M' Ave

To expand a little further; they serve as EMT's, primarily. That is the function they act in on most occasions. From a fire/emergency prospective, they act as key liaisons, especially the Fire Brigade Chiefs. We attend in service training sessions with the Fire Brigade chief's on a a regular basis. They are able to go over equipment specifications and hazards as well as discuss how we would proceed in the event of an emergency.
The fire brigade in Grand Central doesn't have the apparatus to mitigate much more than a small rubbish fire, however there knowledge of the terminal and it's inner-workings is essential for responding FDNY and EMS units.

The rig was positioned between on-coming traffic and operating fire personnel. The rig took the hit and not the personnel.
All Stainless Body.
Way too early to tell if will be repaired or disposed of.
The 2002 HME (former E4) will be utilized.
Fire Trucks can be repaired or replaced. The 4 Fire Fighters working on the other side of the impact zone can not!
A good visual example of why we need to place "big red" between us and them.

Blah blah blah...........warning lights people......warning lights!
WHO CARES!
I ride around in a big red engine or truck. It has flashing lights and we use it on streets highways ect.....The only thing that is really going to make a difference for your safety is YOU! Use your head and pay attention. I've been standing on the highway and seen people work REALLY hard to squeeze their car between the flares we put up to close a portion of the road. I've had motorcycles weave right through the firemen on the scene.
Lights, stripes, ribbons, flares don't matter that much. The only thing that will keep you safe is using your head and some proper rig placement. The only thing that's going to keep you safe and stop drivers from coming near you while you work is to make them UNABLE to.

Blah blah blah...........warning lights people......warning lights!
WHO CARES!
I ride around in a big red engine or truck. It has flashing lights and we use it on streets highways ect.....The only thing that is really going to make a difference for your safety is YOU! Use your head and pay attention. I've been standing on the highway and seen people work REALLY hard to squeeze their car between the flares we put up to close a portion of the road. I've had motorcycles weave right through the firemen on the scene.
Lights, stripes, ribbons, flares don't matter that much. The only thing that will keep you safe is using your head and some proper rig placement. The only thing that's going to keep you safe and stop drivers from coming near you while you work is to make them UNABLE to.

There was no little face picture that was vomiting, so you'll just have to imagine that's what I'm running to do right now......
Not for one second did anyone look at this with a level head. Nope, we're just going to give the family 7 mil and name a street after this guy. So now we name streets after political and sports hero's, firemen and cops who suffer LODD and apparently, guys who try to run over cops and get shot in self defense.....
If only 5 bullets had been fired, and this guy was still dead, would we be having this discussion? I know NOTHING about police training, but I know how easy it is to fire a handgun and I know they carry a lot of bullets. If I was almost hit by a car intentionally, or saw my partner almost hit by a car intentionally at 4am in a lousy neighborhood, I'd shoot a lot. If the result of this whole lawsuit is some additional training for cops, fine, whatever the politicians need to make them feel better. However, to pay the family of a man who was killed in this manner sets BAD precedent.
Everyone loves to forget that this was a guy who was out at a sleazy strip-club, suspected to be a drug spot, in a high crime area only HOURS before he was supposed to get married. (what kind of lifestyle is that anyway?) He was in an altercation witnessed by cops and there was some scuttle about a gun. They got in a car and tried to hit the cop who attempted to stop them. I guess that action isn't supposed to have any consequences?
The deck is stacked against the cops everyday. I work in the most economically depressed area in NYC with high crime and I watch what the cops are up against everyday. They are the enemy to many everywhere they go and that's a tough position to be up against. Do we really need to neuter the cops ability to enforce law and keep order?

