M' Ave

This situation is a disgrace. The handling and management of resources in The Village of Lachmont is hollow. They are a career dept., which is understaffed. They have few volunteers and they've spent decades reducing the relevance and responsibility of that outfit. So, what you're left with, as with many of the local "combo" fire departments, is an illusion of safety. It's a great big gamble that the politicians typically win. Luck eventually runs out.
What has happened, twice, recently in Larchmont is an indicative of 2 problems:
1) Many FD's in Westchester lack any semblance of adequate staffing. This is a problem that some have tried to address through a regional consolidation plan....but no one has the stones to see it through, not to mention the fact that many are entrenched in guarding their own little fiefdom...
2) In this example, in this municipality, it appears that a serious lack of judgement was made. The residents of Larchmont pay some of the highest taxes in the NATION and they should expect the fire protection they pay for. What? Everyone was just so excited to go Yonkers they shut the lights and call the TMFD? This is gross-negligence in management. If someone died in a house fire in Larchmont, I would expect the LFD chief to go to jail. The LFD's first responsibility is to the residents of Larchmont. Mx aide is important to give and receive, but if you can't continue to perform your primary duties, you can't perform them for another municipality.

It's the same old story...the current admin. hates (for want of a better word) the fire dept...107 members do the very best they can with what they have which is not much.The admin. cancelled the hiring of several new members and spare parts are nil.Hopefully after the election we may see some progress...it's a long road but it has to start somewhere. The taxpayers of Mount Vernon are being short changed and no one in city hall cares...this opinion is mine and not official...

Have New Rochelle consolidate with who ??? Pelham ? Larchmont ? Scarsdale? How would New Rochelle get additional manpower by consolidating ?? New Rochelle needs to get the New Rochelle City Counsel agree to fund a minimum number of firefighters per shift. Back in the 1980's there were 31 firefighters per shift
5 engines X 4 firefighters = 20
3 ladders. X 3 firefighters = 9
D C and his aid = 2
_______
31 Total
NRFD needs to go back to this level of manning plus 1 additional firefighter on each ladder and 2 firefighters to man to rescue every shift. NRFD needs to be funded for a minimum of 36 firefighters per shift,

If only we'd learn from the past and stop doing it over and over again in the future....
I can be a little hawkish....but we're digging a lot of holes for ourselves....
On the flip-side, I'd like to see us actually fight someone, and not in the media and the television cameras. War is ugly, now it has to deal with the flow of easy information and public perception.

Isn't LFD obligated to respond as a signatory of the mutual aid plan? If there was a county wide paid or combination department and there was a large 4th alarm going on there would be empty stations throughout the county (hopefully done in a systematic way). I'm not saying consolidation would not be good it would but anyone who thinks a consolidated department would staff all the apparatus or stations that exist at this point to the current levels is fooling themselves.

Doesn't make any logical sense at all. How do you leave your village unprotected by your fire dept.and put the coverage on a neighboring yown,just to say hey look at us we went mutual aid to Yonkers.That's what it is all about and don't tell me different.The village mayor and board should be aware of this and stop the nonsense. If you had the manpower in the village to cover the manpower going to Yonkers it's a different story. But it doesn't sound like this went down.

I think Larchmont just has the mentality "The Town Of Mamaroneck will cover us". What if they have their own calls to cover? I can't imagine the Town is OK with this.
What happens if somebody is trapped in a fire in Larchmont? How will they justify sending all their career firefighters, the only ones who can drive Larchmont apparatus, to cover a firehouse in Yonkers? In effect, they took the entire department out of service to go mutual aid to standby for another department that's not even nearby. How will they explain that to the residents? I hope Larchmont comes up with a better plan for next time.

Larchmont also did the same thing a couple of weeks ago when they went to the fire in Greenville.

If there was a fire who were they going to call-Ghostbusters?
Larchmont was not understaffed, it was closed for the night as no one was left behind to cover the district. If volunteers responded to HQ, there would have been no one to operate the equipment as the 3 Career FF on duty took off, asking the Town of Mamaroneck to standby in the TMFD quarters with 1 and 1.

