SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN ROCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE, a Farmington ambulance was transporting a patient to Frisbie Memorial Hospital and it was being followed by a Frisbie ambulance that had been assisting it on the call.  As they were going through an intersection in town, an Acura sedan drove into the side of the Frisbie ambulance.

Foster’s Daily Democrat photo

The Acura’s front end was demolished with the bumper ending up 20 ft. away and the driver needing an ambulance himself for injuries he sustained in the wreck.

The ambulance crew was ok and the only damage to the truck was what they described as ” a clipboard-size dent.”

Foster’s Daily Democrat has the REPORT.

THE LONG NEW YEAR’S DAY WEEKEND was typically marred by excessive traffic loads on the highways.  Oftentimes it is caused by unknown forces that take advantage of the holiday break to weave havoc on the roads, such as these:

In Miami, Florida, on Friday traffic came to a standstill on the Palmetto Expressway when a truckload of literally thousands of shoes were dumped onto a two-lane overpass.  They filled both lanes for a stretch of several hundred feet and had the road virtually closed until a front-end loader could come in to shove them over into the right-hand lane to allow traffic to start moving.

AP / Diaz photo

Nobody has any idea who owns them or how they happened to be dumped on the roadway.  The used shoes were tied together in their matching pairs of work boots, bath slippers, sneakers, beach sandals and even inline skates.  A private contractor was hired to come pick them up and dump them in a vacant field.

 The State Police put out a call for any interested charity to come pick them up so they can be put to good use, anyway.  A Nashville, Tennessee, charity Souls4Soles has offered to come pick them up and distribute them in Haiti.

This helicopter video gives you an idea of the magnitude of the “shoefall”:

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In Detroit, Michigan, on the same morning traffic was scrambled for hours on I-94 after a tractor-trailer filled with fresh chicken eggs struck a guardrail and spilled its yellow & white load across the freeway.  It was cleared up by the time the sunny side came up.  CNN has the video:

THE TOWN OF DARGAVILLE IN THE far north end of New Zealand had a major fire in the heart of its business district earlier today. The fire alarm was sounded around 7:30 pm local time when someone spotted smoke coming from a paint store.

Dargaville News photo

When the Dargaville Volunteer Fire Brigade arrived on the scene the store was in full blaze and the fire was spreading to the adjacent businesses.  After calling for mutual aid assistance, eventually there were 100 firefighters and 20 engines on the scene.

Fire Chief Mitch King says the fire is the biggest the town has seen since the mid-1960s, and it is believed that around five business premises have been destroyed.

He says a significant structural collapse occurred with the second level facade falling onto the street of Fosters Home Decorating shop. Mr King says if the buildings had had heat sensors and sprinklers installed this would have made a “huge difference to the outcome”.

He says the lack of these fire safety devices was not just an issue in Dargaville but all over the country. Business owners’ decisions not to have them was often a cost factor.

StuffNZ has the latest REPORT.

. . . and everything to do with local political power

A guaranteed groaner when teaching a fire officer course is to talk about “Mrs. Smith” or The Phoenix Way.  Firefighters are quick to point out that they are not in a retail trade. Users of 9-1-1 are called victims or patients, not customers. 

With Fire Chiefs Clack and Rubin embracing Brunacini customer service, a brief search on TheWatchDesk will provide vigorous and emotional responses from city firefighters:  Baltimore example, Washington example.

DCFEMS Customer Service Unit - Go HERE to read Vito Maggiolo’s dcfd.com article

The Phoenix Way does not travel well outside the Valley of the Sun.  It makes no difference if the plan was lifted from the PFD website out-of-context or implemented by a retired Phoenix command officer at a new fire department.  

But in the city where it started, it is protecting firefighter jobs.  It provides an long-term example of carbon becoming a diamond.  There were two significant pressures in Phoenix that may not be present in your department.

PRO-BUSINESS WITH A BULLET

Phoenix public safety unions won the right to collective bargaining in the early 1980s. One result of this political activism was a firefighter-initiated referendum to replace the at-large city council system with single member district elections. This eroded the ability of business leaders to influence city operations.

Phoenix is lead by old-school Republican conservatives. It is the home of two senators who were presidential candidates, Barry Goldwater and John McCain. In the 1980s and 1990s the police chief functioned as a political operative, using his law enforcement authority to investigate and harass political foes. (HERE)

Just before the 1982 single-member district referendum vote occured, more than a dozen firefighters, including the union president, were arrested on cocaine charges. Duane Pell, a former city council member and IAFF Local 493 leader, talked about this incident in a 1993 Phoenix New Times article.

