PATIENT CONFIDENTIALITY TAKES A BACK SEAT when something “really good” pops up at the Mercy Walworth Medical Center in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. When a patient was brought in to the ER with an object lodged in his rectum, it stirred a bit of interest.
It was after the X-rays were taken, though, that the tittilation factor kicked in and once the word got around that the buried object was a sex toy, ethics joined the casualty list as at least two nurses took pictures of the films with their cellphone cameras.
Things got out of control when a tipster called the sheriff’s office to tell them that one of the nurses posted the photos on her Facebook page. Once the law got involved, the Facebook page was suddenly taken offline and the two nurses were fired. There’s no report on what medical procedure was used or the outcome.
After a penetrating investigation, the police have not found any criminal violations, so no charges have been lodged.
EVERY FIRST-DUE HAS A “REGULAR” WHO continually demands some sort of ambulance service. Everyone knows their name, their address by memory, and what they look like.
Ambulance crews in Aberystwyth, Wales, thought they had finally seen the last of Amy Beth Dallamura, 45, when she moved away to Sussex last September. Amy had caused the EMS to expend more than £1 million just rescuing her from 50 suicide attempts by wading out into the ocean, or leaping off piers, jetties, rocks and cliffs in the seaside town since 2001. On one occasion her misadventure caused the call-out of a helicopter, two lifeboats, and two shore rescue teams totalling 26 men.
Amy Beth Dellamura
The local magistrates then issued an Anti-social Behavior Order (ASBO) banning her from going in the sea, onto beaches or the promenade in the town.
Last Saturday, Feb. 20, Dallamura returned to Aberystwyth and asked the magistrates to lift the order, which they refused to do, saying that it would remain in place until further notice. She had apologised for the concern she had caused and argued that her Asbo was “no longer necessary”.
Rebuffed in her appeal, she immediately went out to the cliffs and initiated “rescue” number 51 for the Wales Emergency Service ambulance.
BBC News brings us the latest chapter in this adventure HERE.
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI, POLICE AND EMS BOTH TEAMED UP to provide this head-shaker for us. The Kansas City Star is reporting that the death of a man that police and a medical examiner had said was the result of natural causes has been ruled a homicide after a funeral home found three bullet holes in his body.
First on the scene in the man’s home was the ambulance crew who found a couple of high-blood-pressure medications near the body and helpfully informed the responding police officer that the death was obviously from natural causes, despite the blood seeping out of his head in an unusual location. The police officer notified both a homicide detective and the medical examiner’s office. Neither the detective nor the M.E. ever showed up at the scene, however.
The wounds were noticed by funeral home workers after the man’s body was embalmed Friday. They returned the 49-year-old Kansas City man’s body to the Jackson County medical examiner’s office, and police counted the death as a homicide. Unfortunately, all the forensic evidence had been cleaned up by the man’s family by the time investigators returned to the house.
The police plan to study their current practices for handling sudden deaths.
RIPON, CALIFORNIA, POLICE CHIEF RICHARD BULL is calling truck driver Randal Taylor, 49, of Salt Lake City, a hero after he cooly mitigated a potential fire disaster early Thursday morning.
Taylor was sleeping in the cab of his rig at the Flying J Truck Plaza when a fire broke out in his trailer. The load he was carrying included 908 pounds of sodium hydroxide and 612 pounds of an industrial-strength bleach, according to Chief Dennis Bitters of the Ripon Fire Department.
Instead of fleeing his truck that was parked with dozens of others in the layover lot, Taylor started driving it away with the intention of steering it to a safer location where the fire wouldn’t endanger the others. Just as he was pulling out of the lot, a Ripon police officer came along and the dash cam in his cruiser caught the activity.
Ripon Police Dept. image
“The driver used courage and he used great common sense and reasoning to try to keep this from becoming a major disaster,” Chief Bull said. “We sure commend him for it.”
The Ripon FD responded and put out the fire without any complications. Later that morning a haz mat cleanup crew arrived and removed the chemicals that were not consumed in the fire.
