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Changing the Expectation
Yeah, the Chrysler 200 is not an uber-car.
But the message from this commercial, first shown last night, is strong.
How can we use this technique to change the discussions about career firefighters?
What phrase can replace “This is the Motor City, and this is what we do” ?
Who should be our spokesperson?
Mike “FossilMedic” Ward
Rural/Metro Ambulance Was on Non-Emergency Transport
Update, Tuesday am: Amb. driver ticketed. Scroll down.
AN AMBULANCE TRANSPORTING a Rochester, New York, nursing home resident to a hospital was struck broadside Sunday afternoon resulting in fatal injuries to the 82-yr.-old patient.
Democrat & Chronicle photo
The Rural/Metro ambulance was on a non-emergency transfer and was making a left-turn when a car coming the opposite direction slammed into the side of the ambulance. Both of the medics were transported and the two people in the car, ages 84 and 92, were seriously injured.
WHAM-TV Ch. 13 provided this video report from the scene:
Police have not yet determined which vehicle had the right-of-way.
The Democrat & Chronicle has MORE.
Update, Tuesday am:
The driver of the ambulance has been ticketed for failure to yield the right-of-way leading to the fatal crash on Sunday.
WHAM-TV Ch. 13 reports:
Brighton Police have charged a Rural Metro ambulance driver after a fatal crash Sunday. Police say Melissa Onderdonk, 43, turned in front of a car, causing the crash. She has been ticketed for failure to yield the right of way.
The accident killed Erwin Leonard, 82, who was a patient in the ambulance.
Monday evening Rural Metro released the following statement:
“Rural/Metro Medical Services deeply regrets the loss of life from yesterday’s accident. We are cooperating fully with the investigation by the Brighton Police Department and New York State Police. Rural/Metro Medical Services is conducting an internal inquiry as well, which will include a full review of applicable company policies and the procedures used in this case.
While the investigation continues, our ambulance crew members involved continue to recover from their injuries. Both crew members are dedicated professional first responders with many years of combined experience serving the public. Melissa and Dennis obviously have been personally affected by this tragedy along with our entire EMS staff.”
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Is directly resolving issues more effective that accepting a compromise you know is flawed?
We should have seen it coming.
You must read Hello, Fire Chief? I want to complain… to see what happened.
I thought the response from the acting captain was brilliant!
Chicago: every misconduct case goes to court
In a related note, Governing magazine reports on the results of a change in handling police misconduct complaints. The city no longer settles out-of-court, takes every complaint to trial.
Heather Kerrigan, writing Chicago’s Police Misconduct Cases Go to Court: To cut costs and save face, all of Chicago’s police misconduct cases are going to trial instead of settling out of court in the February 2011 issue describes the start:
(Chicago Superintendent of Police Jody Weis, writing in July 2009:)
“I have asked the Department of Law to litigate those cases which would have been settled [as] a matter of financial concern,” Weis wrote. “If plaintiffs know their complaint will in fact be litigated, more focus and concern will be given to the factual validity of the complaints signed.”
In other words, if plaintiffs knew they’d have to go before a jury, they’d be less likely to file frivolous misconduct cases. Plaintiff attorneys knew the city’s reputation for settling out of court, and the Police Department thought the lawyers had come to view misconduct cases as easy wins.
Due to existing workload, this change in policy requires the issuing of contracts to private attorneys. The details are in the article.
The results should make us consider our policies on lawsuits:
In the first year after the city began taking every case to court, the number of federal civil rights cases filed against police officers dropped by almost 50 percent. In addition, cases brought against officers are being voluntarily dismissed at higher rates. In 2009, about 18 percent of plaintiffs voluntarily dropped their case. By October 2010, nearly 46 percent of plaintiffs dropped their case. The Department of Law told the city that the results are “nothing short of astonishing.”
Even when the city takes a case to trial, it’s still paying less money than it had when it settled out of court. In 2010, the city was projected to pay approximately $1.7 million in case settlements. In 2008, it was $9 million. Farming out every single case to private counsel would still cost only about $5 million per year in flat fees and bonuses, so the city comes out ahead.
Law enforcement deals with a significantly larger workload of “misconduct” lawsuits. Their return on investment will be higher than fire.
Being a big city with passionate people, I am sure Second City Cop will have a different take on this issue. We have requested a response.
