efermann

Well said, and a mention of the Ol' Putt to boot! As stated, the GWB expansion did happen, but it was more roadways and not rail to occupied the available real estate. Things were different at that time, right through the time of Robert Moses. The automobile was rising and arrived at the top of the heap. We have to be realistic....gas is going to be $5 a gallon this summer and it'll never fall too far again. (Don't believe these nit-wit presidential wanna-bees who claim they'll bring back $2 gas). We need to find alternatives to driving our own vehicles in many urban and suburban areas. Money needs to be poured into mass transit and the scope of our projects needs to surpass the needs of today to accommodate for tomorrow.

This week a group of fire service leaders had an interesting round table and the following questions were raised:
After the intitial response is onscene of a working fire and the IC beleives he does not need more personnel at that moment:
1) Do the IC's request enough additional personnel to staging to provide timely relief if needed (or to handle a change in the situation or tactics)?
2) How is the above question change if you have additional companies available inhouse vs. having to call mutual aid?
3) Do firefighters, company officers and even IC's avoid putting the staged resources to work, because "we can hamdle it without them"? Do we consider giving our troops a break by using those staged or is it more important to release them (particularly if they are mutual aid).
4) If IC's do not request enough personnel, does this come to light during critiques or post incident reports? Do members or in the case of a career dept. the union complain about this?
5) Now lets move on to what is the purpose of Mutual Aid move up to cover the vacant station? Would it be better to move them to staging as the potential for use at the scene (particularly if a mayday occurs) is far greater than the potential of a 2nd incident in the community (particularly in a smaller community)?
6) If you are using mutual aid to move up to cover your station, who is covering the units moved up? I find this particularly interesting when FD A has a fire and FD B moves its only ladder into A's station, but not B's area has no ladder.
I expect the answer will vary based on the size of the dept and by the staffing. VFD's and career depts may also have slightly different answers, but I encourage all to participate.

I have to look at this 2 different ways the more I've thought about it.
The 22 year old firefighter in me says drag until you can't anymore and activate your pass alarm.
The 37 year old says drag until your on free air and then make a bee line for the exit and get another crew to re enter for the victim. I have no ethical dilemma...incident priority 1 is life safety and this includes me and my partner. We will do nothing but complicate the matter if one and even worse both of us drop. A little smoke has never hurt anyone...but the problem is, is that smoke is the least of our worries here. Its the toxic by products of combustion that may be present even in the absence of smoke. Right amount of CO and to the floor you'll go.
Another thought I had..and it violates the core principles of firefighter operations is take a look at your air..whoever has the most left stays and does what they can and the person with the least heads for the exit to get assistance and advises that you have an urgent situation with a member with low air and a victim. Send the FAST with an extra air pack so the remaining member can do a hot swap, have an extra person assist them out and the FAST can remove the victim to boot. If its an uncomplicated removal..simple use of a stokes may make quick work of what could be a very tedious drag. Not textbook..but an option.
CKroll...I only wish I could fit the bill of your "mac"...guess I'm gonna have to do as a co worker for now with ya.

