Does anyone know how the Columbus FD batallions are divided up? I searched their website and came up empty. Thanks!
Official Columbus Fire website ...
Battalions - Division of Fire, Columbus, Ohio
Thats what I was looking for! Thanks!
Their apparatus list needs an update
Has anything changed in regards to CFD Battalion 8? Yesterday there was a car into building call for Madison Township and they were dispatched on Battalion 8. I don't usually listen to the dispatch channel so I don't know if they are routinely dispatched on that fireground now.
I think that's a first. Other than training runs, I don't believe they have ever used BN8 for an actual incident; it's not a battalion as such, but is rather intended for high-rise incidents, training (and a possible future Battalion 8).
Has anything changed in regards to CFD Battalion 8? Yesterday there was a car into building call for Madison Township and they were dispatched on Battalion 8. I don't usually listen to the dispatch channel so I don't know if they are routinely dispatched on that fireground now.
This site is also extremely helpful: City of Columbus, Division of Fire
BN 8 is used when a second incident is dispatched in the same battalion. It used to be that we'd be assigned to just the next open battalion channel, or if an incident was finishing up, they'd move to the BN# ALT FG or 10 Alpha, but recently instead of tying up another fireground and causing a game of musical chairs to happen, they dispatch onto BN8 FG.
This actually got very confusing for us during the storms of summer 2012. At one point, I remember that both battalion 4 and battalion 1 were on BN4 FG because of the musical chairs and they ended up going to the same assignment in BN2. What should have happened was that the second run in battalion 2's district should have gone to BN8 with battalion 4 being assigned to it, and the third run should have gone out on BN2 ALT FG with battalion 1 being assigned to it, but alas, 10 Fire, and 10 dispatch were down, our MDT's were barely working, dispatching was being done over 9 DELTA at the time, and the FAO generally had their hands full...
There's actually an interesting story behind that day. I recall it as it was approaching 80 degrees when I walked INTO the station that day for roll-call.
At the time, on Fridays between about 8am and 12noon the FAO would test their backup system. Dispatches would be "done by hand" and the automated system would go down for maintenance. I've only heard this story second or third hand, but here's how it goes:
Because it was so hot, and because manual dispatching only allows for one run to be dispatched at a time, the FAO was getting a lot of 911 calls and they were stacking up waiting to be dispatched. To alleviate this problem, they kept the automated system on (which can dispatch a certain number of runs simultaneously, I think it's 5 or 6). This turned out to be a good idea because we were busy with a lot of elderly and such in the mid to later morning. (We did 23 medic runs that day, but only 17 of those were after the storm hit).
Sometime in the afternoon when it cooled down, I decided to take a nap, and that's when the storm hit. My partner woke me from the couch and told me we had a run, but I didn't hear the page. It was given to us over the landline because the automated system had gone out. Further, the backup system also failed, which they did not discover due to the fact that they had skipped testing that day. Oops!
Long story short, something happened such that they couldn't access 10 FIRE from their consoles and with as many people trying to mark dispatch on 10 DISP, something happened that it went down as well. So we were asked to monitor what was probably still 9 DELTA back then to get our runs on! But yes, the overhead went out of service, 10 FIRE went out of service, and MDT coverage was spotty in our area due to cell towers having been hit. At one point, our MDT dispatched us for a fire that should have gotten to us an hour earlier! When I did pull up the MDT at one of the hospitals, I saw about 350 pending runs. Yikes!
But yes, a lot of people did a lot of talking in a lot of meetings after that day, because it was a clear indication that we were not ready for a major incident...