| HorneTD 2005-05-23, 11:54 am |
| Carey Gregory wrote:
> [cross-posting trimmed]
>
> HorneTD <hornetd@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Are you serious? My, what a quaint idea.
>
> Won't happen. Fire is a dwindling emergency, but medical and other
> emergencies that produce no outwardly visible signs are on the rise.
> Spending public money on watch towers and the personnel to man them would be
> a ridiculous waste that would be better spent ensuring that the public voice
> network (whatever form it takes) is always capable of reaching emergency
> resources. To allow that requirement to slip into history would be a huge
> public policy mistake.
>
Fire will only remain a dwindling emergency if the means to contact fire
& rescue services remain reliable. Present practice is to fight fires
room by room. If decaying reliability of the PSTN continues we will
have to go back to fighting them block by block. As for money to staff
watch towers such watches were historically maintained by on duty fire
crews. My remarks about station towers were only meant to indicate that
we are now going backwards in the reliability of emergency call
communications.
My point is that the Public Switched Telephone Network's (PSTN)
reliability is going down rather than up. The network is beginning down
a path that will lead to fragility rather than robustness.
A side story that you may find entertaining is that back in the mid
eighties a new firefighter reported for duty at a very historic Chicago
fire house that still had a watch tower. This rookie was told that he
had the first four hours of tower watch from eight P.M. until midnight.
He was handed a pair of the binoculars that are carried on units to
read hazardous materials placards and sent up the stairs as a sort of
initiation gag. It was 1115 or so when he came pounding down the stairs
yelling for his crew to turn out because he had spotted the loom up of a
fire in their service area. His was in fact the first report of that
fire. The first telephone alarm was not received by fire alarm until
the units were already on the way.
--
Tom Horne
--
Tom Horne
Well we aren't no thin blue heroes and yet we aren't no blackguards to.
We're just working men and woman most remarkable like you.
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