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I Need Another Engine Company. No, Not That One.
I'm reading on another discussion board about the closest engine not being called and having to be "special requested" to actually respond.
Why is this still happening in the fire service. The closest unit should always be dispatched. Several reasons were given for this.
The dumbest one was It was a paid company that wasn't called and they need to be ready to respond in thier own district. WOW so volunteers don't need to be ready for thier own district. Every time we call for mutual aid we're taking units out of thier district.
Being overlooked by dispatch is one thing, not being on the run card is another. One dau someone who knows about the fire service will be impacted by this and will own that fire company.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by maricel consolacion on
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In my opinion, u do have a good point. I wish we could just follow the running card properly at all times. Your country maintains ur facilities far more effective than us, i'd say only 30% of our vehicles can be trusted on major emergencies. It's ironic to have to admit that we are lagging behind on a lot of issues. I admire the principle u have and if i was in a country such as yours ( I know it's not a perfect system, but we are really far from it), i will assume the same stand. Looking back at the past issues concerning emergency responses, i know u all are aware of how poor things have been handled. Politics have gone a long way in destroying our system and the people are not the only ones suffering the consequences, not only us (the uniformed personnel like the police and fire officers) but the primarily on the impact it has made towards neighboring countries.
Don't get me wrong, i love this country but i cannot turn a blind eye. I just do what i think is right given the circumstances... that's the irony of those in the lower ranks.
Much respect to those who stands by what is right :)
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Permalink Reply by Art "ChiefReason" Goodrich on
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"Mutual aid" has to be "mutual". They should be SIGNED agreements between jurisdictions and they should state what you are willing to provide (yes; like box cards). If that is a 1959 American LaFrance, then so be it. If your strickened department needs tanker ops and you don't have one, then don't get all huffy because you weren't called.
If blood between departments have gone bad for whatever reason, then it is up to the governing bodies to either resolve the conflict or void the mutual aid agreement.
Honestly; I think the "turf wars" are worse today than 20 years ago. I guess everyone needs those run numbers so that they can make that annual run survey edition of Firehouse Magazine!
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Permalink Reply by James Borsellino on
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For the last six years or me, my community was amalgimated with the city. We relied on five stations all volunteer, the city of Hamilton took over and now became a composite department with us and four other former volunteer departments. The city decided that the "FULL TIMES" were not going to take orders from volunteers. They demoted the volunteer District Chiefs to station Captains. the Captains were demoted to Luetenants. if there are no volunteer officers on scene a Full timer firefighter becomes the officer even if he has less seniority.
The city now dispatches a Full time truck with a volunteer station everytime now, but heres the problem. The ambulance sits in the station right beside the full timer truck which is 20 minutes away from my house! The ambulance gets to my house 10 minutes before the truck does on medical calls and the full timers beat the volunteers by five minutes and the volunteers station is 8 to 9 minutes from my house! Can you figure out how the numbers work??
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Permalink Reply by Lieutenant Dan on
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Years ago I was a newly promoted company officer and tried to promote a training class with a dept that was next to my zone.
My supervisor squelched my efforts to train together for political reasons.
In a perfect world the closest unit should be called and be able to communicate with another agency.And hopefully have an equal responce as far as personel and equipment.
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Permalink Reply by 55 TRUCK on
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The Firefighters need to start to hit the streets and let the public know what's going on. You may have some retired or carreer ff that live in the area. They will be more than happy to help to insure that there loved ones are safe by helping to inform the public and letting the powers that be know there feelings about the situation. This type of political BS is dangerouse for the Firemen and the public.
Here we don't have this problem at least not with in this county and the 5 counties that border ours. Mutual aid agreeements are honored we help each other. Companies are set on Box assignments and Tac calls. We even respond to Vol. areas and have on occasion called in a Vol dept.
The sad thing is I hear about this more between Vol. dept. The this is my area crap.
Sad, very sad.
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Permalink Reply by Tony P on
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Anything that involves people will be imperfect. We have a well drawn-up system, that doesn't always work perfectly simply because of the human factor.
There are two fire services in my State, one all career and the other mostly volunteer.
All dispatching is via the one CAD system. Both services.
Response is organised primariy by distance/response time.
Support (including MA between the two services) is automatic via the CAD.
