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Timely Monday Morning Training

“One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six who jumped in the rear, we need massive EMS here.”

Most of you reading this have already probably heard the sad news on the passing of FDNY Brother Joey DiBernardo, one of six forced to jump 4 stories rather than be burnt alive back in January of 2005 in what has come to be known as “Black Sunday.” 

Of the six, Lieutenant John G. Bellew and Lieutenant Curtis Meyran succumbed to their injuries that day.  Firefighters Jeffrey Cool, Eugene Stolowski, and Brendan Cawley survived their jumps along with Lieutenant DiBernardo with massive physical injuries as well as haunting emotional trauma which remains to this day.

This morning an email from www.FirefighterCloseCalls.com (Home of the Secret List) is making its way to thousands of Brothers and Sisters, imploring all of us to take a few short moments to fully understand what has happened and who we have just lost.  Along with Chief Goldfeder and the others at Firefighter Close Calls, I want to make sure everyone gets this important message as we prepare to lay our Brother to rest tomorrow. 

Please ensure these videos are seen by all your companies, either at roll call, or shortly thereafter.  If you are on a volunteer department, please forward this information to all your contacts immediately.

For further enlightenment, utilize the NIOSH report and encourage discussion among your crews.  As usual, Command Safety lays out all the information you need to make the training useable, understandable, and accessible.

Here are the links:

Message from Firefighter Close Calls

Video about Brother Joey DiBernardo

Video about the Black Sunday Fire.

NIOSH Report

Command Safety’s Comprehensive Look at the Incident

 

God Bless you, Joey.  May he keep you in His tender care.

Posted in Brotherhood, Close Calls, Firefighting Operations, Fires, In the Line of Duty, Line of Duty, LODD, Mass Casualty Incident, Never Forget, News, Training, Training & Development, training-fire-rescue-topics, Videos

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Posted by on November 27, 2011 • No comments

Tweet Tweet… A Little Birdie Just Told Me Your Engine Company Was Out Of Service

The citizenry in FDNY’s East Village are being notified when their local apparatus is unavailable to respond to their potential emergencies.

According to a story out in the New York Post today, firefighters of Engine Company 28 and Ladder Company 11 have been tweeting these unsanctioned announcements.

“We’re just trying to let people know when we’re not around,” said a source familiar with the instant-messaging tactic, which has nothing to do with the FDNY’s official Twitter account.

The holiday staff at Fire Daily, after checking out yet another installment of Dave Statter’s new-found hilarity, “Animated Comments- Thanksgiving Edition”, quickly returned to reality long enough to scrub their eyes and ears clean of all they had just witnessed before checking into the reported tweetster.

Some of the tweets are coming from ManCB3FireWatch who offers up the following for a profile on his account on Twitter:

Manhattan Community Board 3  We serve as a method of letting the residents of Alpha City & LES know when their local fire companies are closed for the day or placed out of service.

FireDaily is now following ManCB3FireWatch on twitter, although there is no guarantee as to how long the account will remain active.

Until then, what we have NOT got here…is a failure to communicate.

Posted in 360 Burn, Funding & Staffing, News, Technology & Communications

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Posted by on November 25, 2010 • No comments

Sending love. Literally.

I had originally planned to remain silent today, letting others share their thoughts on this special day.  But as I began to peruse some of the rhetoric being shared by a few (thankfully) that still are filled with hatred and venom, I began to think about love vs. hate and the role it plays in my life.

The accelerating growth of Firefighter Netcast has brought me away from my family more this year than at any other time in recent memory.  We have been in many different places in just a few short months.  We have been fortunate and honored to meet some very interesting people, and have generated relationships that are sure to endure for years to come.

Being away from home has affected my youngest daughter as well.  We have attempted to bridge the miles with video phone calls on a nightly basis, no matter where we are.

But I want to relate an interesting development that has come about in the relationship between us.  We have come to recognize a very interesting way of “sending our love”.

This revelation came about during a phone call while I was away in Baltimore this summer.  My daughter asked me if I had “felt an overwhelming sense of love” from her at about 9:00 that morning.  I initially smiled and wanted to instantly respond with a “yes, of course I did, sweetheart.”  But I paused, and tried to remember what I was doing at 9:00.

