I will need to update the cost of volunteer firefighting

[nadinbrzezinski]

In the good ol' days when I did my rescue and all that shtick... I got gently used Turnout Gear for 300 bucks... been a few decades. It was truly new, returned by a fire department that ordered too small.

So today we were looking for wildland fire gear for when we cover our local fires (settled on the t shirt, Level 1-A... I am not going to be actively taking a shovel... but if there are sparks the T-Shirts will be more than enough to avoid a burn)... did I mention they are made in the US and probably the most expensive T-Shirts I have ever bought?

So out of curiousity checked on the cost of the Fire Dex turn out gear (I remember it fondly)

Well the jacket is 1200 buckaroos, and the pants 800 buckaroos.... so for about 2,000 bucks you can get yourself your structural fire turn out gear, and that does not include the boots, gloves and helmet. For that add about another two thousand. (Sorry, I did not add right)

So should we all now ask fire fighters to pay for that gear? I know, for Mitt and the crew that is nothing... I mean chump change, but think about it next time you see your firefighter... in full gear ready to go fight a house fire. And I will have to revise my cost to equip a fire crew and a truck, quite a bit upwards.

Ok it is cheaper if they are fighting a forest fire, but you get the picture. And this is why... we pay for it using tax money...

[XemaSab]

1. Lot of people in my area need both structural and wildland gear

Add $$$$$ for that.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Yeah the wildland gear, just t-shirt

jacket and pants, looking at 1000, we just spent fifty per t-shirt alone.

Again, gloves, helmet and boots not included, let alone the rigging for water bottles, and all that jazz.

The good thing of me having done the job is that I-A and III-A and ANSI are not greek to me.

[TheMastersNemesis]

3. I Was A Volunteer

When I lived in St. Clair, Missouri during the summer and 5 months before I was drafted in 1967 I would go out with the volunteer fire department. I remember fighting a house fire and a brush fire. Only the core staff were trained really and whatever volunteers showed up went on calls. They had a couple of jeeps, a staff car and one or two old fire engines. They were always scraping for money. When the siren went off in the middle of the night you would see a couple of car fly through main street. They had to drive to the station first before they could get out. It might take 10 or 15 minutes to get a crew assembled.

There was no pay except for the chief from what I remember. So it truly was all volunteer. It is crazy to think that Romney and company think that we can just trash the basic foundation of our society. What is crazy is how many Republicans are all for getting rid of public servants.

Public servants are the ones who plow the snow off of our roads, clean our sewage, fix our roads and bridges, clean up our pollution, remove our dead animals from the roadways, treat our water, deal with contagious diseases, etc. Expecting them to work for a pittance is nutcase thinking. Many of these supposed menial jobs require expertise. Without them or society would just stop. To privatize it all more make it volunteer is simply unworkable.

In today's world fire fighting and police work are too complex to leave to amateurs. Too much can go wrong and untrained civilians are likely to get themselves killed as well as the ones they are to rescue. And no one is prepared to deal with incidents where there is a lot of carnage. The election should be over right now. The fact that Romney and GOP candidates have not fallen 10 points behind immediately just proves how demented we have become as a nation.

The iconic picture of the Three Stooges in firefighting gear is what we will get with this new insanity.

[Jamessmith1]

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