Monroe Fire Talkgroup Question

[rdale]

I'm monitoring the major fire in Ida on the Dimondale tower although just getting the primary fire talkgroup 2249. A request was made by the IC to have "Fire 2 patched to Emergency Talkgroup 1" because not all the onscene rigs have the new radios.

Dispatch said that they were not setup at this time to do such a patch, and all units could switch to Emergency Talkgroup 1 but that dispatch would no longer be able to monitor. Any idea what Fire 2 is? Or why EMER1 is listed as a talkgroup (2244) but sounds more like a talkaround if dispatch can't monitor?

- Rob

[WTFD10]

Fire 2 is 154.355

I have been told that Central Dispatch can only monitor the main fire dispatch talkgroup which is channel 1 and 16 on the radios.

Don't know if they don't have the other tg's programmed in their consoles or if the "fire dispatcher" is just too busy also doing LEIN and whatever else to switch channels.

[MONROEUSER]

The dispatch consoles are not yet set up with all of the talkgroups. As soon as they are the talkgroups can be patched but as of this date the consoles still are not set up to monitor or patch most of the tallgroups. Everything in there is still in the transitional phase and should all be completed in the next 2 to 3 weeks. There is also work being done so dispatch can patch the Monroe 800 system to Toledo and Downriver. All of that should be completed real soon.

[rdale]

Just seems strange that they would intermix the radios beforehand without the ability to patch things together - it seemed comms were not very easy at the Ida incident.

[FPO703]

You'd think they'd have dispatch finished before switching to a new radio system, no? That only makes sense.

[rdale]

If I had to guess they were probably doing it partially because they expected coverage problems to pop up (as they did) and didn't want comms to go to nil while fixing... That fire wasn't a typical event for Monroe Co ;>

[WTFD10]

Originally Posted by rdale

That fire wasn't a typical event for Monroe Co ;>

You win the understatement of the week award

[ka2tsv]

I've been on the fence as to post a response to this or not, since I try to stay in the background, but here goes. It isn't as easy as just saying today we are going to turn off all the old stuff, and on with all the new stuff.

There are a finite amount of resources that can fit on a console position, and CEB, and a balance must be achieved. The legacy system must still be supported till all the users on it have the capability to use the new system, and there is a comfort level with the reliability of the new system to let go of the old.

When I created the console configs I had to cram 10 lbs of **** into a 5 lb box. So for now there is enough to get by on both systems, and when they are ready and comfortable enough to cut off the old stuff, they will have everything they need.

Is it somewhat of a pain? Yes, I heard the communications chaos, I understand, after all I'm not just one of the tech's but also a FF. I was on standby at Dundee's station, and that's just how it works for the moment. In the very near future things will be good!