NJRadioGuy

So they're sitting against the garage door with breaching tools. Nobody thought of using the Halligan on the hinges? Hello, McFly. Oh, wait. Nobody had an axe or a sledge. Maybe they should have called in 81 Truck with their Slamigan™! That would have saved the day! What the f@#$ kind of "glass" was that window made of? In the real world AGP makes window film to thwart burglary. It will delay entry by turning ordinary glass into something like windshield glass but that's easily defeatable with breaching tools—just like a windshield.Those are some pretty high-end home mods, and not the sort of things that the Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company would install. As such, their techs and management would know they'd be on the hook for million in liability if they failed to follow code and allowed shit like that to exist without means of egress. There's water supply going to the heater. Cold water in, hot water out. Take the cold water line off and keep yourselves cool. So let's say that such a firetrap DID exist (obviously more robust than shown, considering cheap TV show budgets, etc). Why is that still a 1 and 1 call—one engine & truck? Get in a couple of heavy rescues and the building collapse unit. And MAYBE if it's 112° in there you could, oh, I don't know, TURN OFF ALL THOSE F@#$ING SERVERS?!? And when I saw the water heater, I was also thinking of jury-rigging it, but not the way they did. Of course, they'd all be quite dead if they tried it. And where did all the 50 gallons of scalding hot water go? And since it was a gas water heater, where was it venting to? It has to vent or it would poison the garage with CO. Where it vents, that's where you breach. Oh, and really...wrong radio channel? SFD is on an 800 MHz Motorola SmartZone trunked radio system. Every channel programmed into their HTs is a trunked talkgroup. Come up on the wrong one and someone will hear it. "Unit calling, you're on <channel-name>. Switch to channel 3." Older VHF/UHF simplex systems, yeah, that could be a real possibility, but not in any major city, not in 2018.

She'll go to PR for 4 months, and be back for the new season. I'm rooting for Zika to take hold while she's down there. What do you think the first 6 episodes of Season 7 will be all about? Miracling Saint Gabby, and then Bayyyyyyyyybeeeeeeeeeee!!! All the while Door Matt's balls go back in Gabby's lockbox on the mantel. I can't even with Severide.

This year and last were both bad for fans of any genre series. There's been a huge shift away from SF/Fantasy/supernatural in favour of military/spy crap that's served to only free up more of my time and DVR space. Last year it was Grimm (the biggest loss of all to me), and original recipe Once Upon a Time, now this year, the Expanse, Lucifer, the dregs of "Once," and almost certainly Gotham. I know I'm forgetting a couple more as well. Audiences had a good choice of genre material for a while but the tide is absolutely shifting away, Arrowverse excepted, and most of that is unwatchable drek half the time. Thank the ghods that Outlander just got a two season renewal and various Game of Thrones prequels are coming to HBO once the ASOIaF series ends next year.

Once was a network darling at ABC. Either that, or Adam and Eddie had compromising pictures of Mickey and Goofy that the Disney brass didn't want to see released.

Way to take a great show and flush it away in 22 dreadful episodes. As I wrote elsewhere, the network and/or the writers either wouldn't or couldn't tell this story in a way to make it engaging to viewers with triple-digit IQs. It also didn't help when the leading actress had the romantic chemistry of a potted plant. I wouldn't mind seeing Netflix or one of the other streamers have a go at this, darken it down and get into the supernatural aspect of the story. I'd watch the hell out of that.

Maybe Colannino would still be alive if someone had actually bothered to put water on the damned fire. Where was accountability? Who was the FAST truck? Hermann and Mouch hit it out of the park tonight. Made up for all the other bullshit.

Word just came down that Paul Blackthorne is leaving after this season. Quite frankly he was one of the only characters I still liked. Damnit. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/arrow-star-paul-blackthorne-exit-season-6-1107665

My DVR's "30-second jump" button sure got a workout last night. I got through it (how, I don't know) in about 15 minutes give or take. WAKE UP, writers, you're losing your audience! This show is now hot garbage, and one (very small) step away from a steaming mastiff turd.

