Spaloo

I was in a vehicle yesterday with a patient while they were using jaws on the door. I didn't have turnout pants on. I didn't lose my legs. I guess what I'm saying is that the situation in the picture is not all that unusual. Hoppah, great update and keep up the good work!

Hoppah, Its been a while since an update. I'm not asking for a release date, but how are things going? Throw us a bone because Im checking this website almost daily to look to see if 1.7 is out

About PD/sheriff/chp having to render medical aid... Because they fall under the category of "first responder" does not require them to render medical aid. Being dispatched to a call in which someone is hurt does not require them to render aid, either. Is there a duty to render aid? Not necessarily. The reason they are dispatched is to assure scene safety and for law enforcement. Is there a breach of duty if the officer is an MFR/EMT/Paramedic? No, unless the officer's assignment is on an EMS/PD vehicle, which does not exist in LA County (except special teams like swat, helicopter, etc). The breach of duty would come if they were dispatched to render medical aid, which they usually aren't. Their department would not support them if they rendered poor treatment that injured or killed the patient. Their job is law enforcement and safety. Again, officers can take it upon themselves to render aid, like the fresno county officer stated. Also, I believe they would fall under the "Good Samaritan" law if their assigned duties did not include medical aid, and tney decided to try and help. Their EMT/Medic license would be brought up if they were functioning as such in their normal job function.

CHP in LA County generally do not do medical care. If some of them take it upon themselves to help, as a good samaritan, that is up to them. From what I remember, there are no EMT/officers or paramedic/officers in Los Angeles county. I do not know if the CHP air unit is a medical evac helicopter or not. Also, some of the officers may have EMT certifications, but they are not hired in as medical personnel.

I've honestly never used the f1-f4 commands. I have to try that. What I usually do is place the batt chief at the corner of the fire station and click on him, click the dispatch info to zoom to the emergency, then use the send command from the batt chief to send the units. What I suggest is an actual dispatcher similar to the batt chief, but with send commands for more units than just light force, engine, police, WT, and ambulance. You, the player, still send the units, but you dont have to individually staff each unit, click each unit, and click near the incident.

One more idea before I head off to work... A Dispatcher. A person or something like a radio antenna, or that strange flashing stand next to the fire station (something stationary, in a central location), that you can click on that has all the "send" commands. You can send PD, EMS, FD, even city services to a location using this "dispatcher". It'd be very similar to the send functions of a battalion chief, but maybe with the addition of a couple other "send" commands (SWAT, city services, maybe even mutual aid like the LACoFD squad, etc). So Hoppah, waddaya think?

You made mention that the FF/PM stretcher team CAN heal, so why are you keeping a third FF/PM on the ALS ambulance? You have an absolutely incredible mod here, based on real life operations and equipment of the LAFD. It doesn't make sense that you would choose to stop at this for the sake of "original gameplay" (the gameplay based on european EMS design). Speaking from experience, the only times LAFD RAs staff a third person on the rig is when they have a paramedic student riding with them. Even then, rarely is the student an actual employee of LAFD. You'll almost never see a doc dispatched to a scene. I don't mean to sound ungrateful or condescending. Thank you so much for such a great mod. I hope that you consider the rationale before making a final decision on this. Whatever the decision, your mod will still be the best out there. Thanks again.

The tanker you're talking about is called an elliptical tanker, and it's mostly used in rural areas. It's been discussed on this forum before. LAFD has a couple aging tankers, and LA Parks and Rec Dept have a couple as well. They are rarely used in LA City. Also, tankers are mostly meant for the delivery of water to the engines; they do not have extra hose connections for the delivery of water onto the fire. You might be able to make one or two hose connections from a tanker, but not 8-16. The times I've seen tankers used, they usually dump their water into a large reservoir for the engine to draw from, as they go and retrieve more water.

GREAT improvements. I can't wait for 1.7 to come out. One question. Why are the ALS ambulances staffing a FF/PM AND a FF/PM stretcher team? If the stretcher team (2 FF/PM) can heal, what's the point of having the third FF/PM? That seems unrealistic.

