Wednesday Morning – Where Do You Turn Next?

I got to wondering the other day …. do any rural departments still carry a box of flour bags on their engines?  Now, I'll bet that practically all of you who just read that don't have any idea what I'm talking about.  But a few of you will and maybe one of you "country boys" will be able to answer my question.

Let's rewind a minute and I'll explain to the city slickers what a flour bag is and what it was used for.  Out in the really, really rural areas you could be responding with your engine, or more likely your tanker (water tender??) to an assist call that is 20 miles away.  And you sure don't know the side roads and long driveways for a territory that far from home.  So when you're driving along the road you need to have a clue as to where to turn next.  You might be able to see the glow or smoke way off to the right, but how do you get there?

Even us city guys knew enough to watch for the booster tank puddles that result from the water sloshing out of the tank when you turn a corner.  Once in a while we'd be in a strange subdivision outside of our usual territory and in the daytime you could follow the sloshes all the way to the fire.  But at night time or when the roads are wet that doesn't work so well.  And out in the prairies that slosh-puddle could dry up on a summer's day before the assisting company got there.  Therefore, in many areas the fire engines all had a little box within reach of the OIC that held a quantity of small paper bags containing a few cups of flour, and when you come to a place where you turn or leave the road, the officer (or somebody) would toss a couple of flour bags out onto the roadway where the bag would burst scattering the flour and leaving a very visible mark to "blaze the trail," so to speak.

That brings me back to where we started on this musing.  Don't ask me why I even thought about this, but for some reason it crawled out or the memory bank and got me thinking.  So please tell us, do you know of anybody who still uses the flour bags?  What is being used in place of them now?  Inquring minds want to know.

Does your equipment check sheet have a box to tic for the flour bags?  We'll find out now because it's time to get our rigs and tools checked out for today.  You'll find me back at the Bunn-O-Matic making more coffee, but you need to know the way yourself….I don't leave a trail.  See you back in the day room in a little while.

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Tuesday Morning – Class What?

Why do communities and fire departments bother with ISO ratings anymore?  As far as the fire/rescue service is concerned, aren't they a tool whose time has come and gone?  And if the insurance companies are wanting to keep using them for premium billing guidelines, then why don't they pay for them and leave us alone?

The ISO – Insurance Services Office, Inc. – is a creature of the building and property insurance industry and they are concerned with evaluating properties to determine their risk or potential for loss as an aid to setting premium rates by the insurers.  There's a lot more to it than that, and their scope is wider than that, but for fire department purposes that is a rough explanation.  We get involved in their Public Protection Classification program (PPC™) and on their website they describe it:

ISO collects information on municipal fire-protection efforts in communities throughout the United States. In each of those communities, ISO analyzes the relevant data using our Fire Suppression Rating Schedule (FSRS). We then assign a Public Protection Classification from 1 to 10. Class 1 generally represents superior property fire protection, and Class 10 indicates that the area's fire-suppression program doesn't meet ISO’s minimum criteria.

By classifying communities' ability to suppress fires, ISO helps the communities evaluate their public fire-protection services. The program provides an objective, countrywide standard that helps fire departments in planning and budgeting for facilities, equipment, and training. And by securing lower fire insurance premiums for communities with better public protection, the PPC program provides incentives and rewards for communities that choose to improve their firefighting services.

ISO has extensive information on more than 47,000 fire-response jurisdictions.

And there you have it ….. that dangling carrot called Class 1.  An incentive for all fire departments (excuse me, fire-response jurisdictions) to work hard in specific areas to improve their operating abilitiy and raise their rating so that the citizenry can enjoy lower insurance costs.  This ratings program began shortly after WWII and in 1947 the city of Los Angeles became the first jurisdiction to be awarded the Class 1 rating.  For a while, the top class was rarely achieved and difficult to attain.  Twenty years later there were only 10 cities in the U. S. that had Class 1 ratings and the number fluctuated right around there for years.

But Los Angeles was a well-run and fully funded department and they were able to keep their Class 1 for 50 years until sometime before 2000 (I think) they chucked it and said they had better things to do than spend the inordinate amount of time and money needed to play along with ISO's ratings game.  They still maintain their standards and strive to keep on top, but they don't drop what they're doing to follow the insurers' bidding and whim.  Somewhere along the way the ISO and the FD's that were interested in raising their prestige level found a way to get more favorable reviews and by the beginning of this century we were seeing 50 to 60 FD's with the top rating, including some that were in communities that previously did not have the physical resources to climb that far.  Or at least, we didn't think so.  And they got to paint that Class 1 Fire Department logo on all of their vehicles and stationery.

The bubble burst in 2007 when the tragic, fatal fire at a furniture store in Charleston, South Carolina, exposed some serious deficiencies within the FD which also enjoyed a Class 1 rating.  Fire officials around the country watched a major fire that was being attacked by a department whose largest hose lines were only 2-½"diameter and not one master stream device carried on any of the pumpers.  Later investigation showed that training was minimal and the training records were mostly fabricated.  The list went on and on, bringing embarrassment to the firefighters who suffered from the city's folly and managment's failure to provide them with the tools to escape the 19th century.  But just as embarrassed was the ISO who were also exposed as being seriously deficient in their own standards by maintaining a Class 1 rating on a department that was using booster lines as primary attack lines.

