assistance and not "weeding."
As far as JJB's "recipes" I'm with the others you're way off base. What is required and what protocol dictates doesn't always lend itself to what the curriculum is actually reinforcing. See my case in point with my "recipe" in regard to BLS albuterol administration. Its great that you know what it says, but you're not in a class nor just on the street. I'm not sure what you were reading with his posts..but you totally missed the point and basically reiterated his point with the correct answer which is not what we're seeing on the street.
In regard to your comment that the EMT course needs to be tougher...again either I have to disagree with you or you're using bad wording. It doesn't need to be tougher...it needs to be more comprehensive and geared towards the potential of future advancement in line with the EMT-I (which I won't get into my opinion on that) and the Paramedic curriculums. Making it tougher does nothing..in fact I'd be interested in what your idea of "making it tougher" entails. You can make testing requirements "tougher" or more stringent, but how do you make a curriculum "tougher?" I don't want "tougher." I want comprehensive, detailed curriculum content that makes for higher educated providers with a good grasp of illnesses, injuries and anatomy.
Please don't feel I'm bashing you, I'm just making points on your comments which I see differently much in line with how you responded to JJB's.
Chris...ALS dependency...isn't even the right word. I'm to the point where often all I can do is shake my head...but point out things not going well, correct something, or try to guide providers to make decisions and act and your nothing but an assh...e. But hey...I'd rather be a professional assh...e who knows what I'm doing, then eat cake, drink kool aid and wear blinders.

Due to semantics or lack of detailed questioning we maybe aren't talking about the same "whole picture" accountability that you and Barry note. Without a doubt, the tags, which are inanimate objects do not make for a system, it takes training, personal responsibility, discipline and leadership for true accountability to be realized.
A few of us have shown the equipment and basic premise of our accountability systems. It should go without saying, though I know full well it isn't across the board, that knowing where your personnel are is a huge part of actual accountability. Freelancing is not the fault of an accountability system, not knowing who's assigned to what task is not a failure of the accountability system, they're both failures of the incident command system.
Please forgive the lack of 100% buy in to NIMS for all incidents. The use of ICS is automatic on every incident and has been long before NIMS. Regardless of who is responsible for resources at a Type III or greater incident, 98% of our runs do not involve a planning section, so the RUL will not be specifically designated. But as with any ICS/NIMS system, the structure is modular and based on span of control, will grow as needed with those positions needed filled. I doubt any of us are really thinking the RUL in the planning section will every be directly responsible for know who is in what corner of a building at any moment. A safety officer or call him, accountability officer will. As with anything in ICS, if it falls under your area of responsibility and you don't delegate it, it's yours.
As for Barry's scenario: if we overlay the normal ICS structure and responsibilities onto a well implemented tag system, and ensure the dept has instilled discipline at all levels, then you can have a decent total accountability system. We don't rely on tags to keep track of where people are, this is the function of each company officer, assigned sector officers (now group/division)and the IC. There are electronic systems that provide more information, but we still will need a back-up to the electronics as we see failures every day that have life altering implications (see Toyota) I've yet to see an electronic solution to freelancing or ensuring members follow the rules, though since I'm going out to dig up my dog's underground fence for yet another repair, I'm starting to hatch an idea! PASS?PAR systems with elecrtic behavior modification!

Well said. To many ff's believe that it ends with the tags.
Agreed. My comments were ment to bring that out.
To many depts do not have the discipline or follow the ICS enough to make this work. Bring on the "antiquefirelt behavior Pass System".......what a great idea.

If I call a mayday, I hope that this is not what is done!!!!!
If I know its radio 22c and he advises he's low on air and lost. I would hope that the firefighters in the building would not abandon him. We still need fire attack, infact, we need more members inthere, not less. we know who is missing. and if he is low on air, he will be out of air by the time we collect all of the tags!!!!
I do not want just the FASt looking for him. Also not every fire is in a single family residential, exiting the building may take time, time that the member in distress does not have.
We do not exit and leave our brother behind to do a PAR, we leave because the conditions have deteriorated to the point that Command decides we must.
An exit par is only done (in my dept.) if conditions radically change (explosion, collapse, etc.) and we do not know if anyone is missing. Normally a PAR is done by calling each company officer and having him acknoledge that he and his company members are ok and where they are. If we know where everyone is and that they are ok, then we are set.
The ring of tags will help the Medical Examiner narrow down who's dental records are needed.

A PAR can be called for, even when there is no emergency like a collapse or m'aidez. In fact an IC should call fo a PAR if the incident starts getting complicated, or if you have been on scene for a long period of time. Sometimes an IC wants to make sure people are where he thinks they are, and doing what he told them to do. A PAR message is not a get out message.

