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Diference: Rural vs. Urban Volly
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Gordon "Gopher" Runer on
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So out here in my part of the world, Eastern New Mexico, I am on the city fire department and we are a paid per call. Our rural departments in the county are more like 10 -15 miles apart. Some guys travel almost 30 minutes just to get to the station! Then however far to the fire. We run on most structure calls as mutual aid for the surrounding districts. It can be quite interesting most times when paged to a rural area due to the instructions from dispatch ususally including someones house or hay field. The fires that we run on can be anything from structures to grass to vehicles to cotton bales. So i guess our department could be considered a combination between urban and rural.
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Permalink Reply by PFC Harmon on
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Thats how my area is, it can take 45 minutes running emergency traffic to get from our station to the edge of our district. We have alot of guys responding pov, I do alot since I live so far out in our district. We also cover a town with a school and factories. In our rural area we have everything from a large OHV park, coal mines, horse farms and gas and oil wells. We aslo have alot of tiny roads that it is hard to get a crew cab pick up up let alone an engine or tanker. We have roads that are not on any map, our dispacther usually says " someone will met you and take you in". The downfall is while fighting a forest fires we come across pot fields and boobie trapped meth labs, makes you real cautious. Stay safe.
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Permalink Reply by BillySFCVFD on
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Here in my VFD's area another difference is the antiquated dispatch (911) system. An example is the land lines, during a 911 call, are connected to the county's dispatch center not a central multi-jurisdiction center to pin point the closest VFD to scene. Cell phone 911 calls cause a amplified problem were they go to the closest dispatch from the cell tower it repeats off of and not necessarily to the proper county center. Once again, especially near a fire service or county border.
Friday @ 2AM my VFD was paged out for a house fire. The address was not on our area map but our SOP states we report to the station while the brass figures it out. We assembled in the apparatus while our Chief clarified the scene location. Rolled five vehicles, with the Chief in the lead, and arrived first after ten miles and one county south on the border of the next county east of that. While responding, the radio traffic was paging out closer depts but we still arrived and attacked first. As usual the house was a completely engulfed. We responded without delay even though later we realized there were closer depts who did arrive within minutes after us. I heard later that the call was from a cell phone which probably helped caused the confusion. Although this situation is rare I believe our Chief phoned the neighboring Chiefs right after the page for location clarification, with us in high gear, so that fire response wasn't delayed any further from the dispatch SNAFU. TCSS
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Permalink Reply by Paul Montpetit on
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How about water supply......I'm in a rural setting and if we don't bring it then we don't have it...we roll with about 9000 gals and we use a lot of mutual aid....another would be type of construction and type od buildings.....you don't find many high rises in the country setting.....LOL....But the biggest is the teamwork that has dveloped among neighboring departments.....our lives often depend on one another....Paul
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Permalink Reply by Tony P on
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This thread has stayed 'nice', so I feel confident to talk about something. Where I am, we traditionally had two types of Fire Brigade. The Urban and the Rural. And, generally speaking they seemed to despise each other. "You only put out grass fires", "You live for your stupid uniforms", "You wouldn't know what a structure fire is", "Our trucks can do anything, your's are useless without a hydrant". Stupid, divisive, pointless. Unfortunately, the whole things was propped up by the 'system'. The use of the words "Rural" and "Urban" in a Brigade name. Seperate member associations for the two types. The wearing of different dress uniforms.
I came into this only a few years ago (as my profile shows). I hated it from the start and started my own war against it! The FRS itself couldn't simply step in and stop the idiocy - tradition was in the way. Again. The two types of Vol were taught by their mentors to behave in the time-worn way. But the organisation has slowly turned things around, with the support of the better members of the two Associations. We now have only one Association. The full-dress jacket is being phased out (would anyone really want to do it the other way? Supply up to 50,000 dress uniforms? PPE is far more important.) The use of the words 'Urban' and 'Rural' Brigade is lessening. We now refer to Brigades more by their risk profile - structural or wildfire. Only semantics, but it all helps.
But some people refer to how much better they are because they get more calls. (This is not having a jab at you Lutan, it's more of an extension to your comment about call volume. You weren't saying you were better, just busier) My Brigade averages around 300 a year. I know a Brigade that has over double that. I know of Brigades that would be lucky to get into double figures, let alone triple. I have my own saying about busier Brigades. "The busier you are the higher the percentage of false alarms". We get a lot of false alarms, be it monitored alarms, hoaxes, whatever. Those Brigades that get maybe 20 calls a year wold rarely get a false alarm. Is anyone better? No, just different call volume.
