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Not Carrying Equipment Due to Mutual Aid
In college my roomate worked as a volunteer for a town of in Vermont. And he told me one time that they did not carry jaws on any of their apparatus. When I asked him why he said because the chief told the department that if a extrication comes in they just call one of the mutual aid departments and would rather not spend the money on the equipment.
Now I know almost 90% of the people on here maybe even close to 100% depend on mutual aid at one time or another. Not for every call but alot of departments cant handle certain calls do to staffing issues or other reasons.
But what if mutual aid isnt available?
Is the reason to not spend the extra money because you have mutual aid with the equipment a valid reason?
I know there is certain equipment towns and departments cant afford all the time but what about when you can?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jack/dt on
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If a department only has 2 or 3 working fires a year, is there any reason for them to have a pumper then? And if just about everything in town is 2 stories or less then there is no real need for a ladder truck or ground ladders over 28 feet. And if all you do is answer smells and bells then you can probably handle that with just one or two people sharing the duty (maybe LEO?).
If mutual aid is being used to fill in gaps in equipment and training then there's probably little if any need for your own fire department. Other than as an organized mob with access to water.
Or, you could be a real fire department and have all the necessary equipment that is required to handle your basic fire department needs. It's just a thought...
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Permalink Reply by Matthew Powers on
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In my neck of the woods, we have a FD that can adequately protect the town from fire. If you think every little FD in the country can ask volunteers to be qualified in Fire, EMS, Extrication, High angle, swift water, HazMat Tech, Search and Rescue, and every other task under the sun, then you are sadly mistaken. We carry saws and come-alongs and window punches and hose, we have a lot of hose, great for blocking up a car. The jaws will be on their way from the next department 10 minutes out, but we can give it a hell of a start and in most cases mitigate the situation before the jaws arrive. To be so reliant on 1 tool is foolish. We don't have them because we can not afford them, and even if they were given to us we could not qualify on them as often as needed.
Think of rural American FDs mutual aid departments as 1 big city FD without as much political BS. Not every station is going to have all of the equipment. That's why dispatch may request units from different houses. Strategically plan your resources and responses. Funding IS a big issue, and this IS an area where we can make cuts. Personnel, training, safety, maintenance, station upkeep, you can't cut these long term. New toys that did not become mainstream until a few years back, these can make the cut and allow for the training and planning that will mitigate the situation as well as needed.
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Permalink Reply by Rob on
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Duplication of resources and equipment is totally out of control in this country.
Unless a neighboring department is miles and miles away then why bother doubling up on stuff that will probably need to be replaced in five years anyway?
There are eight individual fire companies in my township. All have pumpers but one also has a ladder platform, another has tanker, another has rescue tools, a couple have foam capability. There is simply no point to each and every company having one of everything. It's efficient and a total waste of money. We don't have rescue tools at my station but if an entrapment call comes in then our run cards are set up to automatically call the company that does have the tools in addition to us. If they are unavailable then the cad system will know that already and will call the next nearest company and so forth.
Big city departments spread their resources around too because it makes operation and financial sense to do so. There is absolutely no reason why individual companies can't agree to do the same thing.
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Matthew,
My point was "have all the necessary equipment that is required to handle your basic fire department needs." Haz-Mat for many departments is outside of their capabilities, as may be swift water or high angle, they take specific and concentrated training.
Training for Hurst tools or their equivalents is little more than a few afternoons with some junk cars. Yes, there is a lot to know about new vehicles, cribbing and stabilization and techniques but no more complicated than learning the basics of firefighting.
Regarding your analogy of rural departments as "...1 big city FD without as much political BS..." that may be great so long as there is an understanding between all of the departments but what you're implying is regionalization, where all departments are essentially one big one. I'm not sure that's where you actually are at.
If you have a due area in which there are motor vehicles, then you should be trained, capable and have basic extrication tools. It can be done with recip saws, cut off wheels and pry bars but why would you not have pneumatic tools at hand? As for new toys, specifically Hurst tools, they've been around a LONG time and are not new. Worse case scenario, have one of those cow flop bingos to raise money.
