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What color fire engines should go first? Or will you be the one leaving...
Original Post Title: Are firefighters considered sacrosanct anymore? Which garnered 3 replies...
"We now only respond for true medical emergencies, and that’s cut our run count back by 1,000 a year, and has kept apparatus and manpower in place for real emergencies.”
An old friend and fellow hazmat guy who is now a local Fire Chief shared a really good article entitled, "Firefighters Feel the Squeeze of Shrinking Budgets, In small and large cities alike, firefighters have gone from heroes to budget bait", where problems are identified and discussed including the scenario of having to cut back on general services to keep fire station doors open. Something has to change with the types of services we provide as well as compromise being necessary on the parts of both unions and municipalities is the authors opinion, do you agree?
Does cutting back on the types of responses seem like something that would work for your jurisdiction to save money and keep apparatus in place for "real" emergencies?
What is not mentioned in the article are the cost savings for driving your apparatus less. This savings that include less fuel and maintenance needs could translate into significant savings.
Up until now, the fire service has been free to do pretty much anything they felt was necessary toward providing increased public safety and emergency response. It appears that firefighters are no longer sacrosanct anymore... If there was ever a time for fire departments to focus on public relations and image, now is the time. Other departments (non-fire) will be competing for money and funding, and we better be on our toes.
As the Santa Barbara City Fire Chief, Andy DiMizio says, "We need to really look hard at what we do, and do it better."
CBz
mschlags@gmail.com
"Failure to prepare is preparing for failure, be prepared... your life may depend on it."
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Richard Armstrong on
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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Op-Ed blogs, the Whiskey Ring, and the Teapot Dome scandal as evidence that an EMS 1st Responder unit in your community is wasteful?
Dude, you've GOT to be kidding me!
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Permalink Reply by Brian Dumser on
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Save the porch!
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Dude i'm simply trying to say that getting a privatized EMS on the tax payers wallet in my opinion was more a play on words to make the public feel better and not necessarily worth the 8-9 times more the money which in turn took money from my guys.If they took away your money you would have the same opinion if whoever got your money did the same as you were doing.And in turn if lowered medical calls got the governing bodies in your area to get rid of 4 or 5 guys then how would you take it?It probably would have been cheaper for the municipality to offer a higher level of training for the guys on the medical team.As for fighting over "what ifs" i've been oh so many times on here told to screw off with my what ifs and deal with actual problems.Yes i 100% agree that an EMS person has more training in extra medical attention.The problem that I had with the whole scenario was it was one person in a pickup truck that still needed our help and a bus still had to come for transport to the hospital.if it had been two people and a bus that didn't have to wait for a bus for transport then the story would be different but it's not.
The corruption stories I provided I did not read them all I just simply put them on here so you could see that in a matter of seconds I had several corruption stories of governments in different areas and those are just the very tip of a very large iceburg.There are things that they spend money on that doesn't need to be spent on.I shouldn't have to prove that to you because I know that you know they go on.And if that money that was wasted went to the Fire service you know that We would be run without a budget issue which puts the people we protect at risk.I don't want to get into an aruement about the first responder unit with you because "my" opinion it was a waste when there was other cheaper options.
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Actually, I think you made a point that you didn't intend to make...
When you linked to the Whiskey Ring and the Teapot Dome scandal, you pointed out that while there has been historical corruption, it is nearly universally caught and punished.
That also means that fire departments have survived independent of the corruption for a long time and that they are likely to do so in the future.
What your analogy really points out is that if a FD is going to do EMS, you might as well get all the way into it instead of just doing 1st response. I've worked for a couple of different FD/EMS systems that didn't worry about firefighter funding or jobs being cut due to a shift in how EMS coverage was provided because WE provided all of the EMS, including EMS transport.
I've also worked in EMS systems that used single paramedic QRVs/fly cars in areas where it was not cost-effective to put an ambulance due to the call volume. Sometimes that meant that we had three vehicles, three paramedics, and three or four firefighters on a BLS scene, but typically the engine and the QRV were back in service in a few minutes and were able to subsequently maintain short response times in that local community, no matter where the transport unit came from.
There's a lot of research into outcomes in EMS. That research shows that only a small percentage of patients benefits from rapid transport, but that a higher percentage benefits from early ALS intervention.
Patient outcomes and cost-effectiveness (not just dollar costs) are what should drive how the EMS system components are designed. Using your numbers, if the additional $90,000 per year benefits the 1,000 or so patients, that's only $90 per patient to improve the outcome for a significant number while not making the outcomes for the rest worse.
If I were the patient, I'd be happy with that.
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Permalink Reply by Mike Schlags (Captain Busy) Retd on
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sometimes, even though we want to save a home, they have to be written off... it's a tough call, but when there are homes that can be protected, you can only see fully involved beautiful homes such as these as you drive by them... in the back of your head you say to yourself, if only there were more boots on the ground and responding engines... what a loss... oh yea... budget cuts...
Finally... sigh... I was wondering who would get the fact that the photo that I chose for this post was intentionally picked because it illustrated the point of this post, doing what you can, with limited resources... because they are going away... just like this mobile home. Valiant effort but a complete waste of time given the wind, radiant heat and limited resources. Fire department management must choose what is important and what is not. We need to do our job better if we are going to survive.
CBz
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