Fire Bashing

[rescue99]

The problem with that train of thought is that tax millage is there for the "just in case". The tax base is paying for the personnel,equipment, and stations to be there. It is not designed to cover the actual service rendered. It was never designed that way.

Umm, no, it isn't a just in case fund. It happens to be the operating fund specifically for the fire (BLS service) / police departments and it most certainly is for day to day operations, including salaries and benefits. I'm glad we did this as our community began to boom back in the late 70's, early 80's.

The millage has been a terrific security blanket. During leaner times fire and police services have not had to endure cut backs thus, keeping our community one of the nations safest places to live. I wasn't so happy when the service bumped up to an ALS service 10 years ago and residents then began paying for transport a second time is all.

 

[firetender]

I've had some horrendous intersections with high and low echelon EMS personnel and systems in every one of these sectors, and more:

Private
Municipal
Fire
Police
Military/Coast Guard
Volunteer
Paid
Unpaid
Bartered
Mall Cops
Hospital
Doctors
Nurses
Paramedics
PA's and on and on

I could make generalizations up the ying-yang regarding commitment, competence, consistency, and compassion for each. But for each example, I'd find an opposite would apply as well.

The thing that bugs me about bashing, period, is whenever I pull that infantile stuff, I draw a bullseye on my own buttocks because, to be honest with you, I, too, sometimes am bashable!

 

[usafmedic45]

Is this how professionalism is measured in volly services?

Whoever is the least hungover or the least drunk at scene is more professional?

Not any service in Indiana I've ever worked on or with. 99.99% of them would have anyone who showed up after a single drink arrested and booted off the department. If you're on call, no drinking. End of discussion.

However, Vent, I think you missed what he was trying to imply here:

We as a group do not touch any drink because we would prefer to be sober and go on a call than be buzzed and have to stay home.

I took it to be that he and his colleagues would rather not drink than have to not go out on calls because they were intoxicated.

That said I call bull:censored::censored::censored::censored: on most of the rest of the post, especially:

Our department has about 27 members, however at our last fire we had 8 show. This is an amazingly turnout for our department at any time, yet I was personally surprised; it was early saturday morning and I expected alot more people to have hangovers. Yet of us 8 who showed, four of us were still probies as we are so "affectionately" called. The level of respect that our department has developed over the years has diminished because a good number of our members get drunk every night.

Chances are the reasons are a little more complicated than that. I was a captain on a similarly small department and we would average 6-8 people (including one or two probies/juniors plus an auxiliary member or two) on a working structure fire after about 5 pm at night or on weekends. A lot of our members would simply not be available because of family commitments, work, hobbies and other things that don't involve being a raging alcoholic as a matter of course. Just because it's Saturday morning doesn't mean we don't show up because are recovering from the rager last night at Stumpy McDumbass's moonshine still.

 

[CollegeBoy]

Chances are the reasons are a little more complicated than that. I was a captain on a similarly small department and we would average 6-8 people (including one or two probies/juniors plus an auxiliary member or two) on a working structure fire after about 5 pm at night or on weekends. A lot of our members would simply not be available because of family commitments, work, hobbies and other things that don't involve being a raging alcoholic as a matter of course. Just because it's Saturday morning doesn't mean we don't show up because are recovering from the rager last night at Stumpy McDumbass's moonshine still.

My department will usually have a turnout of about 6-8 at any given fire at any time. If a second alarm is called we will usually see about 5 or 6 more people from our department show when they realize just how big it is going to be. On average we will have nearly 15 members show to multiple alrm fires early in the morning, but this time we only had 8. The problem is alot of our regulars spend friday night at the bar, because friday night is THEIR night. The people who have really damged our department are those who go to maybee two fires a year, just to say they are on the department; they are blasted most of the rest of the time.

I guess I'm having a little bit of a problem communicting my point.

 

[usafmedic45]

The people who have really damged our department are those who go to maybee two fires a year, just to say they are on the department; they are blasted most of the rest of the time.

That's when you pull the "We took a vote and you lost. Turn in your gear" sort of remedy to the solution. Our department would take a majority vote to eliminate problems with people who are not pulling their weight or had a history of causing problems. There are three really good reasons in the section I quoted alone that give you grounds to eliminate these people from your department:
-Alcohol abuse (if it impairs their availability/ability to respond to calls, it's a concern for the department and either they correct the issue or they get lost).
-Negative reflection on the department/lack of professionalism
-Failure to take call, cherry-picking calls, etc. If need be, introduce a policy that you have to sign up for and take call X days per month, attend mandatory training sessions (at very least you should already be doing this one) etc; this eliminates those people who just want to be able to claim they are on a department. I eliminated 4 EMTs off my department when they refused to take part in training courses (two of them lost their certs when our medical director found out and they didn't back down) and would suspend people for refusal to run EMS calls since they were "a firefighter, not a cot jockey" to quote one of them. There were also *** chewings when people would sit around and wait to see if it was something "interesting" or "fun" before responding. This was a major reason why we went to having a on-call schedule that people signed up for and were obligated to abide by unless the had a good reason. It fixed most of the major issues we had and ran off a lot of the sketchier people that we didn't have dead to rights on a fireable offense.

Honestly, how many people are you really needing to battle a structure fire? If you have a structure fire why are you not calling for mutual aid (tankers, manpower, etc)? At least putting them on standby until you get on scene and confirm it's a working fire. Most of the smaller (read as: less than 50+ person volunteer stations) I've dealt with- even ones with adequate staffing and a high degree of profesisonalism- tend to use mutual aid and it's necessarily a bad thing for a single station to "only" contribute eight people. Especially in an area without hydrants, trying to handle a fire with even 10-15 people is not necessarily a good idea because of the need for tanker ops, rehab, a RIT team, etc.

The problem is alot of our regulars spend friday night at the bar, because friday night is THEIR night.

Nothing technically wrong with that so long as they don't try to respond to calls while intoxicated and take call at other times. You're talking to someone who would go out with friends one or two nights a week despite working a paid EMS job and being on the volunteer fire department. Just because they choose to drink does not mean they are bad people (saying this as I sit here with a glass of wine), so long as they are responsible about it and keep that part of their life and their professional activities separate.