Mike “FossilMedic” Ward
Rio’s Carnival Props Warehouses Destroyed
A FIRE SWEPT THROUGH THE DISTRICT known as “Samba City” in Rio de Janiero Monday morning, destroying a large portion of the warehouses where the floats, costumes and props for the city’s famous Carnival parade are stored.
Reuters
Just one month away from the renowned Mardi Gras street party and parade that the city is noted for, a fire started in an upstairs classroom (according to early speculation) and spread quickly through the complex of parade-related float and prop designer/builders.
While the firefighters were battling the spreading blaze, workers were pulling floats out of the storage barns along with as many costumes that they could manage in attempts to salvage what they could.
AP photos
“It’s an unimaginable loss,” Jorge Castanheira, the president of Carnival organizing body Liesa, told Globo News.
At the time of this posting the fire is under control, but the full extent of the destruction is not yet known. At least four of the warehouses have been completely burned out and there may be more.
AP
Along with the float construction operations and prop storage, the buildings house the samba schools where the dance routines are taught for the famous Carnival show.
CNN has an early report HERE.
ABC News (Australia) has MORE.
Globo News (Rio de Janiero) has the story HERE (Portugese).
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Monday Morning Lineup
Everyone knows that the human brain is an amazing thing. It processes information instantly and makes decisions just like a computer. In fact, it IS a computer, and the more we common simpletons become familiar with how our electronic computers work, the better we understand what’s going on inside the “little gray cells.”
Occasionally we hear about someone who was born with a rare gift of being able to process complicated mathematical calculations in their head and spit out the solution in a matter of seconds. You can’t learn how to do something like that, it’s just the way your brain cells and connections were laid out in your physical formation. I remember back when I was a teenager seeing someone on television who could instantly give you the square root of any number you tossed at him. This was particularly impressive once you learned how to use paper and pencil to calculate square roots and ending up with a half-sheet of long-division doodles leading up to your solution ten minutes later. This guy could do it in a nano-second without even writing it down.
Mohan Srivastava
What reminded me about these math wizards was an article I read last week about a statistician in Toronto who by chance discovered that he could look at a scratch-off lottery ticket and tell if it was a winner or a loser without scratching off any of the numbers. He tried to be a good guy and wrote to the Ontario Lottery security officials and told them how he did it so that they might correct their game, but he was ignored. So he bought 20 scratch tickets, sorted them into two piles marked “winners” and “losers” and mailed them to the higher uppity-ups of the lottery commission. The next day, after they saw that he had a 90% success rate, they pulled the game.
Mohan Srivastava is the statistician who spotted the vulnerability of the tickets and was concerned that perhaps a few people throughout Canada and the U. S. were using the same ability to spot weaknesses in lottery schemes to earn a living off of the trick. A new look at how payoffs are being awarded in several U. S. states showed that may well be the case and in Massachusetts the authorities uncovered an operation by organized crime that was collecting literally millions of dollars by gaming the scratch-offs.
WIRED.com had an extensive interview with Srivastava that they have published along with a visual display on how the scam works. If you are curious to learn more about this trick and what is going on with it these days, CLICK HERE to read the entire article.
And then click on over to the equipment check sheets and get started with those while I go make some more coffee. See you back in the day room.
Pleads Guilty to Theft From FD
THE FORMER CHIEF OF THE CLAYTON, NEW JERSEY, Volunteer Fire Department was sentenced Friday to serve three years in the state prison after a plea-bargained admission to official misconduct. Harry Simpson, 45, was chief of the all-volunteer department in 2006 when he stole more than $11,000 from his own department. In May of last year Firegeezer reported on his arrest:
The prosecutor’s office said the funds had been obtained by the department through a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant awarded in 2004. When Clayton applied for a second FEMA grant in 2008, it was discovered that the first one had not been closed out and a follow-up audit was performed.
Irregularities were discovered, and a subsequent investigation was conducted that uncovered the discrepancy.
In addition to the prison term, he is required to pay $11,900 restitution to the fire department.
He can renew an old acquaintance while he is in prison. Clayton’s former police chief is already in there serving a 7-year term for embezzling $180,000 from the local Mothers Against Drunk Driving committee and another $1,000 from the police flashlight fund.
The Courier-Post has more in this latest STORY.
Season One, Episode 6
Nurses Wild
Sparks fly between Johnny and a nurse. Dr. Morton assumes an unconscious hippie is on drugs.
