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Permalink Reply by Jack/dt on February 11, 2010 at 9:56am

Lutan,

There are a lot of things the public has no clue about. Are you suggesting that we now operate in a manner sufficiently transparent so that there will never be any question as to what it is that we are doing...in the public's eye? Fair enough.

Moving forward there should be no Mutual Aid to surrounding towns. Regardless of the reason(s) for MA, should the public see fire department A in Town B they are going to think that Town A is funding fire service in Town B. We can't have that so no Mutual Aid.

If the fire department performs EMS and supplies patient transport then they can only transport to hospitals within city limits. Sorry burn victims, you may have to be off-loaded at the town limit and loaded onto another ambulance...we can't have the public wondering what town A EMS is doing in Town B, or C or wherever.

No apparatus out of town for LODD funerals. We apologize for the inconvenience but we can no longer let rigs go out of town for ANY fumerals. It just wouldn't look right.

Lutan, are you starting to see the absurdity here?

Yes, the rig was out of town. But like kali pointed out (and john crabbe) sometimes out of district/out of town is actually closer. The newscast should be ignored at this point as it was contrived and inaccurate Granted the Fire Commissioner was not aware that this station was 'going out of town' but then again, why would he? Would even the Chief be aware of it?

If we are going to trust the judgment of the station Captain and/or engine officers on the fireground, then we have to trust their judgment as to where they feel they can go to shop and still be able to respond quickly. I believe that that was the case here.
The engine officer exercised his best judgment as to where to stop.

It wasn't the "public" that questioned this issue it was the media and if you've watched the video clip you can easily see there was NEVER an issue about stopping for groceries, ever! Every "charge" that the "reporter" levied was countered by the Commissioner with the exception of being out-of-town. And what do you want to bet that that will be defended (but unreported) once the Commish has all the facts and details. SOP's might say 'no going out of town' but when its closer and safer to do so than to be in town but further out of your 1st due then it does make sense. It becomes a grey area that may not be defined in the SOP's but is understood.

I understand what you're saying but at some point we have to step back and say wait...we operate the way we do for very specific reasons, otherwise, there may be a lot of questions that we are going to have to answer to:
Why is that engine at the grocery store? Why is it out of town? Why is the fire station dark at night? (shouldn't those guys be awake and waiting for a call?) Why does a Chief show up in another vehicle? (why can't he/she ride on an engine?) Why are they taking so long to put the fire out? Why bother cutting a hole in the roof, just put the damn fire out. Do you really need to have all of those truck just for a little car accident/house fire/false alarm? Why is road blocked and I can't get through just because of a little fender bender?

So no Lutan, it is NOT always ONLY black and white. Life is not black and white and neither are fire department operations. Grey exists because life is not binary and that is what judgment is all about.

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