A(possibly dumb) fire dispatch radio question...

[Golay]

Agree

Speaking strictly as a fire buff and radio hobbyist for the past 40 years, your dispatch center should have the capability to transmit and receive on each of the 18 township fireground channels, as well as the dispatch channel.

In my opinion, if they cannot, it poses a potential safety issue.

John
Peoria, AZ

I'm thinking along the same lines.
There may be 18 different communities on 18 different channels, but all 18 are not going to be out on runs.
Dispatch is the place for some changes. Seems to me not everyone will be out at once. One thought would be that when Dispatch sends a community out, they should have a couple more radios, and change channels on one of those to the community.

Also, it just seems a bit goofy to me that all 18 have separate channels. Like krokus says, there needs to be a bit of consolidation here. Maybe a north and south, or an east or west. I'm guessing were not exactly talking about 18 thriving metropolises here. Just 18 small communities, with a few runs a day at most. Since there is a Central Dispatch, that means there is some sort of organization over all. I suggest the OP print and suggest our ramblings to that organization.

 

[ofd8001]

I sort of agree with you in that their could be fewer primary operations channels. However there is benefit for each fire department to have its "own" for non-critical communications.

Years ago our county (coincidentally with 18 fire departments) had 3 radio channels. It worked okay most of the time. However every so often bad weather moved in and trees fell on houses, wires came down and so on. The radio channels got so overloaded it was impossible at times to communicate.

We had situations of folks talking about traffic control for downed wires, while others were trying to deal with working structure fires. It got so bad those of us with an extra frequency or two were asked to share them.

 

[Rred]

"... it poses a potential safety issue."
Oh, you mean, like when NYPD and FDNY both considered it unimportant to have radios that could work in the World Trade Center? And when NYC EMS dismantled their old citywide radio system, instead of keeping it as a backup, because that was also an unlikely and expensive need? So, EMS lost all radio communications when the towers went down as well?
Sometimes, even if you rashly assume the folks in charge KNOW what they should be doing (and that's a rash assumption, just look at how the NYC subways have spent decades and huge amounts not quite deploying radio communications in the tunnels. Admittedly a technological challenge.) sometimes it is simply political suicide to try getting money assigned for REAL priorities.
There are "bad" decisions made for "good" financial reasons all the time.

 

[krokus]

I sort of agree with you in that their could be fewer primary operations channels. However there is benefit for each fire department to have its "own" for non-critical communications.

Years ago our county (coincidentally with 18 fire departments) had 3 radio channels. It worked okay most of the time. However every so often bad weather moved in and trees fell on houses, wires came down and so on. The radio channels got so overloaded it was impossible at times to communicate.

We had situations of folks talking about traffic control for downed wires, while others were trying to deal with working structure fires. It got so bad those of us with an extra frequency or two were asked to share them.

That is why having multiple tactical radio options is a good idea, and getting people off of the dispatch is a great idea.

Multiple discreet frequencies is an easy way to handle that, if possible. This becomes problematic in areas where a trunked systems are the primary communications method. Major metropolitan areas, where there are fewer unused frequencies, can be a bit of a challenge.

With 18 different frequencies in use, this provides a nice pool of resources, if the agencies are willing to coordinate.

Sent via Tapatalk

 

[Rred]

Broward County (Fort Lauderdale) recently released their study on the problems they had last year when 2500 responders mobbed the FLL airport when the psycho from Alaska pulled a gun out and started shooting.

Among the problems were that 2500 responders, plus the airport personnel, were all trying to use the county's trunked system at the same time. And no one had ever conceived of needing to support hundreds, let alone a thousand, users all at the same time. From what I heard the conclusion is that "We need a bigger boat". (Or was that Jaws?)

Technology can't solve every problem. Or maybe it can...if the PTT button delivered a nasty shock every time someone used it, and stronger shocks every 5 seconds after that, I bet a lot more users would WAIT before they pressed it?

 

[madrabbitt]

While I dont work at the local level, the county im living/working in for the summer has a pretty well organized system. While its a large, rural county, its something that can easily be scaled for size and need.

The entire system is VHF.
Fire/EMS paging is analog simulcast on a single frequency. This is purely a paging channel. No matter where in the county you are, your pager will pick up the tones.
There appear to be 12 separate fire protection districts or clusters of districts, including EMS. In a few cases small adjacent districts share a pair of tones, (i assume for automatic mutual aid)

The (only) hospital in the city runs the paid EMS service. (In fact, they even have one or two rescue/heavy rescue squad vehicles) They have a single response frequency. (P25)
The city fire volunteers have a response/fireground frequency. (P25)
The rural fire protection districts have a response frequency and two fireground frequencies (P25)

The response frequencies are simulcast repeated frequencies. Dispatch monitors them.
The fireground frequencies are simplex. Unknown if dispatch monitors them or not.

There are also VHF analog state frequencies available for fireground use in all the radios. In addition, if
the incident is federal, our analog fireground frequencies are in the county radios as well.

The dispatch center here appears to have 3 people on days, two on swing and 1 overnight. They are shared between LE and Fire/EMS AND 911 inbound.

 

[DJ11DLN]

Agree on things needing to be consolidated, primarily to make Dispatch an easier task. A single frequency for all Department paging and Dispatch contact (and keep off of it when ops are underway) would work best. Retaining individual frequencies for each Department to actually operate on would work well, especially if some of them have an additional allocation for FG use.

Perhaps this is a work in progress. Maybe the Departments used to do their own Dispatching, which would explain the discrete frequencies, and it has been consolidated at the County level. If the County is willing to work with them at this level, to save money on reprogramming or new pagers, that could explain the frequencies being retained. Possibly there is a plan to get everybody on a single frequency at some point in the future, as pagers/radios are rotated out of service and replaced. This can take a long time when you are dealing with poorly funded rural Departments. I know this from experience. If this is the case, they are all lucky that their County isn't just telling them, "You will all be dispatched on XXX.XXX from now on, we'll assign which tones you will use, and that's how it's going to be. Deal with it. Your end isn't our problem." I'm familiar with that scenario as well.

 

[madrabbitt]

That was a case with a county i used to work in.

The paging/dispatch/primary channel was in the state pool of mutual aid channels.

Agencies were supposed to vacate those frequencies, but in the days of crystals and tone reeds, that was easier said then done.

They FINALLY vacated that frequency (and changed one of their tac/fireground freq's to dispatch) this year, now that everyone is on radios and pagers that can be reprogrammed quickly. Took a week. County radio guys went out to each station during their meeting nights and programmed the radios and pagers to the new one. For that week, they dispatched on both.

 

[PriorMike]

Hello all,

Thanks for the feedback, there is good info here.

I'm planning on inquiring if there is any movement on upgrading the system, but haven't got around to it.

 

[captaincab]

I consider myself to be lucky interop wise where i am. On the fire side we have a low band page channel and a 500mhz page channel for voice and a vhf alphanumeric page channel. For fire ground operations we have 10 500mhz channels for fire and 2 for ems operations all monitored 24/7 by county dispatch. In addtion there are 4 simplex fire ops channels and a county wide command channel for pd/fd/ema interops the command channel is monitored 24/7 by fd and pd dispatchers and the simplex channels are in the 3 mobile command vehicles. On the pd side each pd sector has a primary and secondary ops channel both monitored 24/7 by dispatch and a simplex channel for car to car local stuff there is a total of 7 pd sectors so 14 repeater channels and 7 simplex ones. In addition there is a dedicated channel for running dmv licenses etc called the clean channel. Oh and i forgot our fire police have a simplex channel for their own communcations. We have 7 sites for antenna's