TVF&R

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OregonScanner

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From TVFR's website:

District Map:
http://www.tvfr.com/DocumentCenter/View/8

Station Locations:
Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue - Official Website

It looks like TVFR has stations in Washington, Clackamas, and a couple of stations in Portland in Multnomah County. Does this mean that their communications are split up between 3 counties? What I mean is even though they are one agency, do units in Washington County use WC Dispatch/Ops, units in Clackamas County use CC Dispatch/Ops or LOCOM, and do units in Multnomah County use MC Dispatch/Ops?
 
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DickH

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Which stations?

Surprise, surprise. Yes, Sta. 60 is in a tiny piece of Portland. I think it's the only building in that little sliver of land.
Sta. 36, while it may have a Portland postal address is actually in Multnomah county.

Here is another interesting point. Portland Sta. 31 is on SE 174th Ave. Since the Gresham city line is only 1/2 block east of the station, and Eng. 31 responds to a large part of Gresham, the company is manned by Portland on shifts A & C and by Gresham on B shift.
Gresham's normal manning is an officer and 2 firefighters, but on B shift Gresham provides the same size crew as Portland, an officer and 3 firefighters.

Edit: I wonder if TVF&R pays rent and taxes on that Portland land.?
 

DickH

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Surprise, surprise. Yes, Sta. 60 is in a tiny piece of Portland.

First I must apologize to Keith for straying from his original question.

Now, yet another surprise. I decided to look at my PF&R and Google maps and it is obvious that TVF&R Station 60 is in Washington county
even though it has a Portland mailing address. It is clear that the apparatus doors face 87th Ave. in Washington county.

This mailing address discrepancy is not unusual. I have seen people and businesses as far away as Tigard giving their address as Portland.

PF&R Map #5389
p414779818-4.jpg


Google Map
p181172616-4.jpg
 

mjohnston4

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Dick, pretty much everything north of Highway 26 in that 185th area, all the way west to Bethany and beyond has a Portland mail address. And to my knowledge Volunteer Station 368 (says 36 on the map) is in Multnomah County, it's right next to Skyline Elementary pretty much.
 

hillsbjp

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TVF&R is pretty special in that it is technically a rural fire district (formed out of the merger of several departments, including Washington County Fire District 1, I believe), but it is under contract to serve several cities. TVF&R contracts with the cities of Beaverton, Sherwood, Tigard, Tualatin, Durham, King City, Wilsonville, and West Linn. The last 2 are both in Clackamas County so TVF&R also provides services in the unincorporated portions of Clackamas County in the areas surrounding those cities. If the cities didn't contract with TVF&R, it would be up to the city to provide their own fire department (Hillsboro being an example of a true municipal fire department). Other fire districts in Washington County (Banks, Forest Grove, Cornelius, Gaston, WCFD2, etc.) all have contracts with their cities to provide municipal fire services.

All this being said, TVF&R is dispatched solely by WCCCA, unless they are providing mutual aid out of county. Sometimes, Engine 60 will go to a Portland call, or E58/59 will go to a call in Oregon City.
 

DickH

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... Engine 60 will go to a Portland call, or E58/59 will go to a call in Oregon City.

And the beauty of the 4 contiguous counties in the Portland area all using Motorola trunked radio systems is the ability to all talk together.
For example, when your Eng. 60 responds to an accident or other minor thing in Portland they switch to Portland OPS-1. If it's a box alarm fire, it's usually on OPS-3. Likewise when one of the Portland companies goes to WCCCA or CCOM they switch to the Talk Group being used for that incident.
 

mjohnston4

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TVF&R no longer has any open contracts, the last contract city to be annexed in was West Linn and that was about 5 years ago. Also Forest Grove and Cornelius are city departments that actually contract services to the rural district around them, Banks, Gaston and Dist 2 are all districts with no contracts. (except the IGA between Hillsboro and Dist 2 for admin/chief services)

Hey Dick, when I hear TVF&R go on certain calls (usually on Cornelius Pass) they are told to go to OPS10, what's the reason for this?
 