It's not normal but it happens more times than you'd think (or want to see) after a fire goes defensive. You'd like to hope so, but sometimes a confluence of Really Bad Stuff happens, grease catches and you go from ignition to flashover in a couple of minutes. But here's the thing. Except in ancient inner-city buildings (which I would argue that plaza likely was not), sprinklers would be required in at least the back of house, which is where it started. But I can handwave that because sometimes Shit Happens and you have to have a viable source of ignition for a TV fire. That didn't bug me all that much. Oh, definitely let it burn. The whole series. To the ground. Don't even save the rotten foundation. Don't even try to get The Big One to extinguish it. Holy crap, what did I watch tonight. Nobody did a f@#$ing primary search upon arrival? Just a single two-and-a-half stretched and in operation? Mom-and-kid were on the second floor. Two guys with a ground ladder and everybody's back on terra firma in about two minutes or less. As presented that's not a particularly difficult fire--no need to go defensive that early. It was called as a deuce (conservative, I'd have probably called for 3 with that much fire, if not 4). Get a couple of master streams going, handlines for an interior attack and covering exposures, and the main body of fire would be knocked down in 10 minutes or less. With a competent FD probably half that. Of course, for a TV shoot they couldn't literally burn down a strip mall so the pretend fire they had going wouldn't come close what they might have faced IRL. I've asked this before and I'll continue to ask it. Who's on the tiller in Truck 19? As for PD bossing around FD on the fire ground, it happens. It shouldn't, but it happens. Not one single battalion or division chief in the entire SFD bothers to respond to a deuce with heavy fire and entrapment, until the chief of the entire department comes in at the end to shake hands and congratulate the dipshit who threw the stick up (without outriggers none the less!!) when a ground ladder was all that was needed, and risked multiple lives in the process. Hughes is on truck, isn't she? Why would she be manning the engine's pump panel (I think that's what she was assigned)? Isn't that the engineer's job? Put her on hydrant duty if nothing else. First few episodes weren't particularly hideous in terms of realism, but sweet baby jeebiz, this one was horrid.

This one was, and the TX indicator was showing full power (as a ham, I have similar equipment and know what it looks like when operating). A signal was absolutely being transmitted, but whether or not they were using it on the fishing grounds is indeed debatable. I'm still trying to figure out how they're using cell phones and cordless phones for ship-to-ship. That's either post-production fakery or some tech I don't fully grasp. I do see they use HF on the 2 MHz and 4 MHz marine service bands and marine VHF (and I'm sure satellite as well). Also, if you're really watching carefully when they show closeups of the radio gear, you can see their callsigns, which are fully searchable on the FCC's licensing website. For example, WDE5199 is the Northwestern.

A bit of inside tech here had me quite angry tonight. Casey (and presumably Sean) was operating illegally on the radio. They showed the front face of the radio several times, and the frequency he was shown transmitting on is allocated to the amateur radio service (146.600), and per FCC regulations, is not legal for use in commercial operation or by non-licensed operators. Marine radios operate in the 156 MHz range and are channelized — 156.800 is Ch. 16, etc. What I've never understood about fishing fleets who work together, why not get commercial radios on frequencies assigned to your company, then encrypt the comms so nobody can eavesdrop on your secret hidey-holes. What they were doing tonight could have netted tens of thousands of dollars in fines for illegal operation from the federal government. It's no different than going past catch limits, keeping females or smalls, or not having escape rings. Legal is legal, illegal is illegal.

The 800# gorilla in the room is that a real-life emergency happened, with a real firefighter down. Forget the massive OSHA violations that would condemn the academy's training tower instantly and likely cost half the department's brass their jobs for allowing training in an unsafe building, but the instant that happens you radio a genuine mayday and make it crystal clear you're not play-acting for the exam. The evacuation order was also horseshit in that scenario (not real-world, obviously). You have two or three able-bodied fellow firefighters there to stabilize him, remove fallen debris and render aid. Stop the simulation, have the powers-that-be cut the gas off, turn on the smoke ejectors and get paramedics and senior officers in PDFQ. But yeah, in the real-world, the evacuate order means GTFO now because the building's about to become an environment incompatible with continued life.

Notice when they were in the burning house rescuing the woman locked in the back they didn't use the Slamigan™ there either. I don't remember who was on irons (I think it was Kidd and either Codrova or Severide), but whoever it was needs to relearn how to use a Halligan. That door would have opened in about 10 seconds.

For the past few seasons I've been abused by this show to the point that the end of every half season, I considered myself a survivor of Audience Abuse in the first degree. I'm so glad they lightened up and went back to a style that made it enjoyable to watch again. I can only stand to see the good guys beaten down so often, and it seemed like it was constant for years. So kudos for lightening things back up. I'm surprised they went there. Or rather, that they went there now. I've always been a Louis fan, even when he was written as a two-dimensional cartoon. Now the writers have stepped up and made him a fun, quirky three-dimensional human, and proven that he's worthy of love. Good for them, and good for Louis. What I thought might have been a better story would have been for Shiela to go ahead and marry her fiancé, and Louis unintentionally falls in with Katrina in the season ender. Halfway through season 8 their relationship falls apart, Louis goes somewhere really dark, and then at the end of S8, which is likely the series finale, Shiela shows up and things go exactly as they did tonight. In fact, that would have made for the best possible ending for the entire series in my mind.