I've liked this thread - it looked at what the 'real' differences are between the two types. The real differences, not the perceived differences. I stil think Craigs post was the best.
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Permalink Reply by Jenny Holderby on
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Tony,
Here we are just Volunteer Fire Departments. We have to be experienced and train in all types of response from medical to wild land fires to farm rescue, river rescue and soon in high rise fires. We have a few 3 story homes and 2 story schools but they are builing a multilevel structure for assisted living with other facilities. In my county most of the 17 FDs are rural/suburban fire fighters. The highway runs along the river, the bridges to the cities/towns where most people work, shop & play cross those rivers and the majority of the population is along that area. Then there is what we call "out back" which means less populated area with smaller roads, some of them are gravel or dirt roads that take more time to get to. In those areas there are FDs with less call volume. Those neighboring departments can often reach the site long before we can get there so we usually have them alerted soon after we are to get someone there faster.
I agree with you about the call volume. In an area where there are more people there are a greater number of emergencies. That usually means the department is bigger or has more members which allows them to cover the call faster than those with less volume, fewer fire fighters and a longer drive to get there.
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Tony, like you I am suprised that this thread has stayed friendly. I will say that like your urban and rural we have vol. fire and rescue for each district, about 6 or 7 per county. Then we have a county wide rescue squad sometimes there is some trouble between them, mostly about "we dont need a rescue squad" or "go play in a fire". Harmless but aggravating.
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Permalink Reply by Joe Stoltz on
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For us, there don't seem to be the "bread and butter" calls one would find in the more urban setting. Taxpayers, triple deckers, housing developments with all buildings identical as to layout; schools, shopping plazas, hospitals - we just don't have them.
We do have a mix of 1800s vintage balloon frame farmhouses and newer McMansions built with lightweight materials. We might get a fire in one of these, or a barn, silo, grain dryer, tractor, or abandoned house. We get calls for grass/field fires, woods/forest fires, wires down, trees/branches down, or flooding due to heavy rain. We'll pump basements and in one case, a ditch that was overflowing into someone's basement. If necessary we'll take sandbags to the town barns to fill them, and later transport them where needed.
At motor vehicle crashes, we will provide BLS patient care while freeing the occupants with the TNT tool set; our fire police will provide traffic control by shutting off or restricting traffic; we will also stand by after extrication is complete to assist the tow truck operator in clearing the wreckage, sometimes with a protection line deployed as a precaution. We also transport the crash victims to the appropriate hospital in our ambulance.
Oh, we also get CO alarms, chimney fires, residential gas leaks, odor investigations, nuisance burns, and once in a great while a high pressure gas main leak in the underground storage facility. Which, by the way sound exactly like a jet plane taking off, since the gas escapes at a pressure of nearly 1,000 psi.
You can see that when our tones drop, there is no telling what it might be.
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Permalink Reply by Mac Conant on
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Thank you for pretty much explaining my FD completely.
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Permalink Reply by Charles Bowles on
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A little late on the reply, FWIW I am very happy to see all the good points/posts, and that everyone has been good. I, never intended for this to be a contest. (Shhhhh! I run in a rural dept., don't hold it against me ;) ) I have to say I have learned a lot of things that I would not have thought about for urban departments, and taken for granted about rural departments. Thumbs up!
Side note, my dept. is a very small two station set up, our county seat has a population of 750. Although most of our members are bls and als, we do not have an ems license and do not practice. ( unfortunate rivalry between rescue and fire). We run mostly MVA's (unless you are from here, then they are 10-50's) And of course, with response times from tone to station to scene, structure fires are almost too involved to do interior attack by the time we get there. However we do protect the exposures *thumbs up*. And of course, everyone still remembers that time they were at that structure fire 5 years ago (the last one that happened in the county) and remembered they responded in their underwear to the station.
Yep...
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I forgot to add, I am thankful for the career guys in our department who can help those of us who don't run that many calls. I am also very thankful that we train hard and often with good attendance, which I feel is vital because of our low call volume because we don't get to run often. Also, I am thankful that we are a very cohesive group of FF's and families (auxillary too!!)
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As the old saying goes Joe "Variety is the spice of life". And you have it! We can get called to most of your variety - except basement flooding, basements are very rare out here. Ambulance is a separate service, so we only assist with that work at MVA's or with lifts.
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