firebuff08

The real question that needs to be asked is this, "Is it really MUTUAL AID? The definition of MUTUAL is "reciprocal", or to make it more simple, party one helps party two when party two needs help and party two helps party one when party one needs help and it is done on a more or less equal basis. So, my question is, does anyone know how often Mount Vernon responds Mutual Aid to Yonkers compared with how often Yonkers responds Mutual Aid to Mount Vernon? And if Mount Vernon does respond Mutual Aid to Yonkers, does it do so with a similar complement of equipment and manpower? and does it do so with similar frequency? If there is NOT reciprocity, if it is all one way with Yonkers responding to Mount Vernon but never the other way around, then perhaps Yonkers should consider terminating any agreement it has to respond into Mount Vernon. There is a growing problem across the country of understaffed departments counting too much on mutual aid plans for coverage and then not being able to fulfill their half of mutual aid when the other department really needs mutual aid.

Prior to the formation of the Peekskill Volunteer Ambulance Corps in 1964, Emergency Medical Transportation in Peekskill was provided by the Peekskill Fire Patrol which at that time operated with a walk-in rescue truck. Patients were loaded into the back of the rescue truck and transported on the squad bench. Even after the PCVAC was formed, and the Fire Patrol received a new apparatus, a pumper, Fire Patrol continued to be dispatched to accidents. It wasn't until a car pedestrian accident involving a relative of a Peekskill police officer that a new policy was implemented designating PCVAC as the Medical Response agency for Peekskill. In that accident, the victim was transported on a stretcher atop the hose bed of a pumper. Back in the 60's and 70's, transporting more than one patient in a single rig was common. Anyone who worked on an ambulance back in those days will remember that most, if not all Cadillac ambulances came equipped to transport four patients on stretchers. One on the standard wheeled stretcher, one on a folding stretcher placed on the squad bench and two on folding stretchers hanging from the ceiling. The ambulances generally carried the three folding stretchers and the hooks that suspended the stretchers from brackets built into the ceiling of the ambulance. I can not ever recall using the hanging stretchers. I can only imagine what a struggle it would have been to lift a patient onto those hanging hooks! But many times we transported two patients on stretchers.

Huge difference between an AM tower and and FM tower. With AM, the entire tower is the positive half of the transmission system, actually radiating the signal into the air. The other half (the negative half) consists of copper wires buried in the ground radiating out from the base of the tower. Each AM tower/antenna is of a specific height based on the frequency the station transmit on, thus a station at 1230 on the dial would have a tower/antenna of a different length than a station at 1420 on the dial. For FM, the tower is merely a support structure for the transmitting antenna. The FM transmitting antenna is mounted either on top of the tower or on the side of the tower near the top. The height of the tower for FM is determined solely by the coverage area the station has been granted by the FCC. That coverage is achieved by a combination of height and power....taller the tower, the lower the power output needed from the transmitter. Towers do not last forever. They are made of steel and they rust over time. They do need to be replaced. There may be other reasons that the WFAS tower is being replaced. It may be they want to install a stronger tower that will support Cellular and Commercial two way antennas (additional revenue stream) while still functioning as an AM transmitting antenna.

Given the size of the Ethan Allen property in PA, 296,000 square foot building on 26 acres, it is more likely that Andy will consolidate ALL of his collection in that location. The Ethan Allen building appears to be many times the size of his existing building in Orange County.

Terribly sad news to hear. While I didn't know Kevin personally, I know he graduated from Peekskill High School in the same class as my eldest daughter. So that means he was still a young man. And I did know his father, Owen from my days as Board Chairman of the Peekskill Volunteer Ambulance Corps and as a Peekskill City Councilman. Now as a Fire Commissioner in Connecticut I can appreciate the hurt the Bristol Family and the Peekskill Fire Department are experiencing on the loss ot Kevin, since my department lost a veteran firefighter of similar age under similar circumstances just a few months ago. My sincerest condolences to the Bristol family, the Peekskill Fire Department and the entire Peekskill Community. May Kevin rest in Peace. Ed Creem, Commissioner South Fire District, Middletown, CT

It should also be noted that those three identical Peekskill apparatus from the 1960's which were assigned to Columbian Engine, Columbian Hose and Cortlandt Hook and Ladder, actually replaced three much older Seagrave apparatus (early 1940's I believe) that also were virtually identical in appearance.