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Tankers Loaded With Ethanol Burning and Exploding
Updated, 7:30 pm. Scroll down.
A NORFOLK SOUTHERN FREIGHT TRAIN hauling 60 tank cars derailed Sunday morning near Arcadia, Ohio. The wreck threw 18 to 20 cars, each carrying 18,000 gallons of ethanol, off the track and started a spectacular fire that led to several violent explosions.
Findlay Courier
Fortunately the accident occurred in a rural area and only about 20 homes had to be evacuated while the incident plays out. The fire departments on the scene are allowing the fires to burn themselves out while they standby on the perimeter with extra foam supplies being brought in as a precaution. The 100+ firefighters are also building dikes in nearby streams to contain any potential runoff.
At daybreak this morning most of the fires were out and railroad crews were attempting to separate the derailed cars from the rest of the train so that the remaining tank cars can be removed from the site. Small fires and hot hazards are expected to remain for several more hours yet.
The Associated Press filed this video summary of the incident:
The Toledo Blade has the early REPORT.
Update, 7:30 pm:
WTVG-TV Ch. 13 is reporting this evening:
Norfolk Southern says the train was headed from Chicago to North Carolina on an east-west line when it derailed at 2:20am today. All 62 cars on the train were carrying ethanol. Emergency officials say the cars that derailed carried 320,000 gallons of ethanol.The burning cars were separated from the other cars on the train but continued to burn for hours after the derailment. Authorities say they will be on scene into Sunday night.
As of 2 pm Eastern this afternoon some of the railcars were still burning.
Currently the cause of the derailement is still unknown.
Dozen Trapped in Old-Age Pensioners Apartment
A LATE-MORNING FIRE IN AN APARTMENT BUILDING of Saint Laurent du Var,France, seriously injured one woman and trapped 12 other residents in their apartments.
The fire started around 11 am in a 3rd-floor unit of the 5-story building and brought more than 50 firefighters from eight departments to the scene where the fire was starting to spread beyond the place of origin. Twelve elderly and infirm people were trapped in their apartments and required the assistance of the firefighters to escape with six of them being taken out with a tower ladder.
The tenant of the unit where the fire started was rescued by the firefighters and transported to the hospital in grave condition. The extreme heat in the hallways presented a challenge for the firefighters to carry the victims out of the building.
This video filed by Nice Matin shows one of the tower-ladder rescues:
There hasn’t yet been a cause for the fire given.
The SDIS 06 (fire department) reports on its WEBSITE.
Nice-Matin has more HERE.
SDIS 06 also has a photo gallery HERE.
Job finished!
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Sunday Morning Lineup
Recently there was an article on AOL’s Money & Finance webpage that was headlined, “10 American Companies That Will Disappear in 2011.” Stories like that catch my eye because I have always been interested in retail and commerece activity including advertising. The failure of long-established and/or large businesses is nothing new, and is a normal event in the constant change and renewal of commercial businesses. It is competition that compels business to improve their product along with keeping up with the evolution of everyday demands from the public. The New York Central Railroad didn’t. Neither did Gimbel’s famed department stores. Anybody seen a Philco television set lately?
In the past year or so we have witnessed the disappearance of Circuit City, Pontiac automobiles, and relative newcomers like Linens ‘n’ Things. Right now we’re watching the slow death by asphyxiation of Blockbuster Video and the classic auto brand of Jaguar.
This ARTICLE that I’m referring to today has a couple of surprises in it. Surprises for me, anyway, because I don’t study corporate activity and financial reports like that. A couple that do NOT suprise me are Saab automobiles and Frontier Airlines. Gateway computers was surprising only because I had completely forgotten about them. And Borders Books is universally written off, in fact they are literally in their last days.
Going …. Going …..
But I was startled to see Office Depot and Sara Lee foods on the death-watch list. I am distraught over Office Depot’s probable demise because I do a lot of business with them. They are one of my favorite places to browse and buy “stuff.” But reading this article’s description of the reasons they are in difficulty makes sense. If I haven’t bored you yet with this topic, CLICK HERE to read the full story.
But first we have to get this equipment checked out, so let’s get started while I go make some more coffee. See you back in the kitchen for Sunday breakfast in just a little while.
Obscure Cellphone Company Shows How to Do It.
