Could I please ask the Fire-Fighters of this Forum(of course with Bill's approval?)
to compare notes on Emergency responses.
Please let's keep it within the PG rating of this Forum.
What do you think Bill?.
(should this be moved to another area?).

What do you mean / are you looking for?

The suburban department I work for (FT) responded to slightly more than 2400 calls last year. Mostly EMS, abut 80 fires of substance.

My volunteer dept responded to around 400 - mostly EMS, about 4 fires.

(Or are you looking for the "fun calls" department? [ ]

or those 'twilight zone' calls?

Sorry, but this is not the right Forum or the right place for this kind of thing!.
This is after all, an ELECTRICAL Forum, lets just let this one die as it should!.
I don't even think that it would fit into the Occupational Safety Forum Area!.
Sorry Bill!.

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 06-28-2003).]

Trumpy,

I didn't have any problems with it. Politics, Religion and controversial stuff like that are obvious things to stay away from, but I don't see any problems with other topics that are kept in good taste.

Did you get a complaint from someone?
I'm just curious, keeping to the main Topic of the Forum is not a bad thing but I don't want anyone to think the suggestion came from me.

Bill

No way Bill,
It most certainly did not come from you, but I was thinking, like this is an Electrical Forum, may be it was just a tad in-appropriate?.
So I suppose, we should go ahead with it then?.

Sparky, DougW, pretty much what I am looking to do, is have a discussion on Fire-Fighting(and MVA rescue) techniques.
With respect to House and other Structure Fires, let's not get too big and out of hand here.
Also, I would like to include MVA's(Motor Vehicle Accidents) as in Rescue Techniques for various types of vehicles(say Van's, SUV's, S/W's and general cars), as they all have thier own technique to effect a decent rescue.
Have any ideas on this sort of thing?, if you do, post away!!!

Well, to start, that's a pretty broad spectrum of discussion...are you looking at equipment, manpower, staffing...

whaadya want?

Well, I guess I'll try to start it off. I don't recall exact figures, but for the volunteer department I work with, about 60% of our calls relate to Motor Vehicle Accidents (including EMS assists and establishing landing zones for Air Medical transport helicopters). The rescue squad is made up of members of the FD who have attained additional skills in rescue, swift water events, confined space, hazardous materials, and has at least Emergency Care Attendant certification (most of the 20 members of the squad are at EMT, EMT-I or paramedics). The typical response consists of a rescue truck and one engine, as well as EMS of course - a separate organization in the city's structure, but sharing some personnel.

A fire alarm response usually depends on the nature of the call, as well as the time of day, of course. A fire alarm out in the county frequently requires a mutual aid response from neighboring departments (mostly tankers and additional personnel). We have a very effective functioning mutual aid agreement among our fire departments.

So far as things electrical, it seems that at least half of our fire alarm calls are the result of some type of electrical failure. The economic level of this area is not really good, and there are a lot of people, both inside the city limits (where codes are in effect), and out in the county (where practically anything goes, unfortunately) try to do their own electrical work or "help" their neighbor, usually with disastrous results. I could easily go on into some of the things I have seen, but I'm sure y'all have seen the same, and probably worse.

Hope this helps...

Mike (mamills)

[This message has been edited by mamills (edited 06-30-2003).]

I'm a rural EMT-I, ex-FF.
Basically, if your in the rural contingent you do everything with nothing with a response time that's 'as good as it gets'.

this trade has it humour also

You mean people actually follow that "Code" thingie?

Most of our calls are EMS. Station one = two ambulances, primary engine, backup/extrication engine, tower ladder. Station two = former front line engine, and an ambulance.

Each shift has a "minimum staffing level" of 7 - at St. 1 we run 2 FF/PM dedicated to the "front line" ambulance; two more on 2nd line squad (Ambulance=Squad="Rescue" in our town) - usually FF/PM's, but we still have a few "grandfathered" folks who can be FF/EMT-B's. These guys also double as the engineer and "jump" man for engine responses. One Shift Commander (appointee), usually a hard-ranked (civil service) Lt. Extra folks usually wind up occupying truck or jump positions, to dedicate the engineer to the engine.

Two FF/PM's at our "west side" station, that man whatever vehicle is needed, and bring themselves and their ambulance into town if we get multiple ambulance calls.

We've been trying to get the FD to enact SOP/SOG's, but our brass think that the union's trying to run the dept - in fact, they either a)don't want to be told how to do things, and b) are ignorant about the scope of OSHA/IDOL's punitive capabilities! It winds up where we have three fire departments sharing a station and wearing the same uniform - if you get shift traded, first priority is forgetting how you used to do it!

Usually run Ambulance to accidents, unless it comes in as an entrapment / rollover / big MF'er, then they roll a squad (ambulance) and our extrication engine. Structural response, two engines, ambulance, ladder truck (depending on type of structure, nature of call, available manpower in station).

