One of the sad facts of life is that every state legislature has its share of corrupt politicians who are always working in favor of their wallet and against the public’s interest.  These sleazy legislators got into the game because it can be so lucrative when you play your chits right.  And one of the ways that they earn their cash-filled envelopes is to slip a paragraph or two into a long, wordy bill that is unrelated to the subject that they’re pushing and rely on nobody catching these few innocuous words while skimming through the proposed law.

That is the tack being taken now by the various home builders’ lobbying groups as a way to subvert the recently-enacted code changes that call for new homes to be built with sprinkler systems in them.  These underhanded clauses are being inserted into large re-writes or upgraded regulations that normally sail through the legislatures without scrutiny once they’ve left the committees where they’re (supposedly) debated.  And those committees are where the builders concentrate their largesse and Caribbean vacations.

Rather than making a conspicuous attempt to simply eliminate the code change, which would be easily spotted by anybody watching for such a stunt, they are inserting language that makes the installation of home sprinklers an option for the home buyer.  In other words, “Let the homeowner choose how much protection he wants in his own house.  We’ll be glad to install sprinklers if they want them.”  Of course, that is a lot of nonsense and in effect it will kill the purpose of the code entirely.  Stop and think for a moment.  Just how many, what percentage of homeowners buy their house before it is built?  Very, very few.  When a new housing development goes up, the builder normally puts up several houses at a time and then has them available for purchase as people are ready to make their move.  Furthermore, if somebody in the future is conscientiously seeking an older house that is sprinklered, they will never have a reasonable number of choices on where to live.

The intent of this type of legislative maneuvering is exposed as a sham simply by their practice of hiding the firefighter-killing clause deep in an unrelated bill where the true merits of it will never be debated.  That is what’s going on right now in both Texas and Missouri.  The Texas governor already has on his desk a bill to either sign or veto that revises and expands basic plumbing regulations for the state.  And buried in the middle of it is the firefighter-killer.

In Missouri the sleaze-balls there inserted the covert bomb in a catch-all bill that revises several statutes related to real estate sales licenses.  These types of bills are seldom vetoed because the governors tend to give the legislatures the benefit of the doubt that they have effectively debated and refined these bills and the finished product is what the people’s representatives want.

I’ve been saying it over and over, and I’ll say it again.  The firefighters themselves, and organizations such as the IAFF and IAFC, have to get out there and educate the public about why everybody needs these home sprinklers in these dwellings that are now being made out of wood chips and glue and toxic Chinese drywall.

But right now we have to get out there and check out this equipment.  You know what I’ll be doing.  And meanwhile, the Morning Lineup videos keep a’comin’:

Well, that didn’t take long.  We wrapped up yesterday’s Lineup with a discussion on using YouTube as a training resource with me asking, Hey, has anybody posted a video on checking out the equipment?  It wasn’t long before Chief Billy Goldfeder, who I swear has catalogued and cross-referenced every YouTube video related even remotely to Fire/Rescue/EMS (and don’t get him started on house sirens), sent me this video clip titled GFD Station 3 truck checks:

Granted, it isn’t quite ready for in-station training, but it’s a start.

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Yesterday we posted a photo story on a 2-alarm fire in the Chicago area that started in a dollar store-type business.  This particular one was a Family Dollar Store facility.  But I got to thinking later on that there have been a LOT of fires in dollar stores lately.  Not all of them have been covered on this site because we don’t post all the hundreds of fires that occur every day.  But I have posted some and lately have been reading quite a few write-ups on them.  More than is expected for a narrowly-defined occupancy like that.  And then thinking back some more, I recalled a multi-alarm fire last year (also in Chicago) that destroyed a huge warehouse  that supplied discount goods for dollar stores.

Now pardon me, but I don’t want to sound like some looney conspiracy theorist.  However, you have to keep in mind that the dollar stores are not only expanding exponentially in the nation, but sales are skyrocketing right now as well.  Where there’s fast money and plenty of it, you’ll find organized crime right around the corner.  I don’t know if there’s a battle going on for control of the distribution lines, or if it’s just an amazing coincidence that these places are bursting into working fires suddenly all across the country.

But if I had a dollar store in my 1st due (and who doesn’t these days?), I sure would be out there doing some pre-planning.  Just in case, you know.

