Arlington Fire District (Town of Poughkeepsie)

[62Truck]

Since the first of the year there have been same changes.

As of 0700 hours January 1st, 2017, the Arlington Fire District will cease providing ambulance transportation service and will be contracting with Mobile Life Support Services to provide transportation. As part of this transition, they will be implementing a system that utilizes paramedic engines. Under this new system, each of the four stations will be staffed with career personnel 24/7 with at least one medic being at each station. A paramedic engine will be dispatched to every EMS call, regardless of priority, within the district. Mobile Life will have two stations located within the Arlington Fire District. The agreement with them helps to ensure that there are additional units available to hand call volume.

Along with this operational change in EMS, there will be adjustments to run card assignments. This includes mutual aid recieved changes for second alarm or greater assignments, and relocations, and backup EMS units.

Changes are also making changes to departmental radio systems and procedures. The channel currently known as AFD 47 will now be known as Repeater 1, and talk around of that channel will no longer be utilized. The channels known as AFD43, and AFD 44 will now be known as EMS 1, and EMS 2. Two tactical portable channels known as Fire 1, and Fire 2 will be instituted, and will be exclusive to AFD personnel, and now shared outside of the department. Local vendors will be notified and instructed not to program radios to transmit on Fire 1, or Fire 2. For mutual aid responding to AFD, AFD will continue to utilize Dutchess County fireground channels. When providing mutual aid, personnel will remain on our portable channel and AFD will provide a AFD command officer at your command post to monitor the fireground frequency and relay information to AFD crews. The decision to remain on our channel was not made lightly and was made in the interest to responder safety after study and debate

 

[guilhermerrrr]

Thank you for your information and helping the scanner community. I'm not American, and I have a question: if the EMS is being provided by a company, does that mean if I call 911 I'll be charged for first aid on the street and the lift to the hospital?

Enviado de meu Nexus 5 usando Tapatalk

 

[DaveNF2G]

In most communities in New York state, you will be charged for the ambulance service no matter who is operating it.

 

[62Truck]

In most communities in New York state, you will be charged for the ambulance service no matter who is operating it.

It depends on whether its private based, or public. With public you pay for it with your property, or fire tax. I used to volunteer for a rescue squad in ulster county a few years ago, we had contracts with the Town, and Village to provide ALS coverage. We had what they called soft billing. We would bill the PT, if the PT didn't have insurance we would make two attempts to contact the PT, after the second attempted the bill would pretty much go in the shredder.

 

[DaveNF2G]

Details. I guess the real question, which I did not actually answer 100% correctly, is whether one would be billed directly for the service. Naturally, somebody pays for all services.

Non-municipal ambulance providers send out bills. How the bill is paid depends on the insurance carrier, if any. Many insurance carriers send a check to the customer, who is expected to use it to pay the ambulance bill. There is a move toward compelling insurers to just pay the ambulance service directly regardless of "network" or other considerations.

 

[warren]

62Truck do you know what frequencies AFD43 and AFD44 are? I believe AFD 47 is 460.200 MHz. Correct me if I am wrong. Thanks.

 

[62Truck]

62Truck do you know what frequencies AFD43 and AFD44 are? I believe AFD 47 is 460.200 MHz. Correct me if I am wrong. Thanks.

AFD 43, and AFD 44 were 463.125, with 43 being repeated, and 44 being talkaround. 463.125 is now referred to as EMS 1 (repeated), and EMS 2 (talkground).

AFD 47 is now referred to as Repeater 1. 460.200.

Fire 1, and Fire 2 are simplex, no repeaters. According to their FCC license they hold mobile only licenses for 458.475, and 465.400. I haven't been able to confirm those frequencies yet.

 

[Comspec333]

I would love to know what they "studied" that led them to this decision. I have no idea what goes on in Dutchess County, but is it common to have people on separate fire ground freq's at a single incident?

 

[62Truck]

I would love to know what they "studied" that led them to this decision. I have no idea what goes on in Dutchess County, but is it common to have people on separate fire ground freq's at a single incident?

I'm not sure what they have studied, a lot of the neighboring depts are not happy with their new procedure. Common practice in Dutchess the depts will use their own channel unless they have mutual aid coming into the district to assist. Normally when mutual aid is requested they will ask the county for a county fireground, and the county will assign them one.