The bigger question should be WHY does a Town/Village of just over 10,000 people covering a mere 3 square miles need three fire stations and all the apparatus Mt. Kisco has? The answer of course is because thats the way it has always been. A single station with two engines and a Ladder Company should be more than sufficient. The fire district where I reside in CT is 24 square miles with a population nearly twice that of Mt. Kisco. One station, two engines, a quint, a brush truck and a rarely used rescue. Within the district are one of the largest manufacturing plants in the state, the two largest power generating plants. a state mental hospital campus, a college campus, several schools, banquet halls, stores, restaurants and apartment complexes. Like most departments in Central CT, automatic mutual aid is dispatched on all working fires. Works very well without ripping off the taxpayers.

I watched it last night and I came away very impressed with the training, dedication and skill of Coast Guard Rescue Crews. Many of the crew members on the two rescue choppers, including the women pilots, appeared to be very young (at least the seemed young to an old man like myself!!), but certainly confident of their own abilitities and those of their fellow crew members. There must be a very high level of trust among members of a Rescue Helicopter crew, especially on the part of the rescue swimmers. I can't imagine going into the Atlantic at the height of a hurricane with 30 foot waves and swimming repeatedly to the life rafts and then back to the location of the rescue basket while holding onto a rescued party from the HMS Bounty. Under those conditions it must have been exhausting. Amazing how quickly they were able to put the documentary together.

What a huge waste of resources sending two ambulances on every call, never mind the increased risk to the public with two competing ambulance services each trying to beat the other to the call. Perhaps its time for the County to do what it should have done a long time ago....Solicit bids for the right to provide the service and award the contract to the service making the best offer.

I can't imagine getting my Social Security check in the mail. What a waste of paper, postage and time. I have been receiving my Social Security payments for five years and from day one, it has been direct deposit. Like clockwork, on the scheduled day of the month, the money is in my checking account by the time I get up in the morning. My mother-in-law, on the other hand doesn't understand the concept. She has to have that paper check in her hand every month so someone can help her scribble an illegible signature on the back (she cant see and her hands are crippled with arthritis) and the someone can load her and her walker into the car and drive her to the bank and then guide her and the walker into the bank so she can deposit it!!!! Talk about not being able to teach an old dog new tricks. She is going to freak out when those checks stop coming.

Since the Chief is not presenting the radar readings as evidence in a court of law, there is no reason for him to be certified. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to operate a radar gun. I suspect the problem people he is after are the wackers with blue lights in the grill, on the dash and on the roof. Maybe discipline for anyone with more than a single blue light on the dash would be sufficient to solve the problem! My guess also would be that some of those who are protesting so much in this thread are a problem in their own departments. The Chief should be lauded for addressing what is a serious problem nationally.

There is a better way. Here in CT you never see a garbage truck with workers handling garbage pails. All of the garbage trucks are one man operations. Every home has one or more large, wheeled containers that are owned by the sanitation dept or private sanitation company. The containers must be placed at curb side. The truck come down the street. Stops. Without ever leaving the driver's seat, the driver operates the mechanical arm which grabs the container, lifts and dumps it into the top of the packer truck and then returns the container to the curb. Entire operation from stop of the truck to start up takes less than 30 seconds. Very efficient. Have not seen garbage men working the back of a truck around here in years. My guess the situation in Peekskill has more to do with a union contract to preserve jobs than with efficiency, or for that matter, safety.

At 2.2 square miles, the entire town of Pelham (the two villages combined) would not even qualify to have an engine company if it were part of any large City in the United States. Why in the name of god are there two fire departments covering this tiny spot on the map with a population of just over 12,000? My daughter lives in Glen Ridge, NJ, a wealthy Borough of 7,500 covering 1.3 square miles. It has NO fire department. The Borough contracts with neighboring Montclair, NJ for fire protection. Montclair has a fulltime paid department operating out of 3 stations. Response times to alarms in Glen Ridge are 3 minutes or less. There is absolutely no reason other than turf protection why Pelham and Pelham Manor can not contract with a neighboring department for protection. At the very least, they should combine the two fire departments into one. Operate out of a single station. Get rid of excess equipment and administration. Even combined they wouldn't do enough call volume to be considered a half busy department. Having lived in Westchester for 20 years, though, it wouldn't surprise me if they went the other way... creating a third fire department in that tiny spot on the map!!

