E106MKFD

I hate to repeat a story, but the bedroom arrangement was one of mine as well. My college had a student run fire department. In the dorm I got out of the bunk on the right side. At home on the left. I was home for a long weekend with a friend and of course in the middle of the night the 'Plectron' sounds off. I roll over and hit the wall. I try it again, hit the wall. I call to my friend, "Murphy, I can't get out of bed" and he simply responds, "try the other side stupid".
Then there was the probie who pulls into the firehouse and squeezes his car between two others. Wearing his Helmet, like Homer, he tries to get out of the car and can't. We left him behind.
One of the guys wore a toupe. He's all geared up in a jump seat. Starts to get up, truck stops short he goes back into the jump seat, helmet with toupe comes flying off. Same guy, cooking for one of the meetings reaches too far into the oven, catches toupe on fire.
How about a 'nickname'. Freshman in college joins the department. Claims he's a truck driver. Big guy, like 6-4. Misses a double clutch downshift. Spent the next four years as Tex Tirebiter.

I thought maybe we could change the tone of what we traditionally see on EMTBravo. I want this to be kind of like the "funny things heard over the radio" thread, and I figured it's about time we all had a good laugh....

This little bit from The Simpsons has been showing up on my Facebook news feed over the last few weeks, and it spawned an idea in my little brain; What funny or awkward situation/story do you have about a time when the alarm went off? I'll start.....
When I was 17 I was a very active junior firefighter/explorer. I was chief of the junior corps, always around the fire house, and a regular at every alarm that wasn't during school hours. Any way, around this point in my life I got a new bed, upgrading from a twin to a full, and I decided to rearrange my bedroom so things would "flow" better. My father, who at this point is a 25 year veteran and ex-chief, tells me that this is a bad idea. When I asked the only thing he told me was, "It's going to ruin your routine." I didn't think too hard about it, and my teenage mind said to rearrange the room anyway. Well, later that night the pager sounded for a residential alarm, I shot out of bed like usual, but instead of running towards the door....WHAM!!!!! I hit the wall and knocked myself over! I was so used to getting out of bed on the right side, I had forgotten that I moved the bed . The best part of the story is as both my parents run past my bedroom door (Mom was a lieutenant at the time), I just hear my dad say, "Told you so."
What's your funny story?

Do we owe the public the truth about their fire depts. ability to handle a structure fire? What I mean by that is we ask the taxpayers for money to run the dept, yet in truth, on any given day at any given time, it takes more than THAT dept to control the situation. Forget career / volunteer bs, this is across the board. This is not about the big one or needing a tanker/tender shuttle operation, this is the room and contents, fire that your patch on your sleeve proudly says WE CAN HANDLE.
Mutual aid to cover the empty fire houses, no problem.
Why is it the neighboring taxpayers responsibility to send its tax dollar funded dept to assist with your BASIC fire.
something is wrong here, and the longer we put our heads in the sand......................

Dutchess 911 to XXX respond for a reported conscious male patient, unknown if breathing.

ok, I was on the scene and noticed several things... one thing, which I was really happy with, being one of the tanker drivers.. when asked by the FD and YHPD, the local and state DPW sent in plows to keep the roads as clear as they could.. making our job safer for the apparatus and manpower... thank you to the plow operators for coming to our aid...

Not sure how consolidation fits into this discussion. Needing eight tankers is needing 8 tankers. True that a county department would (hopefully) allocate resources in a more even fashion so areas with the need for tankers would have them. But anyway...
For those of you not familiar with tanker operations, there is a formula that determines how many tankers you will need. For example, a 2000 gallon tanker driving a three mile loop can only supply 150 gallons per minute. Sooo, if they were flowing 1200 gallons a minute, they would need...8 tankers. Or if the three miles was over crappy roads, you just might need the 8 tankers to flow even less water. Having been a water supply officer on a similar fire, until all those tankers get in the right line, and into the flow, it seems like more, more, more is the answer.