As for me, I use the truck as a quint. I know it's not real for LAFD, but the ladder truck is laid out like a quint in the game and can be a stand-alone unit, so I like staffing it with 4 FFs. One enters the bucket, 2 get in SCBA and enter the building/remove people, and 1 stays next to the quint. If you guys find a way to utilize the engine with the truck more effectively in the game, I think Id use the light force more often. I know how difficult that would be since the game wasn't designed that way.

So that part of the game isn't going to change. While I agree the timing could be more realistic, the game clock is much faster than real time. So the time it takes for the FF to reach their vehicle is the equivalent of a minute. As far as the initial staffing, I usually take the chief out and move him to his designated "dispatch" spot, his the alarm again to get another chief, then empty all the rigs in the station and send them back into the station. I do have to agree, hoppah did come off a bit rude on that one. I'll chalk it up to a subtle language difference. Either way, nothing we can do about it. It's his mod after all. Hoppah, I do have a question for you. Are at least some of our suggestions at all helpful? Have you incorporated any of them, or are we being a nuisance to you and the other moderators? If it's a bother, I for one will stop suggesting things and happily, patiently wait for the new release. I like to think that my occasional suggestion does help since I used to work EMS in LA County and the SoCal region, I've been a paramedic for a while now, and I could give you some information that would add to the realism. Who knows, maybe I'm just a pain in the ass. I hope I'm not coming off as ungrateful, I just want to honestly know if we're a help at all.

Cool. I never had any luck with transporting without a medic assessing the patient. I'll have to try it on the next relatively healthy patient.

Not necessarily. You can use the engine as the ALS unit, and have the BLS ambulance transport. That way your medics are available while the BLS unit transports the patient. If you really want to be realistic, the paramedic would have to go into the BLS unit to transport an "ALS" patient (or a critical patient in the game). Mike, does LAFD have a medic assessment engine follow up to the hospital in an 800 rig if there are no medic RAs available in the area? How does the fire dept get away with having just 1 medic on their "paramedic assessment" engines if the county requires 2 to be an ALS unit?

I can field that one. By squad, I assume you mean the LA County FD squad. The usual staffing is two firefighter/paramedics and yeah, its nice to just be able to put 2 in there

Here's another idea. Please don't hate me for all these ideas. As I understand it, station 2 will have a BLS ambulance and an ALS engine. If the simulated patient's health is at a certain level (relatively healthy), can the BLS unit "stabilize" the patient and transport the patient themselves without ALS assessing the patient. Mike, please correct me if I'm wrong, but in real life, for priority 3, non-emergent patients ("I stubbed my toe." "I've been on an antibiotic for 12 hours and it isn't working." "I've been weak for the past 4 months.") would just be evaluated by a BLS unit and transported BLS (ALS would be cancelled). So for those patients in the game that are found to be relatively healthy, like the ones that just got beat up by a "rioting civilian", could skip the ALS evaluation if the health line is near the top, and the FF/EMT "stabilizes" them early. My other idea would be to have off-screen resources that you order take a certain amount of time before they appear. For example, if you order engine 2 from off the screen, it takes 30 seconds before it appears since that station is a certain distance away. If you order the water tender, it might take a full minute due to it's simulated location outside the map. These ideas might make it more realistic, but you guys have already done so much and it's greatly appreciated. Thanks again Mike and Hoppah. Again, if there's anything I can do, let me know. I'm not as good a resource about LAFD as Mike, but I might be able to help on the EMS side of things if you ever decide to work on that.

Hoppah, that is just incredible. The EMS system you created is just about spot-on realistic. One question, though. Are there going to be BLS ambulances and als ambulances? Again, you do some great work. I can't wait until 1.7 comes out.

Now that I turned my tooltips back on, doesn't LAFD respond an engine and an RA to medicals? Which medicals does a bls rig respond to as well? Is the jaws staying on the engine in v1.7? If it's not (for realism), then the USAR would make sense at station 2.

