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Not Carrying Equipment Due to Mutual Aid
In college my roomate worked as a volunteer for a town of in Vermont. And he told me one time that they did not carry jaws on any of their apparatus. When I asked him why he said because the chief told the department that if a extrication comes in they just call one of the mutual aid departments and would rather not spend the money on the equipment.
Now I know almost 90% of the people on here maybe even close to 100% depend on mutual aid at one time or another. Not for every call but alot of departments cant handle certain calls do to staffing issues or other reasons.
But what if mutual aid isnt available?
Is the reason to not spend the extra money because you have mutual aid with the equipment a valid reason?
I know there is certain equipment towns and departments cant afford all the time but what about when you can?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jack/dt on
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What's a reasonable distance?
Why shouldn't a department have (at least one of) their own jaws?
Being able to expedite an extrication using a hurst-type is part of the job where I am, so I wouldn't consider it being "...masters of none..." I would consider it being a well trained firefighter and a part of our skill set. I said it before if you can put out fire you can cut up a car, how well you do either is a function of training and equipment.
If a department is relying on another department's tools or expertise who then do you think is paying for those tools and expertise? The taxpayers of the requesting department or those of the supplying department?
Yes as a taxpayer I would agree that the next town over buys the ladder truck, or the hurst tools, or the heavy rescue because they can better afford the increase in taxes and this way I have access to all sorts of cool tools and abilities without it costing me (and the rest of us taxpayers) any additional money.
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Rob what you describes makes perfect sense and yes cities do indeed set up in similar ways. But all of the resources are bought and paid for by the taxpayers and so are shared throughout the town. If you have 8 individual fire companies in your township and they all have various staffing and equipment responsibilities and are called out as needed....why then aren't you all just one big township fire department? Seems that would be an even better utilization of resources.
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Permalink Reply by Rob on
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That's the question everyone keeps asking, and I totally agree. The problems we have are, township managers that do not want anything to do with fire departments, current fire chiefs that are still living in the 70's and don't want to loose their little patch of power, major money issues and ridiculous personality conflicts between chief officers and board members.
I'll give you one example, there is one department that has a total 1st due area of less than half a mile. They average 5 1st due calls each year. The neighboring dept (mine) runs 1800+ 1st due calls each year in about 6 sqr miles. BUT, the township funds all departments equally, each gets $50k annually. The tiny department does not need anywhere near that amount to function, but how interested do you think they are in sharing that with a merged department? It's the same story all over western PA with the bs home rule charters and uneducated people in positions of power.
Rant over.
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Permalink Reply by Capt./Chaplain Mike Petrosky on
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That's a really sad situation your friends community has going on there. The community itself needs to know that the fire dept. that is serving and protecting them doesn't have or is unwilling to get the proper equipment to do their job that they took an oath to carry out. If you don't have the equipment but go on the run and call for mutual aid what good are you going to be to that pt. that is stuck in the vehicle that you can't get in to? Why go and be a target for other motorist and a target/liability for your taxpayers? I understand the reason for and not having money-there isn't a fire dept out there that isn't tightening up the belt some or alot. But just to try and get away from doing it and counting on your neighboring dept.'s, that's not right ( if that is truly the case ). And you cant always depend on the dept. next door to be available, what if they have their own MVA with entrapment? Sad story-hope this little rant of mine helps.
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Permalink Reply by Todd on
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If it's a cooperative effort between the departments then I see no problem with it.
One department I know of worked with two surrounding departments and created the following set-up.
His department bought a mobile air supply unit, and a in station compressor station.
Another department set up rescue with cutters, spreaders, rams, air bags, struts, etc. for auto extrication.
The third department set up their squad truck for extensive portable lighting and for on scene rehab. They also bought one of those light tower trailers.
These three departments worked together to ensure that the needs of all three communities were met, while saving the taxpayers of all three areas money. The money saved means that these three departments can assure that their personnel are in up to date gear, have decent equipment, get necessary training, etc. That's always a plus....especially in tight budget times like right now.
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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There's a big difference in running occasional calls like off-airport ARFF, hazmat, and technical rescue calls and in running everyday calls like wrecks, fires, and medical emergencies.
The specialty stuff - ARFF, hazmat, and tech rescue - can be handled by departments or area teams that specialize in them.
It's difficult to explain why we sat on scene and waited for someone else to bring us some basic extrication tools, especially when a combi-tool that will do 90% of most extrications is relatively inexpensive compared to the true specialty stuff.
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If you aren't running but 5 or 6 pin jobs a year then how can you justify the expense?
Honestly, had the county EMS here not insisted on buying crappy combination tools that were totally incapable of handling anything worse than a minor door pop we wouldn't have had justification enough to spend the money we did when we bought our tool set. We cover part of I20, have two major US highways and a major SC highway that runs through our response area, and are essentially an urban area with heavy traffic throughout our response area from 0700-1900 every single day. How much justification can a small college town in Vermont have for a set of tools?
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Permalink Reply by Brandon on
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when we get reported intrapment we always start either monmouth fire or sabattus fire pending on whos closer most of the time they are availible but if they are not then we just keep extricatin with the sawzals we have and use the IRONS to force open the doors we have some extrication equipment like sawzals window punches and a window cutting tool we can use it would take so much longer but if it comes to that its what you gotta do and if you really got too we would call the next town over lewiston or we would just do it our self even tho it takes longer but liek i said most of the time one of the other towns is availible for it
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Permalink Reply by Paul Montpetit on
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Let's go to a fire and party.....Hell, we don't need bunker gear...the "other" company has some...Engines...? Naw, I am sure they have one on scene......Makes about the same amount of sense as having the attitude....."we don't need it, company X down the road had it.."
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