Agreed and infact I think the VFD's will actually see more benefits in terms of manpower than the career depts.
Great questions.
1st Every community involved in a potential consolidation needs to be anylized. What FD resources already exist, Stations, apparatus, personnel. The road network and the call volume and type and the water system. If this is done well, honestly with no bias, then good planing can determine what the needs are and what direction to take the consolidation. Once there is a general agreement to consolidate, response patterns need to be set up and SOP's and training on how things need to work.
2nd to answer how it would work is not possible till #1 is completed. But I will give some possabilities;
in the case of the 14 call dept. I believe they are in a very unusual position. If I have the right FD, they are a very small village located within a very large park. They do not have any boardering FD's So they might not have the ability to consolidate and actually change anything.
Now as a hypothetical answer, if
Dept. "A" has 1 station with 2 engines and a ladder,
dept. "B" has 2 stations with 3 engines, 1 rescue and a ladder and
dept. "c" has 1 station with 3 engines and a rescue. They are all 1-2 square miles.
Consolidated dept XYZ might only need 3 engines (+ 1 spare), 1 Rescue and 1 ladder (+ 1 spare). And they only need 3 stations, but to keep everyone happy they might keep all 4. The new dept might look like this:
XYZ FD Co. "A" staffs 1 engine (they store the ladder as the dept spare)
XYZ FD Co. "B" staffs 1 engine, 1 rescue at one station
XYZ FD Co. "B2" staffs 1 ladder at the other station.
XYZ FD CO. "C" staffs 1 engine (they store an engine as the dept spare)
The responds 1 engine from the closest house for minor alarms. For MVA's add the rescue. For AFA, the closest 2 engines, 1 ladder & rescue. for reported fires; 3 engines, 1 ladder, 1 rescue from all houses.
Keep the spares fully supplied so they can be swapped or used in a major emergency. But we can now reduce the fleet by 4 engines & a rescue. Or maybe we convert the rescue to a collapse unit and convert 1 engine to a foam or special water supply unit.
Personnel wise, Co. "A" use to average 6 ff's staffing 3 rigs, now they are running a 6 man engine they had 100 calls in the old district, but now they also get more calls in the other 2. same concept holds true for the other companies. Also now that you have 3x the pool, you might be able to set up special ops. Foam, Tech rescue, hazmat, dive, etc.

Having mapped out the 1,500 hydrants in my city I can tell you there are ones that you will never find if you do not have a map (and a few that even with the map and the water company engineer you will still not find).
I also found 3 hydrants that are ornimental and do not function (one was plumbed with a 5/8" garden hose oulet that worked).
What Eastchester, Fairview, Greenville, Hartsdale, Larchmont, New Rochelle, Pelham, Pelham Manor and Scarsdale have done is added rig laptop computers with mapping software

Lots to see here, hydrants: red, orange, green & blue are NFPA flows. Blue with a red ring is unknown flow.
Marked with a "P" are private, "T" are out of town (normally they would be tank, but we do not have any of those) they can also list dry ones & yard ones. If you click on the hydrant the yellow box pops up, gives some info, then if you hit "open" gives specs, inspection history etc. on the hydrant.
Out of service Hydrants (none here) get a big X over the top of them and that can be set on our master PC at HQ and it pushes that info out to the fleet every 15 minutes.

In this map if you hit a button (distanse to 3 closest hydrants) you get the above on the rig map. Note the distances are direct to the house not via roads, so they are approx and they are color coded by flow.