“The headlines were firefighters involved in major drug trafficking, a system of drug trafficking that, because of the convenient location of fire stations throughout the city, made perfect locations for firefighters to distribute cocaine,” says Pell, describing the allegations. Most of the firefighters were cleared of criminal charges and no major drug ring was ever found.

This arrest started a decade of intimidation and harassment of the union president. Eleven years after the unfounded cocaine arrest, IAFF Local 493 President Pat Cantelme filed a $1 million lawsuit accusing the police chief, county attorney and others of violating his civil rights.  (HERE)

WE COULD ALWAYS CONTRACT WITH RURAL-METRO

During this time Scottsdale-based Rural-Metro was a successful for-profit contract fire protection corporation.  Imagine working every day in a city that is hostile to organized labor and points to a neighboring private corporation when things get dificult.  For the metro Washington readers, it would be as if McLean/Tysons, Bethesda/Chevy-Chase, Inner Harbor or Georgetown/West End were protected by a for-profit fire department.

APPLYING NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD (NLRB) TECHNIQUES

The Labor/Management effort began in 1984 using a NLRB Relationship By Objectives (RBO) procedure . RBO is recommended when labor and management are at an impasse. The RBO process created The Phoenix Way, the Big Five and “Be Nice.” 

Be Nice covers both the internal (firefighter) and external (Mrs. Smith) customer. There was a tremendous effort to encourage, reinforce and reward nice behavior.  It was a recurrent feature within their internal publications and videos, retelling customer service stories and celebrating little acts of kindness.

During a discussion of organizational structure, a PFD captain identified a senior staffer as “the Deputy Chief for Being Nice.” For a municipality involved in hard-ball politics, each positive firefighter/civilian encounter increased citizen support of the department. 

BE NICE PRODUCES VOTER SUPPORT

Voters passed Proposition 1 in a September 11, 2007 election.  Proposition 1 hikes the sales tax 0.2 percent, which will be used to hire 500 new police officers and 100 new firefighters within the next two years. (source - Goldwater Institute)

During an October 2008 budget work session, the Associated Press reported “… a majority of the City Council expressed support for increasing the public-safety budget by $10 million, or about 1.3 percent, while cutting the other departments by 25 percent to 45 percent.”

PROPOSED FY 2010 BUDGET

With a budget deficit approaching $270 million - a 22% reduction in projected revenue - city agencies were directed to provide budgets reflecting a 30% reduction of expenditures. Public safety was directed to provide a 15% reduction.  Courts, police and fire account for 68% of the city expenditures.

The proposed FY2010 budget released last week calls for elimination of 1,300 of the exising 14,000 city jobs.  (HERE)  This reduction is on top of a $90 million budget cut in early 2008.

In last week’s proposed city budget none of the 1,588 firefighter postions were eliminated. The department will be losing some of their 350 civilian employees and will run no recruit schools in 2009.  The fire department will reduce it’s FY10 budget by 7.5%. (HERE),

“Seventy percent of our general fund goes to first responders,” said Councilman Michael Nowakowski. “You can’t cut from police and fire because it’s a need. Our city is growing and we need officers on the street and firefighters and paramedics out there to protect our families.” 

This is a far cry from the city council sentiments in the 1990s, when candidates ran against public safety labor and their featherbedded jobs.

Mike “Fossilmedic” Ward
Diamond or Dust budget series

Lacey, M. (1992, December 30). The Pursuit of Pat Cantelme. Phoenix New Times.
Pasztor, D. (1993, February 3). Arizona’s Own J. Edgar Hoover.. Phoenix New Times.
Pasztor, D. (1993, March 3). Firefighter Fires Back: Union Chief Alleges Abuse of Power by Ortega, Romley, others. Phoenix New Times.
Wong, S. (2008, December 26) Phoenix’s budget gap grows bigger The Arizona Republic.
Berry, J. (2009, January 01) Phoenix unveils $270 million in cuts. The Arizona Republic
Ferraresi, M. (2009, January 01) Phoenix police, fire asked to cut costs. The Arizona Republic.

AN EARLY MORNING HOUSE FIRE SUNDAY in Oswego County, New York, has killed eight people - 4 adults and 4 children - all members of the same family.  The only survivor was one male who was sleeping in the basement of the two-story frame house.

When the FD arrived on the scene at 3 am, the house was fully involved with no hope of making a rescue attempt.  The home was wood-framed balloon construction, lending to the rapid fire spread, and there were no smoke detectors in the house.