DickH

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Hey Dick, when I hear TVF&R go on certain calls (usually on Cornelius Pass) they are told to go to OPS10, what's the reason for this?

Are you sure you heard 10? The higher OPS channels (7 through 12) are only used for Training. Accidents are almost always on OPS-6.

OPS-1 = Routine calls.
OPS-2 = a 2nd Portland fire.
OPS-3 = the first Portland fire.
OPS-4 = a Gresham fire.
OPS-5 = a Sauvie Island fire or a river incident.
OPS-6 = large accidents/pin-ins, gas leaks.
Sometimes a dispatcher will assign a different OPS channel, but it's rare.
 

hillsbjp

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TVF&R

TVF&R no longer has any open contracts, the last contract city to be annexed in was West Linn and that was about 5 years ago. Also Forest Grove and Cornelius are city departments that actually contract services to the rural district around them, Banks, Gaston and Dist 2 are all districts with no contracts. (except the IGA between Hillsboro and Dist 2 for admin/chief services)

Hey Dick, when I hear TVF&R go on certain calls (usually on Cornelius Pass) they are told to go to OPS10, what's the reason for this?

Whoops. Looks like I have a serious case of foot in mouth disease. Next time, somebody punch me before I go shooting my mouth off about something I don't know about. ;)

As far as the ops channel question, I can only speculate that it's the designated mutual aid channel for those calls. Maybe it's the only Portland ops channel in the TVF&R radios (although that would be both dumb and easy to fix).
 
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DickH

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Positive, it has happened 3 or 4 times and I wasn't sure if it was because of the poor communications in that area. But it's that area on Cornelius Pass Road.

Any OPS channel will be heard exactly as well or poorly as any other. They all go through the same repeaters. Yes, Corn Pass is a bad area. If they are having trouble on a scene, they might use one of the 4 Simplex channels since they are direct, unit to unit.
 

PaulNDaOC

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Portland has a local fill-in 800 radio site in Corn Pass. Maybe TVF&R to an unused OPS channel on the Portland system in order to communicate with dispatchers up at WCCCA for incidents inside Multnomah County that E-368 rolls on.

I don't beleive the system 800 system used by TVFR has a site near the Pass, and one really is needed
for anybody to hear you up there, especially on the 800 band..

Just a thought.
 
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hillsbjp

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Portland has a local fill-in 800 radio site in Corn Pass. Maybe TVF&R to an unused OPS channel on the Portland system in order to communicate with dispatchers up at WCCCA for incidents inside Multnomah County that E-368 rolls on.

I don't beleive the system 800 system used by TVFR has a site near the Pass, and one really is needed
for anybody to hear you up there, especially on the 800 band..

Just a thought.

The nearest Washington County site is at the WCCCA PSAP, near 185th and US-26. If Engine 368 is responding to a call down in the pass east of Skyline, they definitely won't be in range of the WCCCA radio system, especially since they probably won't be able to get one of the linked Clackamas County towers either. The Portland site is made to fill that gap in Multnomah County's area. They probably use a Portland ops channel out of necessity, and that area is all Multnomah County anyway. On a crash, E368 may respond because they're the closest station, but police and ambulance will be coming from Multnomah County.

Here are some maps of the two system's tower sites that I made a couple of months ago, based on FCC license data. These maps are better than the RR database maps, since the database doesn't translate FCC data very well, and several towers are missing on those maps. I highly suspect that the WCCCA licenses are out of date, so there may be a couple of new Washington County towers that aren't on here. Portland should be pretty current though.

Washington/Clackamas/Newberg:
https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zGIqusI_NJqg.kyTuXgyLdgrc

Portland/Multnomah:
https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zGIqusI_NJqg.kkTarTJ8R240
(Ignore the green placemarks. That's the new Portland digital radio system which isn't being used for public safety yet).
 

mjohnston4

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All Metro area department have OPS channels for all counties. I don't think OPS10 is a patch or a repeater, I'm thinking it's a channel to throw them on due to "increased" radio chatter that comes with the communication issues.
 
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