Each agency has 2 talkgroups, one for department operations and one (those recently listed and causing the confusion) for radio paging or alerts. The alert talkgroup is RECEIVE ONLY, its a paging talkgroup for the trunking radios and in position 16 on the portable radios, basically allowing the trunking portable radio to function as a pager if you do not have a pager.
Each agency radio is set up like this in Bank A:
Position 1-DISPATCH (to monitor all alerts countywide and receive only),
#2-each departments talkgroup and is also used for single company response,
#3-CeCOM the channel we actually call into to the 911 center and advise we are responding,
#4 thru #8 are countywide tac channels assigned for multiple company response, Tac 7 and 8 are set asside for helo operations as needed),
#9 is a simplex NON Trunked simplex channel for fireground ops,
#10 thru 15 vary by department needs, but are usually an adjoining departments talkgroup (their channel 2) so we can switch quickly to assist them as necessary, and lastly...
#16 is PAGE/ALERT. When you only want to receive your departments calls, you simply put your portable on 16, its receive only, like a pager. If you want or need to monitor all county calls, you can monitor channel 1 and any other talkgroup the user needs to or wants to scan. Each portable has 2 banks, A and B, each departments bank A is set up like I just described . CeCom can call us on our company talkgroups if needed, but we always switch to #3-CeCom to directly communicate with the dispatcher so they do not need to monitor each agency individually, as that at times can be alot of traffic to keep up with between 3 or 4 dispatchers who monitor radios and answer all the 911 calls. This set up allows the dispatchers to only need to monitor like 5 talkgroups total (between fire and rescue, Sheriff, emergency management, and such) instead every talkgroup on the system.