And yes,

nice to see what proper funding can do DougW

we don't have a lot, but our state does have a neat web site

Let's get one straight here, no Code references, this is why I was a bit stand-offish about posting a thing like this.
Let's start off with the parking of Fire Appliances at Incidents, under the SOP's(Standard Operating Procedures), you have to park a Fire Appliance(Pump) at 45 degrees to the road, next to the house where you are working.
(Our turnout crews are a wee bit different to the US guys, as in we have the First-Aid hose Reel and we only use Flaked Deliveries, if it is REALLY necessary).
Also, our hose sizes are measured in mm's, not inches!.
If you're really keen, give us a pic of your Fire-Fighter Kit!.
How common is the Elkhart Branch in the US?.

Just so that there are no differences in terms between me and the US fire-fighters, I would like to submit some basic terms to this thread:

• Delivery= Hose(from the Appliance to the fireground)
• Branch=Nozzle(this should be self-explanatory)
• Appliance= Pump(see below)
• PRT= Pump rescue tender(While our Appliances are not called Tenders), this is an appliance that carries both Fire-fighting AND Rescue Gear, with an Air Compressor for spreaders and cutting gear.
  This is normally an initial turn-out appliance.
• BA=Breathing Apparatus, anyone who has been a Fire-fighter should know what this means!.
• Suction hose= Big hose used to draught water out of creeks,streams and swimming pools, normally with a strainer on the end!.
• Turn-out Crew= One Officer(Senior Fire-fighter or Higher Rank), Driver(again being a Qualified FF or SFF, with Driver and Pump Operation Quals) and two Qualified Fire-Fighters or Senior Fire-fighters, in the back seat!. .
• Our hoses are ALL in millimetres in diameter, but, I can convert them all in my head,so I don't think there's a problem there, guys!.

If anyone would like to submit a similar list of terms, peculiar to the US w/ regard to Fire-Fighting, that would be cool!.

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 07-05-2003).]

Sparky,
I just checked out the Humour link that you posted above.
Oh, how true!. ,but I must say don't give us guys any other ideas than what we have already got.
When I was a Paid(Career) Firefighter, we had a Divisional Officer (DO), that no-one particularly liked,mainly because of his attitude towards Operational Staff and we set him up to go into the smoke chamber on one our regular BA courses and one of the FF's pulled his BA mask off, there was no heat or anything, just a whopping great Stink-Bomb, that was thrown in there by a Senior Station Officer, a few minutes before-hand.
We ALL got in trouble over that one, even the rookie FF, that was standing outside of the smoke chamber, with the Fire Extinguisher, in case something went "wrong",apparently he laughed so hard, it gave the whole show away!.
It was REAL fun though!!.

ah, the 'smokehouse' , fine long standing establishment of maltese cross bearers world wide!

my first (scenario) experience was with a squad performing a right hand search for a downed FF

the Lt. hid himself well, and we failed miserably, after a while he started ranting from his spot....

"i've paid taxes all my life yaknow, and all i get is loosers that wouldn't know if thier a** was on fire"

Laughing sure seems to use up an SCBA a lot quicker...

OK,
Lets start with training, what happens at your Brigade/Department with respect to inducting New Recruits, as in how are they trained up to a level, where they become Operational Staff, is Medical training a normal part of FF training in the US, or is this an extra skill?.
What are the basics of FF training in the US?.

BTW,sparky,
The smoke chamber was the ONLY way to give New FF's the taste of the heat of the fire, before they actually hit the real thing!.
These days, we burn an old derelict house down, in 4-5 stages, but it's too controlled, nothing counts for the madness and confusion of turning up at a K-99 house fire at 0230,when everyone is still half asleep!.

It depends where one goes in the US Trumpy, quite the wide gambit as to what is considered 'operational'

in other words, there are standards, yet not every locale' subscribes to them

It really depends on the locale, as Sparky sez...

At my VFD (under Illinois law), we can allow someone to perform interior structural FF ops if the AHJ feels the person has "demonstrated appropriate knowledge and abilities to perform the required tasks" or some such language. In my VFD, that mean you've been through the SCBA classes, been through a few "live (training burns" out at the drill building, and know what hoses are used when - generally about 6-9 months of weekly drills. (Of course, there have been times when we've gotten fires in the middle of the day, and if you're breathin', you're going in, cause we're not getting a whole lot of folks showing up. Generally, it's the officer's call)

On my paid dept, the "industry standard" is 10 weeks of full-time "academy" training - 8 weeks for FFII (a 240 hr state certification - basically the entire IFSTA Essentials), plus two 40-hour classes - one in HazMat Awareness/ops, and one for Technical Rescue (confined space/trench/high angle) Awareness. Of course, that's just to ride the BRT (big red truck) . Most of the FT departments in the Chicago metro are providers of Paramedic level EMS, so there's EMT Basic, and then Paramedic as well. (five and eleven months, respectively, plus clinical and field time). For a full-time gig, it's basically a two year period before you're really "street ready".

[This message has been edited by DougW (edited 07-20-2003).]

Guys,
What I would like to do is move this Discussion to the Occupational Safety Forum, if that's OK with Bill Addiss?.
What I was originally trying to do, was start a Topic that could give all and any FF's at ECN a go at submitting info on Fire-Fighter Safety and the like.
It is not a chance to have a B@*&h about your particular Fire Department and it's short-falls or other-wise.
Bill, could you please do this?.

Thread moved >> ECN Fire-Fighters