Brunswick Fire unit designations

[troymail]

Curious if any knows what the story is with Brunswick County fire unit designations. I've lives in large urban areas that have fairly consistent nomenclature but I've also lived in more rural areas like Brunswick but I can for the life of me understand how units are one day called 50-71 and the next called Leland Engine 1.

I know some stations like Shallotte and Sunset Beach opt to consistently call themselves Shallotte Tower 1 and Sunset Beach Engine 3, etc. - at least that is fairly consistent. But to hear some stations that seem to switch back and forth in their radio designations.... I don't get it...

Just curious.

 

[radioman2001]

Remnants of the old guard I'd say. We went through the same in Westchester and in Dutchess as I remember when the consolidations and 911 took place. I don't know how many time I would hear someone say Ambulance 10 for Hawthorne Fire after the trunked system went on line. I guess as long as the dispatcher knows who it is, and it will eventually work out that the operator will use the new designators.

 

[troymail]

Remnants of the old guard I'd say. We went through the same in Westchester and in Dutchess as I remember when the consolidations and 911 took place. I don't know how many time I would hear someone say Ambulance 10 for Hawthorne Fire after the trunked system went on line. I guess as long as the dispatcher knows who it is, and it will eventually work out that the operator will use the new designators.

Yeah - I'm sure that could be part of it but in the Leland case, they seemed to have one day just decided to go pretty solidly from unit designations of 50-xx and 52-xx to "Leland xxxx" (which, in my mind, doesn't support that theory). Maybe there's a new Fire Chief and he decided to do things differently.

Others seem to have changed as well but not at the same time nor consistently.

In at least one case, they went from a format of

[station]-[A] like 50-71

where A is a range of values the sometimes indicates the type of equipment (i.e. 7 for engine - but that's not even consistent) and B is a one-up for that type of apparatus (i.e. Engine 1, Engine 2, etc.)​

to dropping the "A" part -- which seems to vary from company to company so dropping it probably makes sense as long as they always precede the designator with a real unit description like "Engine" or "Ladder".

Oh well -- as my wife says - I should just stop trying to (over)analyze things... I can't help it - it's just weird (to me anyway).

 

[rescue161]

I can't speak for Brunswick, but Winston-Salem, Forsyth County particularly, back in the late 80's used a system like the following:

If the fire department was "Station 20" then the first engine was called 1-20 or Engine 1-20, engine 2 was called 2-20 or Engine 2-20. If their was a rescue unit in the station, it was called Squad-20. The officers had radio designators as they were the only ones authorized to have radios. They started at 11. So the Chief was 11-20, the assistant chief was 12-20 and so on. I think they we had 8 officers or so back then. Everybody else was issued a pager only.

 

[28056]

Brunswick County in the 90s was pretty easy (if you knew the station).

Station number - 11 (Sunset Beach, my old station)
Chief - 1100
Assistant Chief 1101
Officers and members 11xx up to 1169
Station - 1170 (the actual building)
Engine - 1171
Engine - 1172
First Responder truck - 1181
Equipment - 1180 (was an OLD yellow Maxim? that was sold to Grissettown Longwood VFD (Station 31). A Chevy Suburban later became 1180 to tow our boat and for 2nd medical calls in our district.

Tankers and ladders/truck companies would fall in between, 1174, 1175, etc.

 

[troymail]

Brunswick County in the 90s was pretty easy (if you knew the station).

Station number - 11 (Sunset Beach, my old station)
Chief - 1100
Assistant Chief 1101
Officers and members 11xx up to 1169
Station - 1170 (the actual building)
Engine - 1171
Engine - 1172
First Responder truck - 1181
Equipment - 1180 (was an OLD yellow Maxim? that was sold to Grissettown Longwood VFD (Station 31). A Chevy Suburban later became 1180 to tow our boat and for 2nd medical calls in our district.

Tankers and ladders/truck companies would fall in between, 1174, 1175, etc.

Since at least June (to my knowledge), Sunset Beach is one of the companies who never use "11" designators. 99% of the time, the only time your hear "11" is on dispatch.

Grissetttown (31) seems to use the "31" designators -- except when they run their rescue squad.

Off the top of my head, the companies that more consistently use company number designators are:

Oak Island (1)
Yaupon Beach (2)
Boiling Springs Lakes (4)
Winnabow (6)
Bolivia (7)
Tri-Beach (8) -- partially
Civietown (9)
Calabash (12)
Supply (13)
Ocean Isle (14)
Waccamaw (16)
Shallotte Point (17)
Sunset Harbor-Zion Hill (18)
Navassa (19)
Coastline (26)
Grissettown-Longwood (31) - mostly
Bald Head Island (32)
Northwest (33)
Sunny Point (35)
Saint James (37)
Oak Island Water Rescue (44)
Sunny Point EMS (45)
St James Rescue (47)

Companies that (at least nearly) never use the numbering:
Southport (3)
Leland (5) - but only in the last 1-2 months
Sunset Beach (11)
Shallotte (15)