The Chief should have taken it one step further. Moving his vehicle as the trooper requested would have created an unsafe situation for the fire personnel. When there is a medical or fire call and there is an armed gunman, do firefighters and EMS personnel enter the scene before the police secure it. NO! Same should apply on the highway. Passing traffic is just as dangerous as someone with a gun. The moment the trooper said he was going to arrest the Chief, all fire and rescue personnel should have been ordered off the highway and returned to quarters by the Chief since the scene would no longer be secure. Any patients they were working on should have been told they were being ordered off the highway and the State Police would be taking over patient care. I hope the Chief is serious about not responding to the highway in the future until the troopers all get the message about safety. If the big hats want to dictate how the scene will be run, let them run it by themselves. Remember, it is the taxpayers in the North Merrick Fire District that pay for the fire dept, not the state police and not the out of town motorists passing through on the parkway, so I am sure the Chief will not be pissing off very many local residents.

With certain exceptions as defined by law, ALL records maintained by ALL government agencies belong to the PUBLIC and NOT to the government agencies. The government agencies are merely the custodians. This fact is one of the most difficult for government employees and even most members of the public to comprehend. In the case of an arrest, all police agenices must maintain in some form a record that is available within a reasonable period of time after the arrest, to the public and the media. That record must contain the name, age and address of the person arrested, the charges lodged against that person, the amount of any bond, whether the person was released or is being held and when that person is scheduled to appear in court. While the case remains under investigation, the police are NOT required to disclose any pertinent facts of the case. By law, anyone should be able to walk into any police station and request the above information without making a formal FOI request, but in most cases, law enforcement does NOT follow the law. They will hassle you and you may be forced to make a formal request. Here in CT where I reside, the state FOI Commission has on several occasions used interns to go out to police departments and other town offices and request to see documents that by law belong to the public, including the aforementioned arrest reports. The results have been dismal. In most cases police and other government officials failed to uphold the law and denied access to information. Of course they were then hauled in for a hearing before the FOI Commission, ordered to release the information, ordered to have all their members attend FOI training and to implement SOP that is compliant with FOI. Without Freedom of Information, we can not have a free society and we can not be a free people as is guanteed by the US and State constitutions.

I am deeply saddened tonight to learn of the passing of Dawn. My earliest rememberances of Dawn go back to 1966 when I joined PCVAC. Dawn had joined a year earlier, shortly after PCVAC was organized. When I joined, Dawn was in charge of Roster. At that time, we tried to have a duty crew, 24/7 and Dawn spent a lot of time every day, on the phone making sure the shifts were filled. Because of my work schedule (evenings at WLNA Radio) I was called often by Dawn to fill open daytime shifts, in addition to my regularly scheduled shifts. Over the years, when I served as Treasurer and later as President and Board Chairman, Dawn was always there, serving in some capacity in addition to being an active EMT. After moving to Connecticut in 1985, I had only infrequent contact with PCVAC, but a few years ago, I was in Peekskill for a few hours and I stopped at PCVAC HQ on Main Street and guess who was there....Dawn. I spent a couple of hours chatting with her about the old days and about how the corps has grown. Since then I have stayed in contact with her via facebook. Her record of 45 years of service to PCVAC is nothing short of amazing. I am sure it is a record that will never be matched. Today it is almost impossible to find people with Dawn's volunteer spirit. I am sure she is in heaven with "Ma" Wessells and all of the other PCVAC oldtimers who have passed on. God Bless You, Dawn.

At less than 5 square miles and a population of 28,000, anyplace else on earth except the Northeast, Newburgh would be just a neighborhood of a much larger municipality. The City of Newburgh is too small and too poor the be economically viable. The problem did not occur overnight. I have not lived in the Hudson Valley for more than 25 years, but when I did live there, Newburgh was about the poorest municipality around. Since then, there have been some efforts to revive the city but the demographics are all wrong. 26% of the population has an income below the poverty line. 25% of Newburgh's households have a female head and no male (Can you say un-wed mothers raising kids on welfare!). 46% of the poplulation is under the age of 24 and 9% is over the age of 65, so there are not enough working people to support city services. Like many other small cities in the Northeast that have become poverty pits, the situation is not going to get better anytime soon. You can not have boarded up buildings and vacant lots that don't pay taxes and expect to provide city services. With the fire load that exists in Newburgh, cutting back to 1 and 1 is insane, but does the City have any other choice. The money just isn't there to pay for it. Nerwbugh is BROKE!

