*  STATter911 has an interesting video amongst his daily collection.  It’s a little off-topic, but fascinating as all get out.  It is a time-lapse surveillance camera of an urban waterway in Japan as a flash flood comes through.  You can see it HERE and then scroll on down and catch the structure fire at the Choo Choo Barn.

*  The Housewatch has a good essay posted about a better way to justify your staffing needs when the politicians try to cut the FD so that they don’t have to cut the pork.  He’s got a good proposal, so take your time and read it carefully HERE.

*  I keep reminding you to keep up with the western wildfire news by checking in with FirefighterBlog HERE and WildfireToday HERE.

Capt. Mike at FirefighterBlog is reporting directly from the Telegraph fire and has some terrific photos and satellite maps.  He also has a link to the Incident Scanner where you can listen to the radio traffic.  Scroll down a ways to get to it.  He’s posting heavily these days.

Bill Gabbert of WildfireToday is reporting today on fires in Wyoming and Montana.

*  VAFireNews has some fresh articles and hot shots on recent fires in the Old Dominion HERE.

*  Mike Legeros of Raleigh/Wake Firefighting Blog was in Baltimore for the Expo and while he was there he started a photo project capturing former Balto. firehouses that are now used by other occupancies.  He’s off to a good start and you can check it out HERE.

Referred from Firehall.com :

A MANITOBA TEENAGER WAS BURIED UNDER A LOAD OF HOT ASPHALT Friday when an excessive amount of the truckload poured out unexpectedly.

The 15-yr.-old boy was working a summer job for Interlake Asphalt Paving in Stony Mountain.  They were working on a parking lot job in the Winnipeg suburb and using a vacant lot owned by Manitoba Hydro (the utility company) to store the asphalt while they removed small loads as they needed them.

The asphalt is typically kept at 165º C. (330º F.) to stay liquified until it is used.  The boy was using a shovel to help guide the molten asphalt onto the pile when a large chunk that was stuck to the wall of the 30′ dump trailer broke loose and buried him.

Free Press image

Richard Hill, a neighbor, heard the boy screaming and ran over to the site.  The Winnipeg Free Press quotes him:

“I heard screaming ‘Help, help.’ I ran through the backyard and saw one guy running with a shovel saying ‘he’s buried.’ I looked around for a shovel and ran over and began shovelling,” he described.

“We got down to his hair… there was just no movement. No movement at all.

“It was so hot my boots were burning because of the asphalt and I burned my hand. It’s burning a bit, but it’s nothing major.”

Stony Mountain/Rockwood fire chief Wallace Drysdale said emergency crews arrived at the scene minutes after being notified of the accident, at around 10:55 a.m.

“There was a young man buried completely up to his hair in hot asphalt,” he said.  Some tried to dig by hand too, so they were burning their hands trying to do it.”

CTV photo

Drysdale said crews knew the victim was dead immediately after arriving, and had to dig to extricate his body.  “In a case like this, when you’re buried that deep, whether it’s asphalt or not, you’re usually deceased,” he said, adding it’s impossible to breathe with so much pressure.  “Our (fire department) members knew this person, ’cause it’s a small town,” he said. “It’s very hard.

“I was one of the first members on scene and we just saw the hair sticking out of this individual. It was extremely hot asphalt. Our crews, when we were digging out, had to shuttle different members in and out in about four- or five-minute intervals because our feet were burning.”

Interlake has two more problems to contend with now.  Under Manitoba labor laws, construction workers have to be at least age 16 to work on the job.  Also, Interlake did not have Hydro’s permission to store the asphalt on their property.  

The Winnipeg Free Press has a brief video report:

THE HAM AND EGGERY RESTAURANT in North Miami Beach, Florida is a local landmark known for its all-night breakfasts.

While popular with the late-night crowd stopping by on their way home after a hard night  of clubbing, few patrons knew just how fresh their meals were.

On July 22 a Florida health inspector paid a visit and found two live chickens held in a cage in the kitchen.  He also observed several other animals inside the establishment.  So he made a list of a few other things that the diners didn’t know about:

• 30 dead roaches in the kitchen.
• 6 fresh and 30 dry rodent droppings in the pantry.
• 15 fresh and 50 dry rodent droppings in the kitchen.
• 15 live roaches in the kitchen.
• Ham being stored at 54º (needs to be 41º or below).
• Food contact surfaces and cooking utensils not sanitized.