IN RECENT YEARS THERE HAVE BEEN several instances where small-town citizens have started complaining about those pesky fire sirens making those horrible noises whenever one of their neighbors has an emergency and needs help. And when the local VFD builds a new firehouse in a different location, a war breaks out when they start constructing a tower for the house siren. Getting the Yuppies’ permission to erect a tower for your siren is a difficult struggle at best.
But fear not, a possible solution may have been discovered by an upstart cellphone company called NextG Networks. Their game plan came to light last week in Mt. Sinai, New York (Long Island), when the Demarco family came home one evening and found a 40-ft. metal pole sticking out of their front yard. They soon learned that within a few days there would be a platform placed on the top with an array of cellphone equipment on it.
Apparently NextG had applied for a permit to erect their mini-tower, but the town of Brookhaven had not approved it. So, going on the presumption that since the permit was never denied, then it would be ok to build it, up it went.
Watch WABC-TV’s video report on what happened next:
Read the story on WABC’s webpage HERE.
Firegeezer asks you: Is there any sweeter sound than this? ….
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iPad Leads Rescuers to Man Buried in Snow Drift
GUTHRIE, OKLAHOMA, FIREFIGHTERS WERE ABLE TO SAVE an elderly man who had fallen into a snow drift Thursday thanks to the fire chief’s iPad tablet.
KOCO-TV image
The 80-yr.-old man had fallen in a farm pasture and his care-giver was unable to get out to him. She called 9-1-1 and an ambulance was dispatched. But the rescue unit became stuck in the snow themselves and radioed back for help. KOCO-TV continues the story:
Fire Chief Lester Branch headed out with his iPad and guided the ambulance crew through a map application.
Branch asked the ambulance team to find a particular road sign. “From that point, we could give them exact directions and follow this trail,” he said. The ambulance crews were able to find and rescue the elderly man.
“I think we all agree the use of the iPad was a huge tool in doing that,” said Branch.
Watch KOCO-TV’s video report on this quick-thinking solution that saved a life:
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Testing Fire Behavior on Subway Tunnel Linings in Italy
ON FEBRUARY 1 THE FIRST OF FOUR FIRE BEHAVIOR tests was held near Rome, Italy, to test two types of proposed liners designed for use in subway tunnels in Rome. The testing is a joint program involving the Ministry of Interior – Department of Fire Brigade (Vigili del Fuoco), Public Aid and Civil Defense with the Company Srl Rome Metro.
photos via Vigili del Fuoco
The tests have as a primary purpose the study of the behavior of the fire tunnel linings, which are prefabricated castings, produced by adopting different concrete mixes that include metal and fiber reinforced polypropylene and conglomerates with particular properties of fire resistance or fire protective coatings. Initially they are running two tests designed to make the comparison between the effects on blocks of concrete without fibers, a real fire created by a pool of hydrocarbons (heptane), and a subsequent fire with an oil burner.
A further objective of the tests, of particular interest to the fire department, is to create a fire in the tunnel and make measurements of the important parameters such as burn rate, gas velocity and temperature profiles.
These photos were taken during the first day of testing on February 1. The second test day was scheduled for yesterday, February 4. Two more test sessions will be conducted on February 23 and 24. Following that, a report will be released with the initial findings of the tests.
The Vigili del Fuoco has the story HERE.
They also have posted a photo gallery HERE and HERE.
Photos via Vigili del Fuoco
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Stubborn Apartment Fire Burns For Eight Hours
A FIRE IN A 47-UNIT APARTMENT BUILDING in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has destroyed the entire building and kept more than 75 firefighters busy well into Friday night.
The fire was first discovered around 2:30 pm by a tenant who went into the basement laundry room and saw a fire burning behind one of the washer or dryer machines. A rapid hue and cry from the tenants that were in the building at the time was instrumental in getting everyone out of the building safely.
As the Albuquerque firefighters were working inside the fire, four of them fell through the 2nd-story floor onto the first-floor level below causing two of them to be injured and requiring transport. At about the same time, 40 minutes after they arrived, the roof started collapsing and all FF’s were pulled out of the building. Soon the southwest corner wall collapsed.
Albuquerque Journal photo catches the corner wall collapse.
The fire was extinguished about eight hours later, according to news reports from the scene, and many of the units remained on the scene throughout the night working the hot spots.
KRQE-TV Ch. 13 filed this video report:
Firefighters hurt as apartments burn: kasa.com
The Albuquerque Journal has MORE.