Astounded, I realized that I had been thinking about how far she had come in spite of the rough start she had when she was born.  You see, she was born at only 25 weeks, critically ill from a fetal infection, certain to die if left in the uterus, almost as certain to perish if taken out so early.  It was the most agonizing time of our lives.

I vividly recall watching helplessly, transfixed at the heroic efforts to intubate her tiny purple body and give her life.  Lungs just dried paper-like sacs, not lubricated enough to expand.  Staff traded places each taking a shot at tubing my little girl, then stepping aside to let the next person give it a go, shaking their heads at their failures.  Seconds turned to minutes. It reminded me of some of the difficult tubes we encountered in the field.

Daddy and Lexi kangaroo, sharing love

Me and Lexi exchanging love, kangaroo-style.

But this was different.  This was my little girl.

I prayed harder than I had ever prayed before.  But beyond that, I felt a sensation, one which I will have difficulty describing here.  At that moment, there rose a powerful and palpable physical sensation in my torso, as if I were transmitting emotion straight to my helpless newborn.  Crazy at it sounds, I felt as if I were “sending love” in an unspoken, non-tactile method.  It was the first time thus had ever happened, but I remember it as clear as day, and will never forget it.  I never spoke of it to anyone then or since.  But the feeling has been a part of my life regularly from that moment on.

Remember the news story out of Australia last week about a baby born at 27 weeks?  After hospital staff tried to resuscitate the child for 20 minutes they gave the parents the heartbreaking news that their little boy had died. But his mother placed the baby on her chest (just as we did ours) and used the kangaroo method, which involves skin-to-skin contact between mother and child. She remained in that position for two hours and soon the infant’s gasps became more regular and, after a while, he opened his eyes.

Sent love?

Certainly, this all could have a very reasonable explanation.  The feeling I experienced in the NICU may have been an intense physical reaction to fear; the feeling my daughter had at 9:00 could have been coincidental.  But I am certain it was all real.

Why am I telling this to you?  Because I want you to know that is is possible.  I want you to consider that you can also “send love”.

Literally.

On the day in which we remember so many lost souls- brothers and sisters who gave their lives in the service to others- why not try open your hearts in a new and powerful way to send them love.

Concentrate on them.

Concentrate on their wives, their husbands, their mothers and fathers, their brothers, and their sisters.

Try to visualize their children, now nine years later, having grown up a bit more in the absence of their magnificent parent.

Then send them love.

Posted in Never Forget

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Posted by on September 11, 2010 • 5 comments

Pre-FireGeezer Fire Geezers – 1943 FDNY Video

(Here’s a video that will even make Bill feel young)

From the YouTube description:

This All Hands building fire took place sometime during the fall or winter of 1943, and shows the Fire Patrol arriving on the scene and carrying tarps in to protect property.

The engine that took the hydrant first was perhaps an American LaFrance, made in the early 1920′s.

Note, the neat looking rig that the Fire Patrol was using.

The rest of the engines on the scene all appear to be Macks, some of which had open cabs while others had enclosed cabs.

Note the gasoline tanks were located behind the cabs.

On the enclosed cab engines you can see what looks like a Federal Sign and Signal Model l8 emergency warning light.

This video was complied and edited from movie film in the Stillman Fire Collection Archives. The original movie was silent. We added the sound track, and if you want to view it as it was taken then turn off your computer speakers.

Posted in Just For Fun, Tradition, Videos

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Posted by on February 22, 2010 • No comments

FDNY Must Hire 2 Blacks and 1 Hispanic From Every 5 Successful Applicants

Last week, Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled that FDNY’s 1999 and 2002 entrance examinations were “intentionally” discriminatory.

In his decision, Garaufis wrote: “There has been one persistent stain on the Fire Department’s record. When it comes to being a New York firefighter, blacks and other minorities face entry barriers that other applicants do not.”

Now, the same judge has issued an order to impose a temporary hiring quota in which 2 blacks and one hispanic will be hired for every five applicants who pass the test until there are 293 minorities added to the ranks of the FDNY.

The quota was just one of the corrective actions that Garaufis laid out in a 57-page ruling in response to a bias suit filed against the city in May 2007 by the feds, the Vulcan Society, which represents black firefighters, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Also under the judge’s ruling, approximately 7,400 minority applicants who sat for the two racially skewed exams may be eligible for monetary damages.

Read the full story here.

