Hello members. I'm a retired fire captain from New York. I worked in a fire district in Westchester County, a couple of miles north of the Bronx. I was also an EMT, and we provided EMT staffed first responders, to augment the volunteer ambulance corp. The ambulance corp. has per diem paramedics, and emt's 24/7 as well as volunteer membership. They run a fly car and two buses. The "triad" response of PD/FD/ and EMS works well in the district, but the greatest life saving ability came when the per diem paramedics were brought on board in the mid-late nineties. The medics work in busier systems, many in NYC, and make ends meet by working the per diem job at the volunteer ambulance.
I retired in 2006, and now reside in the Florida Keys. Read about the legal plight of this site, I think it really sucks what happened. Members here IMHO should step up and help the site administrator with defraying his legal costs. I'm a poster on EMTBravo.net, a very similar site to this. NY suburbs based, we also have a large participation from FDNY members, and a NYC section on the board.
I had a PM question for the administrator; hope he can help me on that.
Other than that, I'm impressed with the professionalism of the discussions here, want to compliment the members on their extensive knowledge. I've read this site for a while before joining last night, very late New Years Eve, and fell asleep at the computer. Woke up with a stiff neck, and the computer was sleeping as well, but still on this site.
I guess if I can add anything to the discussions I will, but if anybody has any questions for a retired fireman that saw EMS make some big advances during my career, I'd be glad to answer them.
Happy New Year 2011. If you check out EMTBravo.net, you'll see me there, same screen-name. I have a pretty good "rep" at the site, and over 1,000 posts. I think my profile is over 7,000 hits. More of my information is available on my profile there, and I will be updating my profile here as well. But I need some sleep right now. lol