Same as everything else in the Fire Service:" My FD is better than yours, my accountability system is better than yours."
There are probably hundreds of accountability systems out there, some cheap like the forest service's T-cards, some, like the radio operated system are very expensive. They all work if we MAKE them work, and none work if we are just going through the motions. Someplace along the line, they all have flaws of one kind or another.
You can make any system work if we see accountability as an ATTITUDE as opposed to a system. The correct attitude starts at the bottom of the organization, the rookie, and runs all the way to the Chief. And it encompases every resource that ccomes in on mutual aid.
The Probie: You taught him the buddy system probably on the first day of proby school, right after the morning "form signing" session and before "this is an Engine, this is a Truck." You came with him, know where he is all the time. Many proby schools require all students to have a buddy all throughout the school. You cannot even go to the bathroom without that buddy going along.
The FF: You spend more time with the people in your firehouse than you do with any other human being. You call him your brother. For a couple of beers and a burger, they will help you move out of your old house and into a new one. Nobody has to tell you to watch out for him because you've always had eachother's back.
The Company Officer: Like a mother duck, the company follows you and they do what you say without question. You scold them when they relieve eachother and don't write the change on the riding assignment chalkboard. You are absolutely aware of your responsibility to keep your people together and safe.
The Chief Officer: You have to have a handle on everyone on the scene including the mutual aid companies. Where are they, what are they doing, are they getting into trouble. How many times have you told a company to "back it out" and get the response "We're OK, Chief, we got it"? Did you assess quickly and decide whether to back them out or let them keep pushing? Do you strive to have FAST in place from beginning to end without interruption? Among all these things you are responsible for, you still have to read the building and the smoke that's emanating and estimate whether you are winning or losing. Are you willing to have your guys get hurt? I think not.
I think the acountability requirement started 20-25 years ago when a volunteer department had a fire where a member came along and worked the job without telling anyone he was there (or he did tell someone but it was forgotten). All returned to quarters, and the next morning the member was found dead in the basement. No one knew that he was at the fire. I cannot recall any other instance of not knowing who was there except 9/11/2001. The accounting problem there was that it happened at change of shifts and off-duty members jumped on the rigs because it was definitely the "Big One." Then two 110 story buildings collapsed onto the accountability system. The Cause was that Arab Radicals flew two planes into those buildings, and not flaws in FDNY's accountability system.
So, how, after reading all the "values" stuff above do we operate at a fire and account for all our members?
1. Operate in Companies-Groups-Divisions. The theory of ICS is in span of control. This is the easiest way for command to track everybody on the fireground
2. If mutual aid comes in with a different Accountability system use their system to account for them. If they have tags on rings, for example, use those tags when you do a PAR
3. If there are several mismatched radio systems in use, you have to have a radio outside for every radio frequency inside if you don't you can miss a mayday call.
4. If the fire is more than just a room and contents, the IC should put a trained man on the IC board. The IC can't run a complex operation and the board at the same time and do an adequate job at both functions.
5. Board men should write up a IC chart on the board which shows the assignments and not just a list of the companies on-scene. They make these boards eraseable so that you can change the chart as needed. For example if E-1 is taken off Fire Attack and sent to Rehab, and then to Staging, you can reflect this on your ICS chart. A list of on-scene companies tells you nothing except that they are someplace on-scene.
6. Give the IC a little help. Companies (or Divisions, Groups, etc.) should advise the IC by radio not only of their progress but the lack thereof as well.
7. Last but not least, when you get there, report in to the IC. When you are demobilized, report out.
Whew...talk about giving my 2 cents worth.

A "political s*** storm"...really?
The "political s*** storm" comes when the public's expectation is that in there hour of need, the fire department shows up with enough trained personnel to save "my child", "my parent", "my wife". So far every department listed (except 1) routinly sends less personnel than every standard calls for.
The political push is to make sure that every response has enough personnel, to actually protect the public and every responder. As a chief officer you should not only understand this, but be promoting it.
This is not about career, combo or volunteer, how many depts and how many chiefs still thinks its ok to send one man apparatus to a structure fire?
I know of 9 (of the 59 in Westchester) that not only think its acceptable, but its actual policy. There are others that think 2 firefighters per rig is ok.
Fair enough, so sticking to the topic.....I know more than 1 department in Westchester thats run card says 2 engines, 1 ladder & the chiefs car (because a chief would be a person). So thats the apparatus count.
Now you made it clear that you do not want to hear this because it ruins the thread, but its the single biggest issue for Westchesters fire service. Those 2 engines, 1 ladder & the chiefs car were dispatched and retoned for any available driver/crew or rolled with 1 or 2 firefighters.
ISO has sent its new staffing policy to the State Insurance Commissioner. Their new position is that since state law requires 6 responders (2in/2out, MPO & IC) to enter a burning structure. If you can not meet that as a rock bottom minimum, then they plan on rerating your dept to a 9. This will affect dozens of Westchester departments in the next year.

