Public Safety Signals

Art Deyo Says:

This type of chain reaction collision is fairly common in California’s central valley. In fact, an accident like this occurred in Bakersfield, Calif this morning in heavy fog. As first responders we must train on ICS and MCI incidents. In addition, we can quickly become part of the accident if we do not pay careful consideration to safety. If the public can see each other they sure can’t see us.

Art

January 11th, 2008 at 11:45 pm

Joseph Pascarella Says:

Art,

Thanks for the post and great point. Trying to sort out these types of incidents when vehicles are traveling at great speeds is very trying.

Joe

January 17th, 2008 at 5:11 am

Mike Bell Says:

There is no public safety incident scenario for which professional public safety personnel should be unprepared. In the “all-risk” model of contemporary public safety response all contingencies possible within a given jurisdiction must be pre-planned and trained for. In the case of a crazy event like the bridge collapse, there is no mental slide tray for the specific incident, so training in ICS, MCI, personnel safety and experienced leadership will be the elements that carry the day in the “once in a lifetime” events. All of the actual tasks conducted that day (firefighting, EMS, water rescue, collapse shoring etc) are simple training modules selected and carried out in an appropriate manner to accomplish what are very basic priorities, life safety, incident stabilization and property/environmental protection which are common to most incidents.

The key is to never forget, we are the professionals, our oath and our ethics mandate we rise to the occasion especially when no one else can or will. That does not happen by accident, deliberate, thought out and well implemented training, post-incident analysis and interdepartmental team building are what the public deserves and demands from us when the stuff hits the fan.

Have a nice day.

January 24th, 2008 at 3:05 am