Jay911
Silent Key (April 15th, 2023)
Well, it appears the earth is still turning, and Calgary EMS survived their move to the new Whitehorn Multi Services Centre building on 35 St NE, near the Whitehorn LRT. EMS has had their headquarters and maintenance facilities there since August, and moved Dispatch there from their old headquarters today at 0530 hours.
The equipment at old HQ (aka "Station 3") is still in place and functioning, to be kept up as a backup system until it is absolutely certain that the new PSCC (Public Safety Communications Centre) operation is rock-solid. Then, the equipment will be broken down and moved to the new building, where it will be installed in preparation for Calgary Fire Dispatch's move to the PSCC between now and March 19.
In the meantime, CPS Communications is supposed to be moving to the PSCC in the month of February, but that is a tentative date.
The new center has something like 40-plus console positions for Public Safety Communicators (the new name for Fire Emergency Operators, Fire Dispatchers, EMS Communications & Deployment Specialists, and CPS Communications Officers) to share. CPS will continue to run a separate calltaking & dispatching operation, but 911 (which until now has been handled by Fire) and Fire and EMS calltaking is being rolled into one operation. Until now, if you had a 911 call that required Fire or EMS response, your call was transferred to those agencies. Once Fire and EMS are together and operational in the PSCC, the 911 calltaker will simply take those calls themselves, leaving the Fire and EMS dispatchers to simply dispatch and manage the apparatus fleets. (Calgary City Police and RCMP calls will continue to be transferred - one to the CPS calltakers across the room, the other to the existing RCMP Telecomms center in Red Deer.)
The Whitehorn Multi-Services Center is also home to the city's 311 call center, and some police property/storage divisions. This has been in planning for several years and is rather exciting to see finally come to pass.
For those running Trunker etc., the new radio positions in the PSCC have all-new IDs on the system. (The talkgroups haven't changed, though.) Ultimately they will be sorted out when some of us manage to sleuth the information.
There may be interesting listening on the B-series channels (B9 thru B16) during the "cut-over" for CPS and Fire (and earlier today, for EMS). These channels are being used for communication between the old and new dispatch centers in case of "hiccups" in the transition.
The equipment at old HQ (aka "Station 3") is still in place and functioning, to be kept up as a backup system until it is absolutely certain that the new PSCC (Public Safety Communications Centre) operation is rock-solid. Then, the equipment will be broken down and moved to the new building, where it will be installed in preparation for Calgary Fire Dispatch's move to the PSCC between now and March 19.
In the meantime, CPS Communications is supposed to be moving to the PSCC in the month of February, but that is a tentative date.
The new center has something like 40-plus console positions for Public Safety Communicators (the new name for Fire Emergency Operators, Fire Dispatchers, EMS Communications & Deployment Specialists, and CPS Communications Officers) to share. CPS will continue to run a separate calltaking & dispatching operation, but 911 (which until now has been handled by Fire) and Fire and EMS calltaking is being rolled into one operation. Until now, if you had a 911 call that required Fire or EMS response, your call was transferred to those agencies. Once Fire and EMS are together and operational in the PSCC, the 911 calltaker will simply take those calls themselves, leaving the Fire and EMS dispatchers to simply dispatch and manage the apparatus fleets. (Calgary City Police and RCMP calls will continue to be transferred - one to the CPS calltakers across the room, the other to the existing RCMP Telecomms center in Red Deer.)
The Whitehorn Multi-Services Center is also home to the city's 311 call center, and some police property/storage divisions. This has been in planning for several years and is rather exciting to see finally come to pass.
For those running Trunker etc., the new radio positions in the PSCC have all-new IDs on the system. (The talkgroups haven't changed, though.) Ultimately they will be sorted out when some of us manage to sleuth the information.
There may be interesting listening on the B-series channels (B9 thru B16) during the "cut-over" for CPS and Fire (and earlier today, for EMS). These channels are being used for communication between the old and new dispatch centers in case of "hiccups" in the transition.