Yes, it looks like FD's practice that PAR can only be done on the lawn or in the street. Our process would be to conduct a PAR via the radio with all crews. As BNechis said, we count on firefighters remaining on task when a MAYDAY is received. All of the reasons we have crews inside are actually magnified when a member is in trouble, and definitely not readily abandoned. We still must ventilate to facilitate fire control, visibility and relieve untenable conditions. We must control the fire to limit the damage to the building and improve conditions for any citizen-victims, as well as our member with the MAYDAY. This is why we have RIT/FAST, so we can keep operations moving forward while also providing for the assistance or rescue of our own. This doesn't preclude members in the immediate area from coming to a members aid, but it should be with the knowledge and approval of the IC.
This brings up a good training point. Most often we see PAR being conducted in conjunction with an evacuation drill. Maybe this sort of instills the wrong message. Maybe running a PAR in the middle of a standard live fire training would change this underlining belief that we need to be outside to conduct a PAR?

We are far from having the perfect or even a very good system, but we realized long ago that tags do not work well. There are a number of elements that are needed:
1) Sufficient personnel on the 1st unit and the remainder of the 1st alarm. With response times that the additional personnel arrive within 4-8 minutes of the 1st engine.
2) assignments based on crew seating or position (i.e. nozzle, hydrant, jump seat, etc.) Everyone knows what tools and procedures each member is going to perform, the tools they are going to bring is all based on the seat and if that rig is 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th due. This way we have a general idea of where each member should be and who they should be with.
3) Portable radio's!!!! Every member and its assigned based on the seat assignment.
i.e. 22a - is Engine 22 officer, 22b driver, 22c nozzle and 22d hydrant.
4) A chiefs Aid to start accountability. In the case of a career dept at the begining of the tour. He has a list in the car of all members on duty, seat and radio assignment. If it changes during the day, its updated. So when he pulls up he knows who is here. We still use the tags, but they do not tell the position & radio, for a VFD/call or combo the passport system would compensate for this and the aid would just need to go to each rig and grab it.
5) Command Staff to assign as accountability officer. Once these members show up we document where crews are operating, and based on the roster plus documenting additional members as assigned. we know who is there and generally where they are operating. we try to track air time, but that is difficult for the initial response as they arrive prior to command staff.
We do use the tags and they get picked up at some point, but I consider them more like dog tags to tell us after the fact who was here if something goes wrong.

One tip for doing a PAR via radio: Give your people a pre-announcement such as "All units operating at 123 Main St, standby for a PAR." Wait a little bit for them to do their piece of the PAR before calling for the entire PAR. I've done this in training and actual incidents and it goes alot smoother.
Picture a multi family dwelling with fire on more that one floor. The PAR should something like this (After the pre-announcement)
"Command to all unit operating at 123 Main St on a PAR...Division 6
Division 6, I have E1, E4, L2, PAR is 10 on Floor number 6 all accounted for, E2 Driver is at the pump.
Received Division 6...Division 7 PAR" And so on
As this is going on, the person at the IC Board (and NOT the IC in this case) should be checking his board against the PAR> Not the IC because this job has exceeded the max span of control of 7. Somebody questioned my number of 7 before. It's 7 max, and 5 optimum.

While no CIC's receive bonuses or payment of the sort, programs that get reputations as "too hard" or "too demanding" or get a history of dropping under-performing students mear fear a drop in enrollment, as students could potentially seek out training that is "easier" or "less challenging". So, this is in effect a potential reason programs may push through students that we all would like to have seen be dropped long ago.
And, in a county like Westchester, where without a doubt most of us either are or know all the CIC's, you have a pretty good idea from their reputation which ones push through unqualified candidates and which ones have the ethics to drop those students in the interest of remediation.

All I see is a lot of effort and a lot of policies to have tags of lots of colors, but I still do not hear accountability.
Here is a scenario:
Reported house fire, upon arrival you have a 2 story private dwelling with light to medium smoke showing. you arrive with 1 engine, 1 ladder and 1 chief. each rig has 1 officer and 2 firefighters plus the chief. The members could be career &/or volunteer but they assembled at the station and arrived together in approximatly 6 minutes. It is 6:30 in the morning and there is a minivan in the driveway. No one is outside upon arrival, the neighbor says she does not know if anyone is home, but they often leave for work at this time.
All 6 firefighters/officers are certified interior. Now from some of the threads I've already taxed some departments.
Engine #1 - 1 firefighter and 1 lt stretch a 1 3/4" handline and the driver operates the pump.
Ladder #1 - 1 FF and the Capt. Force entry and start to search. The other firefighter as part of the two out helps the pump operator make a hydrant.
The chief is IC.
Who is collecting these tags at the door? Who is the 2nd "out" member?
Now its 10 minutes later, an additonal 6 members are on scene (again a stretch for many) who is collecting tags? In a few minutes it will be time to rotate members due to low air.
A PASS alarm goes off and is not reset, what does your tag ("accountability") system do for you?
Who's alarm?
Where are they?
Who has what radio (if equipped) ?
You do a PAR and 2 members do not answer (but only 4 of the 7 members inside have radios). So how does your tag ("accountability") system help?
Visability starts to deteriorate and one of the truck members shows up in a 2nd floor window, a ground ladder is placed and he gets out. He does not know where anyone else is. How does your tag ("accountability") system help?