Modesto Bee photo
The Modesto Bee has the full story and more photos HERE.
This video contains the Ripon police dash cam recording of the truck as it’s leaving the truck stop:
Posted by firegeezeron February 28, 2009 •
Filed under: fire
A MAN WHO WRECKED HIS CAR IN HUMBOLDT COUNTY, California, Thursday night refused treatment from the emergency medical crew and then hopped into their ambulance and sped away.
Derrick Gates, 20, had driven his car over an embankment and crashed into some trees. When the local rescue squad showed up, Gates refused treatment. The Eureka Times-StandardREPORTS:
While waiting for a CHP unit, Gates allegedly hopped into the ambulance and sped eastbound. A Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office deputy who was nearby pursued the ambulance, the CHP reported.
Gates then turned onto State Route 96 and drove into Hoopa, the CHP reported, then along several other roads as a CHP officer joined the chase. Gates then turned back toward Willow Creek. A CHP officer managed to deflate the right tires of the ambulance using a spike strip, but Gates allegedly kept driving, back west on Route 299.
The ambulance broke down near Titlow Hill Road, the CHP reported, and Gates was taken into custody at 9:30 p.m.
After struggling with the police who first had him checked out at the ER, Gates was jailed on suspicion of evading a police officer, stealing an emergency vehicle and driving under the influence of a controlled substance.
THE IRVING, TEXAS, FIRE DEPARTMENT EVACUATED AN ENTIRE shopping center Friday afternoon along with nearly 70 nearby homes when they found a vacant department store filled with gasoline fumes.
WFAA-TV
The the first units arrived to the call for a strong gasoline odor, they could smell the fumes from several hundred feet away. They immediately evacuated 20 businesses in the shopping center and started breaking out windows to ventilate the buildings. They soon extended the evacuation zone to 1,000 ft. which included approx. 68 houses in a neighborhood behind the shopping center.
Investigation into the cause disclosed that a cleaning crew that had been hired to remove the floor tiles in the vacant department store had been using hundreds of gallons of gasoline to soak the old adhesive mastic in an attempt to remove it. However, along with filling the building with highly-explosive fumes, the gasoline merely mixed with the old mastic creating a flammable slurry that absorbed the gasoline and prevented it from evaporating. Some people who work in the shopping center say that they have been using the gasoling all week.
The fire department has called in a specialized private haz mat cleanup firm along with a special ventilation unit from the Dallas/Ft. Worth Airport fire department.
KDFW-TV has this video report:
The FD is still amazed that the potential inferno was never ignited during all that time. All of the outside utilities have been shut down in the area.
I want to start off this morning with a couple of updates for you. You folks who read us before eveningtime will probably not have seen these additions to yesterday’s postings.
First of all, I want to let you know that we’ve added a link to the story about the country club/banquet hall fire yesterday (HERE) in Addison, Illinois. The link takes you to a photo gallery page where Larry Shapiro has posted several more pictures of that fire. Larry is a professional fire photographer who has contributed to our website several times before and seems to never miss a “smoke showing” response anywhere in the NW Chicago area.
While you might not be particularly motivated to click back just to see a couple more photos, I think you’ll find these interesting because Larry has a new “gadget” attached to his images. It’s called Zoomify and I found it both fascinating and fun to fiddle with. When you go to any of the photos that are wrapped in the Zoomify frame, you can literally zoom in on any portion of the picture that interests you. And as you zoom in, you can also toggle around the frame to center in on what you’re looking for. Scroll back to the story (or click HERE) to follow the link and check it out. Digital development is great!
The next update I want to tell you about comes just in time for some weekend reading for you. When it all hit the fan up in Gloucester, Mass., this week, everything was based on the recently-released “After Action Report” on the the tragedy that led to the fire chief’s immediate decision to retire. We covered it yesterday HERE. Dave Statter spent a good bit of yesterday tracking down that report that was referred to, but never posted, and he has posted the entire 93-page report (in .pdf format) HERE. I plan to take time to read through it today also.
