Thursday, June 5, 2014

How Many Do They Need Anyway?





As I was running around Tuesday getting the grass mowed around the bee hives and the house we own in town caught up I went over to pick a few things up from the store. It was extremely warm by that time climbing up into the lower 90's and I know I had to take a couple of breaks while mowing to cool off in the shade. Usually I stop maybe once halfway through but I think I stopped about four times this go around.

As I exited the store there was a guy who had collapsed from the heat laying across the bench right outside the door. He had a couple of people helping him already, no reason for me to get involved and someone came scurrying out behind me with a bottle of water for him as well. I heard another man say that he had called an ambulance and they were on their way.

By the time I made it out to my truck with my groceries the emergency vehicles began to arrive. First one complete fire truck, then another, followed by an ambulance, then the local PD arrived in two separate vehicles.

WTF?

Now I may not vote in this town/city but I sure as hell pay property taxes here (ok the wife pays em but still) and I am constantly hearing about how these departments need more money for this, extra funds for that, put a new tax initiative on the ballot please.... Please sir we would like some more...

Yet they send five vehicles and who knows how many people to a simple case of heat exhaustion?

This is a prime example of miss management of our tax money and bloated government. If these departments have enough staff and extra resources to send that many vehicles and people to a simple heat exhaustion call then something is wrong. I don't know about the ambulance crew, they may have been a privately funded operation from the local hospital or they may have been county, I wasn't close enough to see, but still there were at least twelve publicly paid employees on that scene before I pulled out of the parking lot and two large fuel guzzling vehicles.

I am sorry but I have a hard time opening my wallet and paying for that kind of over staffed waste.

Of course questioning such waste places one in the position of virtual Tea Partier. Instead of wanting dirty air and water you want to let people die and houses to burn down.  Someone somewhere can come up with any number of fantasy scenarios where if the local departments didn't have that many people they couldn't respond to every conceivable emergency that might happen. Those scenarios in the same vein as why the county sheriff department needs a MRAPS for serving warrants I am sure. 

I am quite sure there are plenty of people out there who feel it is so much better for cities to be over staffed in such ways. Fine. But I tell ya what. How about you stop letting those who rent or don't own property vote to raise my property taxes to pay for something they think is nice to have but not truly needed 99% of the time. Why sure those who don't pay the actual property tax increases are fine with such moves, why wouldn't they be it's all gain for them with no cost, or so they think. Wait until their rent goes up a bit.

Mob rule Democracy at it's finest and a good sign why we are in the mess we are in.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!

18 comments:

  1. Boredom pure and simple. While in Fla we had a couple of people pass away at one hotel, at different times of the year. We must have seen 6 to 8 Deputy's Plus 1 EMS rig, and 1 fire truck. The EMS pronounced death, and both left. As deputy's left as needed elsewhere. One poor ba##ard had to wait for the M.E. which took like 3 or 4 hours.

    We also saw 15 police cars chase one car from a bank robbery down I-4

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    1. Rob - There are many forms of government welfare and all these over staffed positions are just the same but with groupies callin em heroes all the time.

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  2. Not too long ago I recall seeing an article about two man first responder vehicles, basically a rolling trauma kit built on Jeep Patriot chassis. Seems like a good solution to me.

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    1. Wolfman - It could be. Hell the Fire department in that town was trying to justify needing deep water scuba gear last year if I remember. I think they said in case someone rolled off the bridge over the mighty Mo. I remember someone else pointing out at the time that the state water patrol's headquarters were in that same town and had jurisdiction on the river anyway.

      My point is they would claim they need four of those vehicles and then three of em would show up to one call. There is no realistic management going on just needless spending of other people's money.

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  3. Look at it this way, the guy on the bench got more vehicles and men devoted to his heat exhaustion than the embassy in Benghazi. Too bad for the ambassador and his men that this old guy didn't pass out on the embassy bench, the place would have been so over run with fire trucks and emergency personnel that the terrorists(video protestors) would have fled the scene.

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    1. Sf - What's scary is some department somewhere could have purchased a C-130 (or whatever they use now days) and responded charging the taxpayers and would ahve felt justified and want to be called heroes for doing it.

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  4. SD - Heh I will gladly accept the label if it keeps em from voting to raise my taxes.

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  5. They always like to drive the big trucks when they can get a chance. It's a feeling of power. They get to own the road and the lights and you never know, a big fire might break out & then they would already be there.

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    1. MV - Ya know if it was a volunteer force I could kinda understand taking a few over precautions, getting the trucks out for a spin whenever you could that kind of thing. But I assure you each and everyone of those guys were on the clock and counting the days until their pensions kick in.

      I can see why we are so broke.

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  6. Here our ambulance services have nothing to do with the county or state. They belong to the only hospital in the county. If you have insurance, you let the insurance pay them. If you don't, you have to pay them so much a month, usually for the rest of your life. Unless you are an Illegal immigrant, in which case you just walk out of the hospital and don't pay anything. So the hospital passes on those costs to locals who do have insurance.

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  7. I should mention that over in the county where my wife works, she had a wreck in March. The wreck was in front of the high school. The hospital is about six blocks away. The bill for the ambulance, just the ambulance, was almost a thousand dollars. Our insurance has a two thousand five hundred deductible before it pays anything, so I got stuck with the whole bill. And that did not include the emergency room and all the hangers on who got to run tests on her and then bill us. I felt like telling her next time, just die in place if you can't get out of the car, but don't get in a damned ambulance. Of course, I didn't.

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    1. Harry - I prolly would have told em to shove their ambulance and walked myself. I see your point in that. Even if the ambulance that arrived was privately funded it was the two fire trucks and idle police guys that really got my gander up.

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  8. Flood the zone is their battle cry can't be low on rollouts come budget time.Gotta keep the numbers up.

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    1. Bubba - Ya. I then keep pushing the tax increase bill until it finally somehow passes too.

      The rat bastards.

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  9. PP,

    They always send out the fire engine with the ambulance here. The ambulance has the experienced EMT's, the fire engine has of course those who fight the fires, and additional medical crews. Then if a call relates to the heart they send out the bigger ambulance which has the more experienced paramedics.
    Not only do we pay dearly in taxes, we also pay a hefty bill for the ambulance.
    There's a lot of waste of tax payer money across the board.

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    1. Sandy - I am sure they sent all those extra vehicles because of numerous what if scenarios. They can't rely on the caller to know really yadda yadda. I understand but it comes down to simple cost as I am sure you agree. There comes a point when preparing for every eventuality becomes too expensive. As preppers I think we all get that.

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    2. They do the same thing here in Jacksonville. Send a $500,000 fire truck with 5 firemen in it plus 2-3 paramedics in the ambulance to pick up a drunk. There is certainly better ways to do this. How about eliminating the paramedics altogether and lease sections of the city out to private ambulance companies? Our panty wearing city council has under funded the police and firemen pensions by $1,500,000,000.00 yes that is a BILLION and no resolution to fix it, the spineless asses. However they did just fund a $40,000,000.00 plus cost overruns new scoreboard for the JagWads stadium. I'd put them all on Social Security and if they don't like it they can quit and go work at wal-mart! There must be some job there they could qualify for, how about herding shopping carts!
      Guess I'm cranky today....

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    3. Mike - LOL if that's cranky I am cranky every day. Of course some already say that I am :)

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