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Saturday Morning Lineup
Ok, can we start listening to the groundhog now? You know, the little rodent who told us that we will have an early Spring this year. Just as he was flicking his whiskers in the shadows, record-setting blizzards were sweeping across the northern-third of the country and another wintry system was attacking the southern-third, dumping snow and ice on Dallas and leaving unheard-of cold temperatures in the southwest desert. You know where Tucson is …. just a few miles north of the Mexican border. For two successive nights the temperature dropped below 20º F. and that is strange.
In my corner of the globe it’s supposed to become mild today and for a while we will have some fair weather (for February) up in the 50′s. But then it all ends on Wednesday when Jack Frost brings some snow and the temps. drop back down to the 20′s. And Thursday night, if the weather guru’s are to be believed, it will go down to 10º. YACKKK!!! Can’t we start listening to the groundhog now?
Alright …. chin-up now and let’s get this equipment checked out. I’m going to get some more coffee started and check the supply to make sure we have enough to get through this next round of unpleasantness that Mother Nature is determined to send us.
“Park & Ride” (Eagle-Tribune photo)
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Keep them coming
I guzzle diet sodas. It irritates wait staff that the glass is empty by time they enter the food order.
The older guys working at an all-night diner where I am a regular have two glasses ready when I sit down.
This guzzling is a remaining behavior from a long-ago habit.
The Challenger shuttle disaster is an annual reminder of a personal crisis decision point.
White-knuckling an urge
Spent weeks attempting to reign in the uncontrollable … could never predict how much I would drink once I started.
When off-duty I often needed 3-4 drinks in order to go to sleep. Would follow the nightcap with a 20 oz sports drink/acetaminophen bolus.
I was trying to go more than two consecutive days without drinking. January 28, 1986, would have been day three. The first three-day dry spell in years. It did not happen.
The last close call
I thought I separated drinking from the job. Until an off-duty response to a greater alarm fire while hammered resulted in a terrifying realization that I could lose my job.
That started the unsuccessful effort to reign in the drinking … and then to visit the Employee Assistance Program to ask for help the day after the Challenger disaster.
I entered an outpatient rehabilitation program 25 years ago tonight. I was angry and uncertain.
Just cause you are sober does not make you “all right”
Up to 90% of alcoholics have at least one relapse in the first four years after treatment. It could be from a behavioral, cognitive or biochemical factor.
I have maintained sobriety for a quarter-century. Doing Job 1 every day.
That was the easy part.
Still have behaviors and thinking that are addictive and destructive. They remain resistant to lasting change.
So much for the “Anonymous” in AA
Alcoholics Anonymous, is the 12-step spiritual self-help program that remains a force in treating a variety of addictive behaviors. Estimate about two million members.
I don’t think Bill Wilson or Dr. Bob Smith ever envisioned a society as tolerant and open about addiction as we are now. There was a lot of shame associated with alcoholics in 1935.
Rescue Me and alcohol
Alcoholism is a frequent topic in Denis Leary’s Rescue Me series.
Season 5 (2009) ended with this cliff-hanger:
Rescue Me’s creators, Denis Leary and Peter Tolan weren’t afraid to risk it. In the waning moments of the finale, Tommy Gavin (Leary) takes two bullets to the chest, courtesy of his grieving Uncle Teddy (Lenny Clarke), who seeks revenge for the recent alcohol-fueled death of his wife. Tolan says it was a natural progression of this season’s story arc, which saw Tommy fall off the wagon and drag the entire Gavin clan with him.
“We just really got into the whole idea of Tommy starting to drink again and being the merry piper leading everybody down that road. And what the consequences would be,” Tolan tells TVGuide.com. “We’ve already established over the seasons that Tommy’s curse — which is a direct reflection of 9/11 — is that he survives. When he should be dead, he survives, and there’s death all around him, which is what he is left to deal with.”
Leary says Teddy, who murdered the drunk driver who killed Tommy’s young son in an earlier season, was the obvious choice to shoot Tommy.
Leary says the show’s success at depicting alcoholism comes from a mixture of personal experience and letting the disease speak for itself. “Our investigation of [alcoholism] comes from a real place,” Leary says.
