Spaloo

hmm only problem I have with the OES rig is that it's YELLOW We all know yellow fire engines shouldn't exist. And Scotia, I'm saying this while I'm totally calm and drinking a Corona, so calm down, k? Happy Cinco De Mayo!

Why worry about OES rigs and support vehicles? I say lets get a working submod out there and work on the extras later! It's looking great so far!

Who cares where the lights are on the battalion vehicle. If we nitpick someone's work to death, it'll never be released. Keep up the good work bro! You can put the lightbar under the hood for all I care! lol

Black top LACoFD Engines have CAFS (compressed air foam system) installed. It's just cosmetic in the game. Don't get me started on it as far as real life...

First of all AMR staffs and runs ALS units for 911 calls because of a little storm a couple years ago that had all the LACOFD squads tied up in north LA County and had LA City RA's running through out Santa Clarita as squads. After that LA County EMS sat down and said that a private ambulance company that is Licensed to run ALS calls can run ALS calls. The only ALS rigs that is dedicated to IFT's (inter-facility transports) are the CCT(Critical Care Transport) rigs which staff 2 EMT's and 1 RN. In fact there was a call during the April storms of 2010 that was in Lake LA and there were no LACOFD squads available for the next 30 minutes. So AMR sent an ALS rig out of Palmdale that just got off a call to the address in Lake LA and made it under 15 minutes. I cannot say what the injures or age of the patient due to patient-confidentiality laws but I can say that this type of call happens anytime there is severe weather. One last thing is that LACOFD can leave any medical call in the hands of an AMR ALS rig only.

This is why AMR ALS units are not only for inter-facility transports in fact BLS units take more IFT's than ALS units.

You're kidding me! AMR has definitely changed in the 10 years since I've been there. How does LA County Fire/EMS function on a regular basis? Does an ALS private ambulance get dispatched to every call? How do they decide if the patient needs an ALS private ambulance with a FD squad? Is it used purely if the FD squads in the area are all out of service or on calls? I remember even as an ALS rig back in '03-'04, if we ran with LA County FD, we had to function as a BLS rig because of billing purposes, unless the patient is about to die right then and there.

A little info on AMR

SCV: 3 ALS for day shift, 4 BLS for day shift, 1 ALS and 6 BLS for night shift.

AV: 5 ALS for both shifts , 6-9 BLS for both shifts

Plus AMR runs a lot of split rigs ex: 1 EMT and 1 paramedic but according to LACO EMS an ALS designation has to have 2 paramedics

AMR LACO has 5 field supervisors, 5 operations supervisors, 1 medical director serves both LACO & Ventura County, 7 managers (only one is a paramedic rest are EMT), and two CES supervisors & 1 CES manager (same manager that is a paramedic).

AMR is in SCV, AV, SGB, Rancho, Iwrindale, and has provides EMS for Home Depot center, Staples center, Nokia center, Dodger stadium.

So I think there should be both ALS & BLS AMR in the submod.

The contract AMR has with LA County FD just provides them with BLS units for 911 transport. The ALS units are just used for inter-facility transport. The last of the AMR ALS prehospital care in LA County went away when Vernon went to fire/medics for their ambulance. Even then, AMR almost always used the Vernon FD ambulance, staffed with AMR medics. I say keep the AMR units BLS for this submod.

FYI "Engine 10-1" and "Engine 10-2" are numbered incorrectly as to how LA County FD numbers their vehicles. It should be "Engine 10" and "Engine 210", with Engine 210 being a part of a light force. To be honest, I don't know if LA County used the Light Force concept back then, so you might be better off deleting engine 210 altogether and having the ladder run as a single piece with 4 people on it.

yes Yes YES I like it! Brings me back to the days when I was an AMR jockey in SoCal. Really, you got everything a LaCoFD submod really needs. All that is missing is a quint tiller. I guess you gotta remap the stations to have a squad instead of ambulance. You're not gonna get all fancy with a LaCoFD tractor-trailer USAR are ya? No need, in my humble opinion. Just make all the AMR ambulances BLS please! If you make it so that a squad has to go on all the medicals, you've really created a whole new way of playing the game!

