Barrington and Lake Zurich Fire Dispatching

[BudTurpa]

Since Barrington FD moved to NWCD I have noticed interesting nuances (at least to me) on how Barrington and Lake Zurich are dispatched when joint equipment is needed.

Observation #1
For Barrington area fire alarm calls (via the fire alarm board or central station calling in) to a business, I notice three pieces of equipment are sent from Barrington and one vehicle from Lake Zurich. This is a regular, non mutual aid, or non escalated call. Sending a neighboring town's gear is common, I know. But it seems to me that a Lake Zurich engine is very regularly dispatched with to the Barrington area - multiple times a day. What's odd to me is that a Lake Zurich engine is part of the normal line up gear that the NWCD CAD puts on a Barrington call. Am I seeing this correctly?

Observation #2
Tagging on to the observation above, it seems inefficient that three of vehicles sent are dispatched on NWCD FD1 but the single Lake Zurich vehicle is dispatched out of a different location. I assume there is a phone call made between dispatching centers, another radio dispatch goes out on Lake Zurich's channel, and then the Lake Zurich gear has to change frequencies to join the Barrington group on FD1. Seems like lots of "backend" stuff to happen multiple times a day. Am I right?

Observation #3
Occasionally I head a Barrington vehicle come on FD1 to alert NWCD that they are going into Lake Zurich on a call. No tones go out for this Barrington gear to go into Lake Zurich. It's as if NWCD is not aware when Barrington is called into Lake Zurich - there's no dispatch to dispatch center coordination going on for this call. Does Barrington's Fire House monitor a Lake Zurich frequency and get dispatched there too? Meaning, does Barrington get dispatched to call from both NWCD and Lake Zurich's dispatch center?

 

[N9JIG]

Since Barrington FD moved to NWCD I have noticed interesting nuances (at least to me) on how Barrington and Lake Zurich are dispatched when joint equipment is needed.

Observation #1
For Barrington area fire alarm calls (via the fire alarm board or central station calling in) to a business, I notice three pieces of equipment are sent from Barrington and one vehicle from Lake Zurich. This is a regular, non mutual aid, or non escalated call. Sending a neighboring town's gear is common, I know. But it seems to me that a Lake Zurich engine is very regularly dispatched with to the Barrington area - multiple times a day. What's odd to me is that a Lake Zurich engine is part of the normal line up gear that the NWCD CAD puts on a Barrington call. Am I seeing this correctly?

While I am not privy to the details here, it is very common in the suburbs to have multiple towns respond to "Code 3" calls. Many smaller suburbs might only staff a single station or the neighboring town is closer.

For towns that do not share a dispatch center, such as Barrington/Lake Zurich there has to be a mechanism for these calls to be dispatched, It could be that they have each others CAD systems in place, especially if they use the same company's systems. It is more likely however that they have either tone alert receivers, an intercom or some other quick way to notify them. In the area I worked we had tone alert receivers for mutual aid calls on 2 different freqs so that any of several dispatch centers could tone out. I don't thing NWCD uses tone alerts any longer so they might have some other system. It could be as simple as a phone call to the other dispatch center requesting the engine...

Observation #2
Tagging on to the observation above, it seems inefficient that three of vehicles sent are dispatched on NWCD FD1 but the single Lake Zurich vehicle is dispatched out of a different location. I assume there is a phone call made between dispatching centers, another radio dispatch goes out on Lake Zurich's channel, and then the Lake Zurich gear has to change frequencies to join the Barrington group on FD1. Seems like lots of "backend" stuff to happen multiple times a day. Am I right?

It is pretty much the rule that on the VHF channels one agency has all their neighbors channels in their radios. For those on P25 (StarCom21) it gets a little dicier. If LZ has SC21 radios then they just have the NWCD talkgroups in them. If they use VHF these days then it is pretty common for NWCD to provide a portable for neighboring agencies to use when responding into a NWCD town, they have been doing this since the original NWCD trunked system started getting used by the FD's. Either way it is a pretty simple channel change. I have been out of the area for a few years so haven't kept up with all the changes but this has been the norm for decades.

Observation #3
Occasionally I head a Barrington vehicle come on FD1 to alert NWCD that they are going into Lake Zurich on a call. No tones go out for this Barrington gear to go into Lake Zurich. It's as if NWCD is not aware when Barrington is called into Lake Zurich - there's no dispatch to dispatch center coordination going on for this call. Does Barrington's Fire House monitor a Lake Zurich frequency and get dispatched there too? Meaning, does Barrington get dispatched to call from both NWCD and Lake Zurich's dispatch center?

Pretty likely yes, LZ probably arranged for an alert receiver to be installed in the Barrington station, then when the Barrington rig leaves they have to notify NWCD of that so they can be set up in CAD as on a call and thus not available for a local call. This is again a pretty common occurrence in the burbs.

 

[BudTurpa]

Pretty likely yes, LZ probably arranged for an alert receiver to be installed in the Barrington station, then when the Barrington rig leaves they have to notify NWCD of that so they can be set up in CAD as on a call and thus not available for a local call. This is again a pretty common occurrence in the burbs.

I assumed that a fire department was dispatched by a single center, so when Lake Zurich needs a Barrington unit, I thought Lake Zurich would phone NWCD and request the mutual aide. Then NWCD would dispatch Barrington into Lake Zurich.

It appears that Barrington monitors Lake Zurich's radio so that Lake Zurich can request a Barrington unit directly. Then it's Barrington's responsibility to update NWCD that they are going into Lake Zurich.

Is this typical?

 

[JKD]

I'm not sure if this is helpful, but in the area I am they have "auto-aid" agreements for certain calls such as fire alarms. I know the fire department in my town has a ladder truck that a neighboring department helped pay for with the understanding that the ladder truck would be automatically available and dispatched to respond to certain calls.

Some of the different dispatch centers share frequencies so when the call is toned out they automatically dispatch equipment from other agencies. If the responding unit is using another dispatch frequency I believe a phone call is made to the dispatch center and when the equipment leaves the station they will switch over to the dispatch frequency for the agency they are responding to and notify them when they are en-route, on-scene, or returning before changing back to their primary dispatch centers frequency or talkgroup.

 

[N9JIG]

I assumed that a fire department was dispatched by a single center, so when Lake Zurich needs a Barrington unit, I thought Lake Zurich would phone NWCD and request the mutual aide. Then NWCD would dispatch Barrington into Lake Zurich.

It appears that Barrington monitors Lake Zurich's radio so that Lake Zurich can request a Barrington unit directly. Then it's Barrington's responsibility to update NWCD that they are going into Lake Zurich.

Is this typical?

Pretty much for those agencies that have mutual response districts but do not share the same dispatch center. In my agency before I retired we had 5 towns, 4 of which had FD's and each was dispatched by their respective police dispatch centers. We all had each other's tone codes in our consoles and, since all were on the same dispatch freq, they all heard the calls go out. We each had some sort fo alert receiver in the dispatch center as well as in the firehouses. Our center was a little more advanced so we had the alert receivers as part of the consoles and got the alerts that way, the others had Plectron, Minitor or VeeTronic's set up in the comm centers for the other agencies. Eventually most of the FD's went to a Fire-only dispatch center so the police 9-1-1 center just transferred phone calls and was notified if the FD needed police assistance.

Since the majority of towns have consolidated now it is less likely that the comm centers have the alert receivers anymore so for calls into areas covered by a different comm center either the rig reports responding to their center when they leave (by CAD or radio) and when they return, then handles all their comms with the dispatch center handling the call itself.