NJRadioGuy

I was surprised to see him playing a baddie in Shetland. He's great as Farder Coram, but to me he'll always be Jeor Mormont, the 998th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch in Game of Thrones. The Old (non-armored) Bear.

They're a treasure-trove of information. Location pings can be as accurate as 3 feet in certain places. Also half of these geniuses brag about their lifestyle and sometimes their crimes on social media. There's also voice call metadata, and text messages that don't go away.

Candidate here means probationary firefighter. Someone who graduated from the Academy but is still on probation and basically learning the ropes, both figuratively and literally. In NYC they're known as probies. Last we heard, Ritter was in this category. Gallo is a regular member, albeit young. In a few months (if not already) Ritter will be the same status. A candidate can still wash out easily if Something Really Bad happens, but once that status ends it's a different thing entirely and his or her full union protections kick in. At least one would assume a department like Chicago would have a policy along those lines. Yeah, but a FF isn't hip deep is literal $#!+ half the day 🙂. Both honorable professions, but hell yeah, a plumber will make 2x or 3x what a FF does.

Ah, you're right, and that's as it should be. As for the dumb C-plot, heck, even "Emergency!" did it almost every single week. Their rescues were the best, but their attempts at levity were cringeworthy every single time. so CF is in good company there, at least.

My nitpick is that Gallo could have easily killed off everybody working the job and he got a sympathy pass and some some extra chores for his trouble. And no, that's not hyperbole. Like us, fire is a living, breathing beast. It craves oxygen or it dies. Orchestrating when to breach an access point—like a door— in a heavily-involved structure fire is something that can't be taken lightly and f@#$nozzle Gallo gave it everything it wanted, and we saw the result. Back story or not, Boden and Casey both should have had him reviewing ventilation protocols and drilling up and down ladders in bunker gear for a week. And Casey shouldn't let Gallo out of his sight on the fireground until he proves his worth. But it also made little sense to even send Gallo to the back door, except as a backup in case something went haywire. And certainly not with only one truck company on the scene. See above. You want to control how much oxygen gets into the fire building, with the idea being you cut open the roof, then go in through the front door with your attack line(s). Force the heat and gasses up through the vent, then hit it with the H2O with extreme prejudice. Severide seriously needs to put in for OFI. He's good at it, and is frankly being wasted on Squad.

Speaking of hella long response times, why are pieces of apparatus from Stn. 51 ever being dispatched to the Loop (downtown) as first due companies? Even with little-to-no traffic that's a 10-15 minute drive from their home base at 1360 S Blue Island Ave, real-life Engine 18's quarters. There would are 4 closer real-world companies; Trucks 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 would have much faster response times. Fun facts: There's no truck company based at Firehouse 18. Just the Engine, Ambulance 65, the high-rise unit, Deputy District Chief 1, and a Paramedic Field Chief. E18 is under the jurisdiction of Battalion Chief 4, and District 1 (the latter based out of that house).

He made a great villain and frankly I love PD. But yeah, they should have brought in someone else to head up Intelligence. On the other hand, we have Cruz, that "lovable goofball" who allowed a (very bad) man to burn up in a fire. Granted the guy whas a complete waste of flesh and deserved All The Bad Things to come his way, but a character we're supposed to root for doesn't do that. And which is why I was wishing it would have been him and not Otis who died in the mattress factory fire. Full circle.

Of course it would, but since it's television the audience needs to see the actors clearly. At least Fire got the message a few seasons ago and they're now masking up with full face masks (albeit minus the regulators, so we can see their faces on screen). I think they could have reached a better compromise on med. The idea of a blood-borne illness not being protected against was just silly in the extreme. This was Ned Stark level of stupid. He did that with Cersei and we all saw how that ended up for him. Correct response to him saying they were bad samples would have been "Ah, OK," saying nothing and acting like everything's good...then calling in the cavalry a minute later from the next room.

