NYC: Big fire (4th alarm now) across a church and several multi-unit residential buildings at 12th St and 27th Ave in Astoria.
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The problem with always dispatching the nearest available fire house is that if there's a large fire somewhere, there won't be nearby available firefighters to respond to *other* fires nearby, requiring the initial response to come from far away.
So they don't always send the nearest available. Instead, they skip over some of them, to ensure maintaining availability near large incidents.
But figuring who best to send next quickly becomes pretty complicated, with multiple contingencies.
5/
@mattblaze
CalFire generally sends the closest units, then has further away units move up to cover empty stations. But California is still not as densely populated as NYC.
With all the mutual aid agreements in place, the cover units will frequently be from another agency. -
@mattblaze
CalFire generally sends the closest units, then has further away units move up to cover empty stations. But California is still not as densely populated as NYC.
With all the mutual aid agreements in place, the cover units will frequently be from another agency.@Dougfir Yeah, this system works in large dense cities (LA and SF, maybe).
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Some terminology: There are two basic kinds of firefighting vehicles: "Engines", which carry hoses and pump water, and "trucks", which have telescoping ladders. Each is crewed by 4 or 5 firefighters. Engines are chiefly responsible for putting out the fire, while trucks are chiefly responsible for rescuing people (and getting access to high floors). In NYC, a "battalion" has a chief that supervises (generally) two engines and one truck
Each additional alarm adds roughly 4 engines and 2 trucks.
@mattblaze This is absolutely fascinating and I'm grateful to you for sharing it. Thank you.
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Anyway, it's a very interesting and complex real-time systems optimization problem, with lives at stake. And it was solved with 19th century technology, with the basic principles unchanged to this day.
8/8
@mattblaze Super cool. Thanks for sharing!
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NYC: Big fire (4th alarm now) across a church and several multi-unit residential buildings at 12th St and 27th Ave in Astoria.
@mattblaze My obsession with nominative determinism makes this thread 100x more fun.
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Anyway, it's a very interesting and complex real-time systems optimization problem, with lives at stake. And it was solved with 19th century technology, with the basic principles unchanged to this day.
8/8
@mattblaze It really is fascinating! I went down this rabbit hole learning about my large suburban FD (Montgomery County MD) and the pre-planning and training is *very* detailed. For each apparatus, once they’re told “you’re the second due” each person (defined by seat) already knows exactly what their initial assignment will be on arrival.
Obviously, very dynamic thereafter. But as they say, plans are useless, but planning is essential.
Nerdsniped.
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@VE2UWY I have that book, somewhere!
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Some terminology: There are two basic kinds of firefighting vehicles: "Engines", which carry hoses and pump water, and "trucks", which have telescoping ladders. Each is crewed by 4 or 5 firefighters. Engines are chiefly responsible for putting out the fire, while trucks are chiefly responsible for rescuing people (and getting access to high floors). In NYC, a "battalion" has a chief that supervises (generally) two engines and one truck
Each additional alarm adds roughly 4 engines and 2 trucks.
I grew up in NYC but only knew part of that. Telegraph and not-nearest for second order responders: yes. Predetermined second order responders and "battalions": no.
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System shared this topic
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@tehstu NYC has always been on the leading edge of this, but other dense cities generally do something similar.
@mattblaze @tehstu I live in a metro area of about 500K, and I hear terms like "box number" and "fast company" on dispatch all the time. I'm guessing this is some simplified version of the system described. They usually just dispatch specific apparatus by name (e.g., Ladder 7, Rescue 4) after that.
I wonder if "fast company" is basically the 'on call' for actual fires and major events.
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@mattblaze @tehstu I live in a metro area of about 500K, and I hear terms like "box number" and "fast company" on dispatch all the time. I'm guessing this is some simplified version of the system described. They usually just dispatch specific apparatus by name (e.g., Ladder 7, Rescue 4) after that.
I wonder if "fast company" is basically the 'on call' for actual fires and major events.
@DarcMoughty @tehstu There's a lot of terminology that varies, but a "FAST" truck is often specially assigned outside the fire building in case other firefighters become trapped and require rescue. It stands for something like Fire (something) Search Team
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Some terminology: There are two basic kinds of firefighting vehicles: "Engines", which carry hoses and pump water, and "trucks", which have telescoping ladders. Each is crewed by 4 or 5 firefighters. Engines are chiefly responsible for putting out the fire, while trucks are chiefly responsible for rescuing people (and getting access to high floors). In NYC, a "battalion" has a chief that supervises (generally) two engines and one truck
Each additional alarm adds roughly 4 engines and 2 trucks.
