5 Ways To Tell You Are In Allegheny County, PA

We all know we take great pride in our fire departments here in western PA, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.  I thought I’d poke some fun at ourselves and write this article. Here are 5 ways to tell you are in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, from a firefighting perspective.

1) Despite having the location and incident announced three times by dispatch, there are at least 3 additional requests for the address and nature of the call.

2) You hear great things on the radio such as, and I quote, “Whatcha got for me brotha?” and circus music during fire incidents.

3) There are 5 or more fire units dispatched for motor vehicle accidents with fluid cleanup or 3 fire units dispatched for a first responder ems call to assist the medics.

4) During a working job, there are as many standby companies as there are companies working the job.

5) Fire departments get called out 3 times a day for “illegal fires” that turn out to be smoke from cookouts or a legal recreational burn.

Did I leave anything out?  Be sure to comment on this post if I did.

Ak-valley and western PA Firefighters Tribute

This video was made by Bill Hartman (Smokejoker951) back in March of 2008 as a tribute.  Many pictures in the video came from the contributions to Hoopie World.