Big Problems at Disney FD

While I certainly agree they need more apparatus in service and the state of repairs of their present apparatuses deplorable I don't see anything wrong with responding to medical emergencies in an SUV instead of an engine company or truck company! I see absently no need to respond with a huge engine or truck company to a medical emergency! You do not need a $500,000+ piece of apparatus to respond to a medical emergency. The wear and tear on the large apparatus is totally unnecessary!
 
Bulldog said:
While I certainly agree they need more apparatus in service and the state of repairs of their present apparatuses deplorable I don't see anything wrong with responding to medical emergencies in an SUV instead of an engine company or truck company! I see absently no need to respond with a huge engine or truck company to a medical emergency! You do not need a $500,000+ piece of apparatus to respond to a medical emergency. The wear and tear on the large apparatus is totally unnecessary!
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Didn't the governor pull their tax exempt status? If so where will the funding come from? And I have seen large cities dispatch their Rescue companies for a medical call. I agree with you 100%.
 
Bulldog said:
While I certainly agree they need more apparatus in service and the state of repairs of their present apparatuses deplorable I don't see anything wrong with responding to medical emergencies in an SUV instead of an engine company or truck company! I see absently no need to respond with a huge engine or truck company to a medical emergency! You do not need a $500,000+ piece of apparatus to respond to a medical emergency. The wear and tear on the large apparatus is totally unnecessary!
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My understanding of the article is that their ambulances are out of service and have been replaced by SUVs running first responder. Which certainly is an issue.
 
Bulldog said:
While I certainly agree they need more apparatus in service and the state of repairs of their present apparatuses deplorable I don't see anything wrong with responding to medical emergencies in an SUV instead of an engine company or truck company! I see absently no need to respond with a huge engine or truck company to a medical emergency! You do not need a $500,000+ piece of apparatus to respond to a medical emergency. The wear and tear on the large apparatus is totally unnecessary!
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I agree with you for the most part. Here in Cincinnati an engine or ladder company responds to every medical emergency and I find it especially wasteful when they leave the engine running while they're treating a patient thus burning fuel. The downside to having other vehicles like SUV's respond is first off, that's an additional vehicle that the department has to purchase and maintain, and second, if it's the same crew that staffs the engine or ladder truck, then if they're leaving the scene of a medical emergency and a call comes in for a fire, they must first return to the station to pick up the larger truck then go to the fire which could cost them precious time.
 
Lebby said:
My understanding of the article is that their ambulances are out of service and have been replaced by SUVs running first responder. Which certainly is an issue.
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I saw an article awhile back that stated they sent two of their medics out for remount right at the beginning of Covid and still hadn’t gotten them back due to supply chain issues. This was as of a couple of months ago I believe.
 
LaurenSkye said:
I agree with you for the most part. Here in Cincinnati an engine or ladder company responds to every medical emergency and I find it especially wasteful when they leave the engine running while they're treating a patient thus burning fuel. The downside to having other vehicles like SUV's respond is first off, that's an additional vehicle that the department has to purchase and maintain, and second, if it's the same crew that staffs the engine or ladder truck, then if they're leaving the scene of a medical emergency and a call comes in for a fire, they must first return to the station to pick up the larger truck then go to the fire which could cost them precious time.
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Whenever I've seen a department dispatch SUVs(or pickups) on medical calls the unit leaves one or two men at the station to respond with the main piece of apparatus and the crew with the SUV responses it to the scene. Yes it costs more than not having the SUV but it saves much wear and tear on the large apparatus that the cost of this motor vehicle is more than offset.
 
grumpy grizzly said:
Didn't the governor pull their tax exempt status? If so where will the funding come from? And I have seen large cities dispatch their Rescue companies for a medical call. I agree with you 100%.
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I believe you are Correct, 'Grump'. I think De Santis Pulled Funding in his on-going Dispute w/ Disney.
Completely Absurd.
 
I used to know a few people that worked for Reedy Creek. Not sure if there still there or not. Theres a lot of issues at the Creek. A lot of them political due to the way that RCFD is structured within Disney. They, more so then other departments are seen as a necessary evil. Judging from some of the things that I have seen and heard from different people over there, it almost sounds like Reedy Creek Improvement District which governs the FD, would much rather disband the FD in its entirety and sub everything out to Orange County and Osceola.

