stchamber11
Member
Every now and then at various towns (here in central connecticut) the dispatcher will tell of an emergency. Then she (ok usually a she) will say, "I will now send your tones" . What are they doing?
Activating the pagers for the firefighters.
or
could be sending knox box tones so the fd personnel can obtain keys to a business.
we would need more info from you to be more accurate
Ok, then this is more interesting than I thought. Pagers, I thought all fire personal had some scanner of some sort in there house to hear the calls. what would the pagers be used for?
Now maybe the main truck could have a radio activated knox box mounted in the cab that would only allow access to the physical keys when the dispatcher sends the tones. I could see that.
Ok, then this is more interesting than I thought. Pagers, I thought all fire personal had some scanner of some sort in there house to hear the calls. what would the pagers be used for?
Wow, that seems so insecure! How long ago did they do this?My local FD used to send out tones and the FF would put the radio up to the knox box for activation.
Never heard of tones for knox boxes. I would not think that would be very secure as any person with malicious intents could easily record and reproduce the tones and gain access to many buildings.
Plus, I would think many knox box's are mounted in places without power or are the padlock style.
Now maybe the main truck could have a radio activated knox box mounted in the cab that would only allow access to the physical keys when the dispatcher sends the tones. I could see that.
I've installed many Knox products but can't say I've ever seen a radio activated one yet! Our old fire district had some weird setup in their main pumpers that required the truck to be in reverse before the Knox keys could be removed. I don't think the keys were in a Knox branded enclosure within the truck however. The fire marshall explained that all to me and he said the super loud backup beeper drew attention so they would always turn to look at the truck and I guess to see if someone was trying to steal the keys. If I'm not mistaken, the driver removed the truck key from the truck upon arrival and that key was needed to shift the truck into gear. Of course the truck would remain running, it just could not be moved. Our fire district has changed since then and I don't know that the new company has such a policy for the knox box keys. I seem to see them simply hanging around their necks.
I haved two knox boxes on my mian building. The old one could not be removed without damage so we left it. The current districts keys do not fit the old districts box's.