Yeah, I was surprised as well. The K-12 or a similar battery-powered device would have made sense. Even the pointed end of a firefighter's pick axe should have gotten through that after a few hearty swings. Mouch had a conventional flat-backed axe. And I know that argon's an inert gas but if that tank had ruptured couldn't that have potentially caused problems? We did (briefly) see the Slamigan in the 3rd part (PD), being used by Cruz. Was glad to see they finally showed decent incident command here with Boden directing other apparatus on the fireground, not just his own crews. AND a division chief (4) who I'm 99% sure was a real-life white helmet with a walk-on role, conferring with him. I think the technical advisors might finally be getting through to the showrunners. A retired buddy of mine who was on the job for a long time even gave it the thumbs up for a reasonable portrayal of a hazmat incident. Obviously in real life there'd be a lot more masks, helmets and full-body hazmat "moon suits" but you've got to show actor's faces on screen and all that. Overall, for all three parts, this was a decent story and quite watchable. Now with that said, the ICK factor was off the charts. Kudos to the props department (Med had me actively fast-forwarding through some scenes), but still. ICK. And unlike a few earlier crossovers, this wasn't 3 distinct shows. PD, Med, and Fire were almost equally represented in all three parts. If you edit out the commercials you have a 2 hour made-for-TV movie basically.

I couldn't agree more. She can't act—yet. She's a tough, hard person and while that would make for a pretty great real-life firefighter, on a primetime U.S. network TV show that's not a big plus. Nor is she particularly as physically attractive as most viewers would want for a lead actor's role. I'm not saying that's a career-killer, but as it stands right now she sucks the life out of every scene she's in. I'd personally rather forego the eye candy for someone who can emote. I want to feel her pain, sadness, joy, and laughter. And for me to do that, she needs to master the acting craft as well as she did the physical and mental training needed her previous career. I wish her luck, but frankly I don't think throwing her head first into one of the highest rated TV shows in the country was doing her any favours.

What a colossal letdown after last week. Buck's just proven (once again) he's not mature enough for the job. Maybe he should consider himself lucky he didn't get fired and/or arrested for stealing the ladder truck for a booty call (twice). That could certainly liven up the coming depositions a bit. I don't know about L.A. or California regs, but here in New Jersey, any 911 dialed-in-error or hangups get a at least one police cruiser dispatched to the location, and two if anything seems remotely suspicious to the call taker. Contact by the officer must be made in person to determine there's nothing wrong. Liked the MVA call in general but why on earth didn't they tie multiple lines to the engine (or better still, from both the engine and truck, each at different angles), and run them down to the car to stabilize it before anything else? That one line to the SUV's hitch didn't look particularly stable. Pretty much every vehicle on the road has anchor points for towing that are directly attached to the frame. Usually 2 at the front and 2 at the back. Tie off onto those ferheavensakes. Also, I wish they'd have shown the mom's rescue. That must have been a hell of an extrication to get her safely, without the risk of falling from being pinned in the vehicle and onto the backboard. No way one person could do that, especially with the vic unconscious. I'd have to think the more prudent way would have been to pull the vehicle back up topside (with the help of an oversized tow and highly-trained technical rescue crew) then slide her out then. The risk of spinal or other complications would be crazy based on what they showed.

Yup, this bothered me to no end. Pull power from the rack and it all suddenly goes away. That gear isn't powered by Magical Fairy Dust. But the other problem is that HQ had obviously designated 51 as a test bed for this new dispatch system. They weren't being voice alerted or called over the radios. So when this thing started to go nuts, Boden's first call should have been over the air to Main advising that the experimental CAD (computer aided dispatch) was down and to route all calls over the radio, with someone manning the watch room to ring the station alarm, open the bay doors, and turn on the lights, etc.