Posted in News

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Posted by on January 27, 2010 • No comments

Check Out This “Must See” 9/11 Coin – It’s Going Fast!

It may be too late to get one for Christmas, but you will definitely want at least one of your own to carry with you for the rest of your life.  I’ve ordered several today.

After much planning and effort a September 11th Commemorative Coin has been struck to coincide with the 10 year anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center.

This beautiful collectible coin marks just the beginning of what will be a long-term effort to raise funds for three non-profit charitable organizations including the W5 Firefighters World Trade Center Fund, The New York Firefighters Burn Center Foundation and the FDNY Veterans of Foreign Wars Post.

Each of these three groups are related to 9/11, firefighter health and safety, and US military veterans- providing important work and activities toward those goals.

They provide services and material assistance to students attending college, US military veterans and burn victims both civilian and firefighter.

The September 11th Anniversary Benefit Fund has been established to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the attacks at the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11th, 2001.

The fund-raising project has been undertaken by FDNY Battalion Chief John Salka and a committee of other firefighters and their friends and will be involved in several fundraising operations over the next several years.

All of the proceeds from these fundraising events will be donated directly to these charitable funds for use on their worthy projects and activities.

The W5 Firefighters World Trade Center Memorial Fund

Maintains a WTC monument in Orange County NY and presents college scholarships to high school graduates.

The FDNY Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 12033

Steadfast supporters of the rehabilitation of disabled veterans from Brooke, Walter Reed and Bethesda Hospitals; assists the widows and orphans of disabled and needy veterans: promotes Americanism through education in patriotism and service to the community of New York City.

The New York Firefighters Burn Center Foundation

A 501(c)(3) public charity, non-profit organization founded in 1975 by firefighters and dedicated to the advancement of burn care, research, prevention, education, and the proper treatment of burns.

For further information and to order these keepsake coins, just click on the coin pictures above, or visit the official fund raising website:

http://www.september11anniversaryfund.com

Due to high demand any coins ordered after 12/12/09 will be shipped after Jan 1, 2010.


Posted in Brotherhood, In the Line of Duty, Line of Duty, Never Forget, News

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Posted by on December 15, 2009 • 1 comment

360 Burn Size-up of the Fire Web 12/1/2009

Check Out Real Sports on HBO Tonight for This Amazing Story

A New York City firefighter completes an Ironman Triathlon. Special enough, but Matthew Long did it after being hit, no, rolled over by a city bus. With less than a 1% chance of survival and 40 surgeries later, Long accomplished this amazing feat.

Not many people can complete an Ironman, and it’s hard to imagine anyone completing an Ironman after going through what Long went through. But Long is an inspiration, and the Real Sports segment on HBO is a good look at a man who refused to quit.

Pennsylvania Fire Department Suffers an Axing of Over Half the Fire Department- See Why:

According to information from certified public accountants, poor accounting practices and questionable transfers under prior administrations are blamed for the fiscal nightmare that resulted in the axing of 7 of the 13 firefighters in Uniontown, PA. Fire Chief Chuck Coldren pleaded with the council to avert the layoffs, repeating earlier assertions that the safety of both firefighters and residents will be endangered with the scaled-back staff.

“With the six guys who are left, it’s going to be a real nightmare for me to figure out how we’re going to operate. It’s a scary situation,” Coldren said.

My question is: what should happen to those responsible for the financial mess if someone gets hurt or killed now? City Clerk Kim Marshall said some of the deficiencies uncovered in the audit have been referred to state police and the state attorney general’s office for investigation.

Here’s more on the story from The Pittsburgh Tribune Review, and a video story from WPXI.com.

Puppy Resuscitated by Firefighters is Their New Mascot

A Dalmatian she’s not, but the 11-week-old Labrador mix puppy aptly named “Smokey” is the new mascot of the Jacksonville (IL) Fire Department. At a house fire nearly a month ago, firefighters found the pup lying near the back door and successfully resuscitated her with special oxygen kits for animals donated to their department.

Smokey’s learning to become a part of the crew as firefighters are teaching her to show children how to stop, drop, and roll. More on how this all came together here with a story by Maria Nagle of the Jacksonville Journal-Courier. More positive PR for firefighters….

Firefighter Curt Rueter plays with Smokey as driver engineer Jim Williams cooks after returning to the Jacksonville Fire Department substation after a day of training.

photo by Robert Leistra

Posted in 360 Burn, Funding & Staffing, IAFF, News, Pub Ed, Staffing, WTF?

