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How Do you respond?
This is going to be more toward the volunteer sector but you guy from the city are welcome to respond as well i now your answers will all be different.
You get toned out for a vehicle fire. The vehicle is in the drive way and no one inside and no exposure's. Lets say address is 10 miles from your station. Do you respond on a RED lights and sirens or do you respond on a White with out lights and siren. Then way do you respond this way?
Don't be afraid to answer here. This is not a who's right or wrong type of forum here. You will see were i'm going with this in a few days. If we get some responses up here.
All my remarks later will be based on New York State Emergence vehicle law. So they may not reflect your proto calls so don't get up set about any remarks i may make. Thanks in advance for your participation.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Marty Hrinko on
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My dept will respond emergent to all calls, with the exception of brush fires and mulch fires, unless there is a threat or exposure problem. No matter what the call there can still be dangers.
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Permalink Reply by Jim Conrad on
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This is a tough one. at our small dept we dont get a lot of calls that dont warrant a lights and sirens response. I am having a hard time trying to think of a situation that wouldn't get worse if the fire dept did not get there except for cat in tree or fully involved car fire in the middle of a 30 acre abandoned parking lot. The heat you are taking in new york sounds like a catch 22. Drive fast the people are mad but response times are low. drive slow people are mad because it took too much time. drive how the conditions allow you to operate safely. We hate to see people killed in a accident with a firetruck, but there have probably been people killed by icecream trucks as well. The legeslation seems to put more liability on the fire depts. By the way, why was the post more for the volunteer side?
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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
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Drive fast the people are mad but response times are low. drive slow people are mad because it took too much time. drive how the conditions allow you to operate safely
The gripes of what people say should not be a factor at all when it comes to calls. The end part does basically establish how a response should be done, but conditions aside, the only way to respond is with Due Regard.
If you arrive a little later, you still arrived and can still attempt to mitigate the situation. This is a far cry from not arriving at all because one gets caught up in what people may think.
Throw response times out the window. This is something that the management has to contend with and subsequently the people. It is the choice of the people to live where they do and have the services (or lack of) they get. When it comes to decreasing response times it really comes down to either more (closer) stations/apparatus, or people sitting in the station/apparatus awaiting calls. Either way, it typically means a cost increase for services.....so again, it is NOT something you, as an individual responder, is going to control. Operating with DUE REGARD is the only reliable way to arrive on scene to mitigate the emergency.
Nobody can tell a driver to go faster, nor should anyone tell the driver to go faster, especially not an officer. An officer can and should tell a driver to slow down if needed......but throw out public opinion on response times, it is not yours to worry about when responding. Arriving safe is what one needs to worry about.
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I agree John that a driver should not worry about public opinion when responding to an incident, that was not my intention. I just worry about what seems like a slippery slope New York seems to be going down in regards to liability. Could someone still be killed while operating under due regard, and if so would that driver/fire department be subject to the full wrath of the legal system? I only ask because i dont know.
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being an unwashed volly, I had to look up due regard. I guess it means dont drive like an a-hole. Which is what i was told in my dept. Looking up due regard led me to the IAFC guide to policies on emergency response. Have skimmed most of it. Has a lot of good information. I was probably just reacting to the post about the two operators who were hung out to dry and not grasping the intent of the first post. sorry.
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Permalink Reply by Derek J Sinesi on
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Jim, More toward the volunteer side because,could you image trying to go 10 city blocks to a fire of any kind with no lights and siren. Through traffic and 10 red lights.
I can tell you i have been through the city of Ithica at 5:00 p.m. and it can take over a 1/2 hour to get from one end to the other on State route 13.
I can tell you this doesn't stem for what people think. It comes from the fact that we wreck millions of dollars worth of apparatus every year across the country. Innocent people get killed. Firefighters get killed or hurt. It makes the fire service look bad. We also have our firefighters killing or injuring themselves when they are responding in their own vehicles.
