This Blog Is Full Of Crap

Sign me up for that fund too. Here, in Wauwatosa, WI, if you dial 911 for an animal rescue they transfer you to the Department of Public Works. The guys send what equipment they think will help in the rescue and they don't ticket you for making the call. They do give you a card that reads "please help keep emergency 911 lines clear for "people" emergencies, in the future dial "211" and someone will ge glad to help." They have ads on t.v. and radio about it too. Cool system, everything you need is 3 digits away. Mind you, the phone system for the service is funded by donation, but, the help for your stuck pet comes from "city workers" who actually started this whole thing.

(Oh, and I forgot... WE'RE WORLD CLASS!)

was it really a kitty and not "the Twelfth Imam"?

In the 50s or early 60s, Princeton had a 7090 computer and one rainy day the comp center (these things are not cheap) started to flood. So they called the fire department to pump to help keep it dry.

The fire department said that they only do fires, not floods.

The comp center guy said : how big a fire do you need?

So, the story goes, anyway, the fire department guy conceded defeat and said they'd be right out.

Hat tip to an old fart who retold this story about monthly for twenty years.

I know that the Religion of Cat Lovers is devoutly humourless about any slight to their Furry Overlords, but I am reminded of a quote I recently read:
" Have you ever seen a cat skeleton in a tree?"

I will now gird my loins with flame retardent material.

Kitties are all important, the feral kitties, the kitty in the sewer, Billy, Emily, the acidental traveler and the kitties we met in the blogs. Moses at Mad Moses Kitty had to go to the vet. The last part of his entry today almost made me cry.

"Now they're keeping me against my will and I can't even go to the bathroom on my own! The pervo "doctor" has to squeeze my bladder for me to tinkle. I'm not liking this. You people can be expecting many MANY bitings and scratchings when I get home!!!

If I get home...."

http://moseskitty.blogspot.com/

I stopped by and left my prayers and skritches.

If you have time would you please go by and leave prayers, hugs and skritches to a frightened kitty and his family.

Rescuing a cat is one thing, but having the neighborhood's crazy cat lady lying to the 911 operator about "her baby" is quite a different story.

all Frisky fans check the cat cams. I see him!

Well here is the full story...the lady said a baby was in the sewer lying to 911. When he arrived on scene, he told her this is something to call animal control or the public works for, not the fire department, sending 16 pieces of apparatus and 35 firemen. At the same time of this call, units were depayed to a full cardiac arrest and a fire because they were at this call. Tell me, which is more important? And they did rescue the cat so dont give me this crap. Why dont you go out everyday and do our job, yes our job, I'm a Houston fire fighter to. Once you do that and get away from your little blog site, then you can put down the fire department.

Question... isn't there any logging of incidents so that a person saying cat, cat, and cat is then crosschecked against escalating it into an imaginary baby? Is this an issue with trigger-happy dispatcher or a failure in the design of the vaunted 911 system?

Also, with all those other incidents to deal with, why does it take so much equipment and manpower for a rescue in a sewer?

Your question about crosschecking is a very good one. When we recieved the call for the cat in the sewer, dispatch gave the lady the phone number for animal control and even prompted to connect the caller. Now, with the cat turning into the baby....if you call 911 and tell us there is a baby in a sewer, we respond in full force even if you call us 5 times a day for non-related incidents (believe it or not people do call us that many times daily). It was a mandatory respnse under the HFD bilaws and Code Of Response apparatus. So it was neither the dispatcher or a failure, just procdure. The reason it took so much manpower is becuase it took many different units with certain specialties. We sent 3 pumpers and 2 ladders, the normal fire response...2 rescue trucks which have specialty equiptment for making rescues, 2 HazMat trucks because of the toxins and danger of being in a sewer, 2 Basic Life Support and 1 Advanced Life Support Ambulance so we had enough medical personel on scene for whatever may arise, We had 2 EMS suburbans on scene to have additional paramedics, my father who is the EMS Supervisor responded to oversee EMS actions, and a district chief responded to oversee fire operations. All this equiptment would have been necessary to evaluate, treat, and rescue a REAL baby.