The cause of the fire is still unknown after a day of sifting through the rubble of the 100-yr.-old house.  All eight victims’ bodies were recovered Sunday afternoon and have been sent to the medical examiner’s office for autopsies and identification.  The fire is not considered to be suspicious.

WSYR-TV Ch. 9 Syracuse has this video report:

The Syracuse Post-Standard has MORE.

THE WAKE COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA, EMS division is introducing an additional service to their citizens.  Beginning Tuesday, January 6, they will start phasing in what they call the Advanced Practice Paramedic program (APP).  When it is fully operational it will provide not only a rapid-response paramedic program but will also be involved in preventive-care health programs and the screening of patients that should be treated at places other than medical facilities, such as substance abuse and mental health clinic.

FireNews.net photo

FireNews.net has a full description of this new service and how it will be operating.  FireNews publisher Jeff Harkey was also involved in the designing of the vehicles.  Read the entire article HERE.

Wake County EMS WEBSITE.

For me, today is the real start for the New Year.  Schools are open again, the 9-to-5ers are back to work, and traffic settles down a bit.

Sometime during this morning’s hours, Firefighter Nation will be signing up Member #28,000.  That is a remarkable achievement, believe me.  They’ve also got a huge archive of photos and videos by now, too.  Congratulations, Guys.

*  *  *

Two big trade shows open this week.  The International Consumer Electronics Show will be running in Las Vegas for the 41st year.  This one is always fun to watch because it’s the showcase for new products that are being tried out and we get to see some mighty imanginative gadgets and toys.  Tourism has been down in Las Vegas recently, so they are touting greatly-reduced hotel room rates for this week.

The other annual event is Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco.  The Mac fans were stunned the other day when Apple announced that this would be the final year for Macworld.  They feel that the expense isn’t justified compared to other means of reaching their customers.  There’s also speculation that Steve Jobs’ health is an issue, too.  He has been suffering from pancreatic cancer and will not be addressing the gathering this year.

*  *  *

A friend of mine asked me the other day what I think about the idea of switching his computer habits from Windows to MacIntosh.  He’s undecided whether to stick with Win or to move over to the Mac.  This is no small decision to make because once you do it, you’re pretty well locked in with the system.

Since I’ve never used a Mac, I can’t really offer any good advice on it, other than to say the the Mac users seem to be a lot more happy in their digital universe than the PC crowd is.  The Mac is definitely more stable  and a lot less vulnerable to virus attacks, which are both good features to consider.  But if you have a lot of ancillary programs to help you with various work or hobby projects, then you have to consider the expense and labor involved in replacing them.

If any of you have ever actually switched from Windows to Mac (or the other way around), would you please enter a Comment telling us about it?  Why did you do it?  Are you glad you did?  Would you recommend it?  You know me, I’m always interested in these things, too.  So I’d like to hear from you.

Ok, let’s start the new year right and get this equipment checked out.  We might have to make it last another year or two longer until revenues pick back up.  I’ll go start the coffee.  We’ll meet back in the day room in a little while.

THE YPSILANTI, MICHIGAN, FIRE DEPARTMENT took delivery of a brand-new KME ladder truck in December, 2007.  Now they want to send it back.

The city paid over $800,000 for the truck just over a year ago.
Now they want their money back after being unable to keep
it in service for as much as 30 consecutive days.
(YpsiNews / Darrell Harden photo)

The Ann Arbor News is reporting today:

Fire Chief Jon Ichesco said the city bought the truck  from KME Fire Apparatus of Pennsylvania, but could not use it for several months because of computer control problems, switch failures, engine control failures and other issues. The truck continues to have problems on a monthly basis, the chief said.

Assistant City Attorney Karl Barr said he sent a letter to the manufacturer asking if the city can return the truck, but he has not received an answer. Earler this month, he filed a complaint with the Washtenaw County Circuit Court to start legal proceedings in case the company refuses to take back the truck. The warranty expired Dec. 21. 

The city bought the truck using a $600,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Ichesco said. The city paid the remaining $220,000. Once the company takes back the truck, the city will begin shopping for another one, he said. The city bought a different fire truck from KME in 1996 and it has been working well, he said.

In addition, the FD spent over $40,000 enlarging the bay door at the central fire station to accommodate the truck.  The truck was delivered six months late and then was unable to be put into service until April, four months later.  Even then, it has never been fully functional for as much as 30 consecutive days since it was delivered.

The YpsiNews has MORE.