OPP Zone 3 Main Talkgroups Down

[uncleblackie]

It's a case of the consoles or the links to the consoles being down.
They have to switch to the TAC channels since they're available in the vicinity of the Comm Centre and the units in the field.

Did it have to be a TAC specifically or could it have been any of the wide area TG's?
Just don't understand why they needed to specifically use the tac channels since the wide area tg's have zone wide tower affiliation as well do they not?

I mean what would they have done had there been a standoff or some other emergency situation that required a separate tg?

What I also found funny, last night when they took the whole system offline for about half an hour there were no comms whatsoever.
No Sim11, no provincial common, nothing. I can't believe they didn't have some temporary backup comms in place even if it only originated from the comm centre tower to at least give some basic vhf simplex comms. They said comms would only be available by phone. WTF?

Granted it was only half an hour. Maybe they figured it would confuse those "radio challenged" officers out there too much and they might lose them alltogether.
Maybe better to just have them leave them radio knobs and buttons alone? LOL!

 

[mikewazowski]

They could have used the Wide Area talkgroups but I believe there's probably more TAC's then WA's.

I'm sure if they needed a TAC channel for an emergency, they could have cleared one off.

 

[Jay911]

Interesting. In my experience as a dispatcher, if a console (or even all consoles) go out, we have "base station" mobile radios that have access to all the necessary TGs as backups. Guess Ontario chose to do it differently for some reason.

 

[mikewazowski]

It's probably a case of your system being much smaller then Ontario's. It actually does work the same way.

Your local towers have enough voice resources to carry all the talkgroups in use in case of a console emergency.

The tower local to the Orillia Comm Centre doesn't have enough voice resources for this.

Because of this, the system engineers have limited Operational talkgroups to the area they are needed in. This prevents officers from dragging their OPS group across the system as they travel outside of their area.

The TAC channels are not geographically limited as well as the Wide Area talkgroups.

 

[SCPD]

Yah Steve Jones is right, they do use fixed mobile units at the comm centre, but yesterday when they were talking N.Bay said to one unit they had to do something with their radio and when she (the dispatcher) came back on and told the unit she had to change the battery in her portable or something to do with the portable. So it looks like they were using portables to do their talking on the TAC Talkgroups to the officers I guess since they didn't have access to their main fixed mobiles.

And yah so that lightning strike obviously did something to their consoles or computers and limited them from using the main talkgroups and doing the patches and by seeing what STATUS Buttons the officers were pressing. Which this also affected the MTO Maintenance from using their main talkgroups and doing the patches for the road reports. And the same thing for the Ambulances, dispatch didn't have access to their TAC Talkgroups and to do the patches to the hospitals for the ambulance crews who were going to the hospital with a patient.

As of this morning the Ambulances on our talkgroup here were able to use the TAC Talkgroup and get a patch to their hospital again. And around 1:00 PM the MTO Maintenance was back to normal using their normal talkgroups and dispatch doing a patch for the road report. And this afternoon the OPP finally got word from N.Bay to switch back to their normal OPS Talkgroups and now everything is back to normal again, until or unless something happens again and does the same thing again.

Now we have to get used again to just listening to the units assigned to the Talkgroups and ones that enter the talkgroup for stuff they need to to in the area they are coming in to. Not having all the other units from another area all on the same TAC Talkgroup with the other units. Which was good so we got to hear what is going on in the other area that we don't usually hear unless N.Bay decides to do a patch.

So now back to normal listening on the main talkgroups just like it was before the storm passed through and caused this interruption.

 

[bglatour001]

Overnights and on Sundays 3OPS20 and 3OPS21 are usually patched to one dispatcher. It's nice to hear some of the happenings from back home.

 

[125]

Every now and then the system will go down. With the OPP they will go in to a fall back mode. Orillia had this happen in the fall after they had to close the comm center after paint fumes became too strong. The units in zone 1 switched to TAC channels and were dispatched by London the units in zone 2 (Muskoka) stayed on there ops channels and dispatched by Smithfalls. The reason for the TAC channels is for use of the consoles at the different comm centers. All comm centers can share TAC channels but can not generally communicate on a OPS group outside of their zone but can on a TAC channel so they will combine ops groups and put them on a TAC. Same can be said if a comm center has to use a remote or temp console. Only in Muskoka you guess where they will move the fall back to... most cases the fall back is Smithfalls but last spring there was a fall back for 2 hours with Northbay doing dispatch. Both at one time or another were the comm center for Muskoka before Orillia became the comm center so both have Muskoka TG's on their consoles. And last spring when the system went down the MOH was on provicial common with Georgan dispatch in Muskoka.