Belleville Fire

[Rick08]

My understanding is that come 2024, Peterborough FD will be dispatching the city of Belleville. How is the longer distance dispatching done, through repeaters or all computer?

 

[randyf]

Phone lines

 

[Jradioptbo]

Council approves Peterborough contract fire dispatch services

Belleville is shifting its current in-house fire dispatch operations to Peterborough Fire Department due to the high cost to upgrade to new next-generation 911 equipment in the new year.

www.intelligencer.ca

Peterborough dispatches Peterborough and Northumberland counties also. Their main dispatch center is on Sherbrooke Street in Peterborough. IP interface is used to send signals through to and from the dispatch to the radio system repeaters and vice versa, whether its analog, DMR, P25, others.

This is becoming more common now to save money from multi dispatch centers to a centralized dispatch center that has already had interfaces with other jurisdictions. It all boils down to cost. Peterborough can cover the cost cheaper and utilize its own dispatchers across multiple jurisdictions.

The problem that I have heard over the scanner, is when there is a big event such as the Derecho windstorm last May caused too much radio traffic at the main dispatch center. They asked Township and other jurisdictional Fire dept's if they could control their own radio traffic because the system became overwhelmed.

Peterborough Control dispatch also asked Northumberland County fire dept's to do the same. You may only have a couple dispatchers/call takers to answer the phones. But when something big happens, it is sure put to the test.

If you have multiple large fire events in each of the coverage dispatch areas, it is a big challenge that "repeat transmission" or "can you land line dispatch" is used because the dispatcher has many transmissions from different dept's coming in all at the same time from different systems.

Good luck Peterborough.

 

[Gymbag]

So what happens to the Belleville dispatchers?

 

[kybervon]

It’s my understanding that they were all firefighters with the lowest in seniority getting stuck in the alarm room. I’m interested in what is going to happen to the other services that they cover (Tweed, Central Hastings, Tyendinaga, Mohawks of Bay of Quinte etc).

Quinte West has already switched over from Belleville to St Catharines FD.