Capt, I was pushing more of an advocacy towards a centralized dispatch, not the specific staffing of Scarsdale. Surely there are many contractual issues, however, they shouldn't impact the function of emergency response. I'm sure that Scaredale did a fine job at the dispatch console, but the resources available to an agency that does that SINGLE task, are far greater. They have redundancy within the same office, ect. ect.
That aside, I couldn't agree more that you need to have positions for those who cannot, for any reason, function as a Full Duty fireman. It's true, while there are many light duty spots around the city, there are also 12,000 firemen/officers. If that single position as a dispatcher was a good place for a Light Duty guy, then it shouldn't be too hard for the village to find another position for someone off-line to fill. Bottom line, firemen get hurt and that's that. Accidents happen, par for the course. It's up to the municipality to provide a place for them to work in Light Duty capacity if they are injured. If they don't have a place for them.....that's the villages problem. Perhaps part of this arrangement could be unlimited sick leave. Of course the municipality will want to supervise this, but....whatever. Again, that's on them. If a member suffers a traumatic injury on the job, well, that's what a 3/4 disability is for.
Lastly, about the city's dispatch, some of the dispatchers were moved to 11 Metro-tech. Brooklyn, Manhattan and Staten Island are in Downtown Brooklyn. Queens and 'da Bronx continue to operate out of their original offices, and that's how it's going to remain. Bronx dispatch is also set-up to handle city wide, should something happen. That said, I think the consolidation is a terrible idea. WHY would you put your eggs in one basket? It doesn't really save that much money as all positions, more or less, have remained. It's all part of this UCT dispatch program. NYPD civilian call takers answer 911 calls and send the info to the respective agencies via glorified text msg. FDNY dispatchers then turn out the companies based on the initial information received from the call takers (who are not anywhere near them). We roll out the door, all too often, with little more than an address, cross-streets and "multdwell" or "pvtdwell" and a letter code A-E, all of which mean "smoke or fire". Sometimes, if we're lucky, we get SOME additional information enroute, such as the nature. Is it an odor of smoke, or a sparking outlet, ect. ect. UCT, for Unified Call Taker, is referred to as "U Can't Tell" in the firehouse. It's lousy. Prior to UCT you could get a sense of what was going on. If it was a phone alarm, that was a pretty reliable source, meaning, someone actually called in and spoke to a dispatcher. If you got a second source, it was because the dispatcher felt that another source was providing them with information that added to the severity of the alarm. When the dispatcher actually spoke to the caller, they could determine if it sounded legit. Some seasoned dispatchers would actually tell you when, "it sounds like you're going to work". Now everything is a UCT alarm and a second source is given anytime the NYPD call taker gets another call for the same incident, regardless of whether there is more information confirming an incident.
Boro centralized dispatch, excellent.
Moving to 11 Meto-tech, seems a little short sighted in this day and age.
UCT, SUCKS!
Rant over...

couple of my shots i know you cant post in picture threads but fell free to combine the topic

This is where 95% of the population gets it wrong. HID's only blind the hell out of people when they are installed wrong and/or are not installed into a projector housing.
The apparatus above has a nice projector setup.

I was trying to think of a "respectful" way to say that. You got it. Thanks!

My friend, your logic is as sound as your spelling, grammar and sentence structure.

My friend, your logic is as sound as your spelling, grammar and sentence structure.

My friend, your logic is as sound as your spelling, grammar and sentence structure.

Are you serious? There is nothing to play around when talking about fire apparatuses. Every piece of equipment if used improperly has the potential to do serious harm. Yes we can have an opinion and the opinion here is that what occurred with those rigs was completely inappropriate and reckless. We are lucky that nothing serious happened and everyone got to go home. But it could have had a tragic ending. I dont want to be the person responsible for explaining to the mans family that he wont be coming home because he was killed in a parade accident that should never have happened.
I agree with previous posters that this should never have been allowed to happen. An officer of the host department should have put a stop to this before it got this far.

WOW, just WOW....What are these clowns thinking?
What the hell is going through these morons heads? Whats with the Chiefs and officers for allowing this? Whats wrong with OTHER Chiefs, Officers, FF's, EMT's, LEO's for not speaking up? On top of all of that, what the hell is the driver of the rig thinking?
Thanks Bogota FD for making the Vol fire service look like crap once again! Absolutely disgusting!

