International Falls Journal - Forum topic - Comments

Making the decision to have

ss84 — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:25:08 -0600

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
Elizabeth Stone

Love this one...<3

Common sense is like basic

shway21 — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:05:52 -0600

Common sense is like basic knowledge, the ability to think, speak and act rationally, I think that gene is missing from your pool. But you and your birds can still fly together, so fly birdie fly!

common sense is simply

live_strong — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:21:20 -0600

common sense is simply common stupidity. Common sense is commonly contradictory, "birds of a feather fly together", "opposites attract", well which is it? there both common sense. I love your argument strategy, when your reasoning fails resort to personal attacks. Its a strategy common when common sense fails.

Dont waste your time then.

shway21 — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 02:16:58 -0600

Dont waste your time then. Nothing is wrong with exposing them so do it thats all I'm saying. Your rediculous antics with unexplained rants is whats uneducated, destructive generalizing comments about an entire group not certain particular people is petty and pointless. You my friend could use a strong dose of common sense and reality.

shway21, You are rambling

rlk1 — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:36:31 -0600

shway21,
You are rambling and off topic usual. Is that because you are attempting to defend a reasoning that is undefendable?
How did I slam anyone by simply stating that government officials and employees should be held accountable for their actions? Take your blinders off and read what I wrote in context before jumping to uneducated assumptions and conclusions.I'll put it in a simpler format that just requires a yes or no answer on your part so you can't pick apart my comments just to satisify your need to argue with nearly everything anyone posts on this website.
Is it wrong to expose corruption and illegal acts by our government officials????????????????????
Like I said before, if it wasn't for the entertainment factor of your comments I wouldn't waste my time replying to your posts.

Hmm didnt know I would need

shway21 — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 03:28:34 -0600

Hmm didnt know I would need a video for saying something sounds like something on a blog? I suppose I could invest in a camera and wait for for the next incomplete stop rlk1 makes and say see I told you so, but I already have a camera and dont feel the need to, I'll leave that to the cops.

And as far as "Crazy" I think that believing living in a small town not being different is crazy, everyone knows everyone I would think you could see that therefore things are going to be different its common sense.

Rlk1 Slammed public officials in general and then said all we can do is reveal them in a truthful and factual manner so if inteligence is what you want to talk about go back to the top and read, the only thing making statements such as that will do is make things worse.

I in no way justified injustices with unfound conclusions, Crazy is you Live_strong.

I find it amusing that you

live_strong — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:18:53 -0600

I find it amusing that you demand a video for any claim to have any merit, yet you are certainly comfortable in making claims lacking thereof. I would ask, do you have a video of rlk1 breaking the law? Oh, if not, I suggest that you sir invest in a video camera.
Why do things work differently in a small town and why are you defending the fact that things work differently in a small town? Things should not be different based on population size, and it is never right to have corruption at any level. Your justifying injustices with indolent unfound conclusions shway21.
Finally, what is so "crazy" about this "talk"? Logically, this "crazy talk" shows more reasoning and intelligence than your "talk." Is it crazy because it suggests that there are serious problems with the social structure of this community which demand attention and change? Does that scare you?

Sounds like a little pent up

shway21 — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:53:13 -0600

Sounds like a little pent up hostility. There is nothing unfounded or rediculous about my statment, Because it most certainly sounds as I stated. So no you didnt break the law and get caught, but welcome to the reality of living in a small town, yes it is a reality and things do work differently in a small town, Go ahead and continue with the crazy talk, but if you want any merit at all invest in a video camera.

shway21, You can't be more

rlk1 — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:20:50 -0600

shway21,
You can't be more wrong, and it's unfounded ridiculous off the wall allegations such as yours that lead me to believe that I just wasted the last 2 minutes of my life replying to your obviously disadvantaged reasoning.

Sounds to me like a person

shway21 — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:48:07 -0600

Sounds to me like a person who broke the law and got caught, Just sayin.

Good post, Its really too

rlk1 — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 13:01:14 -0600

Good post,
Its really too bad that that historically it has been proven on an almost daily basis that our elected and appointed representatives as a whole cannot and probably will never be able to be trusted to act in an ethical and legal manner. Such activity has a negative effect on the moral and ethical govt. employees that don't violate state laws and cross moral/ethical boundries at will. Certain local County and City employees can and have gotten away with this for many years, and even if they are exposed for such activities the violators can rest assured that their supervisors will probably cover it up anyway.
All we can do is expose these people in a forum such as this one in a truthful and factual manner, be diligent and notify the proper people that can and will act properly.
Eventually they will pay for their actions. Its just too bad that the taxpayers will also have to pay for these employees actions AGAIN.
I have made previous posts Re: the above matters. I have waited for a very long time to be able to post the information that you will read about the week of March 22nd 2010 in the reader input section.
I look forward to the obvious replies I'm sure to recieve again.

