the BLAH-G

Good Morning to all the Blah-g readers !

I don’t know how many of you are “ care takers “ however I would like to say God Bless You !

These last few weeks have been very trying for this writer as I am now Care Taker of my 88 year old Father whom I love dearly. Being new to the world of Care Taking, most of my days and nights are devoted to caring for him and even though these are trying times they are also very rewarding times too. I am almost always in ear shot of one of my scanners and I could write about so many things that are going banans with our Emergency Communications Cyst-Em, the Blah-g now has to take a back seat.

I was able to put together a few new audio clips for you and they can be found on my website… so please check them out. I also received an email worth posting and with the email authors permission I am going to post it at the end of this short Blah-g.

I now have two more Westmoreland County Dispatchers emailing me and I want to express my thanks to them… they know who they are, and with the information that I am now receiving from them along with the information from the other dispatchers who have been sending me emails for the last year or so I am really being kept informed !

I have to be careful about what I print here in the Blah-g because I do not want the mafia style bosses at the 911 Center to find out who my informes are. I know soooo much about 911 and the management and can only print so little. Damn that picces me off !

Now and then though someone who is not a dispatcher will send me an email that exposes some of the problems 911 has and with that persons permission I will publish the info. Just like the email I'm about to post is stuff that I've known about however couldn't post until it was confirmed by a third party.

EXAMPLE: If a dispatcher emails me and tells me that the EMS ( ambulance) Desk’s communications stopped working for two hours at 5PM and they could not talk to any of the medics… I couldn’t write about that because R. Matason and M. Brammell would know that it was the EMS Dispatcher that emailed me. However if a Medic would email me with the same info and give me permission to use his email, then I could report it.

Am I making sense ? I only get about five hours of sleep a WEEK now... it's hard to think and write at the movie theater, ya know. But the popcorn is sure good !

But if it’s something as simple as the MAIN GATE at 911 being broken then I can write about it because it could have come from anyone at 911, or even the pizza or beer delivery man.

Just the things I KNOW ABOUT DAN that I haven’t published would probably get him fired in a heart beat !

Then there is Richard Matason. He has me stumped. I’m still wondering how he got his job. His last Harrisburg trip that we paid for was suppose to be for “learning”. The only thing he learned was how to use his new Blackberry ! I can say that because I have witnesses that sat and watched him. During critical classes he attended all the others were taking notes, he was entering phone numbers in his Blackberry !… zzzzz

IMO, Mark Brammell is another wild bird. I think he could do a good job if he wouldn’t PLAY UP TO the commissioners, he just might be a good Assistant Director if he would do the things he is suppose to and use his own brain instead of relying on others. For example, each and every FIRE RADIO is suppose to have SIMPLEX FIRE TAC CHANNELS however he insists on making them DUPLEX… in English, instead of talk-around like they are suppose to be they are Trucked through the repeater system. That is a NO NO. If the repeater goes down then all communcations at the fire grounds are lost, gone, finished, KAPUT !!!

And who is in charge of having everything go through those DAMN PHONE LINES ? That’s also a NO NO. If Joe Tech decides to run a FULL system test which would include the dedicated 911 lines... ALL 911 COMMUNCATIONS ARE LOST for the whole county !

These are things NOT APPROVED by the Department of Homeland Security AND NFPA. If I were the director of our Department of Public Safety, THINGS WOULD CHANGE ! In fact, if I were director the first thing I would do is HIRE A GOOD DIRECTOR, then step down or become 911’s technical advisor.

Of course I would replace myself with someone qualifed to run our county ! I'm not qualified, nor are the people that are there now ! I am qualified on how to set up and properly maintain the radio system, something Westmoreland County lacks now. Damn, there I go blabbering again...

WE ARE IN SERIOUS NEED OF GOOD 911 DIRECTORS !

Well again I am repeating myself. If you are new to my Blah-g, please go back and read the previous posts and catch up ! There is a YEAR of reading to go back on, download them all and make a book !

