Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Irons51 on December 15, 2007 at 9:34am

Hey...

First of all I'd love for you to explain to me how a policy can be gay?? All this time I thought only people were gay. All of that aside, I have to say thiat I think you are way off base here. It is important from a legal standpoint for departments to have SOGs in place that define what is an emergency and what is not. With the number of apparatus accidents nation wide and the high profile firefighter and civilian deaths I'm frankly surprised at your thoughts on this. We have a similar policy in my department. In fact we are often dispatched on "cold" responses. Also, the officer on the apparatus can decide to shift to a "cold" response based on information received from the scene via dispatch. The most common example of this is a campus security officer arriving and reporting an alarm due to smoking or cooking smoke. Not everything we respond to in the fire service turns out to be a true emergency.

Permalink Reply by Stevie on December 25, 2007 at 2:52pm

Point taken most of us have been throught a EVOC o CEVO corse so we should be driving cautiously while responding to the scene, how ever i would like to know what to expect before i get to a scene and how and wheeto place my piece and have the men ready for attack. But to let us know for us to slow our response you have a good point but to let us know so we are prepared its a good idea.

Permalink Reply by citymedic on December 30, 2007 at 2:23pm

great point...just to take your thought a little further MGL has a chapter about emergency responses, and the manner in which we should be responding to incidents. Its not about "big brother" looking over our shoulder. Its placing a policy about keeping our coworkers safe and the general public safe too.

Permalink Reply by jon viscione on July 30, 2008 at 3:26pm

Anyone that has been in the fire service for any length of time should be able to tell when we can slow down. The only problem I have with this is that I can see it coming back to bite us in the ass. I can remember when we would return from a call with some lights on, to avoid an accident, this was stopped a long time ago. From a legal standpoint if you are responding to a scene and you are told to go "CODE C" and you are involved in an accident, were your lights on? were you responding with traffic? and more bs like that. And yes,I know we are required to obey the rules of the road at all times. I can just see this as being one more thing to use against us legally. What ever happened to using common sense?

Permalink Reply by Chuck Lowe on August 25, 2008 at 10:00pm

Bingo Jon! You hit the nail on the head. Its not that the city of Boston doesnt feel that their professionals cant be trusted. Its just a legal thing. Goofy? Sure! but they have to cover their butts (If only in their own minds).

Permalink Reply by Leroy on June 23, 2009 at 2:18pm

Actually, I am in favor of the comm. center passing on info from the IC or first arriving crew. The adreneline levels are very high when the crew is responding to a call, and sometimes drivers need that reminder. No, I'm not saying they need to be babysat but merely, a reminder that safety comes first. Both to the crew and the general public.