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Posted by on December 1, 2009 • No comments

It’s Time.

From Michael McAuliff of the New York Daily News

First responders and Ground Zero workers are pleased Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is headed to New York to face justice – but they hope to win a different kind of justice of their own.

“Eight years later they finally bring the terrorists to New York and eight years later we’re still waiting for help” treating 9/11-related illnesses, said John Feal.  “It doesn’t equate,” added Feal, who heads the FealGood Foundation, devoted to raising awareness about the health crisis. He and busloads of survivors and victims held a rally Wednesday in Washington.

The FealGood Foundation holds a press conference earlier this year at the scene of the 9/11 attacks (photo by Schwartz for News)

They’re demanding Congress act on legislation named after James Zadroga, an NYPD officer who died from his exposure to Ground Zero. The proposal would spend about $8 billion to reopen the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation fund to care for the illnesses suffered by the responding heroes.

“I’m going to be focused on getting that bill passed,” said Glen Klein, a former NYPD Emergency Service Unit officer who spent 700 hours at Ground Zero. “It’s time.”

It’s the same two words Jim Ryan wanted to tell Congress Wednesday hoping to join hundreds of his fellow Sept. 11 responders on their journey to Capitol Hill. But he couldn’t make it.

He’s dying himself.

“I was a 46-year-old firefighter, working at my job in April 2006,” said the husband and father of two teenage boys and a 9-year-old daughter. His doctor thought he had gallstones, but it was pancreatic cancer, a deadly illness more common in older men. The fire department eventually agreed the cancer was from 9/11, and he retired.

He beat it once.

Then came the relapse last November – and more treatments. His doctor can’t do any more.

“They just determined last week it wasn’t working. As of right now, I’m not on anything. At this point, I’m just seeking second opinions,” Ryan said.  He doesn’t want to ask how much time he has left.

“I don’t believe in deadlines,” he said.

But he wanted to do what he could to push Congress to pass the $8 billion measure. It would reopen the Sept. 11 victims’ compensation fund and provide for the families of the ill and dying.

So Tuesday night he packed some gear in the car of his friend and fellow firefighter, Keith Palumbo, and went to the Engine Co. 320/Ladder 167 firehouse in Flushing for a party that Palumbo arranged so Ryan’s department brothers could see him again before it was too late.

“It was overwhelming,” Ryan said.

But he got violently ill, and it was obvious to his friends that Ryan, who’s lost 50 pounds to his illness, couldn’t make the trip to Washington.

“Keith, he took my bag out of his car and he said, ‘You’re not going.’ He said, ‘You can’t, you’re not physically able to,’” Ryan recalled.

It’s almost the way he felt about the months he spent digging through the voids in the wreckage of the twin towers, searching for the fallen. He tried to explain it to his wife, Magda, when she asked why he wanted to swim in that toxic devastation for so long.

“I told her I don’t. It’s the last place in the world I want to be, but right now, and it’s kind of hard to put it in words, but right now it’s the only place in the world I want be,” Ryan remembered.

There was no internal conflict about going to Washington Wednesday, except that he couldn’t.

“I felt horrible because it’s not only about me,” he said. “It’s about all the guys who are going to come after me, and there’s going to be plenty of them. … I don’t think you’ve even seen the tip of the iceberg yet.”

Ryan and the other advocates say they’ve received assurances that Congress would act this fall. But sources told the Daily News that the battle to overhaul the nation’s health care system comes first – a fight that could extend into next year. Feal said rally goers intend to take their message straight to lawmakers.

“We’re taking three teams into each congressional [office] building,” Feal said Wednesday. “I’m storming the Capitol.”

The Zadroga Act is sitting in Congress, held hostage by the health care reform debate. The House version is all but ready to go. The Senate’s has yet to be discussed in a committee hearing.

Palumbo and others carried the message for Ryan, visiting lawmakers in their black turnout coats. He hopes legislators heard it.

“We’ve got eight guys in the firehouse who have cancer,” Palumbo said after walking the halls of Congress, knocking on doors.

“Hopefully, we prodded them with our tale.”

Posted in Firefighter Safety & Health, In the Line of Duty, Line of Duty, LODD, Never Forget, News

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Posted by on November 20, 2009 • No comments