Heh. And kudos to that other show for that 2-parter. As for the rescue itself, first off, Kidd as the driver should have known where to position the rig before raising the aerial. Second, the first thing the rescuer(s) should have done was to ensure the child didn't move, reassure her everything was fine and we'll have you down in a minute. Tell her a story, make her laugh, take her mind off things. Ask if she has a favourite pet or teacher, whatever. Take her mind off the predicament. I think the smarter move would be to ensure she was calm, and assuming the ride itself was stable, get her to hang on and wait for the aerial to be repositioned. Maybe bring it up above the basket, and lower a rescuer down on a line with a spare line and/or a fall arrest harness rig to put around her. Or better still, call for a tower ladder to respond and just bring the basket up, walk into it and bingo. Casey saw a lot of potential in the kid and believes he'd be a great addition to his team. Smart move to try and poach him from the other company. As for the back story, yeah that would have been news when he graduated from the academy, but at this point he's past being a candidate (probie) and maybe Boden just forgot about it or it never hit his radar. It's not as if a BC knows the back story of every FF that he may have to command (remember, a battalion chief has command of multiple companies in his response area). He might be aware of who someone is if they stick out in any way (good or bad) but for the most part it's "oh yeah. he's on Engine 123, right?" The SMART system was never explained. Any advance in CAD is a Big Deal. Data point as well, a lot of departments have computer voices for alerting over the air and to houses. Saves having a voice alarm dispatcher waste 30 seconds announcing the call over the air when the same words can be spoken by a computer. No idea what a priority yellow was supposed to be. "No lights/sirens" maybe? I doubt it. As for the No Fires Today part, only a very small part of modern fire service is actually firefighting. Most calls are medicals or motor vehicle accidents. Fire protection, good building codes and smoke alarms are having an effect. Plus they have a budget as a TV show and fires are expensive to stage and film. Yup. It's not so much that Engine < Truck; they are two equally important rigs with different responsibilities. Correct. The engine is a purpose-built rig that draws water from the source (hydrant or tanker), pumps it up to pressure, regulates it, and supplies the hose lines to extinguish the fire. It also carries a number of other tools and basic medical supplies since there is a greater chance of an Engine company alone being dispatched to relatively minor incidents, since there are usually about twice as many engines as there are truck companies. Truck companies have a number of tasks. Venting the roof of the fire building is first and foremost, smoke ejection, overhauling (pulling down ceilings and walls to look for hot-spots that the engine crew will extinguish after the fire is under control), simple rescue jobs, vehicle extrication with a Hurst Tool (Jaws of Life™), forcing entry, and throwing water in an exterior attack from monitors up high. The Heavy Rescue (there are only 4 of them in Chicago in real life, I believe) is for major calls like building collapses, more technical rescues, train wrecks and plane crashes, multiple entrapment calls, etc. They really are an elite company, and to get on Squad you've got to be the best of the best. As I mentioned up above, why the hell she wasn't secured in a harness is beyond me. Remember, 9.8 m/s/s isn't just a good idea, it's the Law. Also, immediately after they got her down off the aerial Casey sends Gallo off to do something else. Who removed the roof ladder afterwards? In defense of SCUBA, it adds a different level of complexity. No visibility in urban waterways being the least of the problems, doing everything by feel and in a quarter of the time and the risk that if your suit gets nicked and you get a cut underwater on something ghods only know what you risk getting infected with or exposed to in certain parts of Chicago waterways.

All yellow cabs in NYC are required by the Taxi and Limousine Commission to have a Lexan partition between the driver and back seat, as well as a working video camera aimed at the passengers. All. Not optional, so a big fail. Also the medallion format is Number-Letter-Number-Number, not Number-Number-Letter-Number. But "TV" so yeah. Also, a young white male taxi driver in NYC would stick out like a sore thumb, let alone a hot blonde. In the hundreds of cab rides I've taken I don't think I've ever had a driver not of middle-eastern or Indian or similar descent. And yeah, the chances of being the cab that picked up the perp is one in a gazillion. Bonus content: There really are numerous NYPD decoy cabs that are fully-wired-up undercover cars. You can see some of them parked outside of the 58th street shops in Maspeth. They are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing, except the medallion on the hood is not real and may have a regular series license plate rather than the typical cab medallion number. They have UHF radio antennas on them, where real cabs generally don't, or if they do, they're typically longer CB antennas. The decoys will never pick up fares, obviously, but are used for surveillance so they don't get spotted. How many damned times does this stupid show need to screw up the "confession" bullshit. You do not need a confession to get a conviction. It's icing on the cake when you do, but hardly necessary. Physical evidence, forensic evidence, video/photographic evidence, cellphone location data (accurate to within about 3 feet with modern phones, incidentally), text messages to and from the perp's account, eyewitness and corroborating witness statements, etc. All of that is admissible and if you have more than one or two solid pieces that's more than enough to secure a conviction. I'd wager that more than half to 70% of perps say nothing or lie like a rug. If the investigators have the other evidence they lay the charge regardless of what the perp says. Interviews are recorded, and I don't care how skeevy the detective is, if his or her interview was legally sound, the perp properly mirandized and everything was above board then that tape gets played at trial. And that is IF there's a trial, which there almost certainly wouldn't be in this case. If that dumb f--k actually confessed to everything but they didn't want to put the cop on the stand then the DA's office would plead him out, probably with the very legitimate excuse of not wanting to put the elderly, disabled victims through a trial. Offer him 20 to life if he pleads out, or risk 50 years if convicted by a jury. Problem solved.