This is a BIG fire, and still burning. They just called in two additional trucks. But it's starting to wind down. They just declared "probably will hold", which is the step before "under control". Over three hours so far.
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Some terminology: There are two basic kinds of firefighting vehicles: "Engines", which carry hoses and pump water, and "trucks", which have telescoping ladders. Each is crewed by 4 or 5 firefighters. Engines are chiefly responsible for putting out the fire, while trucks are chiefly responsible for rescuing people (and getting access to high floors). In NYC, a "battalion" has a chief that supervises (generally) two engines and one truck
Each additional alarm adds roughly 4 engines and 2 trucks.
@mattblaze I quite like the names we use here in Toronto, which are… quite descriptive. “Engines” are Pumpers, “trucks” are Aerials, and then we have Rescue Pumpers, Hazmat, Heavy Rescue Squads, and two High Rise units as the other primary apparatus (plus some variants like Tower and Platform). Then all the secondary apparatus like the Air/Lights, the giant “Tower One” (which is support, not primary; the other Towers are primary I think), and all the chiefs are just called “car” over the radio.
They also have a pretty cool foam pumper I’ve seen around once or twice, and I’m not sure if it would be primary or secondary (not sure how it’s crewed). It is, fittingly, assigned the unit number FP121.
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This is a BIG fire, and still burning. They just called in two additional trucks. But it's starting to wind down. They just declared "probably will hold", which is the step before "under control". Over three hours so far.
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Anyway, it's a very interesting and complex real-time systems optimization problem, with lives at stake. And it was solved with 19th century technology, with the basic principles unchanged to this day.
8/8
@mattblaze Very interesting! I never knew how the x-Alarm system actually worked.
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Anyway, it's a very interesting and complex real-time systems optimization problem, with lives at stake. And it was solved with 19th century technology, with the basic principles unchanged to this day.
8/8
@mattblaze how long until a tech bro comes and says: "wow, that system is outdated. Look at my shiny AI... We feed it with the fire location and it will tell the dispatcher who to send..."
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Anyway, it's a very interesting and complex real-time systems optimization problem, with lives at stake. And it was solved with 19th century technology, with the basic principles unchanged to this day.
8/8
@mattblaze I appreciate learning about this from a guy named Blaze
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@mattblaze how long until a tech bro comes and says: "wow, that system is outdated. Look at my shiny AI... We feed it with the fire location and it will tell the dispatcher who to send..."
@carstenfranke
And then gets told where to shove it. Disaster response communities are pretty careful about this kind of thing and have a certain amount of autonomy because of the whole people dying thing.
@mattblaze -
Some terminology: There are two basic kinds of firefighting vehicles: "Engines", which carry hoses and pump water, and "trucks", which have telescoping ladders. Each is crewed by 4 or 5 firefighters. Engines are chiefly responsible for putting out the fire, while trucks are chiefly responsible for rescuing people (and getting access to high floors). In NYC, a "battalion" has a chief that supervises (generally) two engines and one truck
Each additional alarm adds roughly 4 engines and 2 trucks.
@mattblaze Fascinating thread, thank you. I had no idea this existed, although now you explain it, it makes perfect sense.
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This is a BIG fire, and still burning. They just called in two additional trucks. But it's starting to wind down. They just declared "probably will hold", which is the step before "under control". Over three hours so far.
@mattblaze oh man, I hope not too many people are injured and that nobody dies.
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Several firefighters injured after a collapse in the church. Now a fifth alarm (the maximum pre-determined response).
The FDNY "alarm" system addresses an interesting and difficult optimization problem in dispatching additional firefighters to large incidents. And it's largely unchanged from the 19th century. It's really quite clever.
Some background:
I loved reading this thank you. Fascinating mechanical system still effective: Another I would share with you is the dabbawalla food delivery system in Mumbai. They collect cooked food from a workers home and deliver it to them at their desk at lunchtime. After lunch they collect the containers and return them to homes. All done with numbers and markings on the containers. …/2