And finally, there has been some buzz about this spate of undiscovered bodies here and there. (HERE and THERE) I’d like to point out that this is really nothing new. Last May we covered the story from Madera County, California, where a fire crew left a body behind after a mobile home fire out in the country. It wasn’t discovered until 2 months later when the sheriff was following up on a missing person report. (see our video report HERE.) That was just plain negligence on the part of the firefighters. I think this would be a good topic for an unstructured drill later today, don’t you? Talk this over about lessons to be learned from these and make sure that you don’t ever let yourself get into a situation like this.
Oh, look at the time. We’d better get this equipment checked out now. I’ll go start some more coffee. See you later in the day room.
AN EVANSVILLE, INDIANA, GIRL IS FIGHTING FOR her life today after accidentally setting herself on fire. Jessica Brooks, 18, was suffering from head lice and decided to self-treat them and kill them by soaking her head with gasoline.
She was in her bathroom pouring the gasoline over her head when the pilot light of a water heater in the same room ignited the fumes. The flash fire that ensued burned off her clothes and hair and left her with 2nd- and 3rd-degree burns over her upper torso, head, arms and hands.
She is currently in a medically-induced coma while they attempt to save her life. If she survives she faces at least six more months in the burn hospital.
The Evansville Courier & Press has the full STORY.
WHAS-TV has this video report:
Posted by firegeezeron February 27, 2009 •
Filed under: fire
THIS NEW MINI-USB CABLE IS COMING OUT JUST AS PDA makers are beginning to standardize their charging plugs. The cable has an SD-card reader located midway along the 90 cm cable (How long is that? I don’t know….ed.) that allows you to download your card without interrupting the charging on your phone-or-whatever.
Inserting an SD card will disable transfers from whichever device is hooked up to the mini-USB end to make way for SD card transfers, but the cable will keep charging the device in the meantime. Once the card is removed, you’ll again be able to shuttle files between your computer and your whatever.
This snazzy little gadget costs a mere $12 plus $3 shipping anywhere. You can read more and order one from Brando.co.hk HERE.
LISBON, CONNECTICUT, VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTER DENNY RAYMOND, 67 yrs. old, was puttering around the house Wednesday afternoon when a call came in for a little girl who had fallen through the ice in a local pond.
Denny, the town’s oldest active volunteer FF, is also trained in cold water rescue. As he was leaving the house to rush to the scene, he wisely grabbed a coil of rope from his garage.
Norwich Bulletin
The Norwich Bulletin tells us:
Raymond arrived at the pond at 2:20 p.m. with fellow firefighters and public works employees Mike Civardi and Lt. John Mather. The first thing they heard was the bone-chilling cries for help from a 6-year-old girl who had fallen through the ice.
The girl, identified by state police as Alexandra Ramsey, clung to the edge of the ice in a hole left where the ice had given way under her feet.
“It was pretty heart wrenching hearing her screaming,” Raymond said. “If she slipped under, it would have been a different situation. We didn’t have a whole lot of time.”
He tied the rope around his waist, handed the end to firefighters and started out on to the ice. Raymond, who said he didn’t have time to don a protective cold water suit but is trained in cold-water rescue, was within inches of the girl when the ice gave way under him. He said few thoughts of his own safety entered his mind. “The little girl is all that mattered,” he said.
Raymond grabbed the girl, and fellow firefighters yanked the two over the ice to safety.
You can read the full story and learn more about Denny Raymond HERE.
THE SUDBURY, ONTARIO, FIRE SERVICE REVEALED THIS WEEK that “disciplinary measures” will be forthcoming for several firefighters who put out an auto fire on Feb. 1 and left the scene without discovering the body of a 63-yr.-old man in the back seat. The victim’s family later discovered the body and called the fire marshal’s office.
The incident triggered an internal investigation and the results were summarized in a press release on Tuesday. Quoted from that release:
“The results of the internal investigation revealed that several procedures were not followed, which, if followed, could have prevented the victim’s family from making the discovery.