The owners have taken immediate steps to correct their problem:

SHORTLY AFTER MIDNIGHT THIS MORNING a Houston (Texas) Fire Department Ambulance was side-swiped by a drunk driver who kept on going.  The ambulance wasn’t on a call at the moment.

The ambulance driver gave chase while waiting for police to arrive.  “It exited the freeway and tried to get away from the ambulance by going down some of the side streets,” said Sgt. David Runyan with the Houston Police Department. “It came back on the freeway and finally pulled over.”

Houston police take the drunk driver, who left
home without his diaper, off to the hoosegow.

KTRK Ch. 13 has the story and a video report HERE.

THE FINAL REPORT FROM TEXAS DPS (Dept. of Public Safety) ON THE SECURITY LAPSES AT  last month’s devastating fire in the Governor’s Mansion was released Monday.

The report is forthwith and highly critical of the actions and procedures of the DPS from the top echelon down to the troopers who were on duty at the mansion.

Among the findings were the facts that there were never any written orders instructing the troopers how to perform and how to operate the security equipment.  There are written procedures explaining how to respond to smoke alarms, but those instructions were not available to troopers at the mansion during construction.

As we have already reported here, the intrusion alarm had been disabled for months and about 1/3 of the security cameras were not functioning.

The trooper on duty the morning of the June 8 fire, John Esposito, said he never conducted a fire watch during any of his 16 shifts between October and June, according to the report.

“Trooper Esposito said he didn’t know about the log or instructions to conduct a fire watch,” the report states. But it also states that the fire watch log shows Esposito’s name written in the log multiple times.

When the fire bomb was pitched into the front of the house, the trooper on duty, John Esposito, had his back to the camera monitors and was never aware of a fire in progress until the monitored fire alarm sounded.  It was another 7 minutes before he called the DPS command center to report it.  And then the DPS operator asked him if she needed to call the fire department.  All told, there was a 19-minute delay from the start of the fire until the FD was notified by DPS of the fire alarm.

Earlier this month the director of DPS, Col. Tommy Davis announced his retirement effective next month.

The entire 16-page report can be read in .pdf format HERE.
Firegeezer urges you to take the time to look over it.

WOAI Ch. 4 San Antonio summarizes the security lapses in this video:

KVUE Ch.  Austin shows the timeline of the delayed response:

Previous Firegeezer reports and videos on the fire and its aftermath last month can be read HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.

A COVINGTON, WASHINGTON GIRL IS BEING CREDITED with saving her brothers from a house fire Sunday morning.

8-yr.-old Cali Smail was at home with her 6-yr.-old brother and their older brother who is 21 yrs. of age.  The parents were out of town for the weekend and the two youngsters were in the care of their big brother who is deaf.

When a fire started in the house, Cali heard the smoke alarm and checked  what was going on.  Finding smoke in the house, she roused both of her brothers and they fled the house.  Their grandmother lives nearby so they ran through the woods to Grandma’s house and reported the fire.

KING-TV, Seattle has a good video report of the incident.  While watching the video, make note of two important things.  One, a working smoke detector.  And two,  the family has practiced fire drills in the home.  We’ve been preaching that for decades in the school fire safety programs.  It’s rewarding to see it pay off.  Watch the video here:

Fredrick Winslow Taylor was fascinated by the developing Industrial Revolution and, instead of going to Harvard, started a four year apprenticeship at a small Philadelphia pump factory in 1874. He then went to work for Midvale Steel, where he rose from laborer to chief engineer in twelve years. During that time he obtained master and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering.

The Principles of Scientific Management was published in 1911. Taylor described the breakdown of work tasks into constituent elements; the timing of each element based on repeated stopwatch studies; the fixing of piece rate compensation based on those studies; and standardization of work tasks on detailed instruction cards. These actions dramatically improved productivity, using the one “best” way.

While Taylorism increased factory output by up to 300%, overenthusiastic application reduced humans in the factory to carbon-based machines. The use of stopwatches was often protested and led to a strike. After Congressional hearings, the federal government banned the use of stopwatches by civil servants in 1913. This administrative law remained in effect through 1949.  