I don't know where you live, but I don't think it'd be a problem if you request to take a tour of your local dispatch center. They'll have loads of information, and to see if first-hand might give you some new ideas. You could make it arcade-style for the fun factor, or make it a simulation and some organizations might purchase it as a training tool. Either way, good luck!

lol I'm sure they're not keeping tabs on how many release date requests there are and multiplying that by ohhh 3. That'll be how long they extend out the release date. Yeah thats how it works.

Just a genuine question. From my perspective, it looks like an incredibly fun, detailed, epic modification that'll never be released. I only say this after lurking for a very long time. I mean no offense by it. I'll even buy the mod if that's what it takes to get it out there!

Maybe I've become a little pessimistic about the release. I'll go back to waiting patiently.

My hat's off to you for such an excellent mod. Thanks for being one of the key people in making this game a classic.

P.S...you never did make my LA County Engine, ya lazy bastard!

All kidding aside, thank you for all the work. I hope to see you come back sometime after a much deserved break. Take care, Hoppah.

I like realism...

Lets make it real then. Whenever PD responds to fires, have them park right in front of the hydrants. Also for EMS, make 90% of the calls come in as "Chest pain, breathing difficulty" and end up being a 20 year old with a sore throat. It'll be so realistic...

Seriously though, is the release date creeping up yet? I've been lurking in this thread for a loooong time.

LAFD does not use volunteers? never mind!

But here I thought the volunteer firemen of the city Los Angeles, it could also be in the modification.

L.A. Mod is not just LAFD, but there can be other fire brigades in L.A. City and L.A. County.

volunteer firefighters are in the all States, so why not in Los Angeles ?

Los Angeles is a city, not a state. Los Angeles COUNTY does have volunteers, but they only operate out of a very small amount of stations, in rural areas. La Habra Heights (in LA County) is a volunteer dept (with part-time paid ff/paramedics), but that is relatively far away from LA City and would not mutual-aid with LA City. You also have teen-age fire explorers that technically volunteer their time, and you might find them on fire apparatus, but they ride along as observers.

So long story short, putting volunteers in this mod would be inaccurate. The call volume in LA City is much too high to be anything but a paid-professional fire service.

I've gone into LABattalionChief.script, LAFireStation.script, and LAFireStationstart.script, and made what I thought were the proper changes to staff the ALS ambulance with just the paramedic stretcher team, but whenever I start the game, that extra paramedic is ALWAYS there. Also, I changed fp_params_endless.xml to decrease the frequency of events and make a few extra ems calls, but again, it doesn't seem to change the game. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

I ran a few calls with LASD SAR. They are BLS. They respond when requested (if requested). I remember LACOFD was big on just doing it themselves, but maybe things have changed. The two calls I saw LASD SAR was a) a mountain biker who fell about 6 miles up a trail in the Angeles National Forest (ANF) and had to be driven out (we had LASD Air 5 on that call, too). and B) a dog somehow made it's way halfway down an 80 foot cliff. LASD rappelled down, secured the dog. LACoFD LF 82 got their aerial up to get everyone off the cliff.

That's my experience. They are definitely BLS, last I checked. If they need ALS, that's what the LACoFD squads are there for.

large forest fires kick us all in the balls. lolz.

A 10 car crash o.O that brings back memories almost of the 40 car crash on the long beach freeway, CA. hahahaha, that'd be a challenge, but it'd be realllllly fun too!

You were there for that? I was working AMR there when that happened. I was just coming off shift when the first calls went out. The sup released us to go home anyways. I remember driving home, I couldn't see more than 5 feet in front of me in some places.

Hoppah,

I'm not one to recommend ridiculous changes. I'm sure you've thought of this before, but is there any way for the firefighters to don SCBAs before they make the hose connections? In real life anywhere, including LA, you're very rarely going to conduct fire suppression without an SCBA.

Ah I thought the CCTs looked a bit longer, but i thought it was just the angle you were at or something of that nature. I suppose there not needed as much here. We have three hospitals and there all 3 located with easy aces to the expressway so transport time from one side of town to another wouldnt be more then 15 minuets.

Critical care transport units with nurses and larger ems units are not a nation-wide thing. LA County's EMS protocols are very detailed and somewhat strict as far as what paramedics can and cannot do. Hence, any procedure or medication that is outside the paramedic protocols are (for the most part) prohibited. RNs do not fall under these protocols. So if a patient is on a medication drip that falls outside the protocols, for example, a heparin drip and integrelin drip, and needs to be transported to a different hospital in LA, then a paramedic cannot monitor this patient and it requires a nurse.