“Specifically, the investigation showed that fire cause determination and overhaul procedures were not properly followed, and also revealed an absence of appropriate supervision at the scene given the circumstances. Overhaul is the practice of searching a fire scene to ensure that no hidden sources of re-ignition exist.”
Investigations are still ongoing into the cause of the man’s death and the cause of the fire itself.
WHEN HURRICANE IKE RAVAGED THE EAST TEXAS coastline last September, one of the major hits was taken by the small town of Gilchrist.
As the storm was approaching, the members of the Gilchrist VFD/Rescue Department wisely removed their apparatus, a pumper, an ambulance and a brush truck, over to a chemical storage facility that offered the use. When it was all over, most of the town had been obliterated and the residents relocated far and wide. The firehouse was nothing but a concrete slab.
KFDM-TV
Five months later, the membership realized that the town would be unlikely to be rebuilt anytime soon and there are no residents to give service to. So this past weekend they voluntarily disbanded the 55-yr.-old fire department and donated their apparatus to other departments.
While the pumper and ambulance were in storage, the Hamshire VFD asked about buying them. The Gilchrist members decided to take their insurance settlement on the firehouse, pay off the notes on the trucks and gave them to Hamshire.
The pumper is only six years old and is worth $107,000. The ambulance is practically brand new valued at $89,000. The brush truck will be given to Galveston County.
The Beaumont Enterprise has all the details and the full STORY HERE.
A LARGE FIRE DESTROYED MOST OF A BANQUETING facility in suburban Chicago Thursday night. A lightning strike caused the blaze that brought over 100 firefighters to the 4-alarm fire that ended up with $1.5 million in damages.
WLS-TV
The Oak Meadows Golf Course facility was built in the 1920′s and is currently owned and operated by the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County. The Chicago Sun-Timesreports:
Firefighters were notified about smoke coming from a country club building about 7:55 p.m. and found saw heavy some coming from the west roof area of the main ballroom. The fire also spread to the building’s attic.
“It’s a pretty sizable building,” Fire Captain Roy Charvat said. “Lightning struck the roof [made of wood], and the fire spread quickly. Initial firefighting efforts were hampered by a lack water supply to the area, as well as a delayed call to the fire department, Charvat said.
The main ballroom contained several banquet halls and other smaller rooms. The buildings sustained heavy damage.
Update:
Fire photographer Larry Shapiro, who never misses smoke over northwest Chicago, has just added a photo gallery of this fire on his website HERE.
Posted by firegeezeron February 27, 2009 •
Filed under: fire
Update: video added, scroll down
Update #2: Link to the report added.
THE GLOUCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS, FIRE CHIEF BARRY McKAY announced his retirement yesterday (Thursday) just minutes after the city released the results of the investigation into the fire department’s actions during a fatal fire in December, 2007.
Firegeezer readers will recall the apartment fire that took place directly across the street from the Central fire station that killed one of the residents. We followed it extensively HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.
Boston Globe
Firefighters world-wide were taken aback when they learned that the victim was at his window, talking to people below when the aerial truck arrived with only the driver on board. Sickening photos and videos were then seen as the firefighter was seen attempting to teach a police officer on how to help him raise a ground ladder.
The report issued yesterday covers thoroughly the other problems within the FD that complicated the fire including the lack of inspections prior and the lack of effective command and control during the fire. The report says, in part:
“The lack of a command structure during the peak of the incident was an important factor in the final outcome. There was also a lack of leadership. The issue of leadership by the fire chief appears to have been an ongoing situation with the command staff and the officers in the department.”
Some highlights from the report as listed by the Daily Times:
“There was no formal incident command.”
“Companies were operating on the interior without adequate communications.”
“No safety officer was assigned or even found to be included in the operating procedures of the department.”
“Scene security was inadequate to nonexistent.”
“Interagency organization and the liaison to outside agencies was nonexistent …”
“Crews were operating unsafely above the fire floor without access to charged hose lines.”
“The Fire Department was unprepared to battle a fire of this size”; report also indicates that personnel had not been sufficiently trained.
“Since the incident, neither the fire chief nor the department had initiated any changes to the department’s standard operating procedures.”