This is an interesting thread. IMO it really does a lot to demonstrate the mindset held by many members of the Fire Service in this region which is such a disservice to those we are sworn to protect and to our own fellow Firefighters....with the exception of helicoppers question regarding manpower (and he is a cop, not a Firefighter), and one other question and answer in regard to White Plains manpower, the whole thread so far is all about how many apparatus respond, with no mention of personnel.
Guys, Firefighters put out fires...Firefighters who are adequately trained and certified for interior firefighting and physically capable. A certain amount and type of apparatus, of course, is necessary, however, listing how many apparatus respond to structure fires is not only worthless in terms of assessing a department's capabilities, it is misleading.

I had the privilege of being Jeff's instructor on several occasions and can tell you he is one of the most dedicated and motivated students I've had and is a very capable firefighter who earned every single certification he has by far exceeding the minimum standard. I would work with Jeff any day.
To simply put it..you have to meet the standards. We can debate what the "minimum" standard is, but everyone who enters a course, I can assure you at a "minimum" is meeting the standard of the curriculum set forth by NY State and the NFPA.

Based on your statement you clearly do not understand the job.
You need to go back and relearn the basics.
If a member gets hurt the job stops and all efforts tend to be refocust on the injured rescuer and the original patient suffers.

Is one ambulance enough for a working structure fire? You have to be available for potential civilian victims as well as ready to treat injured FF(s)? Since the FD operates with two-in/two-out (as a minimum for illustration only), wouldn't it be prudent to have at least two ambulances available in case both require urgent care?
It also takes extra hands to work a cardiac arrest so if a victim is removed from the fire, it would be better to have the extra hands already on site.
None of this considers the type of structure, time of day, or conditions, either. If you have a multi-family dwelling at 3 AM or a smoky fire in an office building at 3 PM you should probably add to the assignment. I remember an early evening fire in an apartment building that had about a dozen ambulances staging.

In MY eyes, in MY experience, a fire IS a medical emergency. Backfill the township if needed, but keep that bus at the fire. Way too many of us die of cardiac events at fires to not have an ALS unit standing by.
Edit; and I realize this doesnt pertain to Westchester, as I am a Dutchess resident...but a few years back when I was a Lieutenant with another department, I had a run of fires in which I was in command or the initial Officer at. I called three second alarms, which are all pre planned in the County CAD. However, I made it a point to add an ALS ambulance for standby at the scene. FOR US. At the time, this was seen as an "odd request". This is somwthing I would do still to this day.
This subject is something I could go on for days about. I feel VERY strongly about adequate EMS at fires...and not just rehab (because we ALL know my opinion of "EMS Prison"! LOL)....

I've been thinking this over the past few days and here are my issues. For one even at 18 most people haven't fully developed their life skills. There are a ton of life skills that you must have or have some basis for that will develop while in the emergency services field. I just don't think that the 16 year old age up to 18 that someone has the full mature level to deal with situations that can and more then likely arise. I know I wouldn't want a 16 year old's head between the legs of my signficant other during child birth or undressing a trauma patient. I'm not stereotyping but lets face it..most just learned how to drive. I enter the marine corps at 17 and turned 18 while in boot camp. Different scenario because its well controlled but I saw out of boot camp in schooling and the fleet of the pitfalls of some who didn't have good life skills and the trouble that it in turn became.
Now with that said as an instructor I've seen both sides of the 16 year old in classes. I've had some who could climb over any wall and were some of that best students I've had...and there's more that I wanted to put through a wall then the latter I mentioned. And the majority of it simply came down to maturity. I know of some decent youth programs that they are allowed to ride during calls...it gives them just enough to do to make them feel part of it without having to (not always necessarily) worry about their lack of life and maturity skills. That doesn't go without saying that there aren't times that I or my colleagues haven't had to speak up because some have no bounds or filters with their mouths. If your truly looking at lowering ages to increase recruitment....you have much bigger problems that need to be addressed. The military has recruitment problems at times...but they don't lower their requirements to take 16 year olds.

