Boise Fire Department is getting Ambulances

[EMT11KDL]

http://www.2news.tv/news/local/52703527.html

Ambulance the Boise Fire Department wants to add directly replaces one that already exists (Ada County Paramedics).

 

[boingo]

IAFF slowly gobbling up another excellent EMS system to justify fire jobs....pathetic.

 

[Flight-LP]

IAFF slowly gobbling up another excellent EMS system to justify fire jobs....pathetic.

Yup! The sad part is that they will probably succeed, using the usual smoke and fire dog and pony show they have perfected over the years.

Their response times are not unreasonable and from what I hear, it sounds like they are a decent provider. I guess the FD wants to replace some shiny trucks and needs the $$ to do it.

 

[Hal9000]

Their response time is so short because they don't have many fire calls for their fire department.

 

[46Young]

I do generally speak out in defense of fire based EMS. However, I don't want anyone to have their livlihood taken away. The current system seems fine. There's no valid reason to take over. Maybe situations like this will cause you to realize that EMS needs more unions, strong organizations to put a stop to situations such as this one.

Look at the FDNY. Suppression has it's own union. EMS has it's own seperate union, each with seperate collective bargaining agendas and contracts. As such, it'll be a cold day in hell before FDNY members become dual role.

 

[Shishkabob]

but the Boise Fire Department says they could help get to those calls quicker, if they had an ambulance too.

Because, you know, medics can ONLY travel on ambulances and not engines.



Retarded.

 

[Foxbat]

I do not think fire service needs to "justify" its existence. Whether you have one fire a day on one fire a week, you still need sufficient number of trucks showing on scene in sufficient time and with sufficient manpower (which some politicians fail to understand and then we see things like one-man or two-man engine companies because "well, you don't have many fires anyway").
...That being said, if it ain't broken, don't fix it. If ambulances do not show up quickly enough, have FD and/or PD act as first responders on high priority calls, maybe even put medics on engines. There is no need to give ambulances to FD to reduce response times.