South Metro Station Alerting

[k0pwo]

I made a search for this, but did not find any threads/info. What type of tones are used for alerting the South Metro Stations? Is it the tones that you hear over the DTRS, tones via a VHF freq? Or do they have zetron or like system that alerts via microwave/phone lines?

If they are alerted by radio tones. What system do they use? QCII, or what? If they are alerted by radio tones, does anyone have a list of the tones for each station? BC etc...?

Thank you.....

 

[SouthMetroFirePIO]

I made a search for this, but did not find any threads/info. What type of tones are used for alerting the South Metro Stations? Is it the tones that you hear over the DTRS, tones via a VHF freq? Or do they have zetron or like system that alerts via microwave/phone lines?

If they are alerted by radio tones. What system do they use? QCII, or what? If they are alerted by radio tones, does anyone have a list of the tones for each station? BC etc...?

Thank you.....

Hello,
South Metro uses First-In by WestNet for station alerting. A signal is sent to each station via T-1 line which triggers the lights, speakers and a pre-alert announcement that identifies what apparatus are needed and for what type of call. Following that in-house pre-alert the Automated Voice Dispatch (AVD) airs the information on MetCom 1 (Talkgroup 1786).

Although South Metro does have VHF frequencies, they are used for DTRS back up or wildland purposes only and there are no tones.

 

[Spitfire8520]

To tag on South Metro's excellent response, pretty much all career fire departments in the Denver Metro area use similar (or even the same) IP alerting systems that are directly connected to the CAD systems. As soon as a call type and location is entered into CAD, the system is triggered over IP to alert the specific crew needed for a call. With these systems, it is actually possible to alert individual bedrooms that are assigned to a specific crew and not wake the entire station. You can actually see the alerting process in South Metro's excellent Unscripted Episode 18 below.

Companies out of station use a mix of MDT, commercial alerting/paging services, and direct monitoring of their radios. The purpose of tone are typically used for getting attention of the listener rather than serving as means of station alerting.

 

[k0pwo]

Thank you both for the replies. Since writing the post I had pretty much came to the conclusion that you were alerting via ip off the CAD software. I just wasn't sure if there was also a data stream of some sort embedded in the DTRS transmission during dispatch (or if that can even be done). Anyhow, thank you both again. Be safe!