Wow...I am at a loss for words. Yes, I will miss this site and all of the related EMT Bravo sites. Having moved from Westchester 25 years ago, I found EMT Bravo to be a link with my former home. A place to visit every day. But my bigger concern is for Seth, his wife and his baby. Seth the most important thing for you to do is to take care of yourself and your family. If that means the end of EMT Bravo, so be it. Good Luck, God Bless and thank your for providing this great service for these past several years. Ed Creem Past President - Peekskill Community Volunteer Ambulance Corps Former member and former Vice Chairman - Westchester County EMS Council

To abaduck ---- So What! You are comparing apples and oranges. Apparently the residents of the Scottish Highlands have chosen to tax themselves to pay for the fire protection they receive. The residents of Obion County, TN have chosen NOT to tax themselves for fire protection. Again I ask, what is so hard to understand about free people making a free choice to live someplace where they don't have to pay for fire protection and don't expect to receive fire protection unless they freely choose to pay for it? Just for the record, the man whose home burned down has an annual tax bill of $463.00 --Yes Four Hundred Sixty Three Dollars a year in Property taxes to cover all services that are provided by the county. And that is for a house and 34 acres of land. Remember, Fire Protection is NOT one of those services. And for the record, in Obion County rescue and extrication is NOT generally provided by the fire departments. They have a Countywide, volunteer Rescue Squad that does that. Given the size of the County and the fact that there are only a handful of roads, I am sure it takes them a long time to get to most calls. But no one forced people to live in Obion county. Gee, they could move to Westchester and pay thousands of dollars in taxes for fire protection that in some areas of Westchester is not much better,at least in the daytime when houses have been know to burn to the ground, despite a nearby firehouse filled with the biggest and most expensive fire trucks money can buy (but nobody to staff them). Given the amount of money people in Westchester pay in taxes, they should have the expectation that a full NFPA 1710 response of firefighters and apparatus would be standing by outside their home just in case they have a fire!

Having read each and every post on this thread and having read all of the background regarding the South Fulton/Obion County situation, it is clear to me that many posters have a serious problem with reading comprehension and a serious problem seeing things in a context other than what the know from their day-to-day experiences. Lets look at some facts --Obion County is extremely rural. It is 545 square miles of land area -- that is 95 square miles larger than Westchester County. The population of Obion County -- THE ENTIRE COUNTY, including residents of 8 cities is 32,450 people!!! Westchester's population is close to one million people. Attempting to view the situation in Obion County in light of the way things are in Westchester is insane. In TN, you either live in a City or you live in the unincorporated County. There are NO TOWNS. County Government is extremely limited and County taxes are extremely low. Residents outside the Cities are NOT Taxed for fire protection. Fire Protection is NOT provided. People know that when they build their homes in areas outside City boundaries. That is a major reason why they build there. They don't want to be bothered by government, by other people and they hate paying taxes. They obviously also hate services that are provided by taxes and that is why they freely choose to live without those services, including fire protection. At some point, the local government officials in the City of South Fulton decided that it would be possible to extend the service of the City's Volunteer Fire Department (a department paid for by the taxpayers of the City of South Fulton through their taxes)to certain residents of Obion County who reside within a reasonable response time to South Fulton. The City government established a Fee of $75 per year for the service it agreed to provide to property owners in unincorporated Obion County. Each property owner in the parts of Obion County, lying outside the city limits of South Fulton, was then free to make a conscious decision to purchase fire protection that they never had previously, for the sum of $75.00 per year or to continue living they way that had forever, without any fire protection at all. In this particular case, the homeowner decided to take his chances and not pay the fee. His decision, freely made. He gambled and lost. Nobody forced him to locate his home in an area that does not have fire protection. He freely chose to do that. If if were a taxpayer in the City of South Fulton, and the local volunteer fire department, operating on my tax dollars, had chosen to extinguish a fire in a Obion County, for a homeowner who had NOT paid the $75.00 fee, I would be in court the next day to sue the fire department and every member who misappropriated taxpayer financed equipment to fight the fire. It would be an open and shut case. The fire department would lose. Responding outside the City Limits of South Fulton to fight fires in unincorporated Obion County is NOT Mutual Aid because there is no organized fire protection in the unincorporated areas of the county. The fire department has a fiduciary and moral responsibility to those who pay for the service -- the taxpayers of the City of South Fulton and those county residents who have entered into individual contracts for department service. They would be violating that fiduciary and moral responsibility if they extinguished a fire for someone who freely chose NOT to avail himself of that service. Why is it so hard for so many to understand this concept.

