Greenville County FD Fireground Talkgroups

[rescuecomm]

Woke up to find North Greenville and Tigerville fighting a woods fire on a neighbor's property. After everything was under control, I switched on the scanner and didn't hear anything. I've got a plethora of admin, SCMA, and event TGs in it, but I only heard Greenville and Taylors/Greer dispatching to other calls. I had gone outside to check on things and didn't hear the call out.

What am I missing?

 

[INDY72]

Tone out/Call out is way before anyone is ever on scene. After things calm down, your not gonna hear a call out about a fire that is under control, or out. If it is a large fire, and takes a while to put out, you will catch any fire tactical/fireground ops on whichever TG was assigned for them to use on the initial call out. But once the job is done, you may hear them go back in service, or back at station if this is not on the MDT's in the rigs. Most modern FD's, including VFD's have MDT's in the units now, and at least have the basic button functions like Responding/En Route, In Service, sometimes On Scene, though usually that gets announced on air. Sometimes you might het lucky enough to hear chatter before they arrive such as "Hey Tigerville Tanker 45, take route 3, first right on Hands Road, about 4 miles on the right. Watch for the muddy shoulder." Like here in Indy, some fire calls last only a few minutes due to the first due Engine will pretty much have the fire knocked down before an Battalion Chief, or even the first due Ladder can get set up for operations. I have listened many times when they page out a residence fire with the usual 2 to 3 Engines, 2 Ladders, BC, and SO. Within five or less minutes of the first Engine on scene they have it under control, and by the time the BC is getting out of his/her vehicle to take command, they are saying fire out, releasing the command, control operator, and TG. I have also listened to, and been a member of a VFD that had to be toned three times before a couple of us could get someone to cover for us at work, or finally get a teacher to let us out of class to respond as the EOC was paging surrounding stations to get them rolling. Those were times the radio got busy as we were trying to get as much help as we could, and sometimes having out of county VFD's having to come help. That was always fun trying to get them to switch over to our freq, or go to a statewide fire freq. But on scene, wasn't much radio chatter as we mostly did face to face. The EOC didn't even do the "Your at 15, 30, 45 minutes" notifications like many of them do now. We said we were going to station to get rigs, or going directly. Said what rig we were rolling if we grabbed one, said when we got on scene, then when the fire was out, or if we needed more help. then said when we got back in house. A lot of VFD's still don't do a lot of fireground chatter unless they have to. Depending on the protocols in use.

 

[rescuecomm]

Good post! Thanks. This county spent millions of dollars to equip all fire departments FFs with APX8000 radios for interop. All county agencies moved to the PAL 800 statewide system. I have most of the commonly used "move to" TGs programmed except what they were using. Somebody here knows.

 

[brian]

I'm not very well versed in radio protocols for Greenville County FDs, and their protocols may vary from one FD to the next. All of this is speculation on my part.

But it's not clear what you're expecting to hear? I assume that when you say "had everything under control" you meant that the FDs were still operating on scene? Which Palmetto 800 site were you monitoring?

It could be that they're using a simplex (off-network) channel for on-scene communications (see below). The only on-network comms you'd hear would be things like on-going status checks by the dispatcher (if they even do those), or requests for more resources, or units going back in service once the incident was resolved. Some of those comms might be non-voice through a CAD system.

For the off-network channels, since they're Palmetto 800 users, the 8TAC and SC 8TAC channels might be used. It could have been one of the 700MHz interop channels. Most/all of those channels are listed here SC Interop/Mutual Aid (South Carolina) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference. and here National Interoperability (United States) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference.

Several years ago, someone posted a Greenville County radio layout template, and it's been added to the Wiki here: Greenville County (SC) - The RadioReference Wiki

There's no guarantee that this layout is still accurate or up to date, but it gives a sense of the conventional channels that had been included in the layout originally. I'd probably program these frequencies first and scan them, before programming every single interop channel listed in the two links above. Of course, you'll have to wait until the next nearby incident to scan to see if you hear any of these active. These are simplex (not repeated), so you have to be really close to the incident to hear them.

It's also possible, but pretty unlikely, that they kept some of their old VHF radios from before the switch to Palmetto 800 and use those on certain incidents, maybe using some of the SC TAC or VTAC channels.

 

[rescuecomm]

I've got the 8TAC, VTAC, and UTAC frequencies in a bank. I don't have the 700 mhz TAC freqs in it. I also have most of the "go to TGs" that Greenville dispatch uses. Nothing was active.

The situation involved a contractor clearing an adjacent lot when the wind carried embers over into my neighbors land. Both lots are more than 100 meters off the road. He has two nice houses back there but he wasn't home. The FDs were refilling the brush trucks on the paved road in front of my house. We are rural and the closest hydrant is a quarter mile up the hill. One of the FFs asked me if I could get the solar powered gate open so they could take a regular pumper in there. He wasn't home but gave me the code to open it. They controlled the fire pretty fast after that.

Once the neighbor was there I went back home and switched on the scanner.

The FFs were using their nice green APX8000 radios. Command was in front of my house, so I heard them talking clearly. They had 3 brush trucks, then the 800 gallon pumper back there along with a large pumper and a pickup on the paved road.

Too much typing but I was thinking maybe the database was missing fire department tactical TGs? Not a big deal as I know we are crowd sourced.

A very interesting day for me for sure.

 

[brian]

"Too much typing but I was thinking maybe the database was missing fire department tactical TGs?"

That's certainly possible. I tend to scan in ID Search mode (Uniden) or with a Wild Card (Whistler) to ensure I am able to hear unprogrammed talkgroups that become active on a site.

Are you confident you were monitoring the same site that the on-scene units were using?

I'd double check that you have all of the Direct 8TAC frequencies programmed with the correct PL tone (100.0).

 

[rescuecomm]

The 8TAC PL is 100.0? Okay, I have 156.7 for SCTAC and 8TAC. I guess that's on me.

 

[brian]

If you look at the SC Mutual Aid link in the post above, you'll see that those SC 8TAC frequencies are used for different purposes, but have different PL tones for different purposes. They can be used in P25 mode or analog. Same is true with the Nationwide 8TAC frequencies.

Again, it's all conjecture about which channels the FDs in Greenville County might use at a given time, and which frequencies/PL tones are in each zone of their radios. We have an idea what they might be, but it hasn't been confirmed. And with these low power channels that may not be used often, it's difficult to be in the right place at the right time to verify their usage.

 

[rescuecomm]

I made changes to the 8TAC freqs by removing the CTCSS. I also added some FD OPS TGs. Not really looking to have any more brush fires near my residence to check them.