GBFD109, Thanks for taking the time to explain conditions, and the eloquence of your reply, especially in the face of a Monday morning QB questioning the amount of resources called.

As the Operations officer at this incident I think I can shed some light on this situation. First, the property conditions that first due units encountered where deplorable. The entire property was covered in 18-20 inches of snow with one, 12 inch wide footpath barely shoveled to the front door. The initial stretch alone was extremely strenuous and taxing on the manpower.
Once interior, crews encountered extreme Colliers Mansion conditions, preventing them from making an expedient advance on the fire on the first floor. The basement, where the heaviest fire was encountered, was a whole different story. Upon making entry to the basement, crews dealt with floor to ceiling junk as well as a well seasoned pile of firewood and the contents of of a woodworking shop.
As far as the apparatus on scene; in that geographical location, due to the lack of hydrants, we were operating from our tanker district alarm assignments, which brings more tankers than manpower carrying apparatus. The time of day is tough on manpower regardless of conditions. Factor in the conditions, and your burning through fresh bodies faster than you can get them there.
In closing, I would like to personally thank all Mutual aid departments for their quick response and assistance.

Took my CDL road test in an 1988 Autocar. Beast of a truck!
Courtesy of the Oshkosh website, this is what we're using at HPN for heavy snow removal. It's amazing how far the technology has come along, and this thing is a beast! And, yes, it's all wheel steering.

Based on some of these posts, I can't help but wonder if some of you were dropped on your heads as babies. What is even more concerning is how little some people know, armchair quarterback and jump to conclusions.
I have a fairly good amount of training regarding trains and train emergencies. I have - what I believe - is a wealth of knowledge of the fire service, including resources in this county and around us. I also have responded to and run a handful of incidents involving mass-casualties.
I have never - nor has 99.5% of you - had an incident like this. The people running it did a TOP NOTCH JOB, and the fact that some of you are sitting back, typing away and criticizing any decisions of the Incident Commander or any others at this incident just fortifies why I have little faith that we can ever become better as a county. Some of you posting here are officers, past officers or - God help us - aspiring officers in your respective agencies. As the Maitre D' in Ferris Bueller's Day off said, "I weep for the future."
/rant
And for the record, this is me, as a person, voicing my opinion which has no reflection of any affiliation I have or have had in the past.

With this incident I doubt that very much. Seems like you just like to start arguments or bash departments without having the facts. In other topics as well. What FACTS do you have to prove your ridiculous claim that there was "favoritism"? Do you also claim to know all about dispatching and incident command as well? The departments have run cards that specify who they want for mutual aid, and Incident Commanders request specific resources.

6 people lost their lives and others injured and this is what's bothering you? Get over it. Stop with the favoritism nonsense and the boo-hoo why didn't they call X, Y or Z.
Resources were called as needed during what I could only imagine to be a chaotic and overwhelming scene.

Ossining has a lot of firefighters and a lot of apparatus. And being that many units directly surrounding Valhalla were called in, It makes sense to bring in 1 & 1 from OFD. Armonk and W. Harrison are better left alone in a situation like this to cover other calls, especially since they're both responders to the airport (which the county considers a big deal). You also have to remember that you can't strip all of your neighbors of equipment and manpower. Sometimes you have to call in someone from a few towns away so you can keep responders available for everything else. It's really like a game of chess when you bring in mutual aid and stand by companies.

My guess is it's all the negativity that goes on here, as a matter of fact my gut tells me to shut up and not even post this. Seems that no matter what is said here someone puts a spin on it that its wrong or a waste of time or money or should be done differently, it's just not worth all the negativity to start a conversation here and for that I feel bad, I always enjoyed this site and still check it several times a day just to find out there is nothing new. That's just my two cents, but I'm sure someone will say I'm wrong.

Talk about your tight spaces.
pic.twitter.com/i0Y2ScewJh
With 24" of snow and no where to put it (actually Boston doesn't have a good plan to remove it), it makes it difficult for all emergency services.