“I know firefighters who have drank, quit, started up again, quit, and finally said, “I can’t work unless I have alcohol. I need to have some fun.” So I think we’re portraying every part of it, and I don’t think we’re preachy about it. If Tommy keeps on drinking, I don’t think we will judge him. And if he quits drinking, I don’t know how we’ll judge the characters that continue to drink.”
Adam Bryant (Sept 1, 2009) “Exclusive: Rescue Me’s Creators Dish on the Shocking Season Finale” TV Guide.
My brothers and sisters were supportive and ball-busting. I did not have to hide my recovery – that was a powerful benefit.
Thanks!
Mike “FossilMedic” Ward
February 4, 2011
Rescue Squad 3 Saves Teen in Cardiac Arrest
THE CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA, Fire Department was called out Thursday morning at 5:20 am when a neighbor called 9-1-1 to report a house on fire across the street. When first engine arrived there was fire through the roof and they found a man, his wife, and their 13-yr.-old son standing out front.
WSOC-TV
The man, Robert Boardman told the FF’s that his 11-yr.-old son was still inside. The rescue crew went directly inside and found the teen in cardiac arrest. They got him outside and began CPR on the front lawn, restoring his heart and breathing before he was transported to the hospital. The lad has since been airlifted to a children’s hospital in Columbia, South Carolina, where he remains in critical condition. The other three family members were treated for injuries and smoke inhalation.
WBTV Ch. 3 prepared this video report:
Twenty-two of the family’s twenty-four cats and dogs perished in the blaze. Fire officials estimate the damage at $130,000 and report that the house had no smoke detectors in it. The nearest fire station is only three minutes away, but the fire was already in full bloom before the CFD ever got the call. Read the report HERE.
Well-Traveled Dispatcher Takes One More Trip
A GLENVIEW, ILLINOIS, 9-1-1 DISPATCHER WAS ARRESTED earlier this week after he was identified from surveillance tapes showing him running naked around the outside of his apartment building. Steven Delatorre was arrested by the Chicago Police Department detectives shortly after and charged with two misdemeanor counts of public indecency/lewd exposure.
The Glenview Patch reports:
Management at his 160-unit apartment building at 1134 W. Granville (in Chicago) has received several complaints during the last year and a half, according to a representative from the condo building who asked Patch to remain anonymous until further investigation has been completed.
“There have been reports of Delatorre running around naked and terrorizing female residents,” the source said. “Delattorre was caught running naked on the property’s security cameras.”
He is currently on temporary administrative leave from the Glenview Police Department and is scheduled for a court appearance in Chicago on February 16.
Another source tells Firegeezer that Delatorre has also worked as a dispatcher in three other Chicagoland dispatch centers as well as two stints as a firefighter/paramedic at two fire departments in the area.
WE’RE AT A LOSS TO EXPLAIN THIS ONE. At first I thought it was a new, smooth bore nozzle, but it might not be. In fact, I can’t be sure if it’s a training session or a fire attack of some kind with a piece of equipment I am unfamiliar with.
What to you think is going on here? Post your suggestion in the Comments so everyone can decide whether to agree with you or not. Meanwhile I will try and find out who the supplier is and how much they cost.
Thanks to Steve R. for grabbing this one for us.
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Homemade Ash Tray Failed
PORTLAND, OREGON, FIREFIGHTERS WERE DISPATCHED to a call reporting a house on fire at 10:30 am Pacific Wednesday. When they arrived five minutes later they found a working fire on the first floor. They had it knocked down in about 20 minutes.
When an investigator began looking at it right away he found a hole that had been cut in the front room floor. It appeared that the tenants had been flicking cigarette butts and ashes through the hole instead of buying a 50¢ ashtray.
“If that’s true, it shouldn’t be a surprise that there was a fire,” said Public Information Officer Paul Corah. ”That’s not careless smoking, that’s stupid smoking.”
The damages are estimated to be $30,000.
KPTV Ch. 12 has the STORY.
UK Supermarkets Push For CCTV in Slaughterhouses
Don’t worry; I’m a meat eater, though sparingly. Is chicken meat? I eat more of that. I’m especially fond of the pork at Qdoba, a Mexican fast food chain though I assuage my guilt by skipping the tortilla, “naked” they call it.
Among the many things I am totally ignorant about, aside from helping with the odd skinning and butchering of deer and a few cows many moons ago, is how my meat is killed these days, thus I was drawn to the Guardian article and video about killing pigs in the UK.