Something's that's far more of an interesting possibility now is that Chloe slept with a biblical character (Cain), what happens if she's pregnant with celestial offspring? And how would that affect Luci? I hope this doesn't happen, but knowing American network TV, I expect precisely this.

I just liked it because it brought the divinity issues back into focus, and we finally saw a faint glimpse of S1 Lucifer. Less cartoonish hooey (still there, but less), and the plot did inch slightly forward. I hope they can keep this pace up and steer the plot back into line, and earn a fourth season. And IF that happens, it needs to go back to a 9pm or even 10pm time slot and go dark, at least for part of the way. Devil face, punishing people, etc. Trust me, I'm as sick of the "dad is manipulating me wah wah wah " as Maze. Chloe should have been written out between S1 and S2. German can't act and there's never been an iota of chemistry between the leads. Chicago Fire showrunners probably came to the same conclusion when they killed off Shay after just two seasons. The farce between the two of them is needless and insulting to the audience. If they insist on keeping her around then advance the damned plot. What is her real purpose within the divinity story? Is TheBigReveal™ (and her reaction) end game of the show? Or does she never find out and she only exists for, what, exactly? Gaaaah.

The idea is that if your body comes in contact with high voltage, you want it to not go through your chest, which will stop the heart or cause it to go into V-fib. Electrical burns can be survivable, and are better than dying instantly, which is basically what would happen if the current flows through. Seven milliAmps through the heart will stop it. That's 7/1000ths of an Amp. Primary power lines can deliver thousands of Amps. Getting both feet on the ground at the same time is the lesser evil. To carry the victim's analogy further, "electric chair bad" -- the electric chair "only" uses about 2500-4000 Volts. Primary power lines are in the vicinity of 14,000 to 22,500 Volts. That would push hundreds or thousands of Amps right through. I think in reality he'd have died instantly or close-enough to not make a difference. But yeah....right in the feels. Good story-telling, even if the physics weren't quite accurate. What I didn't get is why Truck didn't use their insulated poles to just lift the lines off the car long enough to let the victim walk away. Electric charges dissipate the instant the current is removed. So enough of those insulated sticks could have just lifted all the energized lines off both the car and the ground for the 5 or 10 seconds it would have taken for the guy to just step down and run to safety, then they drop the lines back when he's safe and wait for the power company to do their thing. Johnny and Roy did that 45 years ago—they'd have gotten him out! I just rewatched that episode last week! They could have also gone to the poles on either side and cut the primary and secondary lines, or pulled the breaker handles if they were close by. There's usually one every block, give or take in most residential areas. But I've said this before here and elsewhere, electricity at that potential is the single scariest thing you can imagine. In a fire or almost any other emergency, you can see, smell or otherwise sense the danger. Not so with electricity. You don't see it coming and it's game over in a fraction of a second. I also didn't get how they were able to get close enough with that absorball without risking getting cooked, but I admit I wasn't paying that close attention.

Bwahaha. We had a gem show up on YouTube from a volly company near me a few weeks back. Working attached-garage fire with extension into the house, and an expensive car outside in the driveway. First-due engine rolls up without their SCBA gear on ready, does the size-up, masks up, lays line and the first drop of the blue stuff goes on the red stuff about 7 minutes later. By then the garage was a total loss, it had spread to the car, also a total loss, and the occupant was lucky to make it out alive. A blast from the deck gun and it would have been down about 80% by the time the inch and three quarters was charged and deployed for an interior attack. So we can sit here and snark on bad fireground action on Station 19 and CF, but the sad reality is there are a lot of (IMO) poorly trained departments in real life.

Looks like Miller's road to self-destruction has just taken a very sharp turn. It's sad to see happening, but he won't be the first, nor the last, to spiral down a dark path. This stunt could potentially land him in federal prison for five years. A drunken T.J. Miller was arrested for calling in a fake bomb threat.

Considering that many ambulance services pay their EMTs and paramedics $15/hr or less (sometimes considerably less, and with scant benefits), I was laughing at that whole storyline. If there's a report of a shooting on an EMS call, there's always PD dispatched to ensure the scene is safe for unarmed medics, and a "shots fired at EMS" radio call would have half the cop cars in the city there in seconds. How the actual hell did the two poolside victims survive? They took 480V across their bodies lying on a wet deck. We know that because the woman touched the man's energized body and she dropped like a rock. They'd both have been crispy critters in short order.

