Major Monroe Co Fire Comms

[smorris]

A very large commercial fire today in Bartonsville, called for about twenty different agencies to respond from Monroe, Northampton, Pike, Lehigh, Wayne, Lackawanna and several depts from Warren County, NJ, some of whom were moved up to local stations to cover calls. Fire Central was the primary channel for chiefs and apparatus, East and North were used for tanker taskforces, P25 IOP was used as a link between the control center and the field comm unit on scene, EMS A-! was used for all on scene EMS. The command channel was patched to several other out-of-county channels for interoperability, including Lackawanna Fire Black and Warren Co's VHF system. Its interesting to note that, Lackawanna and Wayne have no interoperability with Monroe and Warren Co only has EMS interoperability, which is VHF. Radio chatter indicated that Wayne fire units expected to barrow some HT's when they arrived on scene.

Lackawanna, Wayne, Lehigh and Warren use VHF, Northampton is mixed UHF/VHF, Pike is VHF, however Bushkill FD can interoperate with Monroe because they were up until a year ago, dispatched by the Monroe Co Control Center. At least 4 aerial streams in operation and at least 20 tankers with 3 or more fill sites. I wish i had started a record session on my 536, I'm kicking myself now.

 

[cpg178]

Aside from hearing the N Pocono tankers call enroute on Black and call back in service I did not pick up any traffic on BLACK that sounded like a command channel being patched in. I know that Gouldsboro (55) has multiband radios since they operate in Wayne, Monore and Lackawanna counties, not sure about Thornhurst or Covington though.