In other areas of the country, paramedics may be trained as "critical care paramedics" and have very similar training to what an RN learns in the ICU setting. These EMS services don't require a nurse during those critical transports, and they'll use whatever ambulance they are in for the shift to accomplish the critical care transport. I assume that is what is done in your area of the country.

I hope that made sense.

For the most part the bread and butter of AMR in Los Angeles are the IFTs (inter facility transports) due to the large number of hospitals, senior citizen facilities, and long term care homes in the Greater Los Angeles Area. For a long time,

AMR had a lock on the LACoFD BLS transport, but due to poor quality of service and lengthy response times, the contract was broken up and they were relegated to a sliver of the area they once covered for the County. They do not respond with LAFD or into LA City for emergency calls, since LAFD has its own BLS and ALS ambulances to take care of that need.

Mike

Poor quality came from the top, not the employees, that's for sure. There's nothing like responding from Montebello to Hawaiian Gardens for a pediatric status epilepticus that they couldn't control with valium. Then everyone shoots us a dirty look for being "late".

One thing I gotta say is that I remember responding into The City for prehospital calls by request of LAFD while I was with AMR. It wasn't very rare, either. It was always a non-emergency response for either a frequent flyer they did not want to transport, or a BLS patient that was requesting a hospital either out of the area or on the other side of the city. Depending on how you look at it, you could say it was a prehospital call, or a BLS transfer from residence to an outpatient facility (ER)

There are also the MCI responses (i.e. Santa Monica MCI) or an occasional Strike Team during a fire. While it's EXTREMELY rare to see a private company on anything other than a transfer in the city of LA, there are times they're utilized and I can see why it'd be a good addition to the game.

So the RA heads to the scene but doesnt go C3 until the fire department gives the ok?

You're thinking of Orange County

Again, Mike, correct me if I'm wrong, but LAFD uses ProQA tiered dispatching. The information given by the caller dictates what resources respond, and whether they respond emergency or not. For example, a cardiac arrest will have all the resources respond emergency, whereas a fall might have the closest resource respond emergency and the transporting unit respond routine (non-emergency). That is just an example...I don't know how LAFD categorizes falls

It's been a while since I've posted anything...or checked this forum for that matter. I gotta say, great job with the tiller, hoppah! Can't wait until it comes out. It honestly looks spot on like the real thing.

On a side note, totally unrelated, I got a job with a career fire dept! WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Any chance you can put in that new ambulance with the spartan furion chassis?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ral11us/2827448852/

It might require a bit of modeling.

I hope this, or one of the other mods/submods goes beyond the drawing board and actually gets released...

Thanks for all your hard work, Hoppah. As I said before, if you need any help with details about LA, I'm pretty familiar with it and the emergency services in that area. (Now if I can only con you into building an LACoFD Engine 8...)

To whoever answered it, yeah the LA River is usually a trickle in the center of the massive waterway. It usually contains more shopping carts than it does water. I like the graffiti. Nice touch.

Hey Mike, quick question. This may be a bit of a stupid question, but if you look at the board that lists all of the medical units in the area of Rampart General Hospital in the tv series Emergency!, there are two units at the bottom that say RAs rather than squads. Know I know that this could be stupid since it's a fictional tv show and the hospital doesn't really exsist, but I know there was a big push to make the show realistic, with them using the same equipment, apparatus, and even actors who were also LACoFD personell. My question is, was LACoFD actually experimenting with RA's in the 1970s, or was that just somthing the show added in? I guess it also could have been some RA's from a nearby fire department, since LACoFD and LAFD aren't they only FDs in the county.

From my limited knowledge on the subject, LACoFD had put a few "mobile aids" in service. These were transporting ambulances, but I don't know if they were available in the '70s. From what I know, I believe all mobile aids are either out of service or place in reserve status. Also, LACoFD, for a short period of time, used LA County Health Dept ambulances as their BLS transport. Unfortunately, LA County DHS could not keep up with the call volume and the program was scrapped.

When I look at the "website" of each LAFD station, it lists the station number and what community it serves. Is each "community" a different city than LA? For example is Sherman Oaks it's own city or is it a neighborhood within the city of LA?

You know how New York is separated into burrows like the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, etc....same concept. Sherman Oaks, Echo Park, Hyde Park, etc are all parts of Los Angeles City.