LOL!!!! That is just about the best idea to ever hit this forum. The only thing I'd add is maybe more firefighters hanging on to the golf cart...maybe 7?

Oh, one last thing, can we add some different calls, too? Maybe a gangfight with multiple gunshot wound patients, an overturned truck carrying hazmat or combustible materials, or a building collapse in freeplay involving the USAR a bit more. Have some of the more realistic calls that don't exist in the game replace the funky ones like bird flu or a green cloud floating over the city. Everyone knows the cloud is brown and it's always there

I might have asked this before, I don't remember getting an answer. Sorry if it's repetative. Is there any way to distinguish between 800 series ambulances (BLS) and ALS? It would add to the realism to have BLS and ALS ambulances. Also, can we get a rough idea of how LAFD/LAPD dispatches for each type of emergency? For example, what resources they'd send for a structure fire, explosion, hazmat, sniper, bank robbery, etc. Also, can you make some more fires a bit more difficult to extinguish, as in real life? Mike, you addressed the ideas concerning LACoFD, but what about private ambulances? I personally remember responding into LA City with AMR. Any chance these would be added? On the subject of ambulances, does RA 66 still have the freightliner? Mike, off the subject of the game, can you get more photos of LAFD stations? I'd like to see how some of the larger stations are laid out. One last thing, are you a FF or specifically the photographer? Do you know about LAFD and LACoFD recruitment? I don't mean the typical brochure stuff, I mean details. I'll PM you later if you do. Thanks Hoppah and Mike. Great job on everything done so far.

Mike, If we want to talk realism, get rid of the thunderstorms and the traveling green radioactive cloud in the deluxe missions. You know that doesn't happen in LA...It's always a toxic cloud over the city I'll say it once more. Add a LACoFD Engine! Also, will there be any changes or additions to the missions in freeplay?

Hey Mike, I got a question for you. How many areas in LA City really need Water Tenders? I know there are rural areas here and there, but how many areas in The City don't have public water and hydrants available? Are there other uses they've found for the water tender? It's been a while since I've lived in SoCal and around here, the water tenders come out when there is no hydrant around. That is about it. Hoppah, I hope I'm not too pestering about this subject, but LA County FD covers areas that are encompassed by Los Angeles City. If you look at Universal City and North Hollywood LACoFD Stations (Battalion 1), they're right there in The City. LACoFD Response Map: http://www.fire.lacounty.gov/HometownFireS...nsBureauMap.pdf It's not too unrealistic to see county units in the city, and I'm with Mike on this one...I'd love to see county fd units in the game (at least a LACoFD Engine to accompany the squad).

nope no ambulance patrols. Both county and city house their fire-based EMS (RA and squads) in the fire stations until the call arrives. The only exception being move-ups. If all available units of a certain type are tied up within an area (for example a mass casualty incident or major fire) then a unit from another part of the city (or county) will move into the area that's lacking that type of unit, but more than likely they'll move up to another station and not just "patrol" the area. As for the privates that do 911 work, they're mostly posted on street corners and do what's called a "system status" movement to evenly distribute all their resources. They're more likely to be seen driving around, but it's still not really a patrol-type function.

los angeles county dept of health services, which oversees all EMS in the county, has a rule/protocol stating that ALS/paramedic units, whether they are squads, ambulances, engines, must have 2 paramedics on board in order to respond to emergency calls as ALS units, unless a special situation exists like a natural disaster or a medic goes home sick. Since then, County FD and some city FDs have created "Medic Assessment Engines" with only 1 medic, but mikesphotos will have to explain how they get away with that. Plus, equipping each ambulance with ALS equipment costs alot more $$$.

There is a star of life, "AMR", and the unit number starting with the year of production (example: 02-025), at least that's how it was when I worked for AMR in LA county. Now the EMS contracts are dispersed among a ton of companies. There's AMR, CARE, Westmed/McCormick, Emergency, Schaeffer to name a few. Hey MCERT1, if you make models for a private ambulance, and especially if you make a model for an LA County FD engine, please let me know! I'd love to try it out.