A lot of people got to wondering after that about what's going on with this operation?  I think some people in the insurance industry were wondering the same thing.  In fact, one of the nation's largest insurers State Farm has discontinued using ISO ratings in the states that don't require it.  And some states are even going so far as to prohibit the use of ISO as an evaluation tool for premium rates.

So now the question arises, why should we bother with ISO?  Certainly and most definitely we should always strive to improve in those same areas on the check list such as communications and alarm system, water supply, training standards, equipment, etc., etc.  But why should we bother with spending all those man-hours and money just to please a group of guys who drop by for a few weeks to look around?  We're having trouble enough getting the money to put 4 FF's on each unit.  The insurance people are right to take all that into consideration, but they should be the ones paying for it.  Gather up all your hydrant flow records and sell them to the ISO.  As usual, L. A. leads the way.

Speaking of check lists, let's get the clipboards out get our morning equipment check under way.  I need to get some more coffee going…now.  See you back in the day room in a little while.

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Monday Morning – What's To Talk About?

As we are constantly gaining new readers, it is not unusual to get the occasional query about why we post an article that has nothing to do with fire or EMS activities.  "Why is this on a fire website?"  So for you recently new visitors, let me explain.

You may have noticed, but not thought about, our website title:  Firegeezer – The Digital Day Room.  To understand what a digital day room is, let's take a moment to mull over what a real, physical day room is.  I realize that in some places it goes by a different name, but every fire and ambulance station has one.  It's kind of like the "living room" of the firehouse where all the comfy chairs and tv set are.  And when it's break time, or unstructured free time, many of the members will wander into the day room to flop down and chat about things.  And what do they usually talk about?

Naturally, the main topics for casual chat have to do with the job.  Crap rolling downhill from HQ, new training programs, different fire engines, what other departments are doing, etc., etc.  I can safely say that probably 80% or maybe even 85% of the topics brought up will be job-related in some way or another.  But what of the other 15 to 20 percent?  They will be discussions about other things that most, but not all, members are interested in.

And that is what we do here, in the Digital Day Room.  Mostly on-topic stuff with a fair sprinkling of other items that most, but not all, of our readers are interested in.  We run the occasional story that  talks about beer, guns, cars, planes, technology, scientific discoveries, history, famous personalities, and any number of other things that may not be particularly important, but we find them interesting.  And that's what we do here.  We make no attempt to give you ALL the news because there are already other well-staffed websites that are sending all the news out into the ether.  But we concentrate on the ones that we think are most interesting, or that are unusual in that you won't read about them anyplace else.  Four years ago we were the only fire-related website that covered a working structure fire in Antarctica and that is what makes us unique.  And we hope that you continue to look to us for that different perspective on what's going on in the fire and EMS world around us.

All of the GeezerGuys thank you for dropping by regularly and seeing what we've found lately.  We truly appreciate you taking the time to visit with us.

Now let's take the time to get this equipment checked out.  Every morning we have to do this, you know.  And I'll get some more coffee going so that it will be ready when we meet back in the (digital) day room.

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Sunday Morning – Where Are Your Friends?

If you're ever in need of a good example of a "death wish," you only need to point to Facebook.  They had such a good idea and pretty good outline of what service they want to offer you (up front, anyway), but they blew the whole thing.  First of all, instead of hiring the best programmers they could get to construct the complicated layout that interconnects your activities and friend followings, they somehow ended up with a platform that is in constant need of tinkering but never gets fixed.

Their other major mistake was to think that they could get wealthy by gathering your personal information that you willingly loaded onto your FB page and selling it to who-knows-what outfits.  All the online games and gadgets they put out for you to play with had permissions buried in them that allowed them to trade your phone numbers and email addresses with people you didn't want to be associated with.  Why do you think they want your birthday?

Despite all this, people kept joining because it was "the only wheel in town" and people really enjoyed the basic benefits of congeniality along with the novelty of reconnecting with friends and classmates from years ago.  And then Google plopped down in the middle of things with their new Google-Plus social network that looks suspiciously like Facebook but with enhanced features and more variety in choosing your circles of contacts.  Now suddenly, Facebook is challenged and they are hastily trying to make up for their deficiencies, like this belated option that permits you to let somebody observe your postings (the Subscribe button) without you being forced to see all of theirs.

Unfortunately, they never brought in mature programmers to make the thing work reliably and still a day doesn't go by where you don't log on and for some reason none of the images will load on your monitor.  Or some of the other half-dozen glitches that continue to plague the system.  As if that wasn't enough, somebody thought that your Facebook "experience" would be enhanced if they messed up the front page where you couldn't see the latest postings.  Instead, you get some computerized selections of what they think you should look at.  Nobody I know has got that mess figured out yet.

And then, last week we learned that Facebook is still dabbling with your personal affairs by planting cookies on your hard drive that monitor all of your web browsing, even when you are not even logged on to Facebook.  They are collecting your web travels and recording every website you visit.  Who do you think ends up with that information?  Nobody knows ….. yet.  But this one caught the eye of the U. S. Congress and they are starting to look into this egregious practice.  Meanwhile, Google-Plus is just sitting there fine-tuning their network and waiting for the inevitable flood of disgruntled Facebook users to swarm over.  How long do you think it will take Google to supplant the snoopy and incompetent Facebook?

We'd better swarm over to the equipment now and get it checked out.  I'll see how the Sunday breakfast is coming and get some more coffee going.

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