Speeding, texting, or both?

The next one will be on foothills, if the drivers don’t slow down. And of course no radar in sight.

I passed by the Domano wreck just after the fire/ ambulance/ police showed up. They were using jaws of life to cut the roof off the Blazer. Judging from the Blazer was and the lack of another wrecked vehicle it looked to me that the Blazer might have tried to make a left onto Gladstone at a high rate of speed.

It could also be a case of people racing to the merge just a little farther along.

I couldn’t tell how many were inside the Blazer but it was just a flop not a all the way roll over.

That part of Domano is full of douchbags that time of day. I am surprised that it hasn’t happened sooner.

We were sitting outside at the CH Starbucks. A lone full fledged red firetruck came along HWY16, sirens going, turned on Domano and kept going, supposedly to the Domano crash scene.

Within no more than 3 minutes, it returned without sirens.

Great exercise. Wonder what they learned from it.

Posted by: billyinpg
“That part of Domano is full of douchbags”

Well I a’int picking them up.
Call a Haz-Mat team.

metalman.

The other car involved with the Domino accident was parked on St. Laurence with damage left front.

The idea is to have equipment moving then cancel if not needed so as not to wast time getting to the scene of an incident.

I am sorry, but if that last fire truck did that, it did it in record time. It takes more than 3 minutes to continue the drive to Gladstone, get the firemen out of the truc, look at the scene to familiarize themselves with the situation, getthe equipment out and place it ready to cut/pry, do it, stick around to make sure the individual is out, pack up, and then take off again and pass by Starbucks.

So, you really have very little sense of time NRTH.

My theory is that the jaws were in the smaller yellow fire truck seen in the photo above. That vehicle looks much more like the tyoe that would be used for extractive first responders. It may also have health first responders on it or else those come with the ambulance.

You know, it would be wonderful if someone would educate all of us, even if it is someone who posts on here relatively regularly, what the SOP for such an incidence response is in PG.

Wouldn’t that be unique rather than some being after other’s throats?

Gee Gus you just march down, have a meeting with the fire chief and tell him how to do things.

The 911 call goes out, major crash. Now lets have a discussion with the caller, how many people and equipment should we send?

Or maybe it goes this way send one responder out to evaluate the situation then call in an appropriate response. Is that your solution? Time wasted.

Oh by the way the quick turn around by that truck, well they have a thing called a radio and where told they were not needed. Would you rather have them wait in the hall thus using up possible life saving time?

You called it Seamutt

My goodness some of you people have just to much time on your hands lol

I will offer some night into the response protocols for PGRS for Motor Vehicles Incidents (MVI). Firstly, my name is Keith Meldrum and I used to be the Chief Communications Officer for PGFRS until I had to move away from Prince George in 2011 due to a potentially fatal autoimmune disease that was caused by the PG air pollution. I now live in Kelowna and do not work in the fire service anymore.

I have never commented on this site before but this issue is one I am very familiar with. Prior to leaving PG, I worked in local government for nearly 17 years and can offer that it can be difficult at times as municipal employees are often under intense scrutiny, which unto itself is fine, but often cannot respond in public forums as the message can often be taken out of context, etc. Unless a situation is extremely important or information is grossly misunderstood, public opinion was left at that.

To provide some insight and I apologize if this is a bit long, part of my duties with PGRS was the management of the fire dispatch centre and assistance in the development of appropriate response protocols, such as response to MVI’s. Municipalities must be cognitive of not over responding emergency equipment and putting the safety of the public and the first responders at risk but at the same time need to balance that against ensuring the correct level of response is sent to ensure appropriate and effective response. PGFRS was leading in the development of responses that sent fire apparatus “routine” based on the incident type and the dispatcher’s professional opinion as compared to every response being an emergency response (lights and siren) as was standard practice, and still is, for many departments in BC. Specifically for MVI’s, municipal fire departments work very closely with their partners in the BC Ambulance Service (BCAS) as the vast majority of notifications of MVI’s are received from BCAS; the 9-1-1 call is typically transferred to BCAS by the 9-1-1 call answer centre. BCAS and PGFRS have state of the art computer aided dispatch (CAD) technology that is linked via a “gateway” that automatically notifies the fire dispatch centre within seconds of the call be created in the BCAS CAD system. The gateway auto-populates the fire CAD system and within CAD is a matrix of different MVI’s types. The call from BCAS is “linked” to the appropriate fire MVI type (e.g. single vehicle, multi-vehicle, confirmed entrapment, etc.). This call matrix then selects a “unit recommendation” (the pre-determined appropriate fire apparatus to respond) and presents this recommendation to the fire despatcher. The fire dispatcher accepts or override the recommendation as deemed appropriate.