There used to be a mobile FD mechanic, that Reedy Creek and several other FDs in the CFl region used. My department used him also, and wanted to hire him full time to work on our rigs. He was retired Jacksonville fleet mechanic, that opened his own mobile service. Really good guy. Since he retired abut 8 years ago, afaik, no one has replaced him. So they are at the mercy of E one, who supplies all of their rigs, or another unknown mechanic service. I know a lot of departments in the same boat. Especially the smaller Departments that cant afford their own mechanics full time. So Im not surprised that theres extended downtimes on their rigs. They typically dont run EMS with the engines unless its for specific calls, like cardiac arrests, respiratory distress or certain cardiac related calls, or a ambulance isnt available. But there call volume is going up, and on a good day when everything is up and running, they can barely keep up with the call volume they have. Its not uncommon for Orange County FD to be running medical calls on property. And even they are having a hard time with their call volume, despite adding probably another 10 or 15 rescues, pre covid.
 
Your Welcome.
At 1 point, I wanted to go to work for RCFD, but changed my mind after talking to some of the guys there. There a great bunch of crews there, but they dont get much in the way of fire. Every once in a while they do, but nothing too bad since everything is sprinklered or artificial. They get some bad accidents with extrications and some car and brush fires but thats about it.
 
This is going to be an interesting experiment answering the question; What constitutes appropriate fire/ems protection?
In 1980, the Boston Fire Department reportedly had the highest per capita spending in the United States (and thus the known universe).
Then came Proposition 2 and 1/2 in Massachusetts. A nuclear winter was forecast. The Proposition passed, BFD became smaller, State taxpayers got to keep more of their hard earned money. And whatta you know...the place is still standing!
The RCFD budget was obviously determined by corporate decision-making. Looks like it worked fine Now, let's see where municipal bureaucrats take things.
 
I dont think there is an easy answer to appropriate fire/ems protection. In a lot of ways your comparing apples to oranges. Looking at my old department, vs another department about an hour north of us as neutral examples, even though the cities were very close in population and size, the other city has a lot of higher speed roads, but we have a lot more industrial and medical facilities, where they have a lot more older residential, ours is newer. And we have the same number of stations, and equipment, but they had more manpower.
Going back to the Creek, there budget is based more on corporate decision making, It really has not been working. For example, when station 4 opened, they took the engine from St 1, 1 of the rescues from there, and another from St 2 with their crews and called it good. They used the tower as first out to fires. Until they got the tire bills because of the way the station sits to the road, they turn 2 or 3 times on the way out and 5 on the way in, which killed the rear tandems on a regular basis. Like every 2 months they were replacing 8 tires at 600 bucks each. So there solution was move it to station 4 and bring the engine back to 1. That required moving both the tower and the heavy (since they were crossed manned) and renumbering the trucks so that was 4500 bucks renumbering 3 trucks. Then some one said, the tower and heavys response was too long to the other side of property so they did it again, for another 4500 dollars to renumber the 3 trucks again. This went on for about 2 years. 2 or 3x per year. Before they finally replaced the missing engine. They just did it again recently, they added a 5th engine to cover a new area being developed by Animal Kingdom. There using an older engine that was just replaced with new, which was probably a spare to begin with. And put it in an existing station, with the same number of members as they did before. They took 1 or 2 members per st, per shift to man the new engine.
Another example, is there special ops program. They started it up, got crews trained in the 5 disciplines, and after about 3 or 4 years the district canceled most of it, saying that theyll rely on Orange County when its needed. Problem is, that OCFR Special Ops trucks are running 1 and 2nd due fire and ems calls arent available all the time. And it takes 2 OCFR squads to make 1 complete team. And they only have 3. Squad 3, assuming Squad 1 is available, is roughly an hour. Ballpark. Squad 4, is maybe the same.
In short the district which governs the FD is burying there heads in the sand, and saying that well it didnt happen yesterday so it wont happen tom.
 
Excellent points. I'm guessing that there is a tire distributor in Central Florida who has the highest regard for RCFD management. This is all decided by Disney middle management advised by some fire protection consultant working on his second pension. He may have a Masters Degree in public policy or municipal management and is dreaming of a city managers job.
 
Pretty much. If the tire shop hadnt heard from the Creek after about 6 weeks, they did a wellness check. In all reality, the Improvement District which governs the property, and by default Emergency Services, is a city governing board for all intents and purposes. There is a mayor and there are people that live full time on Disney property. But not enough to make a difference.
Theres a lot of good crew there that make the best of what they have. They have made some really great stops, that could have ended with a saved foundation on more then 1 occasion.
 
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