Bucks County EMS/Fire Radio Frequency

[yxnks98]

Anyone know why the following website has not been working for around 3 months? Might have something to do with the cyber attack that happened to them.
Anyone know of any other ways to hear dispatched besides listening to the 5-0 radio live? There used to be a bucks county EMS/Fire dispatch radio frequency that seems to be offline also.

Bucks County EMS Alerts UNOFFICIAL

EMS dispatch recordings from Bucks County, PA

cbemsalerts.posthaven.com

 

[trentbob]

As far as listening to Bucks County EMS, they are on the Phase 2 simulcast system. There are frequencies that rebroadcast on several VHF and UHF frequencies. I will provide them below.

I'm not a big listener of EMS unless I want to know if a situation is a Class 5 or not.

As far as the website not working, I can not help you with that, I guess whoever was contributing to it, stopped.

If you don't have an SDR setup or a SDR scanner from Uniden you will have a hard time picking up Ems North and South on their talk groups. There are VHF frequencies that can be picked up on the most basic scanner that re broadcast County Wide EMS and Fire.

Listen to 155.55... pl 123.0 on the oldest. most basic scanner you can find. There is also a UHF rebroadcast out of Bristol PA that rebroadcast the same thing. There is a UHF rebroadcast of the county that gives you South Band response that comes from a top Oxford Valley Mall.

It's all in the database.

 

[Whiskey3JMC]

Welcome to the RR forums @yxnks98. You can listen to a number of Bucks County radio feeds via Broadcastify. Although acquiring a scanner capable of monitoring Bucks' trunked radio system (preferably a Uniden SDS100 or SDS200 to combat simulcast distortion) is the preferred method for monitoring, Yes there will be a learning curve involved if you have little to no experience with Uniden's scanner product line within the past decade. There are plenty of resources and folks to lend you a hand right here on the forums. Broadcastify's radio feeds are a nice backup option. Only drawback is you're at the feed provider's mercy to hear what you hear whereas owning your own scanner gives you greater control of what you scan. Lastly keep in mind all law enforcement in Bucks County are fully encrypted and therefore cannot be monitored

 

[trentbob]

Ah yes, you can stream on all of the scanner apps a countywide dispatch for fire and EMS, that is provided by radio reference, there is a considerable delay and with so many false alarms, the responding agency is usually backing its equipment into their headquarters after being recalled as the alarm goes out over the streaming app lol.

 

[trentbob]

@yxnks98 we would like to help you here if you want to get back to the thread, I'm curious as to why you want a way to listen to EMS without using a scanner app like 5-0 live radio that you mentioned, which is like all scanning apps and comes from broadcastify on radio reference.

Okay I do see that for the present time there is no County Wide dispatch offering on the scanning apps that would cover both fire and EMS so to answer your question..

you would need to get an inexpensive second hand scanner that is capable of receiving VHF High and UHF analog, it doesn't even need to be a trunking scanner.

Depending where your location is in Bucks County there are several frequencies you can monitor on a scanner that are rebroadcast of the entire County EMS and Fire dispatch.

The only thing being streamed on scanner apps at the present time is fire South, fire East, fire Central, fire North and fire police North and South but no EMS. The volunteer contributor has stopped providing the feed.

Where is your location?

 

[Rsull067]

Anyone know why the following website has not been working for around 3 months? Might have something to do with the cyber attack that happened to them.
Anyone know of any other ways to hear dispatched besides listening to the 5-0 radio live? There used to be a bucks county EMS/Fire dispatch radio frequency that seems to be offline also.be

Bucks County EMS Alerts UNOFFICIAL

EMS dispatch recordings from Bucks County, PA

cbemsalerts.posthaven.com

Short answer is: I think the site you mention having no updates since 07:50:52 on 02/23/24 and the hacking of the county system are not related. Issues at the bucks county communications center did not affect the posthaven.com site which you used.

The "hack" to Bucks County's CAD system caused disruption about a month prior to cbemsalerts.posthaven.com's last update, which means, even during and after the attact, cbmsalerts.posthaven.com continued receiving updates.



The long read:
AFAIK, when the county system was hacked (via ransomware) it did not have any effect on the normal 155.550 over-the-air broadcasts.

From what I can tell, the hobbyist that maintained the cbemsalerts.posthaven.com site is no longer doing so. I don't know who maintained it, but a mild forensic sniff would have me guess it is/was a ham, an amateur radio licensee in the Warminster/Warrington area.

You mentioned the posthaven.com (free hosting site) for EMS alerts. Apparently the same person also put time and energy into
Bucks County Fire Alerts UNOFFICIAL which made available all the Fire tone drops heard on 155.550. The site stopped updates at the same time it's EMS sister site did...07:50:52 on 02/23/24. The recordings on both websites sound like recorded FM analog transmissions, and sometimes you can hear analog interference or signal washout, etc.

For at least 6 months from Februrary of 2023, the cbemsalerts.posthaven.com page would go hours or sometimes even days without updates.

To end the long answer, someone else could make a similar website. The software tools to develop are free. The hardware costs money (decent notebook computer with 16gb memory or better and at least 3 RTL-SDR dongles. If you aren't in the backyard of a Bucks County transmtter site, then you will also need a decent VHF antenna, and the wires, connectors, etc.