Chief McKay has been on the department for 35 years, the past 26 years as chief.
Read the latest report on this development in the Gloucester Daily TimesHERE.
Update: Our friends at FireVideo.net sent along this raw video of the infamous upside-down ladder raise.
After clicking the Start button, wait 40 seconds before it starts running. The video runs for 14 minutes.
Firevideo.net are the distributors of the well-known “Helmet Cam” video device. CLICK HERE to learn more about it.
Update: Report available online
Dave Statter at STATter911 has acquired the 93-page After Action Report (AAR) and posted it online in .pdf format HERE.
Posted by firegeezeron February 27, 2009 •
Filed under: fire
The information revolution took a big step this week when more major newspapers drifted into their final days. Yesterday the owners of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver announced that today’s edition will be their last and the newspaper will shut down after 150 years of publication. They had already said a few weeks ago that they would have to close unless they could find a buyer to take over the paper. But none could be found.
Buyout success is not a story you find in the newspaper business these days. A multi-millionaire bought the Chicago Tribune family of papers two years ago and they have already filed Chap. 11 this past December. Besides the Tribune they publish the Los Angeles Times and the Baltimore Sun. The L. A. Times is particularly ready to topple right now. The Detroit newspapers said that they will stop printing for home delivery, restricting a limited print run for newsstands and similar downtown distribution, and putting everything else online.
Earlier this week the owners of the Philadelphia Enquirer and Philadelphia Daily News filed bankruptcy papers. At the beginning of this month the Seattle Post-Intelligencer said that they will shut down in March if they can’t find a buyer. There appears to be a big shortage of “buyers” these days.
The other day, Comcast cable co., which owns Newsday, the Long Island paper, wrote down 2/3 of their value off the books and said that they plan to start charging subscription fees to read their online edition. The only newspaper that has successfully gotten away with that move is the Wall Street Journal, but they have a unique niche of readers that are willing to pay for that service.
The New York Times has been trying to unload their ownership of the Boston Globe without success. The are in effect trying to give it away by tying it to the sale of their share of the Boston Red Sox. No takers. We could list literally dozens of other newspapers that are dying, but it’s not the point. They have lost their readers and, more importantly, lost their advertisers. Without ad revenue they starve. So where are the readers and advertisers going? You know as well as anybody that the readers are going online where the news is plentiful, selective and free. The advertisers are scattering all over the place, not just online. But they have the local newspaper plant in the rear-view mirror.
But sales are through the roof for the Kindle 2 where you can have many newspapers and magazines downloaded directly to your device. Changes are rolling in and some old-line publishers can’t see it. You are witness to an interesting upheaval in knowledge distribution.
But we still have to get this equipment checked out. So while you get started on that, I’ll go make the coffee.
THE SMALL FARM TOWN OF RINGLING, OKLAHOMA, is missing most of its town government today. At 1 am Tuesday morning Police Chief Jeremy Wilson sent out a radio message that he and the town’s entire 9-man reserve police force were resigning immediately.
Before the day was out, the mayor, the vice-mayor and the city attorney all quit too, and hit the bricks. The only people left are the three town council members who apparently are the cause of all the turmoil. The former police chief says that he was constantly being hassled by the council who were trying to find ways to fire him because he had “too many patrolmen on the street.”
The Tulsa World has the STORY HERE.
KAUZ-TV has more and a VIDEO.
IT’S ONLY BEEN ONE DAY SINCE A TEXAS man was found dead in a burned out house after the FD left the scene – 5 days later. STATter911 has the STORY HERE about the man’s family who came searching for him and found him laying in the rubble.
The record for “left body” didn’t hold up for long, though. A dead man in Gainesville, Florida, was left sitting upright in the front back seat of his car for 12 days. While he was a’mouldering there, the car was ticketed for a parking violation – 7 times.
“See? He’s right there!” Gainesville Sun photo
The first ticket was written on the day after the 42-yr.-old man was last seen alive. His death is not being considered suspicious, but the meter maids are going back to class for further training.