Holy crap, I got the names completely messed up when I read your post (not enough sleep and caffeine). I was thinking Hope and the Chaplain. Yeah, what you said about Collins. And he IS a successful model, so I'm sure he's used to it. Question is how did an idiot who can't figure out 6 letter word jumbles manage to pass an EMS exam and get hired on in the first place? Good gawd, not just as a basic life support ambulance attendant but as a qualified ALS paramedic? That's not a career for morons, and especially not on a massive urban department. A quick Google shows a minimum of 450 hours of coursework and 500 hours of clinical training. Far from it, but you never know what he spends his money on. I earned a ton of money in my first job and blew it all as soon as I got it. According to the link below, a regular rank and file FF or FF-EMT averages a bit under $90k. Officers a lot more. Before he and Trudy met, maybe he ate out for every meal, went to the track a lot, bought expensive stuff, whatever. https://www.chicagocomputerclasses.com/average-city-chicago-salary-firefighter/

If you're the operator, yeah, it's a no-no, but Stella could get totally fitshased. But like you say, it happens. I don't own a boat but I've been out with buddies a few years ago and we had a couple beers. I don't drink much, so I cracked one and probably didn't finish, but the rest had a few each, including the operator. Different times and it wasn't a speed boat, just a little bass boat on a small lake. Dumb Shit We Do When We're Young And Invincible. I honestly can't remember if we were wearing PFDs either. On the original viewing I didn't notice if Gallo (or, rather, Gallo's stuntman) was wearing turnout boots or just regular duty/tactical ankle boots (looking now they were tac boots under bunker pants). But not a lot of free motion in bunker gear either. Still not Station-19 bad, thankfully. That rat-infested mess returns soon, I think. I need the guffaws. And yeah, in the real world he'd have gotten written up or worse. I can see two possibilities with Gallo. One, this was just a big call to bring him into viewers' minds (hey, that new guy on the show, he's the one that climbed the balconies, right?). Next Big Hero on the show. Or else he becomes a plot device that flames out spectacularly, puts Casey at risk and gets his ass transferred/hurt/killed in the process. Good way to fill up the first half of the season with excess drama. But with his speech at the end I don't think this is going to be the case. Guy looks like the real deal but we'll see.

It's a real place, about 200 miles south-east of Chicago. Also TV Trope number 7: No woman will ever be just platonically friends with a man, and suspicion will always be brought. Ditto for men: they can never have a best-bud (straight) female friend without sexual tension being hinted at.