For these reasons, I suspect a ham / amateur radio opertator was the wizard behind the curtain.

 

[trentbob]

Thanks for that information, haven't seen the original poster since the date of his one post as a newbie..

As per the information I provided him if he really wanted to listen to Live EMS dispatch all he would have to do was just listen to 155.55 on a cheap second hand analog non-trunking scanner.

I wasn't familiar with the website he was talking about and did not see the value of it, thanks again for the information about the hack.

I am a member of WARC so I would be interested in the scoop..😉

 

[wfeigley]

Anyone know why the following website has not been working for around 3 months? Might have something to do with the cyber attack that happened to them.
Anyone know of any other ways to hear dispatched besides listening to the 5-0 radio live? There used to be a bucks county EMS/Fire dispatch radio frequency that seems to be offline also.

Bucks County EMS Alerts UNOFFICIAL

EMS dispatch recordings from Bucks County, PA

cbemsalerts.posthaven.com

I miss it, too. On one of the last posts in February, someone replied "RIP." I'm guessing the person who provided this stopped or even passed away. I had it hooked up through IFTTT to send me a text if station 17/18 was dispatched. I live in Florida now, but I'll never stop wanting to hear calls in my home town, even though I haven't been a firefighter in many years.

 

[trentbob]

I miss it, too. On one of the last posts in February, someone replied "RIP." I'm guessing the person who provided this stopped or even passed away. I had it hooked up through IFTTT to send me a text if station 17/18 was dispatched. I live in Florida now, but I'll never stop wanting to hear calls in my home town, even though I haven't been a firefighter in many years.

I'm confused as what this site was that I know nothing about although I'm well informed on Bucks County LOL. What was the advantage to this?

If you miss Bucks County Fire radio as a former firefighter, and you are a member, why not just set up some playlist on broadcastiify???

I'll admit it's a clunky process but.. you can listen to multiple dispatch/ response/ ops for the entire County and scan them all together. It'll just wait for the next broadcast while you listen to multiple talk groups. The delay is significantly less than the scanner apps which makes sense but we're talking about seconds not minutes.

 

[wfeigley]

Here's what it was. Someone had software that decoded the tones on every dispatch and recorded the dispatch. It then posted the recording on a blog at Post Haven (Bucks County Fire Alerts UNOFFICIAL) and on Twitter (x.com). You could scroll through and find the companies you were interested in and listen to the dispatches. Even better, you could sign up on Post Haven for an email whenever a dispatch came in (and filter your email to just keep the companies you are interested in and delete all others). I found that using IFTTT (a service that automates tasks, mostly to integrate smart home products), I could set an automation up that if a dispatch for Station 17/18 was posted on Post Have, then it sent me a text message with the link to the audio of the dispatch. It came in within about 5 minutes of the dispatch. If it was a dwelling or building fire, I'd stream the North Band on Broadcastify if I wasn't busy.

When I lived in Quakertown, I enjoyed turning on the scanner when I heard sirens in town. Now that I live in Florida, I miss that, and this gave me a way to know when there was a job to listen to, either live or on the archives. It was nice while it lasted. Hoping someone else starts it up again.

 

[trentbob]

Okay thanks for that description, not something I would be particularly interested in but nonetheless interesting.

On my SDS radios I monitor south and east response talk group and Ops talk group. EMS I normally don't listen to unless I want to know the severity of injuries or if it's a class 5.

January 2021 was a real hit for the county when we lost all County Police to encryption.

Take a look at broadcastify playlists, I scan those same 4 talk groups on my phone. I'm not a fire buff, as a retired newspaper man you've seen one house fire you've seen them all LOL, it's good though to be able to avoid the traffic and the closed roads and take another route to avoid the scene.

Thanks for the explanation, I had never heard of that.

 

[CommJunkie]

Anyone know why the following website has not been working for around 3 months? Might have something to do with the cyber attack that happened to them.
Anyone know of any other ways to hear dispatched besides listening to the 5-0 radio live? There used to be a bucks county EMS/Fire dispatch radio frequency that seems to be offline also.

Bucks County EMS Alerts UNOFFICIAL

EMS dispatch recordings from Bucks County, PA

cbemsalerts.posthaven.com

It had a Facebook page. This was the last post.

 

[wfeigley]

It had a Facebook page. This was the last post. View attachment 164428

Thanks for solving the mystery! I didn't know they had a Facebook page, just the Post Haven and Twitter feeds. I miss it!

 

[Rsull067]

IF someone with enough knowledge of python and enough free time had the desire, it is entirely possible to recreate the same "unofficial" service. I found the service that went away extremely useful. For example? Drive past a dwelling that is burnt to a crisp but you remember it not being that way last week? The posthaven archive would allow you to hear each company being hit out over 155.55, and you could know when it happened, all from the comfort of your smartphone or tablet, etc. In concept, I know how to make the same thing happen. My problem is that I have the attention span of a goldfish, and I already have hundreds of started but stalled projects. If I started something like this, I'd only disappoint anyone that hoped I'd get it working. HOWEVER, the post above about the computer crash is intriguing. I would LOVE to get my hands on Bucks County Fire Alerts Unofficial said "crashed" computer to see if I can "uncrash" it and make it work again. That's actually one of the ways I make a living... computer data/disaster recovery.