Jax fire/rescue fire tones

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khvfdff

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Hey dude,

The Jacksonville Fire/Rescue Dispatch is simulcast with the 800 on 460.5750. You will not always hear station tones on that channel. That is the only channel that they have to set off the station tones. The reason behind this is because Jacksonville Fire/Rescue Department has so many calls that they have to dispatch if they are totally slammed they dont use the fire station tones but still use the MDTs and the station Rip and Run and then just hit an alert tone to dispatch a call.

By not using the station tones they can page up to approximately 15-30 calls in just one minute if they are that slammed. Doing a page like Clay County does would take Jacksonville approximately 30-45 seconds for each page if not longer using the fire tiones, hitting the warble alert and then talking. Clay county does get quite active but not active enough that they dont use the fire tone pagers.

They are still able to utilize them and get a call paged within about 30-45 seconds. Using those tones in Jacksonville all the time would just make it harder on the dispatchers working in the communications center and would probably cause alot of fustration trying to get calls paged. Also they would have possibly multiple calls waiting to be dispatched, when all they should have to do is send the call to the MDT, and rip and run inside the station, and then air it over the radio.

Other than the 800 system 460.5750 is the only dispatch channel that they use for tones and dispatching all calls simulcast of the 800 like Clay does. They used to have a frequency of 154.4450 but that became inactive many moons ago according to my father who used to be a volunteer firefighter in Jacksonville. They just never cancelled the license for that channel. I have also had that channel in my scanner before and never heard squat out of it.
 

khvfdff

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Well that may not be the right term for it. Its a computer printout of the location of the incident, the time dispatch and any other information.
 

SCPD

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Pinellas County Fire Dispatch dispatches 2 calls every 60 seconds. Tones,voice, print-outs, & alpha page. Jax is just disorganized & lazy. Pinellas Co is one of the most advanced in the Nation.
 

n4voxgill

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Com-4 said:
Pinellas County Fire Dispatch dispatches 2 calls every 60 seconds. Tones,voice, print-outs, & alpha page. Jax is just disorganized & lazy. Pinellas Co is one of the most advanced in the Nation.

Got my interest up. Went on line to do some checking. First I couldn't even find a fire department listed for Pinellas County. Found a EMS department. Looked up St Pete and found that their FD had 6589 calls for all of 2002, the last year they had stats listed.

Went on to look for Jax. Found that in 2003 Jax FR responded to 98,051 calls. But that is one about every five minutes. Jax does have 1201 full time professional firefighters, 126 civilian or part time employees and 57 fire stations.

Looked at Miami Dade FR and they have great stats. Their figures show that they respond to a call about every 2.5 minutes. No where near as busy as whatever is in Pinellas responding twice a minute.
 

khvfdff

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Well maybe Jacksonville just doesnt want to use the fire tones. I hear them only once in a while like i said before. I don't hear them all the time using the tone alerts. I also know that on a busy day they have paged out about 8 calls in one minute.
 

n4voxgill

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I did go to Pinellas County Emergency Communications and they showed the following calls

2154 hrs. Eng 17 2213 hrs Eng 29
2203 hrs Eng 11 2226 hrs R 9
2204 hrs R 4 2228 hrs Eng 39
2230 hrs R 34
must not be showing all of the calls because that only comes out to one every 5 minutes on Friday evening.
 

grem467

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i would think that LESS calls would be better.. it just means our citizens arent burning their houses down.. lol
 

bravo14

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I noticed st johns co is getting busy every year. Fire/Rescue hardly got called out now they get called all the time even when they clear a call. I use to keep track of the Run Number not anymore since they don't air that anymore. They use to repeat the call twice after the tone now once and one more time a few mints later. Everytime I go to Jax there fire/rescue is even harder to track after they get called the first time. I have to listen fast and where it is.
 

SCPD

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I was not pissy, I was just stating the facts. I brought up Pinellas because the gentleman stated Jax does not tone out because it gets better response times. Which is untrue. Tones do not delay response times nor does it cause fustration for the dispatchers.

Pinellas Co does NOT have a County Fire Dept {Legal term is Fire/Rescue,not Fire Dept.} , all the cities in the county have an open Mutual Aid agreement which allow them to respond beyond thier city limits on a routine basis. Making response times cut in half. Average time to get on scene anywhere in the county is 2 minutes or less. The dispatch center for all cities in the county are ran by the county on a unifed system for effectiveness. 70 fire stations countywide. Fire tones are MODAT format. They are short & do not cause a long delay in tones. Stations have laser printers,station CAD's that allow them to view the same screens as the dispatchers. They all carry alpha pagers that gives them the same info as the voice dispatch. On board VoIP laptops show them area maps of the location while enroute, pre-fire plans,hazards,& if its a medical call. They can view patients medical history for the past 5 yrs. Thier laptops can also instant msg other units in the field, & can voice via the laptop's network on a secure VoIP group {Not part of the Public Safety trunked system}. Currently in the test phase they will soon have the ability to transmit live feed to the commanders,hospitals,MD's, etc. The XTS-5000's will replace the alpha pagers with all text being sent to the XTS-5000 just like the pager does.

Again I am not pissy, just educating. Thats what the Forum's are for. not flames or silly comments.
 

grem467

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Com-4 said:
Fire tones are MODAT format. They are short & do not cause a long delay in tones.

I think you mean MOSCAD, MODAT is a ptt id format formerly used by LAPD.

and by the way, ALOT of what JFRD does is via the laptops and PDRCs in the vehicles, so just because you dont hear it via voice on the air, doesnt mean there isnt activity or lack of communications. JFRD has a GREAT majority of all the technology you stated the other county uses. It just came across as "well i dont hear fire tones, so they must be a backwoods hick agency"

ill assume that was a miscommunications and was not your intent to imply that.
 
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SCPD

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No MODAT, LAPD was not the only dept in the US to use it. Dispatch encodes the MODAT ID of each unit they want unmuted @ the station. Much like decoding a PL, but on a larger scale. Jax does not have half of what Pinellas Does. Jax is still on the old style printer set up from early 1990's, Pinellas CAD software enables the call taker to start units responding the second the call taker confirms the address of the incident. The Dispatcher starts dispatch before the call taker is even half way done with the intake of the call. The software automaticly starts alert to the station via printer,station CAD,alpha page,alert near by units on other channels of the call,transfer the call to other agencies such as EMS,PD,coast guard,etc. while the dispatcher is voicing the call all at the same time. On The Jax System, units are not made aware of a near by call & can take up to 2mins after the call has been dispatched. Loosing valueable time. On the Jax System dispatchers have to transfer the call to other agencies if other agency response is required. Again, loosing valued time. I do not consider that good techology at all.
 

SCPD

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Pinellas software also enables the call takers & dispatchers of all the agencies involved{PD, FD EMS,etc.} to view updates on the call in real time.
 
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