I think what really is going on is a couple of people that have no idea about the fire service have a bug up their butts and want to tell us how to operate. Kinda like the group at NFPA. I have seen the reports of these accidents and i have to believe one case the driver had been drinking so i think he got what was coming to him. The other case the driver hit a car in a intersection and killed a women who did not yield to the lights and sirens. Granted the driver did not slow down and claim the intersection like he should have. But from the different reports i have been able to read what got him is they were responding to a grass fire in a ditch. So the finding was they were not responding to a TRUE EMERGENCE. So this is where most of this is coming from.
I believe every call should be treated as a emergence till a officer state's different. I also believe we need to do a much better job training our operators of apparatus.I am one of those guys that spends more time reading apparatus accident reports then LODD reports. I will be brutally honest here i see no reason to see some of the so called accidents i see and read about. A accident to me is running into the road sign pulling up on the scene or pulling off to far on the shoulder and rolling the truck on its side stupid stuff like this. Rolling over a truck because we are driving to fast or hitting someone in the intersection because we did not slow down and make sure no one was coming the other direction and not stopping for us are things that some would call a accident. I see them as lack of training and discipline. (i'm sure that commit will get me in trouble) So in some ways i can see were these people are coming from and other ways i don't.
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I see now. I fully agree that training and dicipline are the answer if we are to protect ourselves from the law and policy makers that will find fault with everything we do. have fewer accidents. i find that i have to tell myself to slow down, stop at tough intersections, and generaly ratchet down the adreneline. training and dicipline would be better than looking on a list of emergencies and cross-checking to find out what risks to take while responding.
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Permalink Reply by Doug DuBree on
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I work for a Paid Dept and we would always go lights and sirens as you are ASSUMING that the caller is correct about no exposues or the closeness of them. I had a call where it was a supposed to be a car fire and the car was 10-15 ft from the house. When we arrived on scene the car was only 6 ft away and exposing the side of a house.
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Permalink Reply by Jack/dt on
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"I think what really is going on is a couple of people that have no idea about the fire service have a bug up their butts and want to tell us how to operate. Kinda like the group at NFPA."
Derek, I have to tell you that (IMO) the above is one of the more ignorant statements I've read. I would strongly suggest that you do a little research and find out just what exactly the NFPA is and has done that has made (and makes) our job safer.
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Jack, I know that the NFPA has done a good job at making are jobs safer. I also know that some of the stuff they want done puts a hardship on a lot of small departments. I know what the NFPA is and most of there standards are good some great others not so much. It was not my intent here to bash them. I should have worded it different What i was getting at that most of the people in the NFPA are not firefighters and do not know what it is we have to do. Sorry to get you upset.
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Derek,
Is there an NFPA standard being cited in this issue with the state? The thing about the NFPA is that standards do need to be adopted in order to be met. There is a reason the NFPA has a standard out there regarding physicals etc, but we still see depts not abiding by them.
Overall, I would agree with Jack more, and I would bet your issue may not be with the NFPA so much as it lies with other entities. I would argue against the NFPA standards being imposed by non-firefighters who don't know what the job entails, on the contrary, much of these standards are there because of knowing what the job entails.
In regards to this subject, I would say there really is no regulation or standard to adequately address every situation, because there is just too much variability involved. There can be a way to impose a greater emphasis on training responders when operating vehicles during a response, but that too may take a standardized training requirement such as EVOC before one can be allowed to drive an emergency vehicle.
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Permalink Reply by Don Catenacci on
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Jack,
While I don't disagree that the NFPA has done some great things to make the fire service a better/safer place, it has also complicated and added unnecessary expense.
Need an example? How about SCBA? How many FDs truly need CBRN level SCBA? As an option sure, mandated for everyone? Sorry no, that is ridiculous. The same with essentially obsoleting all 2216 psi SCBA by making the new standard for low alarms 33% of remaining air.
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