The first intermission . . . from the Beebe's skiing saga that is. We hit the slopes yesterday and today, and the kids have crashed safely in their beds and I nearly crashed in the living room, but decided to Facebook and blog instead. I took video footage of a few skiing highlights, but used a borrowed camera . . . which I returned like a responsible citizen . . . before getting the clips copied into my computer. As a consolation prize, you can see some nutty Pittsburghers skiing in their new winter wonderland. (Thanks to That's Church for the clip). Hopefully I'll have some of my own to post soon.
Speaking of crashes, we had a few over the course of the ski trip. I crashed four times . . . and three of those times were on flat ground. The fourth was when I got tangled in Vanessa's friend's skis while disembarking off the lift. Kind like playing Ice Twister on skis. Thankfully, no paparazzi were close enough to document the event. Phillip took a nasty spill when he mis-judged a jump and tumbled face-first into the snow. Fortunately bruised faces are cool for teenaged, daredevil skiers.
I sort of implied in my last post that I had an opinion about charging a fee for false alarms . . . so here it is. If the fee gives building owners incentive to maintain their alarm systems (which would reduce alarms going off for nothing and firefighters being dispatched for nothing), I say nail 'em with the fee. If it makes people waffle and worry about fees when they should be dialing 911, I say it could be counter productive.
Andrew from Toronto, who is a real firefighter from a real department, probably has a valid opinion about this. Next time I see him I'll see what he thinks.
Speaking of dialling 911, there is a new-ish method of CPR out there now, which may save lives (as long as you dial 911 to get the paramedics rolling ASAP, instead of waffling and wondering if you'll get billed for a false alarm if you revive the guy).
I still have to teach the 30 compressions/2 breaths method because bureaucracies change at the speed of snails crawling backwards uphill in February (that's really slow), but I suspect the no-breaths method will be adopted by all eventually.
Friday, February 19, 2010
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Hey!! YOU, TOO, are a 'real' firefighter from a 'real' department. Along with all our other friends in the province who do what we do.
ReplyDeleteThe majority of our (nuisance) habitual false alarms are from monitored systems where the residents will not be making the decision on whether we respond or not. The ones I would be worried about would be the single homeowner whose CO alarm goes off and they think it's just faulty, or those who try to put the fires out themselves. I'm not sure if we will end up with those issues or not, to be honest, but it's always a possibility.
Thanks Andrew, just checking to see if you are still reading :-). Thanks for the opinion.
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