POCSAG - Hamilton

[homerjay]

A shame that HFD doesn't have pageouts for full time trucks. I was monitoring Mississauga's and there's pages for every truck, full time or not. And all the constant updates.
Do Mississauga firefighters carry pagers? Or does the CAD info get sent to one pager frequency that relays the messages, maybe?

They used to have pageouts for every call, multiple trucks would/could respond. They used to be simulcast broadcast on 154.250 when Hamilton was on their old truck system. The only time you would hear actual tones is for the volunteer stations in Binbrook, Glanbrook, Flamborough, Rockton, Outer Ancaster, Stoney Creek, etc. But this is going back to early 2000's

I'm actually surprised they are still using that VHF frequency for something after all these years.

 

[MattCPRail]

I believe Hamilton Fire is the only department in Ontario that uses 10-codes. Anyone have a list of them?
Some codes they use are a bit different from what I'm familiar with. The times I've listened to them recently I've heard the following:
10-4: Copy
10-8: In Service
10-12: Used when arriving on scene, it's usually meant standby every where else
10-19: Returning to station

If anyone has more I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[exkalibur]

I thought Hamilton Fire is encrypted? Or have they come to their senses finally.

 

[Forts]

I was by Hamilton yesterday and they are fully encrypted. Care to share how you are listening?

 

[MattCPRail]

They are often patched with Burlington or Grimsby for crashes, or for mutual aid structures fires. It's not very common, but multiple times recently.

 

[gary123]

This is a good reason for understanding how the local systems work and are meshed together. Sometimes as MattCPRail has found there might be a backdoor to getting something everyone is missing. Good work Matt.

 

[EJB]

They are often patched with Burlington or Grimsby for crashes, or for mutual aid structures fires. It's not very common, but multiple times recently.

Happens every now and then. There is no ITC Hamilton fire activity in city calls, but they will patch with Burlington close to borders like the 403/6 Hwy or bridge.

From memory, they used 10 codes on occasion and recently both EMS and Fire showed up at my building for what Fire told EMS was a sudden death.

 

[MattCPRail]

Something very odd just happened. I run 154.2500 through-out the day for decoding volunteer calls.
I swapped over to 929.2875 to check out what's going on and then 929.4125
When I checked over to PDW I noticed I recieved a HFD call! Now I don't know if I was on 929.2875 or 929.4125 when it was decoded or if somehow my SDR glitched. For anyone wondering, here is what got decoded (full address and caller info blocked for privacy)

0210117 22:12:43 12-05-24 POCSAG-1 ALPHA 1200 Event: ALARM Composite Loc: BROOKVIEW CT AN X-1: WOODLAND DR X-2: DEAD END Map: 201B CALLER ADDR: TAC: TAC3

 

[MattCPRail]

For anyone who cares Hamilton Fire will be putting an end to the Twitter/X CAD but they are working on a system to display active calls on the hamilton.ca website.

 

[MattCPRail]

407.0625 has no longer been active since about August. Pages still come in nicely. Possibly they changed the frequency or just stopped using it?

 

[EJB]

For anyone who cares Hamilton Fire will be putting an end to the Twitter/X CAD but they are working on a system to display active calls on the hamilton.ca website.

What are they gonna do? Do you know?

Was a fire call at my building in the middle of the night this weekend. Would be nice to know if me and my killers have to leave my apartment

E

 

[freddie_hg]

Looks like the new dashboard is now live:

HFD Incidents Dashboard

Discover, analyze and download data from HFD Incidents Dashboard. Download in CSV, KML, Zip, GeoJSON, GeoTIFF or PNG. Find API links for GeoServices, WMS, and WFS. Analyze with charts and thematic maps. Take the next step and create StoryMaps and Web Maps.

hfd-incidents-dashboard-spatialsolutions.hub.arcgis.com