On 12/4, the members of Hughsonville FD in the Town of Wappingers helped make a little boys 11th birthday unforgettable. Christopher, the son of a close friend to my wife and I, has been diagnosed with "Leg-Calf Perthies", a bone disorder that has caused the complete deterioration of his right femur. Christopher has been confined to a wheel chair and has recently found out that he will be undergoing the first of several surgeries at Boston Childrens Hospital the week of Christmas. To celebrate his Birthday his family chose to rent the hall at HFD, seeing as Christopher has always loved the fire service. When the members of HFD found out what a fan of the fire department Christopher is they decided to give him a few gifts of their own. Sporting an HFD helmet and a huge grinn, Christopher was pushed through the engine room by the Captian of HFD and given his own personal VIP tour of the station. He almost jumped out of his wheel chair when the Lieutenant pulled "THE BEAST" (45-55 and Christophers favorite truck) into the back lot and sat him in the drivers seat. His eyes lit up as he was lifted into the bucket of the Tower Ladder and his smile could be seen for miles as the HFD members all accepted his challange to a "wheel chair race". Christophers perfect day came to a close with the members of HFD singing "Happy Birthday", having some cake, watching him unwrap his gifts and presenting him with his own HFD patch and T-Shirt (With a picture of "THE BEAST" on it of course).
From Christophers family: "To Chief Glenn Kramer, Assistant Chief Tim Laffin, Captian Ed D'Anna, Lieutenant Trevor Dhalla, Fire FIghter Ryan White and Fire Fighter Chris Baker:
Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts, you have no idea how much this ment to Christopher and how much you have just helped him. It was so wonderful to see him smile like that today. He was still talking about all of you when we got home. Thank You and God Bless!"
Here are a few shots from the party. I wanted to post this to remind all of us why we do what we do. As the members of HFD showed today, It's not all about getting on the big red truck and running into the devils play ground. It's about the smile on a little boys face when you hand him a helmet and say "blow the horn". Thank you again HFD for making Christophers birthday so special for him. Stay Safe!
If anyone would like to be kept up to date on Christophers journey PM me.

Sounds about like it was to me, Cap.
The People on upper floors were probably not trapped, just scared. Sounds like they were defended in place. As you said, water on the fire AND a good vent will usually solve most of your other problems.
Familiarization inspections are a high priority item in Hartsdale. There is no reason that a FFs first time in a building like this is for a
fire. That's how FFs get lost and sometimes dead. As Seth said, inspections are one of the first things we do when a probie comes aboard. He still remembers that building and its layout. And that's only one building.

Joey was a "plank holder" in Squad Co. 61 (Bronx), when we were "transformed" by DC Ray Downey (RIP 9-11-01) from an engine co. to a squad co. in SOC. As a newly formed co. we were constantly drilling and preparing to "go-online" as a squad, and many members of the hand-picked company were the original engine members. Joey loved going to the "Rock" every day tour for the months of training- he was always "up" for any type of hands-on activity. Especially when it came to "ropes". He was one of my "rope fairies"- guys who loved to take out the high-angle and confined space gear and rig up scenarios to drill on. I remember one "24" tour where we had spent the whole day training at the "Rock";came back to quarters for the night tour and had chow;drilled again for an hour on "firefighter removal" from the cellar, and then the brothers sat in the kitchem while I did paperwork in the co. office. Around midnight I heard footsteps (not Santa's reindeer) on the roof, so I climbed the scuttle ladder to check it out. There on the roof was Joey and the rest of the crew, setting up to do a "pickoff" from the top floor bunkroom. I was beat, and looking forward to lying down on the couch- but what could I say? I became the "victim" in the window for them to "rescue". You had to admire Joe's burning desire to excel at all phases of firefighting and rescue.
When I got promoted up a rank, he made me a "cutdown" halligan as an officers tool, w/ my nickname welded on it- that was the type of guy Joe was! His Dad (Joe,Sr) is a retired and well-loved Deputy Chief from the South Bronx (Div 6) and my heart gors out to him and the family, and the brothers who knew Joey on FDNY and LI where Joey was also a volly in his hometown. Sorry for this rambling message, but I'm surely going to miss Joey and his quiet but infectious smile and personality. Joey, R.I.P.,brother!