In most cases, the closest engine as well as the rescue truck (the “green truck”) is dispatched. There are numerous issues and hazards to be mitigated at a car crash, especially considering modern vehicular technology. Air bag deployments, or non-deployments, high voltage batteries, hazardous materials, and of course traffic control are as important as patience extrication. These are often complex and dangerous scenes for the first responders.

When a multiple unit response is initiated but it is determined that the additional fire resource(s are not required), the first on scene unit will advise the dispatch centre that the other responding units can be cancelled and return to their station.

MVI, and all other emergency response protocols, are reviewed and amended as necessary on a regular basis. Again, MVI responses are linked very closely to BCAS and the fire service and BCAS work very closely together in this partnership to ensure the safety of the public and their responders.

In closing, I offer that these protocols I have referred to were in place in 2011 when I had to unfortunately “retire” form a job that I loved. With that said, I am sure that the protocols are similar if not the same today and I would offer that my past colleagues at PGFRS would be more than happy to discuss any of this if they were contacted.

Keith Meldrum

Seamutt wrote: “Gee Gus you just march down, have a meeting with the fire chief and tell him how to do things.”

Yu obviously do not understand. Can you read for content or are you just the real contrarian on this site?

“You know, it would be wonderful if someone would educate all of us”
Well it looks like our wish has been granted. Thanks Mr Meldrum. It sounds like a lot more thought and knowledge has gone into this system than most of the public knows.

I thank you very much for your response, Keith. It is the type of response that I understand is not typically given by people currently in position of authority because the possibility of that snowballing into something much worse than the gossip of public postings is very high.

I think in the end what I am looking for is some understanding by governments at all levels, but especially at the local levels, as well as the media, to raise the awareness of how things work because, I find, that the less some people know, the more we have misunderstandings.

So, I am looking for more articles like that in local print, local web pages, and especially from local governments and government services on their web pages, including specialty departments/services such as fire, police, ambulance, bylaws, planning, hospital emergency rooms, etc.

We are in an age where communication opportunities are tremendous. I find the problem is that the communication typically falls under the following categories:

1. authoritarian – we know what we are doing and we are doing it for your good.

2. limited factual – there has been an incident at such an such an intersection … then it stops because info is not sufficient or is sensitive and is not being released.

3. not specifically solicited – the comments following a posted story, no matter what “news” site it is posted on

4. opinion columns – typically one person and, of course, the unwritten word is typically subjective, as most opinions are.

5. Informative/investigative – those are so rare ….. we lost the last good one in this city when Hoekstra left to go to Vancouver. He still writes the occasional good ones about here because he is familar with it. In my opinion, his writings about the local mill explosions would never be touched by anyone in PG because they are too close to the “political” scene.

As far as air quality goes, I know another person who had to leave the community against his wishes because of that.

BTW, for those who have been on this site for some time, you might recall the article written a year ago

blog/view/24708

I know, most are quite old on this site and suffer from short term memory loss sometimes … LOL

The headline is: “City Looks at Ways to Keep the EMR Program Alive”

It was apparently successful.

“The move now is to see how the two services can work together, better, to ensure the proper resources are being sent to the scene. It would start with AN INTEGRATED DISPATCH SYSTEM THAT COULD RECOGNIZE WHAT HAS BEEN SENT TO ANY ONE INCIDENT.”

“The system does not have a big enough safety net, that’s why all the first responders go” says Dr.Holmes, “UNTIL THERE IS AN INTEGRATED DISPATCH SYSTEM, IT ISN’T KNOWN WHO HAS BEEN SENT TO THE SCENE.” He says he has been working in the emergency services field for 25 years, and HE STILL ASKS WHY ALL THE RESOURCES ARE SENT TO THE SAME SCENE.

Nice cut and paste, eh? I knew it existed. I knew where it was posted because the site has a wonderful search engine. The key words were easy to figure out. I did not have to re-write it. I also know that someone who would be classified an expert in the field, and that is not me, had this opinion.

So, where are we at with this?

Waiting for seamutt’s next smart ass comment…. ;-)

The car that sideswiped the school bus was a rented car. The driver – a male – will be facing charges.