I saw this on the internet today. They way the PowerPoint is written gives me the impression that the change to Station TN is a sure thing. I hadn't heard of this until today, and was wondering if anyone else had? Seems like a little bit of a geographical jump to use Tolland County from Western Hartford County. Not bashing regionalization.
East Granby Fire Changing Dispatch Centers?
- Thread starter pvnh
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Unfortunately there are no Hartford County alternatives for regional dispatch. Single dispatcher operations are adequate for a small, quiet single agency. But to try to juggle PD, FD, EMS, DPW, & E911 is very risky. A fire may require half dozen or more phone calls for mutual aid while they are supposed to be monitoring other radios and answering phones. A local dispatcher missed the incident commander requesting additional resources in just the past week. Another one regularly delays first responder dispatch 1-2 minutes because the solo dispatcher also does the EMD. It gets to be more the rule rather than the exception. Not a slight on the dispatchers, just that the vast majority of Hartford County dispatch centers could do much, much better. All goes down to money and control.
Farmington valley should definitely consider regionalizing, especially with how new technology has made it easier than ever to control things remotely.
Granby, Simsbury, Avon, Canton, and Farmington could consolidate into one dispatch center, and have maybe 3-4 dispatchers on at a time. Problem is everybody has their own fiefdom and doesn't want to play with anybody else
It is very common for dispatch centers to be farther away. For example, my home town of Ansonia fire and EMS was dispatched by C-MED New Haven in New Haven. Originally both were dispatched by the PD (who also still maintained the primary PSAP). PD gets the 911 and transfers the fire and ems calls up to the regional center. When C-MED New Haven closed, the the majority of the lower Valley towns went with North West Pubic Safety up in Waterbury. Most of the FD / EMS towers are either line-of-site control station or connected by Tel-Co lines.
scanner404
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July 1st is when East Granby is in fact changing dispatch centers from Granby to TN per a recent board of selectman meeting I saw online. Fire will be dispatched through TN and EMS calls will be called into Granby for ambulance dispatch, while TN takes care of the EMD portion with the caller. PD goes through Troop H like it always has. My question is how the heck can they hear the East Granby portable units all the way from the TN station?
Usually there's a microwave link or fiber connection to the transmitter. They already do that with many towns.
Phone Line, T1, Microwave, Fiber....Just like all centers do..
scanner404
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Ah, makes sense; just gotta hope that stuff is reliable during mass power outages like we had with the October 2011 storm.
QV dispatches Salem and Colchester. Look at where they are in relation to QV. There are no issues to speak of there. So for TN to dispatch Granby is nothing at all. Towers will have a fiber link from East Granby to Tolland, no issues at all with coverage.
scanner404
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And just an FYI, it appears the town of Granby will be going digital relatively soon; Probably within the next year or two. They put out an RFP for a radio consultant to help update their entire radio systems.
i just read through the document and i dont see anything that says .. going digital. There are words that say : P25/Digital capabilities.
With luck the radio systems will all be updated. Everything else is far from decided.
chris
chris
I heard through the grapevine they intend to switch to UHF, which makes sense because pretty much everyone around there with the exception of LCD towns are on UHF
I believe VHF would be the preference...
Border towns for Granby (Lost Acres FD)
Simsbury - UHF
East Granby - VHF P25
Suffield - VHF (P25 mix)
Southwick - VHF
Granville MA - VHF
Hartland - VHF
Barkhamsted - VHF
Canton - VHF
Border towns for Granby (Lost Acres FD)
Simsbury - UHF
East Granby - VHF P25
Suffield - VHF (P25 mix)
Southwick - VHF
Granville MA - VHF
Hartland - VHF
Barkhamsted - VHF
Canton - VHF
for some reason I thought that east granby was uhf also
maybe i was mixing it up with the ems channelit would however, make most sense for them to get multi-band subscribers, then it doesnt matter what band their mutual aid partners are on.
But somebody from simsbury told me they are going UHF, and simsbury has to reprogram all their radios to add it.
I believe the EGFD radios are or at least some are APX multiband. They may show up on the State system with an EG talkgroup as well.
Simsbury could be reprogramming to add the new town event channel or to change the town emergency channel and PD to P25 in their radios.
chris
Simsbury could be reprogramming to add the new town event channel or to change the town emergency channel and PD to P25 in their radios.
chris
scanner404
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I heard from Chief Horr directly they already applied to the FCC for a frequency change for the Lost Acres FD. Not sure what that frequency will be, but most likely UHF. PD and EMS already have UHF frequencies, but if I was a radio consultant, why wouldn’t I recommend going digital? More than likely gonna happen.
“ All goes down to money and control.” ...as was depicted with the Avon and Simsbury study. From what I could gather, the suggestion of creating a single dispatch center for both towns came down to control. I doubt the cost was insurmountable, but if both towns did decide to merge dispatch duties, and planning for the future was included, the logistics of adding additional Farmington Valley towns (Canton, Farmington, possibly the Granby's) would require that all towns in the area/region would/should be included in the study, regardless of if they were interested in forming a regional center or not... because those that are not interested presently may change their outlook later. It just doesn’t make sense to form a combined dispatch center without planning for the future. This is born out because even single towns/agencies that control its own center have seen the need to expand to meet the needs over the years.
An interesting topic... wondering what you think would be the ideal dispatch scenario? With the entire country’s many dispatch centers to choose from, there must be one or two that would be a good fit for north central Ct.
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