One of the showrunners did say last week that Otis' storyline was about played out, so yeah. Time for new blood. Probably a nicer way of saying Yuri's contract was up and they couldn't afford him or one of the other supporting cast any more and he drew short straw in the writers' room. I'm with Boden's initial instincts. No cowboys need apply. You want the guy next to you in your company to be reliable; to know what he's going to do before he does it. On the other hand, he's a Candidate (probationary firefighter) so a bad screwup would get him booted off the job in seconds. Not like that'll happen. People do irrational things when they're in too deep. The old adage "when in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout" often holds true. Going through the window or from an adjacent balcony would have made the most sense, followed by getting the stick up in the air. In the time it took Superman to fly up those balconies Clark Kent could have sauntered up the internal stairwell and into the apartment to at least calm the guy down. And while it doesn't take too long to get the aerial ladder up, tossing a line across or coming down from the roof with a spare line and belt would have worked well. But the guy was tangled up pretty good so they just needed to get him to Calm The F--- Down, hold on and wait for the aerial. Tell him a joke, find out about his girl, whatever. He can pitch. I see his point and I didn't have a problem with how he did it, within the parameters of the show's hierarchy. It would have to go through HQ, but if both commanding officers agree it's easy enough. E90 obviously saw the potential, and since he's just a candidate he can move around easily enough. Not sure what real-CFD does about moving from engine to ladder in training. I know! Now in many departments, the EMS folks have their own hierarchy and reports, so maybe Boden didn't have the authority to move his ass, although a word to his supervisor would get him turfed out on his ear in a hurry. But in show-cannon he does have that power, so who knows. And if that had been Dawson or someone else who did that they'd be suspended and have 5 episodes tailored to getting them reinstated. And yes, he could take action against Foster but he's probably too brain dead to think of that. Or that will be the plot of the next 5 episodes, while we wait for Foster to get reinstated. If that were my kid, Collins would be picking his teeth up off the living room rug and getting his nuts pulled back down from his throat, (and me treated for a broken foot). I was hoping Brett would have walked in on the Chaplain banging Hope's brains out to seal that storyline dead and buried in a heartbeat. --- Overall I liked this episode and it hit some good notes for me. Seeing the BSG memorabilia in the box was a gut punch. Sadly, I knew they'd go the prettyboy/girl route to replace Otis. I'd hoped they'd put another veteran on Truck so Mouch can retire and run the bar full-time. And since the average viewer's age for One Chicago is late-50s or early-60s, give our generation another good character actor to appreciate. I liked the juxtaposition of how Severide saw Stella when she was dressed all hot with a thermos full of margaritas versus how his eyes lit up towards her after she helped in the water rescue, basically saving that guy's life (and his leg). Which I agree, should have been severed or badly mangled...but this is a 9pm network show after all, and Stella needed to make the save. In reality, with that amount of blood in the water, he'd have bled out in the water from a lacerated femoral artery.

The sharks would have definitely been a Fox move, but I get the sense that they're trying not to go too far overboard (no pun intended) here. Well, maybe the budget didn't include the wholesale destruction of a huge boat. I'd go with the water temp and cauterization of the wound. The one thing that they can be thankful for is that that antenna wasn't a broadcast station still under power. 50,000 to 100,000 Watts at RF, and a tsunami would suddenly be the least of your worries. Most broadcast stations have standby generators which cut over in seconds, but SWR foldback when the antenna hit the drink would probably (hopefully?) fault out the P.A. stage. Also L.A.'s FM/TV broadcast antennas are nowhere near the shore (height above average terrain, etc), and the AMers are south of the city for the most part.

The cell network is a lot more robust than you might think; sites have battery backups that can last a long time, and 9-1-1 call centers are hardened as much as can be. Plus in any major metropolitan area there are backup call centers in case the primary gets hit. Not saying it's impossible that the lines would stay available, but it's not a fragile single-point-of-failure case either.

Hats off to the VFX team. I don't know how they did it but damn that was intense. Power disconnect by the electric company was complete horseshit. There's no big red handle in a box to pull, rather it's done via multiple pole-mounted circuit breakers, or just cut the lines and isolate them. Doable in about a half hour with coordination amongst several crews, or with one crew and FFs who are trained on high voltage. FEMA and/or other federal agencies would have had boots on the ground with a coordinated triage plan within an hour or less. No way that'd be handled exclusively by municipal services. The stranded E136 was somewhat close to buildings. Why not try to figure out a way to get able-bodied rescuees high above in one of those structures? That's always in the disaster plan. Generally they'll look for large refrigerated spaces (ice rink, cold storage facilities, etc). Legit call and something not generally done in network TV. People die in large numbers and the show isn't whitewashing that, thankfully. The personal deaths they showed were necessary and I'm glad they didn't pull those punches. Yup. And glad they did that too. Kids die. It sucks. It's a gut punch like no other. Pretty sure Christopher's going to be OK, but if not, his death will change Buck profoundly, and that's at the core of decent drama. But that kid's really a star in that show so I hope he's around for more episodes to come, and not just in flashbacks. Do it. Do it now. Get one called the LIFEHAMMER. Not the cheap Chinese knockoff clones whose hammers might not be hard enough for tempered window glass. They're about $15 each. You can also buy and use an automatic center punch from any hardware store. They work brilliantly. Yup. Call-takers don't get enough praise in first responders dramas and I'm glad they don't forget them here. That said, there's a difference in specialities between the public-facing call takers and radio dispatchers (the folks who communicate with the first responders in the field over the radio). Call takers triage the calls and get locations, then pass them on to dispatchers who roll the apparatus; it's not one in the same job, as the show would imply. Maggie would never be in contact with the crews over the radio or even know which companies are assigned where, but in the context of a TV show I'll forgive it. So long as the job is fairly represented (which it is, in the show's typical over-the-top-hey-it's-FOX way) I'm good, and I hope that representation serves as a way to get new call takers and dispatchers into emergency call centers. My only worry about these two episodes is that they'll have shot their entire year's budget on VFX so will they be able to have any good rescues or fires for the rest of the season?