Check into all the city

kay — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:50:32 -0600

Check into all the city departments such as the city street workers, city water/sewer and others before coming down on this one. You will find alot to discuss then.

Jerry Jensen provided The

Laurel Beager — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:26:15 -0600

Jerry Jensen provided The Journal the following information on the issue. He was instructed by Mayor Shawn Mason not to reply directly to the questions posed on our Web site.

Yes, when you look at the Fire Department from the outside, I can certainly understand why you have your concerns about staffing.

We do have 30 firefighters and 16 EMT’s and one valuable Paramedic, with 4 full time Firefighter Engineers that work at the station 24/7 (someone at the station at all times). Last year was an excellent year for the fire department with 31 total fire calls, which is the best year that we have ever had for fires. With that we also had 842 ambulance calls that we transported patients, and that has been the worst year as far as number of transfers, so your numbers are right for 2009.

The fire department budget pays for 2 of the full time engineers, and the ambulance budget pays for the other two full time engineers.

I’m really not sure what to say about your little slam of my department about the save the basement vs. save a life, if you think for one second that all we do is save the basement and put a lower priority on saving a life, you really don’t have any understanding of emergency services.

Our firefighter Engineers are required to be EMT’s, and for good reason, they are very active on the ambulance as well. Yes, we need more Paramedics, and someday hopefully we will have more than one, so we can give the citizens in our community the service they deserve.

I have looked many times at how would could manage our department without the firefighter engineers, since that is always a concern of concerned citizens such as yourself. I think they are a valuable asset to our community, when you talk about other communities north of Duluth, who do it the way we do, your right.

Virginia has at least 20 full time Firefighter/Paramedics who cover both the fire and ambulance calls.

Hibbing has at least 20 full time Firefighter/Paramedics who cover both the fire and ambulance calls,

and it is the same in Clouquet. (Which I have all the respect in world for these three departments)

They respond to fires with 4 to 6 firefighters to a fire, and then they have support from the communities around them to provide mutual aid (back up).

When we have a fire, we have a Firefighter Engineer at the station, which pages the remaining firefighters, and is in the apparatus on the way to a fire within a minute. The rest of the volunteer respond to the location of the incident, approximately 23, the off duty Firefighter Engineers respond to the station to man the station and respond with additional apparatuses. They also respond the on call ambulance crew to respond for medical support for both citizens and firefighters.

The Ambulance service does have a paramedic that works 8 am to 4 pm Monday thru Friday, and she will respond to any call she hears, that she feels her skills are needed.

I really hope one day we will be able to have more paramedics than just one, having a paramedic does make a difference to the care of our patients. I’m currently responding on calls during the day if I’m not busy with something else, and normally I will find a way to get away to help, because that does mean getting out the door in less than a minute, which does make a difference to the patient.

Now if you were to ask any of the EMT’s how they would feel in not having the Firefighter Engineer at the station when a call comes to the station, they would quickly inform you that our engineers are a must to make our ambulance successful.

When we receive a call, they have the ambulance out of the garage and instructions for getting to the incident as quick as possible.

The engineers monitor all aspects of the call to insure they arrive at the scene, how long they are there, and if they need more help, and to also be ready to dispatch another call.

The Firefighter Engineers are very busy at the station most of the time, they have stacks of check lists that they have to complete, daily, weekly and monthly.

I’m very proud of the staff we have at the station, both fire and ambulance, and because of our responsibilities in our community and our geographic location, we have the right kind of department, having a combination department.

As far as the ambulance goes, I will continue to work with a task force that has been trying very hard to establish an ALS (Advance Life Support (paramedics)) service for our community.

I would love to have you stop at the station and observe the duties of the Firefighter Engineer, and if you have ideas, that you think would be more efficient or less expensive for our community, I’m always open to suggestions.

I know this just touches the duties of the Firefighter Engineers, but I hope it opens up a few of the issues that are not normally thought of.

Jerry Jensen
Fire Chief/Ambulance Director
600 4th Street
International Falls, MN 56649

On Tuesday, the Journal

Laurel Beager — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:03:41 -0600

On Tuesday, the Journal asked Jerry Jensen, chief of the ambulance service and fire department, to respond to the questions raised here by either answering himself or replying to The Journal so we could provide the information.

My apologies Andy, I see

lesleyk — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:50:18 -0600

My apologies Andy, I see your point and it's a fair question. I would think that our firefighters are already EMT trained or trained to some degree. A good question to ask your city council rep or seriously, call Jerry up and ask. We may have an aging population, but we do also have a lot of buildings and empty homes in disrepair - definitely fire hazards. Right now, our fire department covers a lot of area. Although there may not be that many fires, there easily could be one out in the county and one in town at the same time . . . if we didn't have a big enough fire dept, how could they cover both fires?