Roanoke City Fire Study

Roanoke City is having System Planning Corporation come to town to do a study. Included in the study, from what I understand, will be Station Location, Manpower, and Pay. It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

To answer your question, the answer is no. I am not so naive to think that the study is going to come back with what I, or even most of you, want to hear. The study probably will not call for minimum staffing of 4 on the engines and 5 on the ladder trucks. The study will probably call for the close of Fire Station #1 and the combination of #5 and #9, and the dismissal of one of the Engine Companies. Maybe it will come back saying we need 2 more medic trucks. Who knows. It will certainly be interesting to find out.

It probably will not, to my dismay, call for me to be put to use. So I will remain on the ARFF crew. Because of this, and the jealousy that I have witnessed, I have decided to put a stat counter right here on this blog. The stat counter is not to measure who reads the blog or how many of you. Rather the stat counter will be a post once a week of my run tally. This being my second tour on ARFF this year, I will only include the second tour, which started…yawn…a couple months ago. Anyways, I will probably not be as strict as every Monday or every Friday like Firewhirl, who has certain posts each day of the week. I will be adding up all the runs of the week, once a week and letting you know of my progress in becoming an experienced, trained, and mildly weathered ARFF Firefighter.

To date since the beginning of my second tour: I have not run a single Call. Not one. Zero, Zilch, flip me over I have a bedsore like Bennington (who can sleep for 14 hours straight -ask me about it). It has gotten to the point that I make sure there is money on my paycheck to see that I am getting paid for it.

Don’t hate, don’t be jealous. I was chosen for the position.