Today marks the 8th year that EMTBravo.NET has been online.
Thanks to all the members, staff, and everyone else who have helped this forum to succeed and become what it is for the past 8 years, and many more to come.
Seth G.
Founder and Executive Director, EMTBravo
seth@emtbravo.com
AKA "x635"

PINATA!!!!!! I'll get a boat!

Let's talk now then. A residential sprinkler head average maybe 13 gpm upon activation, 95% of residential fires where sprinklers were present were held or extinguished by 2 or less heads. So under 26 gpm water flowing will cause how much damage compared to a fire that doubles in size every minute and that's "old math" compared to the new highly combustible furnishings we use today. Let's say there's are dwelling fire that a career staffed FD responds to within 6 minutes of detection. The fire was already out of hand when discovered requiring the call to 911, now it's 64 times greater than at discovery. Upon arrival the FD leads out in just 1 minute and starts water on the fire (pretty good), what are they flowing? I'll be conservative and say 150 gpm. That's the same amount of water basically as two heads would have flowed until the FD arrived, with no increase in fire size. Starting to get the picture? And that's if they only needed to flow for 1 minute, which is extremely unlikley.
As for inadvertent water damage, the data suggests this is extremely rare. You already have water piped throughout the home, and today plumbers are mostly using PEX tubing or CPVC with expands upon freezing rather than break like iron pipe or copper.
Our city has mandated sprinklers in new one and two family dwellings since 2010, thus far none of the systems have exceeded $10k, and the high was due to the home having an in home business which the state decided to require more sprinkler head coverage and required a second larger water entrance, which is not the case in any of the other homes.
With uninformed naysayers in our midst, we're sure to have to fight an uphill battle all the way. And lastly, fire damage is permanent, water damage is largely reversible, it's a no brainer, is it not

A few months ago, went to the Fort Myers area of Florida looking at apartments. Found a few listings on Craigslist and followed up on them. Another one we found was obviously too good to be true; Cape Coral, private house with a dock and a pool. So I contact the owner out of curiosity and get the whole ridiculous story of how "she" is doing charity medical work in Nigeria, and won't be able to return anytime soon, but lucky for me, we can do the entire transaction right over the internet!
So I play along with this Nigerian bonehead and get him to think I'm totally interested. He gives me all this information of how and where to send a Western Union money order for the deposit, and I keep right on playing with this S.O.B.
I go to Moneygram, not Western Union, and I get a money order for....... ONE DOLLAR. cost me ten bucks to send it, I didn't care. I could picture this.....Nigerian, riding his bicycle to the bank where I sent the money order, drooling that he suckered somebody into forking over the $800 he wanted. heh heh.
The guys at Moneygram thought it was hilarious. And so I waited......then came the email response and I acted shocked! "Somebody has ripped me off!" "I will investigate this" haha...
Kept leading this jerk-off on for a week. Made him go back to the bank two more times before he finally gave up. I hope he had to bike through the freakin' desert on a rusty old one-speed with flat tires.
It got to be an obsession. My gf was starting to look at me strange. But I thought, this is the revenge for all the poor old senior citizens, the trusting old souls that this worthless POS had suckered in the past.
Call me sadistic, I don't care. I enjoyed every minute of it.
PS: Many, if not the majority of real-estate listing on Craigslist are phony scams. Be careful if you get the sob story as the previous posters have mentioned.

Tying off is only beneficial if it can keep you out of the water. Tied off and in the water you can become dragged under. Tied off in the middle of the current you become an obstruction. Water builds behind you and creates an eddy in front of you. This sinks you lower and lower until the water can start over topping you. At this point you have the full force of the river holding you under. This all takes places in seconds.