SINCE LAST SEPTEMBER WE HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING the story of the ambulance driver from the quaintly-named Cranberry Volunteer Ambulance Corps. On Sept. 23 Shanea Leigh Climo was driving the ambulance while drunk and blew through a red light, plowing into a car and killing both of the passengers. (See the Firegeezer update HEREfor the full story.)
In December she avoided trial by agreeing to a plea bargain with the District Attorney. Climo pleaded guilty to two counts of involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and drunken driving. Prosecutors dropped felony charges of vehicular homicide while driving drunk.
Yesterday (Wednesday) she was sentenced by the county court judge to 11-½ to 23 months in jail.
Climo’s attorney, Stephen Misko, said she has completed nursing school since the accident and plans on pursuing that career when she is released from jail. By pleading guilty to only misdemeanors, Mr. Misko said, she will be able to seek jobs that don’t automatically bar convicted felons.
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has this latest REPORT.
AFTER MORE THAN 20 YEARS OF DITHERING, the San Diego, California, city council voted to comply with the law that they enforce on everybody else and begin the process to retrofit City Hall with a sprinkler system.
San Diego City Hall
KGTV reports:
The motion by Councilwoman Marti Emerald directs the mayor’s office to seek bids from companies for the roughly $5 million project and to report back to the council June 1. It also calls for evacuation drills to be held at City Hall for the first time in about six years.
The 13-story building that houses the mayor, council members, city planners and financial staffers is the only tall building in the city without sprinklers. For more than 20 years, the City Council has delayed compliance with an ordinance that requires sprinklers in other high-rises.
San Diego’s fire chief and parade coordinator told the council that the building is relatively safe now because it has a fire alarm system and a standpipe. (Really…. she said that….ed.)
FIREFIGHTERS IN SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS, DIDN’T HAVE many opportunities to grab a sandwich yesterday. The city had four structure fires in a 22-hour period.
The first one came in at 2 am when the cook at the Two Eagles Restaurant left a pot unattended which led to a $150,000-loss fire. A police patrol spotted smoke coming from the building and the FD arrived to find the kitchen pretty well destroyed. The building’s sprinkler system had already doused most of the flames. The rest of the business suffered heavy smoke damage.
The second blaze was started maliciously when someone torched the front porch of a house that quickly involved the entire building and destroyed it. The family inside were still asleep at the time, but they managed to scramble and flee through the back door. The phone line had already burnt through when they discovered that the house was on fire, but a neighbor had already called in the alarm. The Springfield Arson and Bomb Squad is investigating that incident which endangered five residents.
Channel 3 has the story HERE.
Channel 22 has an on-scene video report:
Worker #3 came in at 11:15 am before they had picked up from the arson. A trash can outside a house started burning and it spread to the home itself causing $25,000 in damage. That fire is not considered to be suspicious, but investigators are trying to determine what was in the trash that led to the possible self-ignition.
WWLP Ch. 22
The workday finished up last night at 10:30 pm when an unattended curling iron in an apartment started a fire that caused $20,000 damage and left the apartment unit uninhabitable.
Today’s shift is no doubt getting some good practice with the hose washer.
Posted by firegeezeron February 26, 2009 •
Filed under: fire
Have you been reading about Amazon.com’s new gadget called Kindle 2? It’s hard to have missed hearing the name over the past couple of weeks. It is an electronic book device that stores complete books, magazines, etc. and you can read them on the 6-inch screen that is on the face of the housing.
Amazon is the owner/operator of the Kindle operation and they are also the sole distributor of the device. But for all the work and development that they have put into it, they certainly deserve to keep the exclusivity of it. What makes it so practical is the downloading feature that allows you to pick almost any book that you want to read from Amazon’s catalog and it downloads wirelessly over a cellphone network in 60 seconds or less. Since the monitor on it is approx. the same size as a paperbook page, reading it is not a problem. Personally, I am amazed at the compact size of it. The Kindle 2 is less than ½-inch thick, yet the chip will store 1,500 books.