Yes, it’s about secret video shot in an abattoir by animal rights groups. But they make a compelling argument: Kill them, but how about doing it humanely? The airing of the video has caused an interesting reaction: Supermarkets are demanding that these slaughterhouses install CCTV of the killing areas to record employee conduct.
Sounds like a great idea but I would suggest a further step: Stream the video live to phone apps and more importantly, display the killing process on screens right above the refrigerated cases in the supermarket. A “before and after” vignette for the carnivores among us.
Well, it’s off to Qdoba.
The article and video:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/03/abattoirs-supermarkets-cctv-cruelty-welfare.
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The Police Chief Lashes Back
A WARREN, MICHIGAN, CITY COUNCILWOMAN WANTS TO RUN FOR MAYOR and she doesn’t have any qualms about trashing her city’s public safety officers in her desperate bid to be loved. In a recent campaign flyer Kathy Vogt wrote, “Did you know that every night from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m., there is only one officer patrolling the streets of Warren between 11 Mile Rd. and 14 Mile Rd. and from Hayes to Dequindre?” The police chief says that her statement is absolutely not true and presented evidence that the area in question has between 10 and 12 officers on patrol during those hours.
Police Commissioner Jere Green felt that he had no choice but to respond to what he called, careless, reckless, harmful, and untrue campaign rhetoric. Chief Green made clear that he is upset with her “sending a message” to the criminal element that Warren is unprotected at night and in effect invites criminals to come into the area to commit their felonies.
Police Commissioner Green
This video report from WJBK-TV Ch. 2 Detroit tells of the flap and interviews the Commish:
While this story is focused on the police department, Firegeezer is posting it because many weasly politicians have recently begun trashing all public safety departments including fire and EMS agencies as a means of shifting the spotlight away from the city councils’ own failures to adequately run their municpalities. Kudos to Chief Green for not allowing his department to be degraded by a mindless attack from Kathy Vogt.
The Detroit Free Press has provided:
Vogt’s campaign flyer HERE, and
Chief Green’s letter to the councilwoman HERE.
STATter911 has a report on a fire chief that is also fighting back HERE.
A Miracle Arrives For Burn Victims
AN AMAZING MEDICAL ADVANCEMENT IS working its way through the testing process and isn’t far away from becoming a standard practice. The device is called The Skin Gun and it uses a burn victim’s own stem cells to accelerate new skin growth. It literally sprays skin cells onto a burn injury and growth begins immediately.
Where costly and painful skin grafts take weeks to start growing, the spray-on skin cells have a 2nd-degree burn completely healed in just a few days. The major danger from burn injuries is not so much from the skin damage but from infections that set in rapidly on the exposed injury. Watch this video report on the skin gun that has been prepared by National Geographic:
This report is part of a television special that will be broadcast on the National Geographic Channel on Monday night, February 7. In their blurb for the program they say:
Imagine the implications if we could regenerate damaged, aging or diseased body parts grown from our own cells custom made, and genetically indistinguishable from our own. Could it eliminate the death sentence for profound birth defects, the need for prosthetics and any shortage of transplant organs? EXPLORER delves into the science of tissue engineering and shows how scientists are beginning to harness the body’s natural powers to grow skin, muscle, body parts and vital organs, even hearts.
The stem cell laboratory Emerging Healthcare Solutions issued a press release yesterday that tells more about this project:
On Wednesday, a video excerpt from an upcoming episode of National Geographic Channel’s Explorer surfaced on the Web detailing the work of Dr. Jörg C. Gerlach and the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. Gerlach has developed a “skin gun” that sprays a burn victim’s own stem cells on to his or her damaged skin. The process is still experimental, but Gerlach says a dozen people have been treated using the procedure. Each patient experienced rapid healing of severe burns in only a few days.The skin gun looks and works similar to an artist’s airbrush, and sprays a solution of the patient’s adult stem cells in water. If clinical trials prove successful, the skin gun could represent an incredible breakthrough in burn treatment, helping to shape the future of stem cell therapy and regenerative medicine.
Doctors describe the procedure as being like using a paint spraygun.