A view from south of Westchester.
We assign RIT (our FAST) to one of the initial assigned companies. Often times it is the 3rd due engine or 2nd due truck/special service. Our staffing is inconsistent, so the RIT team could be as few as 2 people, mostly likely 3, and sometimes 4. We have RIT bags on the trucks and squads. They have some rope, extra bottle, mask, and a quick-fill line.
As for training. We have no RIT qualification. If you can ride, you can be on the RIT team. We also don’t have interior/exterior qualifications. You are a FFI, FFII (EMT), FFIII (Pump Operator) FFIV (EMT-I) or FFV (PM).
Interestingly, we just did RIT training for our fall skills development. We reviewed the RIT bag, did some mayday training, and did a RIT evolution in our burn building. The evolution had us rescue a down FF. We had to find him, get him some air, and get him out. The building was dark and smoked up. And, we had to crawl through a small opening, over a knee wall, and down a tunnel to find him. We broke into teams of 4 using an acronym I had never heard TEAR (Team lead, Extrication, Air, and Rope) and we were timed and our air level was noted. It was a great drill.
My takeaways from the drill:
1. 4 people is not enough. We were all hustling to get to the down victim, get him air, and get him packaged to move, and then had to move him. It would have been nice to have had 1 or 2 folks there who were fresh to drag him out.
2. It takes a lot longer than I thought. We did the evolution in about 13 minutes, and while I knew it was slower than we wanted, I did not think it was that slow. As I watched the next group, I thought they were in there longer than we were. Turns out they did it in about 10 mins. Sitting outside waiting made that wait seem really long.
Be safe,
JR

The one thing that I don't think is a great idea is when a department calls for a fast for a working fire and then puts them to work. I think thatafter a fast is on the scene and is established, they should remain as the fast. If you need more manpower, then go m/a for manpower and not another fast. There is no sence in putting them to work after they are there and then waiting for another fast to show up. Kinda defeaats the purpose.

This is why the dual dispatch with a FASTeam was implemented. Get them started, and if you don't need them, turn em around. All of our M/A teams were more then willing to try this out.
Yorktown's own FAST team response protocol is if we cannot field a crew (minimum 4 FASTeam qualified members [which is pages long in our SOGs]) in 3 minutes and out the door in 5, we will notify 60-control and the IC we cannot field a FASTeam. If we know we cannot field it sooner then that, we'll notify them immediately. If we have the manpower(minimum 4 interior firefighters), but not a FASTeam, we will notify the IC that we can send either an engine or truck, if the IC so chooses to accept. We have a no retone policy, and honestly feel others lives are more important then our ego's
As "buffy" as this sounds, our guys are very good at "getting on the horn" the moment a neighboring department gets called to a fire, and sending out mass texts and group chats (for those who have smart phones) to see who's around to respond. We sometimes know before the first due company arrives on scene, if we'll be able to field a crew or not should we be called. Members normally start making their way to HQ to lesson the time even more as the texts are going out.
No
4 out of the first 5 arriving firemen are FASTeam members.
3 in and about 20 outside was being utilized.

Thank you to all. My wife Helen, who I called "Pumpkin" gave up her battle with lung cancer on Saturday morning Oct 1, 2011. She was such a good wife. Very mellow and low keyed. To this day, she looked the same way she did when I married her on Oct 9, 1976. Even after all those chemo and cancer treatments, she could still pass for a beautiful 25 year old. She just never aged.
Our first date was on Valentines Day, February 14, 1975. We went to see a new movie out about a high rise fire called "Towering Infernio". I told her that I was on the list to get on the fire dept. But I really don't think she was too impressed.
Our second date, I had to stop back home because I had forgotten to take the tickets for the show we were going to see. I invited her in for a few minutes and she talked with my mother. Later when I came home, she said to me "that's the girl you're going to marry". She was right and we would have celebrated our 34th Wedding Anniversary on Oct 9th.
"Pumpkin" was an Angel. She died peacefully at Backus Hospital in Norwich, Ct. Those nurses were the Greatest.