Divemedic

There are many fire departments (and some ambulance services) in the United States where each employee works a 24 hour shift. Most work 24 hours on, 48 hours off. This schedule works out to 56 hours a week and requires three shifts.There are others, but this one appears to be the most prevalent. I worked this shift pattern for the last 15 years of my career. It requires you to report to work at 7:30 in the morning, and work straight through to 7:30 the next morning.

The 24 hour shift is a relic of a time when EMS was nonexistent, and firefighting wasn’t all that busy. Employers asked for and received an exemption from the 40 hour per week rule of the FSLA, using the excuse that late night fires were rare, and firefighters could sleep. This means that an employer can make a firefighter work 53 hours a week without paying overtime. The result is that the 56 hour work week costs the employer the equivalent of  57.5 hours of straight time pay.

Since the FSLA, fire departments have taken on many new roles: EMS, hazardous materials response, heavy rescue, rescue diving, and more. Call loads have been increasing steadily. In 1999, the station I was assigned to ran an average of 2,300 calls a year. By the year I retired, my station was up to 3,200 calls a year. My personal record was answering 23 calls in one day. That is not an unusual situation. The busiest fire unit in North America runs an AVERAGE of 16 calls per day. Not station, unit. There can be more than one unit in a station, which can see call loads of 50 or more calls per day. That call load is on top of all of the other duties like equipment maintenance, inspections, public education, and other routine duties.

Couple that with the staffing issues and employee burnout that causes frequent manpower shortages, and you create a large amount of mandatory overtime. For political reasons, firefighters cannot be seen sleeping during the day, so a paramedic firefighter may be 36 hours into a 48 hour shift, and be operating on no sleep. All of this means that emergency personnel are rarely as well rested as they should be, and this is aggravated by overtime.

That is why this incident comes as no surprise. You cannot expect that an employee that is 18 hours into a 24 shift to be making the same quality decisions that he did when he was just coming on shift. The IAFF, as well as many firefighters, will vigorously oppose a change to this schedule, mostly because it will cut into the 4-5 days off per week that many firefighters enjoy. Employers will fight changes, because it would mean having to hire more personnel.

However, there is no question in my mind that, as call loads and duties increase, this schedule becomes more dangerous and difficult to justify.

A group in Orange county, Florida is circulating a petition to be added to the ballot that would pass a county ordinance to require that all businesses in the county give employees paid sick days. They are seeking one hour of sick time for every thirty seven hours worked. The law supported by the petition would also prohibit employers from disciplining employees for calling in sick. This will increase labor costs by 3%, as well as make it more likely that employers would have staffing woes, further increasing costs to employers.

This stupid law will probably pass, because the idiots voting for this will not understand that employers will have only three ways to deal with this added expense (essentially, a tax):
1 Cut costs. This will happen through lower wages or lay offs.
2 Increase revenue. They will raise prices. This means that many of the businesses that currently do not offer sick time, like convenience stores and fast food places, will charge more. Hello, local inflation.
3 Simply close Orange County locations, and move out of the county.

This is the basic flaw of Democracy: Everyone thinks that they can live at the expense of everyone else by simply voting for it.

I wonder what it would cost to install ground surveillance radar at your bug out location?

Why do people go to school? What is the purpose? Nominally, it is for the student to learn certain things, as defined by the objectives of the course. When I was a student in public school, I found the actual learning process to be boring. I would seldom do homework, and I usually put my head down and slept in class. Yet with all of that, at exam time, I would get A’s. Students and teachers alike would complain that I wasn’t doing the work. I pointed out that the point of the class was not to do homework, but to master the course objectives, which I had done, as evidenced by the fact that I had passed the exam.

So teachers began making the completion of homework a substantial portion of the course grade. One of the things that I remember from a 7th grade world history class was that we were given assignments every day, and we were required to complete these assignments and place them in a notebook. This notebook would be collected at the end of the semester, and would be graded. The grade for this notebook would be 60% of the overall grade for the course. I remember one of those assignments. It was a line drawing of a Roman Gladiator, and the assignment was to color in the picture. I felt it was a waste of time, and I didn’t do it. I scored 90% plus on every exam, and I failed the class. The girl who sat next to me failed every exam, turned in a stellar coloring book, and got an A in the class.

This is why we are turning out educated idiots. The focus in school is on obedience, not education. That is why I don’t criticize this mom, who is under fire because her daughter didn’t turn in her homework.

If I had to do it all over again, I would drop out of school as soon as I was able, and take the GED. Then I could attend a community college for an associate’s degree. Public school is a waste of time.

So as Hugo Chavez, the Socialist leader of Venezuela, sees his lead in polls cut from thirteen percent to only five percent in only six weeks ahead of the October 7 election for his third term, the civilian ownership of guns is now outlawed. Socialism is such a good idea, that it has to be mandatory and backed by a monopoly of government force.

Hugo Chavez’s government says the ultimate aim is to disarm all
civilians, but his opponents say the police and government may not have
the capacity or the will to enforce the new law.
Criminal violence is set to be a major issue in presidential elections later in the year.
Campaign group The Venezuela Violence Observatory said last
year that violence has risen steadily since Mr Chavez took office in
1999.

Do you think that this was a manufactured crisis, just like Fast and Furious? The past decade has seen a consolidation of power by Chavez. Him being declared president for life is just around the corner.

Gun confiscation will be followed by dictatorship.

So today, I read about an 11 year old that is pregnant because she was at a sleepover, and the 36 year old man who lives there, while high on Lortabs and Xanny bars, mistook her for his wife and had his way with her.

Then I read about the Canadian 14 year old that is on her third pregnancy with her 35 year old boyfriend. Where are the parents in all this?

Before I was retired, I held the record for medics in the area, by transporting a 12 year old girl to the hospital who was in active labor. I just can’t understand this sort of thing.

One thing I do  wonder, is why are girls hitting menarche earlier and earlier?

Got in a debate on Facebook with a couple of anti gunners today. It began with this post:

anti 1: According to the Center for Disease Control(CDC)
In the year 2007
Homicide with a firearm: 12,129 (33 a day)
Suicide with a firearm: 17,348 (47.5 a day)
Death by accidental discharge of firearm: 721 (just over 2 a day)

I reply: 

That is the motto displayed at the TSA’s air marshal training center. They appear to be living up to that motto, with their unconstitutional searches being expanded to city buses, highways, and shopping malls.

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee praised these violations of her
constituents’ rights with an explanation asinine even by congressional
standards:

“We’re looking to make sure that the lady I
saw walking with a cane … knows that Metro cares as much about her as
we do about building the light rail.”

See, if you
don’t support the random harassment of ordinary people riding the bus to
work, you’re a callous bastard who doesn’t care about little old
ladies.