Friday Morning Lineup
Did you watch that video on yesterday’s Lineup (HERE)? The one about the new online newspaper that is delivered directly to your iPad. As you would expect, News Corp.’s competitors showed their lack of class and unloaded a bunch of snarky comments and denigrations after they found out that they have been left at the gate. But within the next few months we will most likely see more periodicals joining the tablet app scene and providing online subscriptions at modest prices. That kind of service is already available for Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, but the Kindle audience is, and always will be, a limited universe. But the “experts” are telling us that tablet sales will continue to accelerate and will take a lot of sales away from the PC market. They certainly won’t replace the PC’s because tablets don’t have the computing power, but they will make your PC far less used and you will go back to one PC at home instead of 3 of them scattered about the house. You will be toting your tablet around with you instead.
You might not want to run out and buy an iPad just now, though. Not only is Apple expected to release iPad 2 sometime in the next few months, but to nobody’s surprise, Google is on the doorstep with their tablet program dubbed Honeycomb. It’s an Android operating system that is designed exclusively for tablets and is based on the open-source Linux program. I’m not a geek by any means, but it looks to me that by putting Honeycomb on a Linux platform will allow and encourage app writers to fill the Android app store rapidly.
Here is a promotional video about the Honeycomb tablet system:
Hey, now you see why YouTube just overhauled their homepage and layout. Since Google doesn’t replicate Apple’s maddening policy of restricting its platforms to one manufacturer, we can expect so see several competitive tablets on the market well before Christmas loaded with the Honeycomb. Competition equals lower prices. Ryan Faas has a good posting on ITworld about Honeycomb HERE where he tells more about it and compares it with Apple’s iOS.
The more I learn about these tablet-thingy’s, the more interested I get.
But now let’s get interested in getting this equipment checked out. I need to get some more coffee started. See you back in the day room in a little while.
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Firefighter Disability Pensions – Part One
4 commentsNot the Boys of Pointe du Hoc
As we negotiate these tough financial times perhaps its inevitable that tales of disability pension abuse surface which serve as fodder or fuel for critics of firefighter retirement systems. These examples are bandied about as proof that the current pension culture in many fire departments is abnormal and boarders on a scam. What if that is closer to the truth than we want to admit?
What’s a proper disability rate for fire fighters? Line firefighters are sometimes compared with military troops because of the nature of the objectives and the environment, though where “disability casualties” are concerned we are a bunch of sissies. During the entire Normandy D-Day Invasion, including the famous assault on Pointe Du Hoc, the casualty rate was about 5.7%. (D-Day was, of course, the largest amphibious landing in the history of warfare.) If D-Day is too sedate for your liking, how about the Battle of the Bulge where the Germans seemed to come out of nowhere, walloping the thinly arrayed Allies with a series of blows that rocked us back on our heels? Total casualty rate was 10.8%. If a couple of battles won’t suffice, let’s use the casualty rate of 16 million US men and women across the entire war: 6.6%. Firefighting is simply not more debilitating than what they went through.
It’s not uncommon for many fire departments, some of them quite large, to have disability retirement rates above 20%–some over 75%. These astounding numbers are proof positive that fire department operations are either manifestly reckless, fire officers are incompetent, or pension rules are way out of balance. Imagine any other profession, public or private, where three out of four employees are injured so badly that they are permanently incapacitated—managers would be fired as incompetent or the company would go out of business, but in many fire departments it is a commonplace fact that does not even garner notice.
Little notice is also given to the fact that many disability retirees go on to find some pretty surprising (and laudable) second careers and endeavors including mixed martial arts, marathoning, and in at least one case, becoming a fire fighter in another state.
“permanently disabled” Boston firefighter Albert Arroyo
has found a second-career competing in bodybuilder championships.
Within our profession it seems to be a rare case for anybody to stop and ask who is really harmed by these sky-high disability rates. The answer: the truly disabled and the men and women who make it to a normal retirement and receive a deflated pension because resources are sucked up by “disability” rates. Anyone who thinks that one doesn’t affect the other is seriously miss-informed, gullible, naïve or just plain ignorant. Normal retirees are the silent masses who deserve more but are edged out as their benefit becomes stagnant or worse.
Some systems are upping the number of work years required before normal retirement from 20 to 25 or more and are also creating a minimum age of 50 or increasing it to 55 or even 62. There is no question that normal retirement benefits are suffering because of sky-high disability rates.
If you work in a department with a 50% or higher disability rate and you take a normal service retirement benefit you are both honorable for not working the system and a chump, more often known as a sucker. Feels strange, doesn’t it?
Tomorrow: The Players
reference: US probes firefighter disability abuse – Boston Globe
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