The picture above is one in a series by Spencer Stevenson in
stmarystoday.com from a house fire last week in Cheltenham. Now, here’s the news we have been working on at STATter 911, along with other fire and EMS stories from around the web:
DC UNIONS TANGLE. EMS union leader Ken Lyons takes on firefighters union head Dan Dugan over
Dugan’s comments in The Washington Post. Dugan also gets heat from Marcus Rosenbaum, brother of David Rosenbaum.
1 FIREFIGHTER, 2 KIDS. DC Fire and EMS Sgt. Danny McCoy grabbed two little boys from a burning apartment building on Sunday. Both kids were not breathing. The boys are alive and expected to survive. McCoy downplayed his role, saying it was teamwork.
SENIOR MOMENTS. I spent Monday afternoon back at the scene of last month’s double fatal fire in Kensington. Is it just a run of bad luck or is there some other factor to explain this long string of senior citizen deaths in residential fires? Chief Tom Carr tells me he wishes he knew the answer to that question.
What Chief Carr does know is that he is kicking off a “Summer of Safety” aimed at getting safety information into the hands of the elderly, their friends and family.
YEAH, BUT CAN OSAMA TILLER? On Sunday, I was reminiscing with some D.C. firefighters about a former chief who referred to his troops as rascals. That is mild compared to what some Florida firefighters claim their chief had to say about them. Withthecommand.com found
this story about accusations that a fire chief, in an open meeting, called 3 of his firefighters traitors and compared them to terrorists.
LOOKING BACK. Wildland firefighting is something I know little about. What I do know is it is a tough job. From Montana,
the Billings Gazette looks back at what was learned from a fire last summer that had landowners quite critical of how the blaze was fought and their property protected.
NO, NOT THAT ED. Thirty years ago when I was running EMS calls in Oxon Hill, we had never even heard of EMS. Now, I am discovering ED. I thought that stood for something else, but I am learning these are calls for someone who has “excited delirium”.
PoliceOne.com takes a look at San Jose, California’s protocol for ED, which is described as “a serious medical condition…a disturbance of consciousness in which the afflicted subject’s violent resistance to arrest for prolonged periods may increase the risk of death”. I guess we just used to call them police fighters. The reason I even bring this up is that the protocol has a component for EMS and dispatchers.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BINGO? Find out how the Reed City, Michigan Fire Department plans to raise money. Apparently someone learned something from how EMS bills for ambulance service.
A KODIAK MOMENT. For firefighters who don’t want to run EMS calls, maybe it is time to follow the words of an old Johnny Horton song and head “North to Alaska”.
The Kodiak Daily Mirror reports some firefighters are learning it is against the local code and state law to spend tax dollars on emergency medical services.
BRANCHING OUT. The answer to this story from across the Atlantic is this: If the cat was up in the tree, you wouldn’t have to worry about the pigeon.
PENCIL ME IN. Leave it to Bill Schumm at firegeezer.com to find this one. When you do your next bit of creative writing on the golf course, you might find something different in your hand along with the scorecard. The little pencils golfers write with could soon be in short supply. Arson is suspected.
