Volunteer Fire Departments and EMS

This article is a little off topic but the point is that 80% or more of the calls in the LMRFD are medical calls for ambulance transport and not fires. 

Yet the two LMRFD volunteer's that took the 80 hours of EMR training allowing them to assist and drive the ambulance were never used by Chief Bonnee. If you had to wait an hour or two for an ambulance ask the chief why? If someone had a worse outcome or died because of the delay please contact me.

Women are better caretakers, my opinion.

I've said many times that we need to separate the ambulance and firefighting portions of the LMRFD. Very few women have any interest in being a firefighter. Only about 4% of firefighters are women, yet women make up more than 50% of private EMS.

Chief Bonnee won't say he agrees me, but he hired a female paramedic who worked shifts as a firefighter but didn't fight fire.

 What about the Firefighter I Firefighter II requirement? This was ok on EMS calls but sucked for the taxpayers and her partner on a fire call if they needed to do a rescue in a structure fire. She's gone now.

The regulations... NFPA 1500 and OSHA requires that a minimum of four firefighters be on the scene before entering the hazard area at a working structure fire. Two of these firefighters must be outside the hazard area ready to rescue or help the team entering the area. This is commonly referred to as the two-in/two-out rule.

In an article by Joseph V. Maruca writing for the National 

Volunteer Fire Council in Fire Engineering, Volunteer Fire Departments: Bait-and-Switch and a Question of Identity 

He says "there’s a major difference between what firefighters do every day and what everyone (and that includes us) thinks that we do". We think of ourselves as firefighters. The public sees us as firefighters. But the reality is most of what we do have nothing to do with firefighting. And people don’t think they can or should volunteer with our departments because they don’t picture themselves as firefighters.

Finally the article...

LINK to the rest of the Fire Engineering Article