There's a difference between riding on an apparatus roof and consuming adult beverages after the event. If the apparatus operators are drinking, yes it is a big no-no. If the apparatus is supposed to be in service and the crew is drinking that's also a big no-no. But if the parade go-ers are just that, parade go-ers, what does their recreating after the parade have to do with being unsafe and unprofessional during the parade?

If you have any intentions or hopes in staving off disastrous public safety cuts, you have to get out in front of the problem before it becomes a reality. It takes time to garner public support. You NEED some information to educate the constituents of a certain district. If the city council and the mayor in Yonkers are kicking the idea of such drastic cuts as company closures around, then that's fuel enough to start a campaign to stop them.
As someone who has a great deal of family in Yonkers, this is of utmost concern. I don't care if Santa in the North Pole writes Amicone to try and persuade him to continue funding public safety.

if it leaves the hose bed looking like the one in the photo....I'll pass...
Seriously though....this is another contraption, along with the hose bed that lowers to the ground, to make a job easier when it isn't that hard to begin with. No one likes loading hose, but many hands make light work. There's no reason you can't do this without a "device".

You'd be surprised....
In the short few years that I've been around, I've been to a couple of ERS (emergency reporting, or street pull boxes)that ended up being jobs. Now, I'll admit that, on each occasion, a second source was received and information was updated en route, but it was an ERS pull box that got us rolling in the first place.
They cost NOTHING! A couple of million dollars a year? Even it if's 5 million, that's nothing on a 64 BILLION dollar budget line. What about natural disasters or 9/11? What happens on those crazy days when cell phones aren't all that reliable? It's mere pennies in the great scheme of things, to offer a priceless service.

Pictured with the NEW pumpers too.

YFD has access to a helicopter anytime they need it. There mobile command post can receive downlinked video from it and all the radio frequencies necessary are available onboard.

Unfortinatly it often is the older rig, but we have found its not an easier life. In our case our front line engines are out of service between 10 and 20%. With 5 frontline engines and 1 spare (#2 died), the spare is inservice about 75% of the time.
The biggest problem with keeping rigs (including spares) to long in busy departments is costs. One study (South Metro in CO) determined the best economic model was no more than 8 years in front line & 2 spare. Selling the unit before it hits its 10th year (when the value drops drimatically). The maintenance costs after that start to approach the bond payments for its replacement and you have a less reliable unit.

There are a host of issues here.
1) In a large and busy dept. it is not uncommon for a rig (even a newer one) to be out of service 15-20% of the time. In a city the size of Yonkers, that would mean the squad would have to leave there quarters on the West side, drive across town to get the spare, then unload the primare rig and load the spare, then take the rig to the shop. All of this gets repeated when its done. This can take the company out of service for an hour or more. If the shop has a 2 hour job it means the crew may be out of service almost as long just switching rigs.
2) Our newest "standard" engines have been given additional equipment that we never use to carry (TIC's, gas detectors, FAST, Water rescue, more foam & foam equipment, more EMS equipment, etc.) It is very difficult to switch over to a spare and fit all the new equipment, since they have 1/2 the storage space. Much of the additional equipment gets left on the floor. Now add to that the squad equipment, YFD Squad 11 carries more rescue equipment than many of the large "heavy rescue" box units in Westchester. In Sq2 (NRFD E22) we carry all the equipment of a standard engine plus, Level A & B suits, Hazmat boots, reference materials, multiple gas detectors, radiation detectors, drager tubes, WMD agent detectors, Antidote Kits, 4 additional Hazmat SCBA's with 1 hour packs and 8 additional 1 hour bottles, PAPR's, Hazmat Skeds, 4 Hazmat tool kits, Extra foam and extra absorbant (plus a bunch of other stuff) if the rig goes out of service you need another rig with enough compartments to hold it all.
3) Most larger depts. have 2 different terms: Spare and Reserve. A spare is uniquipped and you switch over when a primary rig is out of service (particularly for long periods). Sometimes they do not even have hose, then that gets switched also. A reserve unit fills in as a spare, but also can be staffed with call back members to beef up the departmet during storms or other major emergencies. Most city's have fewer companies than they should and get away with that by beefing things up as needed. This is based on the city's wanting to base staffing on slow times and not busy times.
4) lastly in any larger department there is a greater chance the rig will be involved in an MVA than in a small village. I suspect Sq 11 response to 3 or 4 times the number of calls as your whole dept. plus its on the street everyday doing training and inspections. Plus driving in Yonkers can get very rough. There is a very good chance that it will get hit or hit something and go out of service for many months. In a busy dept you can not have critical equipment out of service for days or even hours, without a spare they could be out for months. And if the rig was ever distroyed it could take up to 2 years to get it replaced.
5) the finances in a big fleet will equill out as this spare will be used a little lighter than the other spares, it will require less maintenance, they may also be able to keep the front line rig without replacement for an extra year or two, because they have a good spare, and if its included as an "extra" spare, then the rest of the spares will also last a little longer.