I think the problem with new EMT's who are insufficiently prepared for EMS lies with the EMT curriculum and not so much instructors pushing students through the program. I don't believe there is enough emphasis placed on field training/rotation hours spent actually working on an ambulance encountering real patients. Role playing in a classroom or performing skills on a mannequin is a good start, but you truly learn "the job" by encountering real life situations, treating real life patients, and overcoming real life problems that may come up on "routine" calls.
Of course, then there are inherent problems with field training, such as finding a qualified EMT/Paramedic to act as a FTO. With the high turnover rates in EMS systems, finding experienced, competent providers can be a challenge all in its own.
The other problem with the cirriculum is that it's too cookbook. EMT's are not taught to think, they are taught a cookbook form of medicine which doesn't fly in real life scenarios because nothing is routine, and each call presents its own unique set of circumstances. Two real life examples I can think of:
#1) EMT responds to a reported chest pain. EMT arrives on scene and finds a patient complaining of chest pain. Patient states they fell a week ago and has been having chest pain ever since. EMT administers aspirin because, well in EMT class, they are taught chest pain=aspirin. Would be correct if we were talking suspected cardiac chest pain, which this is not.
#2) EMT responds to an unresponsive. Arrives and finds an unresponsive male in front yard of house. Patient was installing roof shingles in the middle of July while downing a couple beers. You can cook a steak on the patients body, but in EMT school, we learned that unresponsive=oral glucose. EMT is seen shoving tubes of oral glucose down the patients throat. The reason as it was relayed to me, he's unresponsive and we're taught to give oral glucose to unresponsive patients (which is incorrect all in its own, but that's for a different discussion). Two examples of cookbook medicine at its finest.
Hopefully a CIC can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the EMT programs do receive money from the State based on the number of graduates from their programs... I'm not sure how much of that money goes directly into a CIC's pocket though. I know when I was teaching as a CLI, my pay, as well as the CIC, was based on the training institutions pay scale, not based on how many students we graduated.

The key word you used is "whoever". is there to collect them, what if the first to arrive is ready to advance into the structure, and the safety officer or the "whoever" guy isnt standing by the front door, who does the officer give his cluster of tags to?
and if it is the safety officer, you stated he has a board, is that next to the front door also, the safety officer by definition should have a bigger role than just collecting tags. Also what happens with a crew taking a ground ladder to the rear, do they have to stop by the front door first with the ladder before proceeding.
I understand the tag system, having good accountability is very important, but it is so much deeper than just tags.
here is the scenario, your "whoever" guy did a good job of collecting tags, hell he has twenty of them, then there is a mayday over the radio, just one, no name given, please someone tell me how the twenty tags collected are going to help identify the member down as opposed to any other method, PAR, rollcall or whatever you call it.
I do like you your faith in the "it must work sometimes or so many depts wouldnt be using it theory"

It's funny you mentioned Vinny Dunn. Anyone who has more than a few years in the fire service who hasn't read his books, in particular the first one, shouldn't consider themselves a true professional.
I'm not sure if he was the point man on FDNY's study on 4 man vs. 5 man engine companies although I believe he was involved...keep in mind also that when FDNY refers to "4 man" and "5 man" they are not counting the Officer, which is as it should be, so to compare apples to apples, YFD would have "3 men" and many other departments "2 men" or "1 man"...anyway, FDNY did do some good studies and tests on the efficiency of 4 man vs. 5 man engine companies and there were also some other departments and organizations which conducted tests and published valid data on the efficiencies of the various levels of manning on engine companies- I'm sure Bnechis would have all of this info at his fingertips. FDNY though, as far as I know, didn't start insisting on pairing up engine companies to stretch the first line until I believe, approximately the mid 90's as a result of some LODD fires.
Vinny Dunn wrote a great article years ago about going around to do in quarters training when he was a BC or DC and he showed up at a busy engine company where on the blackboard in the kitchen prior to his arrival the senior man, a very experienced old timer, had written "it's the first line, stupid"...meaning, "you can talk to us all day about strategy, tactics, truckwork, etc., but as the first line goes, so will the fire go, and maybe you should be emphasizing that more when conducting training. At the time I was reading it I was new on the job and I had already heard from senior guys and officers basically the same thing, but not in those words, and it really stuck after that. Years hence, I can attest to the validity of that statement.
I believe most fire departments including my own would improve their operations if more emphasis was placed on the rapid placement and advancement of the first line as well as ensuring it is the proper size (2 1/2 when necessary) as dictated by fire and building conditions.