Orange County Fire Monitoring

[ladymaniu00]

I have just moved from New York City to Orange County CA and was interested in listening to fire frequencies here. Now in NYC, it is probably the easiest place to monitor anything. Can someone explain how the trunked system is set up in this county so I know what equipment I would need to buy. I only like listening for fires and was interested in these cities within the county: Santa Ana, Anaheim, Stanton, LaPalma, Buena Park, Cypress, West Minster, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Orange, Villa Park, Tustin, Placentia, Los Alamitos, Fullerton, and LaHabra. Any information would help greatly.

 

[oregontreehugger]

Here is the database page:

http://www.radioreference.com/modules.php?name=RR&ctid=212

It looks like there is a mix of encrypted, digital, and analog trunked communications. The city and county fire talkgroups *appear* to be analog, so most likely you'd be able to hear those with a regular trunktracking scanner (beware of rebanding, as well).

I'm sure someone more familiar with Orange County will chime in here...

 

[Mick]

For Orange County city fire dept's.:
851.0625, 855.7125, 856.2125, 856.7125, 856.9625, 857.2125, 857.4625, 857.7125, 857.9625, 858.2125, 858.4625, 858.7125, 858.9625, 859.2125, 859.4625, 859.7125, 859.9625, 860.2125, 860.4625, 860.7125, & 860.9625 MHz trunked.

Fire dispatch talkgroups:
560 Brea
1520 La Habra
2672 County Fire*
3056 Anaheim, Fullerton, Orange, and Garden Grove
3088 Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach, and Newport Beach

For Costa Mesa and Santa Ana:
866.125, 866.175, 866.375, 866.625, 866.875, 867.125, 867.375, 867.625, 867.825, 867.875, 868.125, 868.375, 868.625, 868.675, & 868.925 MHz trunked.

Fire dispatch talkgroups:
720 Costa Mesa
2224 Santa Ana

*For talkgroup 2672,
County Fire contracts with these cities:
Aliso Viejo
Buena Park
Cypress
Dana Point
Irvine
Laguna Hills
Laguna Niguel
Laguna Woods
Lake Forest
La Palma
Los Alamitos
Mission Viejo
Placentia
Rancho Santa Margarita
San Clemente
San Juan Capistrano
Seal Beach
Stanton
Tustin
Villa Park
Westminster
Yorba Linda

Laguna Beach is on their own TRS.

 

[Markb]

All the fire stuff is analog trunked and can be listened to with any trunking scanner for about another year at the most due to rebanding, if things remain on schedule. Some of the new Uniden scanners should be able to receive a firmware upgrade to remain compatible with the newly rebanded stuff, older trunking scanners will probably be useless.
La Habra now contracts with LA County Fire, so they can be found on their system - Stations 191, 192, 193 and 194.

 

[ladymaniu00]

rebanding issue for orange county???

If I use a Bearcat 796d scanner will I have problems when the fire frequencies get rebanded?

 

[DanRollman]

If I use a Bearcat 796d scanner will I have problems when the fire frequencies get rebanded?

You probably will not have "problems", per se, but will need to take a few steps beyond simply reprogramming the frequencies. Uniden has said that during rebanding, they expect to provide a firmware upgrade or other workaround to allow that particular model (along with the BC246T, BCD396T, BCD996T, BC898T, and BCT8) to continue to track the same types of Motorola trunked systems each of those models are currently able to track. Other Uniden does not expect that any other models will be able to track rebanded Motorola trunked systems as the company does not plan to release firmware upgrades for other older models.

Dan
www.CaliforniaScanner.com

 

[johncoleman]

Question Please

what is rebanding and what about the pro 96

thanks

 

[Markb]

Go to the Wiki section of the site and do a search for "rebanding". There's a lot of good info there.

 

[WayneH]

From what I've read freqs between 855 and 861 will not get reassigned with rebanding. All others will have their channel assignments changed, which would require a firmware update if possible.

-Wayne