Well, as promised, here is the email I received. The only thing edited out was the authors name and his EMS station affiliation.
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I didn't know if you heard about the counties new policies for EMS. In a memo we received from Sandy Smithe on all MVA's (Blah-ger Note: MVA = Motor Vehicle Accident) EMS is to request a County Wide Tac channel. Also for Fire Stand-by's we are to monitor the FD TAC channel, but as you are aware those cheap XTS1500 radio's that the county gave everyone we aren't able to listen to the FD TAC channels so I guess instead of being at the actual scene we are suppose to stay inside our rigs and listen to the FD TAC channel as well as our EMS Tac channel. And 2 days after the memo was issued to the EMS departments we had 2 MVA's and both times when asked for a County Wide channel the dispatchers seemed like they had absolutely no clue what we were talking about (Imagine that). Oh well, and if you have noticed listening to this BS with the new response levels Omega-Echo I think 911 has one of those carnival wheels that they spin to see what the call is because they send diabetic emergencies and other ALS responses as Alpha calls and vehicle accidents with unknown injuries are per protocol a Bravo response (non-emergency). And now county seems to think they run EMS services when the call should have a paramedic on-board sometimes they aren't always available to respond and you have to run the call with 2 EMT's but county wants to question us about what we are doing. Last time I checked they were suppose to dispatch not be the law of EMS like they are trying to become.
= = = =
This is absolutely NOT a made up email, it is from an honest to God EMT who cares enough about saving lives that they took the time out to share their thoughts with me.

911 is so screwed up that sometimes I wonder why they aren’t playing music over that damn radio system and dispatching all of there emergency calls by messenger pigeon. Ah, stupid me. They wouldn’t play music over the 800 Mhz system because the quality would be so poor, it wouldn’t be in stereo and there would be so many DEAD SPOTS that only 50% of the county would be able to receive it.

Lets see, if we did convert that 911 radio Cyst-Em into a Music Station we could have the following line-up:

Brammel’s BeBop from 6 to 10 AM
Matason’s Melodies from 10 AM to Noon
Fleming and Steven’s Swap and Shop from Noon until 8 PM
Pat and Glenn’s Polka Show from 8 PM to Midnight
Tony and Ed’s Underground Sound from Midnight to 3 AM
Clayton and Sally’s Cooking By Numbers from 3 to 5 AM
From 5 AM until 6 AM Staley Communications would have to come in and jump start all the towers that have gone down during the previous 24 hours. During that time Elevator Music would be heard hosted by Joe Poinski, Motorola’s Polka Man.

HEY, I MIGHT BE ON TO SOMETHING HERE!

Ok, the main reason for the Blah-g this morning was to share that email with you and to let you know there are NEW AUDIO CLIPS now on my website ! One audio clip is so small that even dial up customers can listen to it and it happens to be the BEST audio clip I’ve managed to CAPTURE so far !

BREAKING NEWS:

Last night there was a fire at my old house in Derry. Why is that important ? Well, that house is now the residence of (Millwood - Station 92) Eastern Derry Township's Fire Chief !!! There was a fire in one of the Bedrooms and he managed to put the fire out but not before receiving major burns to his face and back. Life-flight flew him to the Pittsburgh Burn Center. The Blah-g wishes him a very speedy recovery.

BREAKING NEWS:

Ligonier and Ligonier Twp Police Departments are getting their Mobile Data Terminals programmed and installed in their police cars today. (MDT as they are commonly called,to allows the police to look up information on their own without waking up Management at 911)

I hope it’s not “what’s his name” from Staley Communications that installs it. The last installation I saw him do, the microphone was connected backwards. Anyhow, that area is so full of DEAD SPOTS I’ll be surprised if it works at all. Perhaps if Motorola loads Donkey Kong on it they will have something to do in their spare time.

BROKEN NEWS:

911.

Until the next Super Duper Pooper Scooper Blah-g…
DECODED,

K3SAM
Sam W. Jacobs CET

http://800.k3sam.com – website for all your grocery needs
news@k3sam.com – regular tips what-ever email address

PLEASE CHECK OUT MY AUDIO CLIPS OR I’LL SICK GOMER ON YOU !