Hahahaha 👍😂
Wait Alex, I thought you could be a Squad simply because it sounds cool, silly me lol.This topic came up not to long ago. You can call a piece of equipment whatever you'd like. But it better damn well carry the necessary equipment and more importantly carry members who are trained to the required level.
I know that you know this, I was just being my sarcastic self.

I agree 100%. My father exercised regularly and took care of himself. He took a stress test in September and PASSED NO PROBLEM. This is the second time I've heard of a stress test inaccurately diagnosing any severe atherosclerosis or blockages. The only way they saw the blockages was through arterial catheterization. My father wants to tell everyone consult your doctor and see if this is an option. It may save your life or another's one day.

Hi all my name is Felix Hughes Jr, some may know me, some might not. My dad has served the county for 33 years. He is last of the first 6 people to get hired. He has also served as Chief in the Village of Mamaroneck. His life has always been about the fire service and I look forward to seeing everyone that he has touched in some way as they pay tribute to him and his career.

Mllax, actually in the past few months Charles County has been added as agency #10.
Howard County and Anne Arundel also use similar systems that allow us to talk to them, even though they aren't part of the COG.
A few months back during an incident at Six Flags America we had PG County, Howard County, Fairfax County and Andrews AFB talking on the same channel with no complicated patches or $1 million dollar FieldComm units necessary. Everyone just switches to PG Talkgroup 8-Delta-3 and we're good to go.
If we can get the technology to support 2 states and a major city on one system, then why can't Westchester county do the same?

Westchester EMS 45 Medics: 5202, a record.

At around 1730 hrs on July 2nd, 2014, there was a hardware failure with the simulcast controller for UHF fire paging on 470.800. The failure was caused by a lightening strike in the rear parking lot at 44-Control, which caused damage to the port on the controller that gets the audio from the consoles in the radio room. For just under two hours, there was no dispatch audio coming out over 470.800, however the tones and dispatch audio were still broadcasting fine over 46.18. Most departments still had low band pagers issued out, with some UHF pagers already in the mix. Yes, departments were advised to muster manpower to standby at the firehouses so they could minimize the impact of those who had UHF pagers missing calls during those two hours. The failure did not result in a doomsday scenario, as all departments were able to monitor dispatch over 46.18 with the low band equipment that was still in place.
Within a few weeks of the failure, a more robust backup UHF paging solution was aggressively implemented. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a failure like this to smack some sense into those controlling the purse strings.
Note that none of this had anything to do with the 700 MHz trunked system, which continued to operate at 100% capacity during the UHF paging failure.

Got an email this afternoon saying interviews will be given on jan 14th and 15th. I do not know how quick of a process it is but seems to be moving faster than a snails pace at this point in time. Anybody else get there packet and or interview date?

Im number 7 on the list. Little excited not going to lie....hope to hear soon what comes next.

Sadly there are now requirements to be a Chief in most of NYS but be comforted to know to be a licensed barber you need 1020 hours not mention the beauticians license and their training.
So you might be safer in a barber shop or beauty salon, then with the incident commander

let me weigh in on this- I have been quiet too long. NYS OFPC has set the standard--let me explain-- FF1-FF2-survival-FAST-RES tec-Eng Co operations-truck co ops-haz mat the list goes on. add them up and guess what you come up with the career standard or close enough. give or take a few hours. so the career firefighters get all of this at one shot we call it probie school or Career Academy or what ever name you want to give it. On the other side OFPC has divided all the classes into separate training modules. so it is possible and is being done by firefighters all over NYS just in a different manner.
So the Training is out there just in different formats.
Now for the quid pro quo--is spelling and grammar correct??
OFPC has left it to--"AHJ" authority having jurisdiction---gotta love spell check to establish the standards for individual fire departments.
The State legislature has established the Standard for fire departments with more then five personnel. that would be the 229 hour standard we have in NYS.
So the Career department are mandated by State Legislature and the other departments aren't-with the exception of OSHA and haz mat.
Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday season and above all be safe out there.