No no no, he went to Puerto Rico to arrest the Hurricane!

Casey has a construction job on the side and I think Severide has helped him at times. I'd imagine in real-life firefighters' wages are directly deposited but it's possible that policy is paper cheques. Unlikely in this day and age, but who knows. VFDs are a good way to keep taxes reasonable, especially in high tax states. Funding for things like radios, apparatus and gear may or may not be provided by the state or municipalities, various grants and handouts, as well as "boot drives" once or twice a year, where you'll see the local vollies out at the mall or in town, usually with the ladders raised and the lights flashing, and passing around a tall firefighter's boot for folks passing by to fill with cash. At least out my way it's an old tradition. Not to mention mailers to town residents asking for donations. In the case of our town's basic life support EMS, service is provided at no cost to the patient and has been for over 75 years. They also do fundraising drives by mail. On the opposite end of the spectrum, paid EMS (both BLS and ALS) bill the patient or their insurance for their services, and as I found out in 2018, a 20 minute ride in this privately run rig is billed over $2500. Even with insurance, I was responsible for $550. So basically unless you're on fire or having a stroke or heart attack, the magic words "cancel the medics" will save you a fortune here. Needless to say, I have no use for privately for-profit EMS companies, but their personnel are absolutely first-rate and rigs are 100% state of the art.

Yeah, it's very common in the 'burbs. Not much burns out here. The more middle/upper-class the neighborhood the less the risk. Most of my town's toneouts are either for residential/commercial alarm activations, high CO readings, odor of gas or MVAs. In many cases the on-call chief shows up in his SUV along with PD to assess the situation, so the rigs don't even leave the apron. Our taxes are already through the roof, and if they went full-time paid it would be even worse. On the down side, if there is a working fire on a weekday it can take longer to muster full crews, and response times can suffer. It's worse on the EMS side, and combined with bad daytime traffic between my town and the local emergency department it's rather nerve wracking to hear 3 toneouts for a BLS rig with nobody able to answer the bell and the call going to mutual aid. Makes me (briefly) reconsider that extra piece of fried chicken or bacon 🙂 That would obviously be impossible in cities; FDNY is one of the best fire departments in the world and consider yourself lucky to be under their umbrella. One of our local vollies (at least one, may be more) is a full time member of an FDNY ladder company and he volunteers here on his days off, always in the station, etc. So the whole business with C.F. firefighters (on the show) having all their outside gigs is a very realistic thing. Now that said, Casey as an Alderman probably wouldn't be allowed to happen but that's not something I can say for sure. The potential for conflicts of interest would be too high in real life. At least I hope it would be. The bullshit fake drama is so aggravating on the show, too, but you gotta have that "hook" to keep regular viewers involved. I just wish those B- and C-plots were written far better than they are.

It's very common. And don't forget, in most of the U.S. firefighters are volunteers, not full-time/paid, so it's expected that they're got other things on the go. About the only place you'll see paid firefighters is in cities and larger counties. All the towns around me are 100% volly, and I live a half hour away from New York City. Ditto our EMS teams. Only paid departments are the paramedics and certain EMS rigs a few towns away.