EMS SYSTEM STATUS MANAGEMENT

EMS witnessed a version of Taylorism when economist Jack Stout researched the ambulance industry for the University of Oklahoma. In 1984 he proposed System Status Management to better allocate ambulances within a community.

SSM is a data driven system where historical call data is used to deploy the ambulance fleet for optimal response times and to predict where the next cluster of calls is likely to occur. Using time-of-day and location, response data for the previous 20 weeks are analyzed. SSM system managers believe that they can predict when and where calls will occur …or at least establish trends.

Like Taylorism, the enthusiastic application of SSM in the late 1980s lead to terrible working conditions for paramedics and emts. Some would spend their entire 8 to 12 hour work shift sitting in a cramped ambulance on a street corner, using fast food bathrooms. There was no recreation, training, physical fitness or recovery (nap) time.

THE NEXT GENERATION

Three years ago, Jay Fitch, founding partner of the EMS consulting group Fitch and Associates, started the Pinnacle leadership forums. It provided sessions in advanced and sophisticated issues affecting emergency medical services. http://www.pinacle-ems.com/

SSM morphed into “high performance ems systems,” and some of the young gun SSM gurus from the late 1980s used the first Pinnacle conference like a 12-step recovery meeting. They admitted that they aggressively applied SSM to get the last percentage point of productivity at the expense of the employees. Amazing what 40-something learns from his 20-something experiences.

HIGH PERFORMANCE EMS IN THE INFORMATION AGE

For me, the most fascinating area is the evolution of SSM in the Information Age. Using the geographic and time information generated by computer aided dispatch systems, automatic vehicle locators and geographic information systems an agency can redeploy scarce resources to where they are needed the most.

I spent Monday in a conference room, manipulating ems response data in a Pinnacle workshop. The idea was to get a three-dimensional understanding of ems volume, demand and supply. The ems industry is too small and specialized to get custom software, so we slogged through a year’s worth of data using Excel, Access and MapPoint to develop ems deployment decisions.

Example of incident workload

We have almost come full circle. When the RAND Corporation was hired by New York City in the late 1960’s, the ground-breaking work on fire department deployment analysis was restricted to service areas defined by circles or diamonds. Forty years of information management improvements allow me to use a laptop to provide a street-by-street, hour-by-hour, season-by-season deployment analysis for a fire department.

As we look at the continuing shrink of municipal revenue, maybe it is time for the fire department to adopt some of the deployment practices honed by the large non-fire high performance ems agencies.

I think I’m finally recuperated from the “Expo experience.”  We had such a good time there that all of us, the Geezerguys and Dave Statter, are already making plans to return next year.  This was the first time any of us had been on the “booth side” of the exhibits and we were learning-as-we-go about how the system works.

The folks at Firehouse.com were a great help and very pleasant with us, considering how unruly we could get if left unsupervised.  And Chief Billy Goldfeder, publisher of the FirefighterCloseCalls website, was a terrific host for the podcast that was recorded on Friday.  Billy has obviously had at least a year and a half of training at the Columbia School of Broadcasting, because he was a real pro at moderating and guiding the roundtable talk.  It must have turned out ok because afterward several people made a point of coming by the booth just to tell us that they were in the audience and liked the show.  As I promised earlier, as soon as Firehouse gets the podcast posted, we’ll put the link up for you.

The good folks at Singer Associates allowed Dave Statter to climb the Pierce aerial and get a few overhead shots of the exhibit floor.  We’re hoping that Goldfeder didn’t see him going up the ladder without strapping on a pompier belt.

I can’t emphasize enough how impressed I was with the variety of vendors (at least 500 of us) that were on the floor as well as the displays that were set up.  In Maryland the State Police operate the air ambulance service statewide and they had a complete helicopter in there on display.  And of course, every apparatus builder both large and small had their latest models on display.  I heard a lot of buzz over the amphibian mini-pumper that was not too far from us.

Yes, I’d recommend that you plan on visiting the Expo next year.  And expect to spend the whole day in there….. you’ll be glad you did.

But since today we’re going to spend the whole day in here, let’s get this equipment checked out.  I’ll start the coffee going.