SIMPLE AND SOUND ANSWER TO ALL OF THIS - CREATE AND ESTABLISH A "COUNTY RUN FIRE DEPARTMENT" THAT IS MANNED BY CAREER (AND STATE CERTIFIED TRAINED) FIREFIGHTERS. THIS WAY, IF YOU HAVE A MAJOR FIRE, BE IT IN YONKERS, MOUNT VERNON, NEW ROCHELLE, WHITE PLAINS, LARCHMONT, DOBBS FERRY, ARDSLEY, NORTH SALEM, YORKTOWN, OR PEEKSKILL, YOU WOULD ALWAYS HAVE A CAREER 'COUNTY' FIRE COMPANY WHO COULD/WOULD FILL IN. THERE WOULD BE NO SUCH THING AS 'MUTUAL AID' AS WITH THE COUNTY RUNNING THE ENTIRE FIRE SERVICES, THEY WOULD BE REQUIRED TO GO AND HELP

So one department couldn't respond because their rig was broken, another department sends 3 career guys on a truck leaving their department understaffed because the vols can only drive the rescue, what a joke

If Larchmont is a combination department, why didn't they fill out the engine with a career firefighter driving and a volunteer crew, leaving the remainder of the career guys to keep Larchmont apparatus in service?

How many career staff were on the assignment. 3? 4? If that's all that's on duty at the station on any given shift, isn't Larchmont playing a shell game to begin with?

They should have initiated a Notification Call to all the Larchmont residence to advise them that they are on Fire Watch for the evening. LOL
Very poor judgment by the LFD IMO.

Larchmont had 3 members in quarters. But volunteers cannot drive so their apparatus was useless. They did a callback of career staff but that didn't place an engine into service until 5AM, several hours after the TL left with all the career staff on duty to go to Yonkers to standb

Larchmont TL-7 was sent to cover a Yonkers station during last night's 4th alarm.
They sent all their career staff, and put the Town Of Mamaroneck FD on standby to cover Larchmont for 9 hours.
Larchmont strips down it's department by sending 1 truck M/A, and by doing so to the point they need another department to cover for the most basic of alarms, taking from that department's coverage as well. What's wrong with this picture?

YES, YES, YES, BUT DOES IT ACCOMPLISH THE GOAL OF DIVERSITY????????

The physical agility will help take care of this but it is indicative of a ridiculous testing metric. With 300 people scoring 100 (or higher), there is definitely something flawed with the test or testing process.

So many wrong points here it is almost farsical.
Total non-story. Russians were operating in international waters and were intercepted by South Korean Air Force prior to an USS Reagan F/A-18C/Ds. Whipped into controversy by Fox News but totally par for the course.
Considering China is a mostly brown navy on the best of days again, there is no challenge to American power in the South China Sea unless you count unmarked obsticles which have sunk more navy ships in recent memory then any boomer, AShM or diesel-electric submarine since the Falklands.
You mean the deal to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East and replace the nuclear weapons material with power generating material? Sounds like a lot of peace to me. That $100 billion will do wonders modernizing their infrustructrue and spreading American goodwill in the region.
Japan or Guam maybe but only Russia can reach US mainland from their mainland. Good thing both Japan and S. Korea have AEGIS based missle defence supplied by the US military.
See US invasion and destabilization of Iraq and subsequent unrest, destabilization in Syria courtesy of G.W. Bush.
"Inscription on the Statue of Liberty"
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
-Emma Lazarus
See Iraq comments from above.
Invited by the Syrian Government and while bombing FSA positions, has more to lose from extremism and terrorism given its proximity to Syria and large muslim regions and population.
Hezbollah hasen't attaked Israel since the begining of the January and considering I drove the entire Lebanon/Israel border in May, there is not much to worry about there.
Not sure how you are calling them in disarray as they are actively competing with the US in the global oil market making American petro products uneconomical to export. They are also winning in Yemen against the Houthi.
Died on a rescue mission rescuing hostages earning America more good will.
De oppresso liber.
We are not the only NATO forces present in country and the 9,000 is way less than the 100,000+ we had at the height of surge.

That's the 64,000 question. We still have no system - in fire or EMS - and we have inadequate career departments, inadequate volunteer departments, and other problems. But without anyone in charge (of anything) admitting we have a problem we are still stuck with the same rut spinning our wheels.

What do you do when you call for a department and they send ALL of the career staff on the engine, leaving no one to man the remaining apparatus. Then 5 minutes later a call comes in for their department. No one is in town to cover the call and the call gets given to the neighboring department. Should that department have been called in the first place ? Should they have refused to respond to the mutual aid fire ?

There are tons of other threads on this subject of but I think it does boil down to that. There's two disparate classes of training in NYS and absolutely no requirement for the volunteer sector to comply with it so there is no guarantee you're getting apples when you order apples. When a truck of oranges shows up what are you supposed to do?

Greenville Fire District
9-27-15
Underhill Rd & Sprain Rd
Multiple Alarm Fire In A Nursery/Garden Center
Fire involves a large wood frame barn used for garden center...
Numerous mutual aid units including Yonkers, Fairview, and Hartsdale on scene

One way to look at it...the other could be that a building had to fall apart for the city to replace it...literally.

One way to look at it...the other could be that a building had to fall apart for the city to replace it...literally.