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Permalink Reply by Richard Armstrong on
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well rob my Municipality is comprised of three full time and 17 volunteer departments and every rescue truck has a set of jaws on them.I can see not wanting to spend money on a T.I.C. or hazmat or specialty stuff like that as you would not use often enough but I don't want to leave a decision to a 911 dispatcher (who do great jobs but only go by the information from the person that is all freaked out on the other end of the phone) on whether or not to page the jaws out form dept. # 2.When my pager goes off I am very comfortable that my station can handle what ever the call is going to be and not be worrying if a victim is going tio need a tool that we don't want to buy because the other station has it and we can just call them.And if your wasting money having the first dept. showing up only to page a second because they have the jaws than that money can be takin into account for the price that goes towards the jaws.There is alot of missing info that sparked this debate as has been said but when some one is in critical condition possibly bleeding out or needs CPR then 2 minutes is along time to wait for tools but if I can't save a life over a few bucks that don't look good on the FF's the Cheif or your town.There is stuff that our council don't want to spend money on but when it comes to lives and the tools we need to do it they will do it.they may not want to spend money on a second set of gloves so we have a dry pair when its 20 below out but if we need a set of jaws then they will be on our truck.
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Jack, I know I am right below your post, but I was not directly replying to yours. By and large I think we are on the same page. We do need the tools to help our citizens. We only differ on Hurst tools being on the list or not. Let me just say that our department bought shares of the neighboring Hurst tools, but due to several factors we are not likely to get any at our station anytime soon.
We service 600+- citizens and countless commuters on the 2 lane highway through town. I am not against such tools, but when you look at a department budget of around $25k/year, the money has to be stretched. The original poster was asking about not buying these tools even if the money was available. I can think of plenty of other places to spend this kind of money that would service our town better. If there was a grant for these, no question, we would take it. However most grants are open ended as far as equipment to purchase. So far other needs have outweighed our .5 extrication calls a year. If the need is higher it would of course be higher on the list.
As for the regionalization, no this is not where we are at, but the bonds of guys that go out cow tipping together are hard to break. ;) I'll admit, we could do very little without mutual aid, and the relationship is always one that we must foster with care.
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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I wouldn't classify a TIC as specialty equipment. A TIC is an essential for engine and truck work.
I'd hate to be in the situation where I had to choose between one essential (extrication tools) and another (TIC).
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Those cows must provide excellent service if you tip them.
What's the going tip for a cow - 15% or so?
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Permalink Reply by Sparky3317 on
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But mutual aid is not always going to be available what are you going to do then? And when its efficient how is it a waiste of money something thats working is always a good thing.
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Permalink Reply by Todd on
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Or you can be better stewards of your taxpayers money and work with other area departments to make sure that your and other area's needs are filled by working together and spreading out responsibilities and equipment instead of redundant duplication of equipment. Not only will it save your taxpayers (and theirs) in the long run, it will also mean that instead of trying to make your staffing "jacks of all trades, masters of none" you can concentrate more of your efforts and time towards getting better at accomplishing another skill set that benefits not only your department but the others around it.
Too often in the fire service we get caught up in the "OOOO Look at their shiny toys. We need some too" line of thinking. Just like every fire department in the US doesn't need an aerial ladder, every fire department doesn't need a full set of extrication tools, especially if there is already a set of tools within a reasonable distance to your response area.
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With that line of thinking we should soon be out of the economic crisis since everybody now needs to purchase enough apparatus and ensure enough staffing 24/7 to be able to handle all of their incidents in house without relying on mutual aid ever. Because, you know, mutual aid might not always be available.
It's really going to suck having to spend that time getting ARFF certified though....but planes fly over my response area multiple times every day and one might crash and we can't depend on Airport Fire to bring in a crash truck because it might not be available.
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well rob my Municipality is comprised of three full time and 17 volunteer departments and every rescue truck has a set of jaws on them
Richard, I would certainly hope that every rescue truck had jaws! But does every station have a rescue truck?
Like I said, the tools are coming automatically, meaning the cad system pages them out at the same time we are paged out. We don't wait until we are on scene to call them. I should also mention that the department with rescue tools is the only paid one here, they are staffed 24/7. Most of the time they are first arriving.
Whatever works I suppose. Population, money, geography, it's all variable, but for my area, one rescue company is more than adequate and mutual aid from another township his not far.
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