It is a very impressive looking rig. Last week I was eastbound on I-691 in Meriden, CT and the Archville apparatus went by, headed west, apparently on its way to Westchester County from Firematic in Rocky Hill. The thing that caught my eye right away was the fact that it looked huge compared to all other vehicles on the highway.

I feel for the firefighters in Lawrence, but the City is in a bind and from what I can determine, the situation will continue to get worse, not better. The City is in such bad financial shape that its finances have been taken over by the State of MA, similar to what happened to Waterbury, CT and other poor cities in the past. Lawrence, MA is a WELFARE City.....it has a population that is decidedly younger than the MA average and an average family income that is half that for the State of MA. The City's Grand List, the total value of all real property, continues to decline as abandoned buildings burn down or are torn down or are taken over by the City because the owners have not paid taxes for years. Residential properties make up 78 percent of the City's taxpaying properties!!!!! And no wonder,who would want to locate a business in a City where the tax rate on commercial property is twice that of residential. The real problem there is the forgotten rule of economics ---NO BUSINESS CAN PAY TAXES. IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND NO BUSINESS HAS EVER PAID A PENNY OF TAXES AND NO BUSINESS EVER WILL. Taxing business is a scam by government to hide the amount of taxes you are paying. As an Economist by Education, I can tell you that every penny of tax levied on a business is paid by the customers of that business in the form of higher prices for goods and services. So the plan is Lawrence is self defeating. A business located in Lawrence, which is a tiny place of less than 7 square miles, is at an economic disadvantage to a business located in an adjacent town, because it must charge more to account for the higher taxes. It looks like the Mutual Aid system is broken in that it has become strictly one way. The other towns around Lawrence, need to protect their own taxpayers. While I do not advocate that they stop aiding Lawrence firefighters, the other towns should set a limit on how many mutual aid calls they will do in a year for free (based on the number of mutual aids they expect to receive from Lawrence). After that, there should be an hourly rate, per truck, sent to Lawrence to cover the cost of providing the service. Or at some point, officials in the surrounding towns could face lawsuits from their own taxpayers angry over paying for services to Lawrence that Lawrence should be providing but simply can not.

Concept is not new. Here where I live in Central Connecticut we have had free standing Emergency Rooms for many years. Middlesex Hospital is the only hospital in Middlesex County. It has a very large emergency room, and one of the busiest in the state but the hospital is at the Northern End of the County. At the southern end of the County, near the shoreline, Middlesex Hospital operates a large, free standing ER which can do pretty much everything that can be done at the hospital's Main ER. To the east of here there isn't another hospital for many miles, so Middlesex Hospital operates a second free standing ER to serve that area. Years ago, when they first opened, the two free standing ER's did not operate around the clock, but for the last several years they have operated 24/7. Ambulances transport emergency patients to the free standing ER's. If a patient needs to be hospitalized, they will be transported to the main hopital after being stabilized in the Free Standing ER. Middlesex Hospital runs a Paramedic Intercept program and operates Paramedic Fly Cars out of the Hospital ER and from the two free standing ER's. Having made use of both the Hospital ER and one of the free standing ER's, I can't tell the difference. They look the same once you are inside, they are staffed the same and equipped the same.

I recently spent some time in Islamorada and it is beautiful there but the FD response times must suck, especially for the volunteers. The Village covers only 7 square miles, but it is a series of long and narrow islands. From the Village limits on the south to the Village limits on the north is 17 miles and there is only 1 (ONE) Road to travel on - US Route 1! The water is never more than a few blocks off to either side of Route 1 and in many places it is visible from Route 1 or even under Route 1. It can take 30 minutes to drive from one end of the village to the other!!! To put that into perspective, that is about the same distance as from the Westchester-Putnam County line north of Peekskill to North Tarrytown!! Try wrapping your head around covering that area with 3 stations, each manned by two people and all travel had to be along route 9A in Cortlandt and Croton and Rt 9 through Ossining and Briarcliff!!!!!!!!

For the record -- the Middletown Police Marine/Communications truck is a 1988 Ford C with a Pierce Body. Formerly was a rescue truck with the Middlefield Fire Department. CVH Fire Department is in fact located closer to the blast site than the first response department, South District, BUT the CVH station is NOT manned. It is a volunteer department. Volunteers are state employees working at other jobs on the Hospital campus. CVH responds only to calls on the Hospital campus. Both of their apparatus are former Middletown FD trucks, 95 Spartan-Marion and an 88 Ottawa-Beck-Ranger.