They don’t charge you for the Sprint wireless service to download the books. I presume that cost is folded into the sales price which is less than $10 per book. The battery is supposed to last for more than two days of active use before it needs recharging. You can read Amazon’s full description of it HERE. So far, they have more than 1/4-million books available for downloading and they are providing another interesting option. For a subscription fee they will automatically download daily newspapers or magazines that you choose to pay for. So instead of waiting for the latest issue of Model Railoader to arrive in your mailbox with the cover half-torn off, it will be automatically sent to your Kindle for easy reading wherever you are.
Why, they are even offering Blog postings on there, too. Over 1,000 blogs are available so far. But again, they are charging a modest subscription fee for them. But you can at least check your favorites without having to go online. I wonder if anybody would be willing to pay to read Firegeezer? Hmmm, it’s doubtful.
The biggest drawback so far is the price of the thing. They are currently selling it for $359 (free shipping). Chances are the price will drift downward after the intial early-buyers rush is over. I’m going to wait, that’s for sure. I do a lot of reading, but I can carry the paperback around ok for now. But for somebody who travels frequently this would be a very handy device, I think. If any GeezerReaders have the Kindle 2 now, please write in and tell us your thoughts and experience with it. We’d like to hear from you.
Here’s Amazon’s video pitch for the Kindle 2:
While we’re waiting for the next download, let’s get this equipment checked out. I need some more coffee.
This is the next in a series of occasional articles about how some fire and rescue departments are using Twitter to enhance their operations. To read previous articles, click on the Twitter category in the right sidebar.
Today’s topic covers how an emergency management agency used the Twitter-related program TweetGrid to help manage an information flow during a major event. First, let’s get introduced to TweetGrid.
TweetGrid is a method to monitor several Twitter categories simultaneously. You can set up a page of columns each dedicated to a specific topic or category that you want to follow in live-time. Start by going to the website http://tweetgrid.com/ and opening it up. You will get a homepage that looks like this:
Take a few minutes to explore the How To and FAQ pages along with the Search. The How To has several video tutorials to get you learn how to operate it. You get your choice of how many columns you want to create and how they will be laid out.
As a sample I set up a 3-column X 1-deep page and picked out three topics to follow, fire, plane and ambulance. I picked “plane” because this is the day of the Amsterdam plane crash.
What makes this so different from following Tweets on your own Twitter page is that with TweetGrid you follow ALL Twitter pages in the universe that are posted with your key words or hash tags that you can also enter. This is a very dynamic page, as you’ll see when you try it out.
A “plus” for TweetGrid is that you DO NOT need to have a Twitter account to use it. So anybody can set one up anywhere, anytime, on any computer.
A good example of how it can be used in emergency operations was utilized last month at the Presidential Inauguration in Washington, D. C., a Maryland state agency set up an operations center to monitor all traffic and emergency situations. One of their operators kindly wrote out for Firegeezer what they did:
We activated a departmental operations center during the Presidential Inauguration and monitored a lot of traditional media outlets, such as cable news networks, local coverage, and our own public safety radio systems. This also included WebEOC, the Capital Region’s standard program for online incident management.
But we also monitored nontraditional media sources using Google Alerts (looking for keywords that would impact our agency’s ability to provide service) and Twitter. Specifically, we used a program called TweetGrid, which allows users to comb through Twitter feeds on a real-time basis, searching for specific events or topics. We tracked a number of search phrases having to do with the inauguration.
While most of it was chatter, there were a couple notable success stories. Most memorable was the incident where a woman fell into the subway tracks during the crush of Inauguration commuters. While most other agencies knew about the incident within fifteen minutes, we were tracking the right Twitter search phrases and literally found out within seconds.
Fortunately, the inauguration went very well, and we had no major incidents to test out our reliance on TweetGrid. But it was invaluable in determining crowd movements, the mood of people on the ground, and gaining a holistic situational awareness that we never could have had in the past.
Notice that phrase situational awareness that also came up last week in our coverage (HERE) of the Hurricane Ike Twitter setup by the Baytown FD. This is obviously one of the early trends in using Twitter for dispatch and communications operations.