Well, at least their fires are slightly more believable than Chicago's (you know the ones, where you can actually see the gas jets feeding them on occasion) so I'll handwave a little bit here, but yeah, what's the sense going in without a charged hand line. Surprised nobody mentioned the potential of steam burns, though. But with all this said, watch a few YouTube fireground videos and even TV firefighters would be better on the scene than some of these ill-trained hosemonkeys in more rural departments. Roll up with light smoke, end up saving the foundation, etc. Maybe doing so would damage the set or the lighting equipment behind it, etc? But it would have been nice if they hit it at the base rather than the ceiling. Heh. What got me from the whole exploding wine bottle BS was why risk the patient's and your own safety going across the WineKillZone™ in the first place. Look at where the victim came to rest...right beside a stained glass window. Get on the horn and have a crew take out that window from the outside and get the victim that way. And speaking of radios, cellphones in the grocery store? Really?? Not their HTs?

You've obviously never been around a brotherhood career like this. It's expected behaviour. Ballbusting and getting in your business is a good thing, and is considered the ultimate sign of respect. Tell someone you don't like broccoli and guess what you get for every meal from now 'til doomsday. Suggest to the friend in a different house, on a different shift, that you're hot for someone in the department or a related agency and the entire known (and unknown) universe will know within about 4.8 picoseconds, and boy will you hear about it. There are no secrets, no unknowns, when the guy bustin' your chops over broccoli is suddenly the guy who's gotta have your back (or you have his) when the fecal matter strikes the rotary oscillator. You see the same stuff on Deadliest Catch and similar shows.

Thoroughly enjoyed the episode, warts and all. Loved decomp-guy, but their hazmat suits would most certainly not have been white when they got him out, especially after he sprung a leak...and there ain't no way in hell they're not pukin' all over themselves in that trailer wearing just the dust masks they started off with. And likewise, if it was that bad, there wouldn't be a crowd surrounding the trailer. Half man, I couldn't sit through. Had to hit the zapper. I guess I mis-spoke a few weeks back when I said how high voltage is a Hard Stop for me. Well it is, but I forgot about stories like this, although usually it's a crushed or twisted lower half under a platform in the subway. Happens real-world, and it's something that gives me utter effing nightmares. I can handle a lot, but that.... So, we got through 10 episodes of a show centered around a fire station and they didn't actually put out a single fire. Yay?

New Favourite Show, hands down. Only watched part one so far, but at least for the pilot, they wrote the job better than anything else on TV has done since Johnny and Roy rode off into the sunset 40-odd years ago. You could put water on an actual fire. Who knew (Chicago Fire, I'm looking at you). They got fire dynamics right, which pleasantly surprised me. I looked at those windows too, and how the beast was playing in the closed off room, and was saying "flashover" before they actually recognized it. Now, that said, it would take probably 10-15 minutes to set up the bags, but for a network TV show I'll handwave—the same way I'll handwave that fire not going to at least a second, if not third, when the first piece of apparatus rolled up. Also, where's the Battalion Chief to direct fireground operations? And who's on the tiller of L-19? I don't think they ever showed the guy or gal back there. Best job in the whole damned house as far as I'm concerned. And I dunno 'bout you, but passing up fresh, hot steaks to slide down a pole that'll still be there after lunch? Yeah. No. Eat when you can, cuz that bell don't wait for suppertime to be over! "Put the wet stuff on the red stuff." You betcha.

With the hoarder crawling through that tunnel of old newspapers with a cigarette lighter for illumination it's a wonder the whole place didn't go up. But I guess they also didn't have the budget for a 3 alarm house fire. Come to think of it, we're 9 episodes in and the Engine crew hasn't responded to a single working fire yet. So enroute to the elevator call we see a shot of Engine 118 responding, then in a wide shot it's TRUCK 118 (a completely different type of vehicle), then they're back to being an engine on the scene. That was a divide-by-zero moment for me. Protip: firefighters don't just drive whatever type of vehicle they think they'll need. I'd be good with them bringing in a background engine crew with no lines (much like Chicago Fire has), and keep the stars on the Truck, since truck companies generally have more interesting calls. Speaking of the elevator call, someone forgot to tell the writers that when elevators fail they almost always fail stuck since it's the application of power that removes the brakes. Also, how could the car go below the basement? Generally there's a bumping block at the lowest floor and the car couldn't go more than a few inches below the door threshold, if that. Good that they extricated the bum from the garbage truck and got him in a C-collar and on a backboard, but his head was flopping around like a rag doll. Just what you want to have when pt states he can't feel his legs. I was shaking my head. Sorry for Abby, but her mom's death was a given even in the premiere. I predicted it would happen by the end of the March sweeps, but since the show was pre-empted for the Olympics that didn't happen. Bet money that Buck and Abby aren't end game. Handcuff call was pure gold. And yes, it happens—more than you'd imagine, in fact. I have a story about that too, but I'll save it for another day, in perhaps a less family-friendly forum <g>.