Agawam FD on scene Mullins Center last night enroute to CDH
Thanks to a requirement from Amherst Fire Chief Tim Nelson that the Mullins Center hire outside contractors to be on site (well, close by at North Station anyway) there were no serious problems last night with ambulance supply-and-demand at the Mullins Center.
Agawam and Easthampton FD ambulances were able to handle the medical transports to Cooley Dickinson Hospital, all of them alcohol related. "About what we expected" according to Chief Nelson.
AFD responding to the Mullins Center for vomiting drunk college aged female urinating herself.
— Larry Kelley (@amherstac) October 8, 2015
A good thing of course since we are talking about potentially life and death scenarios for the rest of us living in town, where a quick arriving ambulance can make all the difference in the world.
Although you would be amazed at some of the ambulance calls Dispatch deals with.
Mullins Center Command, staffed by AFD personnel, saw a total of 15 concert goers last night with four of them requiring transport. Nothing compared to last month's concert.
The next test of our Emergency Medical System will come on Halloween: Another Mullins Center show and with the holiday falling on a weekend the college aged zombie hoards will be out in full strength looking to party.
6 comments:
Hats off to UMass for getting a show on campus Halloween weekend. Students are benefiting from the tactic of staging concerts on notorious party weekends and so is the town.
Hey...my wife was nowhere Near UMass, Larry. (J/K honey.)
The next test of our Emergency Medical System will come on Halloween: Another Mullins Center show and with the holiday falling on a weekend the college aged zombie hoards will be out in full strength looking to party.
It's not that Larry as much as the fact that maintaining control over a population via oppression requires one to maintain the logistical ability to oppress as all other forms of leadership have already been abandoned. This is why Machiavelli warned leaders not to resort to this unless they absolutely had to -- what he meant by it being more important for the people to "love" their Prince than for the Prince to always get the people to do what he wanted them to do.
At this point, the only thing preventing total anarchy on that campus is each student's individual fear of coercion. The SECOND that it appears that the authorities are overwhelmed, all hell will break loose.
It will be just like the fall of the DDR -- I was watching on the Noon News what the East German's were watching on their evening news and my response was "Holy S***, did he just say what I THINK he just said?!?" He had -- and very much hadn't intended to -- he'd scrambled what he was supposed to say about how the DDR wasn't the prison it was, and how East Germans routinely left for vacations in the West via the Czech border.
What he actually said was that "of course" all East German Citizens were free to travel to the West, and hence free to leave the country via the border crossing(s) with Czechoslovakia. Hearing this, they all loaded up their smoke-belching cars (2 cycle engines) and headed for Czechoslovakia, arriving there a couple hours later.
Overwhelmed, the East German Border Guards essentially said "F-It" and just let everyone just go through -- and even then, there was a 14 MILE backup at the crossing, which led to the DDR opening "Checkpoint Charlie" and then the night we all remember when the wall itself came down -- was torn down by brute human force.
Larry, the same thing is going to happen with your war on rowdyism. Eventually, someday -- and it may not be this Halloween, but someday -- the authorities are going to be so overwhelmed that the students will realize that there is no longer any realistic likelyhood of them being personally punished if they violate the hated rules. As that is the only check on their behavior, there now will be none at all.
All hell will break loose.
When parents ask me why students drink so much, not why they drink but why the "pregaming" and such, I point out that the only message given them is not to drink at all, and the only reason given for that is "because we will punish you if we catch you doing it" -- and that "pregaming" only came into fashion with "alcohol free" events that they weren't allowed to drink *at*, so they went with the alcohol already inside of them....
There is no more social contract anymore, not with the UMass students, all civility from them is by fiat and force -- and the second that slips -- RUN.....
Let me try this a different way:
Why do you stop for a Red light?
A: Because there might be a cop there?
B: Because a 40 ton truck might hit you?
C: Because you want to live in a society where the 40 ton truck also stops for Red lights and hence you choose to comply with the law because you benefit from others doing likewise.
While I freak people out by saying that (C) is the *only* reason why I stop, and while for a few (A) is the only reason, for most people it is (B). Sure there might be a cruiser tucked away somewhere in the bushes, but it's the traffic that has the Green light that they are most worried about. (And neither knowing what it takes to stop a loaded "18-wheeler" even if all ten brakes are properly adjusted, nor how rarely they are -- nor how often the 40 ton truck weighs more than that -- blindly think it can stop, even if the driver wants to.)
But if tickets were the ONLY reason why people stopped for red lights, there would have to be a realistic fear of getting a ticket or no one would ever stop. This is why most police officers are far more interested in impressing upon someone how dangerous it is to run red lights than in writing tickets -- for most of them, it is about keeping people from getting killed.
Student behavior at UMass is ONLY managed by fear. There no longer is self interest or any concept of "you wouldn't want someone doing this to you" or anything else -- it is just fear of punishment. Fear of what the police and/or Enku might do to you.
Once that is gone, it will be like the Red light at 3AM in the middle of nowhere. (Or that one on the end of Main Street as you come into downtown, one car simply will not trip it.) Yes, I wait -- most folks won't.
And once the fear of punishment is gone, absolutely nothing (including the extent to which they are endangering themnselves) will stop the UMass students.
There are somewhat stormy looking clouds overhead at the moment. We could A) get a bit of a badly needed rainstorm or B) endure a giant EF5 tornado that wipes Amherst off the face of the earth.
But, methinks it will be A.
Yes, but if you lived in "Tornado Alley", wouldn't you want to have a cellar or some place of refuge to flee to?
Unfortunately, nothing above ground will protect you from a F-5, but wouldn't you want your daughter's school to have *some* place for then to flee to?
I look at it like the Hurricane of 1938, which came right up the Connecticut River Valley.
It will happen again -- maybe not in our lifetimes, but it will happen again.
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