And it all begins with checking out our equipment, so let’s get started.  I’ll go run another pot of coffee.  (Does anybody know where we bought that stuff?)

I think I mentioned last week how it’s interesting that news items seem to sort out into batches by topic.  Suddenly there will be lots of happenings involving air ambulances, etc.  Yesterday it was fire and rescue-related crime stories.  I noticed as I was selecting things to post about that there was a lot of that going on and I actually left a bunch of them off the site.  I just didn’t have time to delve into the many misbehaving firefighters and ambulance thieves that showed up on Monday and Tuesday.

Last week the animal kingdom was keeping the fire and rescue agencies busy and recording some of their strangest incidents.  That was fun for a couple of days until the judge reconvened night court again.  We did get to wrap up one of last week’s animal stories, though, when some N. Y. highway workers found that poor wallaroo who just wanted to be free instead of on the freeway where they found his carcass.

There was one animal story from last week that I sure would have liked to tell you about but couldn’t quite fit into any of our topics.  And it also blended right in with yesterday’s Crime theme.  It was THIS STORY about the upstate New York sheriff deputies that were engaged in a vehicle pursuit of a horse and buggy.  I’m sure it’s not very often that they get to write  a traffic ticket for “overdriving an animal.”

And now for something completely different.  Yesterday we posted a training topic about a shoulder-load variation for high-rise packs that apparently was developed for forestry use.  Talk about disparate functions!  And it has triggered some interesting comments as well as perhaps encouraged some people to turn it into an engine-bay drill to learn from.

What fascinated me was the origin of this story.  It was a group of firefighters who were scanning YouTube for some training tips.  That’s right, YouTube has now become a viable training resource for the fire and rescue community.  Thinking back, we even used it to find some samples of that new ambulance/police car siren that is now coming into usage.  And I recall last year when one of our German readers told me that he regularly checks out the YouTube channel for a fire dept. in South Dakota that actively uses it to share some evolutions.

Several fire departments have been using YouTube to park their training videos that used to be sent around to the stations on cassettes to be viewed but are now always available to be watched whenever it’s convenient.  What I like best about it is the instantaneous sharing aspect of the service.  An FD that posts a routine evolution for, say, catching a hydrant, can also see how some other FD’s in other parts of the country do the same thing.  By seeing what others are doing and adapting their practices to your own unique needs makes everybody get better at what they do.

A while back FossilMedic proposed (HERE and HERE) that every department should be creating the position of Internet Intelligence Officer (I.I.O.) to monitor the internet in the command post during major operations.  The I.I.O. has recently taken on the responsibility for Twittering during large-scale events and disasters as well.  But in between the “big ones”, your department’s I.I.O. could be scanning the internet for training tips, too.

Last month YouTube announced (HERE) that users are uploading 20 hours of video per minute onto their servers.  Wow!  There’s bound to be a few minutes of FRD stuff every hour or so.  It’s time for your dept. to appoint an I.I.O. soon, don’t you agree?  If you or your company are currently mining YouTube for training tips (real training, not response videos), would you please drop me an email and tell me what and how you’re doing it ?  Thanks.

Hey, has anybody posted a video on checking out the equipment?  Well, fire up the videocam and let’s get started.   I’ll go make the coffee.

My befuddled brain is slow getting into gear this morning.  I can see and walk and function ok, but my creative-thinking process hasn’t started processing yet.  Sometimes I have a topic already selected for the Lineup (but not today) and other times I just face up to the keyboard and see what lands there.  That’s not working today, either.

I don’t know if it’s the apparently violent thunderstorm that’s closing in on Firegeezer HQ and threatening a sudden internet shutdown, or this aching tooth that will be requiring an appointment with the dentist pretty soon, but I’m looking for a way to keep this short.  I’ve got a couple of good Twitter topics that I want to write about, so I’ll get started on one of those just as soon as I take my trip around the fire web and report back.  And I’ve got some good stories that arrived by email overnight that I want to share with you.

Tell you what we’ll do.  While you’re getting the equipment checked out, I’ll go make some more much-needed coffee and then I’ll turn the Lineup over to you.  Use the Comments as an open forum and mention anything fire/ems-related that you want to talk about.  See you in the day room.

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