This is a tough topic and one that's surely going to raise the collective blood pressure. However, that said, I don't believe that you can have a successful combination department if you actively create what ends up being, essentially, two classes of firefighter/officer. How can it really function? You're going to have to preface every officer's title with either "Volunteer" or "Career"? That sounds a bit silly.
I believe that for operational management and individual moral, you can't have a structure like this. I can imagine that you might have a situation where only career members can be officers, or vice versa with only volunteer officers. Or, all things being equal and you have all members holding equally weighted titles, the way it should be.
Now for the tricky part....
....you gotta have equal qualifications and this is where the waters get a little murky. You cannot call a guy who took Intro to Officer and Fire Officer 1 a Lieutenant and have a guy who went to FLIPS 5 days a week for 5 weeks Lieutenant as well. Career officers were promoted through competitive examination while volunteers are voted into office. This does call into question the validity of the member holding that rank as popularity can play an unfortunate roll. The manner in which a person is promoted is something that is simply not going to change, so we're going to have to move past that. Volunteer/Combination departments can bolster the validity of an elected volunteer officer by insuring that the candidate pool is very strong, has a certain number of years of experience and holds far more than the basic set of certifications from state fire classes. FLIPS is almost 200 hours long, so you have to put that in perspective and put together a list of prerequisites that can, at least, somewhat compare. The smart, dedicated volunteers (and I know a bunch) have already or will put in the time. You just have to hope you have enough of them.

I'm sorry, but beware the person who says they know it and don't need to learn it in class. Everyone from the 15 year old Junior FF to the Chief of Dept. in the FDNY has something to learn. Only a small portion of FLIPS is FDNY specific and that is an extra week that doesn't include the "upstaters". 200 hours of class to learn how to lead a company of 5 men/women into a fire is nothing. FDNY proby school was almost 1,000 hours in total and when I got out I was still just a proby who knew nothing about nothing. Now I'm the Johnny who knows a little about nothing. For an officer, 200 hours only scratches the surface as far as tactics and personnel management are concerned, but I think that like all course work, it gives us the tools with which to maximize the effect of our experience. This is why newly promoted Captains are sent to the Captains Development courses and likewise for Battalion Chiefs and on and on...
There is always something new you need to learn.
In the volunteer service, it would be nice if prior work experience or professional position could be factored into officer candidacy. If you're involved in the emergency services as a career, that's a little extra experience brought to the table. Perhaps someone is a personnel manager in their professional life and has a leg up on delegating responsibility and separating themselves from the rank and file.
Tying this back to the original question about career and volunteer officers in a combo dept; there doesn't need to be a separation. With a tightly regulated promotion program in the career side, the onus is on the volunteer organization to insure proper legitimacy of fire officers. Some departments do this very well by strictly enforcing a very high training standard and assigning meaningful responsibility. However, the 21 year old who joined at 18, never had a job, barely has the min. training requirements and was simply voted into an officers position is the problem. Weak standards hurt rank as a whole, because many people don't know the difference between the guy who's doing it as a career and their neighbor who's looking out for them at the sound of the alarm horns.

Well done FDMV. This is truly another step in the right direction! Well done and lets all hope that the courts decide in favor of merit!