The station that 'owns' the location of the incident is in control. This means that a lower ranked person from the home station can be IC over a higher rank - if I was the basic FF in charge at a bad incident, I can pass control over to the higher ranked person from out of area, this is allowed by the state Act that governs my FRS.
Requests for extra support also go through the CAD, specific units are not to be requested (though sometimes they are...)
In my particular area (direct neighbours with the career FRS) it works well. We all work together. In areas where the system may not work well it's often the fault of the old ego thing. Ego that has been allowed to exist due to poor supervision of higher ranked officers in my view. (my FRS has ranking career officers over all the individual stations.) So it's a 'human' problem, not the system.
The idea of keeping a station staffed 'in case' is not one that I totally agree with. Yes, there can be instances where need demands, but generally I think not. With the automatic support that we have, the CAD will know if a station is totally bare, and send calls to the next nearest. With that in place, the way I was taught, to 'fight the fire you've got', gets the nearest, gets them first - that's what the system does. If the crew from a station knows that they are stripped of people although they still have vehicles available, then they can call for a 'step up', a vehicle and crew to be responded to their station to cover the gap. That works just as easily with vols as career, if needed. Many a time there have been career appliances and crews moved to cover a vol area during a bad (usually huge) incident, as with vols covering a career station.
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"The sad thing is I hear about this more between Vol. dept. The this is my area crap.
Sad, very sad." I tend to agree. In our case, I see it as a hangover from when each Brigade (station) in the State was a separate entity. All the volunteer brigades being forced to merge into the one service by the State Govt has gone a long way to reducing the problem. It cured a lot of other problems, too, like funding.
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Permalink Reply by Andrew Salinger on
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In our area the closest called is not always the fastest due to the roads we cover and weather factors aswell but the people at CAD have learnt which trucks get to specific areas the fastest. More times than not there will be atleast 2 special request trucks for wildland fires or fires out of the town area mainly due to the fact that the dont really call the small trucks that we need for the areas that are hard to access
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Permalink Reply by Marvin Hawk on
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Well put Ron. It sort of reminds me of some marriage advice I got on my wedding day. Don't go to bed mad at each other because you will wake up mad and stay mad. After two or three days you can't remember why you were mad you just know your mad.
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My current department has automatic aid with all surrounding departments. A structure fire here pulls both manned engines and a engine from 2 of the 5 departments we border. So first alarm is 4 apparatus (2 coming from mutual aid) and our Chief plus a Chief from each of the mutual aid departments.
Once we arrive on scene and confirm it's a working fire, an off duty shift is called back to cover the district. Since volunteers, we are a combination department, will be responding to the incident in the Squad. IF the personnel on the Squad aren't needed, no volunteers respond (unfortunately usually the case) or no off duty personnel or not enough off duty personnel report to the station. Another mutual aid request will be placed to back fill our station 1 located in the center of the district.
Now on my last department where I was a volunteer we had a mutual aid agreement with all surrounding departments. And all departments were used wisely both on first alarm, as move ups etc. But one of the MA departments pulled their MA agreement with us and decided to RISK it by having less units on scene. Reason, in a 8-9 month span my station would arrive on scene of one of THEIR fires first. In a number of cases we would have the fire knocked down and entering overhaul prior to their arrival. In ALL the cases, the local media arrived and you would see in the newspaper a picture of our Engine sitting in front of the burned house. The Chief of the MA department told his Board of Directors, in open session mind you. He was tired of seeing OUR engine in the newspaper for HIS fires.
Simply put, his Ego took priority over Citizens safety.... And the Board of Directors agreed.
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We read 'closest' for this purpose as travel time, not distance.
"the people at CAD have learnt" - does this mean that people in your dispatch centre often over-ride the CAD? CAD here does the work. Allocation of response order has been worked out by teams physically traveling the route, then entering the results into the computer. If a station has been emptied of vehicles, this will be recorded on the CAD, taking that station off-line - the next closest station will take its place.
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yeah true but they also allow for the response times. Some brigades in our area can take over 20 mins to get the truck rolling and generally we have ours on the road in under 7 mins
If a station has been emptied of vehicles, this will be recorded on the CAD, taking that station off-line -there have been a few times since changing over to CAD that we have been given multiple jobs for the one truck on opposite sides of our resopnse area as the primary brigade. Even with all trucks out we have been paged to for jobs.
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