If anybody else has started using Twitter in your operations, please tell us what you are doing with it.
THE MINNESOTA STATE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR AND INDUSTRY has apparently knuckled under to the builders’ lobbies and announced Monday that they will not be adopting the mandatory home sprinkler code this year.
The International Residential Code (IRC) that was ironically adopted in Minneapolis last fall, calls for the home sprinkler construction for all new homes built after Jan. 1, 2011.
“Given the drastic slowdown of the construction economy, we feel it is not the appropriate time to be updating regulations,” Steve Hernick, state building official, and Jerry Rosendahl, state fire marshal, said in the Department of Labor and Industry announcement.
Monte Mraz, Builders Association of Minnesota president told the Bemidji Pioneer Tuesday that there would be a “… significant burden adopting a new building code would place on both homeowners and builders at this time…. We are confident that the existing residential building code will continue to protect homeowners.,” Mraz said. “What we have now works; there will be no harm to citizens by the delay.”
By not adopting the 2009 ammendments, Minnesota will not be requiring home sprinklers for at least five years, if ever.
The state building official and fire marshal went on to list four reasons for not adopting the life-saving upgrades, one of which was the cost of printing new code books. The other three reasons are just as laughable and you can read them all in the story from the Bemidji PioneerHERE.
Firegeezer adds: This sellout of the Minnesota citizens’ life safety will not only contribute to more increases in property loss, but also adds more endangerment to firefighters’ lives as additional buildings go up utilizing the so-called lightweight construction methods. But the state building officer and the fire marshal have succeeded in helping to preserve a smidgeon of the homebuilders’ profits.
A TURKISH AIRLINES PASSENGER PLANE crashed this morning near the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, Holland. The Boeing 737-800 was carrying 127 passengers and a crew of 7 when it went down while approaching the landing strip after flying from Istanbul.
Eyewitnesses say that they saw an engine fall off the plane when it was at about 6,000 ft. altitude. Surviving passengers say that it felt like the plane had “hit a ditch” and then it fell very quickly and landed in a field where it broke into three pieces. The fortunate combination of breaking apart and no fire ignition probably led to the high number of survivors who were able to evacuate through the openings between the sections.
Getty Images
At the time of this writing it has been reported that there were nine dead and at least 50 injured.
In terms of passenger numbers, Schipol is the fifth biggest airport in Europe behind London, Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid.
This early video is provided by the UK Telegraph:
Check back here for updates as more information is released.
Reuters
Reuters
This spur-of-the-moment video made by a passerby caught a police car wrecking while responding to the scene. (It looks like the police are upset with the van for doing the right thing and pulling over to the right.)
Update, 10:15 pm:
Current casualty toll is 9 dead, 80+ injured, with 6 critical and another 27 listed as serious. Three of the dead were the cockpit crew.
The “black boxes” were succesfully retrieved.
Several witnesses and passengers said that the plane came in with the tail down, nose up and the tail clipped the edge of the highway before skidding off into the field. There are still some reports that one or both engines had come off the plane before it hit land.
AFP
This video report shows an aerial view of the wreckage, the debris field and the triage areas at work:
THAT’S WHAT THE FORT WAYNE, INDIANA, FIRE CHIEF is giving as one of his reasons for not dispatching nearby volunteer fire companies to city alarms.
Dave Statter at STATter911 has been following this story since January 23 when a multi-alarm fire in a Fort Wayne apartment building exposed the FD’s dispatch practice of ignoring non-city stations. The fire in question was literally just yards away from a volunteer firehouse, yet even though there were three alarms struck, the station was never dispatched.
Read the STATter911 stories HERE and HERE. The first one has a good aerial view showing the location of the ignored firehouse in relation to the fire scene.
Initially, the chief advanced some plausible reasons for the practice, but yesterday he got some head-scratching going when he told a WANE-TV reporter that “There is a danger in sending too many people, sometimes…”
Watch this controversial interview here:
Firegeezer wonders: Will today’s budget-cutters now start claiming that reducing staffing levels is actually a safety measure?
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