Hi everyone, I am indeed back! I had a great vacation at disneyland and brought in the new year right!
Mike, how much did your hits grow since you are on this forum ?
Honestly, not to much. The malibu fire pics I posted slammed my server big time though due to the news attention they recieved. I average about 4 to 6k hits a day, but that was hitting about 15! 72% through search engines, 11% direct.
But does the county police out there actually patrol or they just do patrol of parks ,government areas,ect?
LA County Sheriff does patrol work for unincorporated areas and contracted cities (alot of areas, in fact). LA County Police generally does security work. They have "patrol cars" but generally stay within the confines of their designated areas (parks, county hospitals and buildings, etc)
Spaloo is correct once again. While they are all sworn police officers, POST level I, they mostly provide security details and park patrols. In the game, they would be the ones who would respond to fights and such at the Hospital on the map.
Mike,
How does OES fall into the grand scheme of things? Do they have there own firefighters or do they just provide engines for departments to staff in the case of strike teams? Also, if there not on a state emergency, can the individual department run the engine on calls as if it was there own? Do you know Brian Humphrey per chance? He is an old friend of mine.
I'm not Mike, but I think I can field this one. OES provides equipment such as fire engines to certain fire departments. It is the fire departments' duty to staff the engines and man the equipment. The only dept I was familiar wth that had an OES engine was La Habra Heights FD, and I know they did not use the OES engine except when requested to do so by the state.
The California Office of Emergency Services is a separate agency that reports directly to the governor of california. It's primary responsibilities involve coordination of local, state and federal agencies to best affect the State's Emergency Plan. The provide overhead, funding, and equipment amongst other services to all large incidents and disasters in this state. What you are probably referring to and what Spaloo commented on are the yellow OES Engines and Water Tenders. The OES has a program in which various agencies throughout the state, both Career and Volunteer recieve Engines and Water Tenders under specific rules and guidelines. The way the program works is that the department gets the apparatus under the agreement that it will NOT be used as a front line apparatus, but can be used for Reserve, temp staffing, and to cover a station. All staffing is done by the local government agency (the fire dept that gets the apparatus) and all repair and maintenance over $100 is paid for by the state.
When a major emergency occurs, the OES will notify the local agency to staff the apparatus and form up into a local area strike team to head to the emergency. Most departments have no more then 1 or 2 OES apparatus, and so a local area strike team will normally have 5 engines from 5 different agencies under the command of a local Battalion Chief. This way the incident gets the necessary resources, but no one agency is left depleted and with empty stations.
As for the Venerable and Esteemed Brian Humphrey.. No I do not know him personally. We have conversed via email and on message groups a few times but that is the extent. For those who do not know the name, Brian Humphrey is the amazing and truly gifted PIO/FIO of the Los Angeles City Fire Department. A Firefighter III/Specialist, his breadth of knowledge and his skill at his job is second to none. He has been such a gift to that department and to the fire service as a whole that those of us who live in this area owe him a large measure of gratitude. His name and that of Bill Peters of the California Dept of Forestry and Fire Protection are truly revered amongst those who even consider being a PIO/FIO.
Do LAFD have water tenders with water cannons on top of them?
No, my Water Tender is based on a LAFD Foam Tender.
If I'm not wrong, LAFD Engine's have a watercannon on top of the engine.
But I can't combine a water cannon with hose connections, so the engine's in my mod are for the hoses and the water tender have the cannon.
Hoppah answered this one correctly. All Engines do have a Deck gun, but the water tenders do not.
@ Mikesphoto's:
Why is your website offline?
I just wanted to start with changing the vehicles.
Unfortunatly, the best laid plans of mice and men do often go awry! We got struck with a powerful winter rain storm here in the Los Angeles area that knocked out power to my area for quite a bit. On top of that, my backup host in the Midwest also went down due to snow!
Hopefully everything is back up and running now, and I am home as well!
Mike