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Volunteers with Lights and Sirens
What do you think, should volunteer firefighters be allowed to have and use lights and sirens in their POV ? Should only the Chief an ASST. Chief be allowed to have them ?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by 4RC1 on
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Thats interesting Art, in NH a POV with lights IS concidered an emergency vehicle, but one step at a time! That is a Helluva Museum in Yarmouth! I LOVE Nova Scotia....tell me are you the last of Barrett's privateers?
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Permalink Reply by Doyle on
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Is the chief and assistant the only guys that respond to fires?? Try a little experiment, run all your calls fire and ems for one week in your big red trucks without lights and sirens, and let just the chief and assistant chief run the calls. See how they get through traffic when responding. Yes I know this sounds as dumb as the initial question. If you can drive a fire truck or ambulance took driving classes and all the other things that make you a proffessional in your field, by all means you should be able to run lights and sirens on your lawnmower if it gets you to the station in a timely manner. A chief and his assistant is only as good as the people backing them up. Just my thoughts.
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Permalink Reply by Alex on
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i think chief and asst.chief should be allowed lights and sirens.while regular firefighters it would depend on how they react..i mean you dont want to give lights and sirens to an idiot who would cause another fire call.so the firefighters that are responsible and trustworthy enough should get the lights and sirens
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Permalink Reply by Joe Stoltz on
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Yeah, it must be a NY thing. I'll give one example out of several that really bothered me: About a year ago I was traveling through a rural village on the way to a mutual aid structure fire, lights and siren on. Horn honking. The curmudgeon in the car ahead of me studied me for quite a while in his mirrors while we plodded up the hill out of town. I finally found a place to pass him and, although tempted, resisted the urge to communicate via sign language.
I live in a rural area as well, and for the most part people know what to do when they see red lights flashing in their mirror. Either this guy did not know, or was perhaps a former VFD member with a grudge, or... I don't know what.
For the record, the dash cam idea is OK, however a dash CANNON would produce more immediate results. I know, it's the passive-agressive in me bleeding through.
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Permalink Reply by Jayson on
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I'll reply yo this as I'm a volunteer and Asst. Chief myself.
If you really want to get down to it, it depends on the person who will be using the lights in the vehicle. Some just can't handle that added little privledge. I do think there should be policies set up within each department stating that you cannot have lights nor siren until you have been an active member of the dept for a certain allocated amount of time. This will prove who is serious about wanting to help the department and who is joining just to be able to say they are on the Fire Department and immediately get lights and siren and a cool little walkie-talkie.
I was a full time installer of emergency equipment, but am now part time and I can assure you I've put lights in people's vehicles which all they pretty much wanted to do was play with them and to be "cool". There was nothing I could do as the chief of their dept had set up the appointment for me to install the lights but I sure didn't want to because its people like this that give the volunteers that actually use the lights for their intended purpose a bad rep with everyone. THey should also be made aware of the laws concering POV's running emergency lights and must be made to obtain their Emergency Light Certification from the state DVS.
I for one will ONLY use mine if responding to a call or if I'm doing something department related (blocking traffic, moving trees in bad weather, etc..) but I'm completely legal to use them whenever. I just don't abuse them.
So..thats my opinion about that. I really like topics like this being an active Asst. Chief and emergency equipment installer.
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Permalink Reply by Brian Boeseneilers on
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Here in Minnesota, we can have lights only ( I think) But in the city I work for we are not allowed eather. I feel that if we are allowed the drive a 70,000 lb truck loaded with 750gal of water and foam code 3 why not my 2000 lb ford escort? I mean, thats why we have training on that topic. We should do what ever it takes to get the proper tools to the patient asap.
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Permalink Reply by Randy on
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In MI order for me to run lights and siren I had to go for 6hours to emergency vehicle driving class and this week I have to do range driving with the cheif. He then will sign our certificate and send it back to the state. all this to run lights and siren on our povs we can have a many lights we want as long as they are red/clear and visible all the way around. we service a high volume traffic area. stay safe!!
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Permalink Reply by steve on
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I see pro's and cons either way.. with this county having multi VFD agencies through out. It honestly takes coomon sense from the Chief and/or the A/C of the dept. Granted it will hurt alot of feelings and may step on some toes, but there is really no reason why all members of any one dept. should be responding code, from one end of the county to the other, for a grass fire or gas leak, etc.... Same as for radio traffic, I feel that only a couple, not the entire dept, should be advising their dispatch, that their in route to the station.. Not only is it confussing for the dispatcher to keep up with, but also ties up the radio frequency for an extended period of time. As long as they know that their page had gotten out, that's all that matters... Now that i steered off course for a little bit, i'll get back between the lines. Here granted you're not considered an emergency vehicle unless you have both a siren and lights, but then again ask your insurance agent, what would be the consequences if you were running code, and tunnel vision took over your mental judgement and you side swipped another for running code..
Just my two cents worth
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Permalink Reply by Robert on
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I personally live in a relatively small town, but due to the large tourist industry in my area we get very congested at many times of the year. We in michigan Are limited to Red or red white lights. And sirens. we may do almost anything we want as far as lights go. I personally have a red code 3 mini bar and a code three siren, as well as a set of yet to be installed wig wags. From my experiance the wigwags for some reason make people notice you faster. we also have the reg's that if we run lights we run sirens too. And the light has to be 360 degree viewable. No question's asked no, bending the rulses. Many people I know on my dept. prefer interior four corner strobes due to the snow during our winter month's. I also do have to Agree very aggresively that driving code or not we have to be sensible on the road. what good are we doing if we are the ones in a accident as well.
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Permalink Reply by Royce Terry on
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Im going to go along with tom on this one we our only 10 minutes away from eachother and rely on eachothers departments for quick responce we have a big insurance company in our town and when 4 o clock roles around they all fly out of town and when we have a call at that time its hard for even the fire trucks to get out its even hard for the firefighters to get to the station! Were alowd to have blue lights whic is fine for a FF and chief and asistance chiefs can have red. Chiefs can have sirens too. Regural personel should be able to the same specifications that the chiefs a blue light for FF sirens if they want to play to put them in
SIRENS SHOULD BE AVAILABLE FOR VFF IN NYS
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Permalink Reply by Justin Newhard on
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i think all firefighters should use lights and sirens because we are responding to save someones life
it would be very helpful if we could
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Why would you have an idiot on your fire department? If you call him an idiot then something should be done to remove him or her. Do you have unresponsible and untrustworthy guys on your department? Maybe someone should have a long look at your personnel before anyone rolls out to a emergency.
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