Williamson County Fire/EMS in 2025...

[garys]

A lot of political stuff Avery Pickett, plus the then chief getting arrested for embezzlement. Yikes. Taylor's new station apparently is near where Avery Pickett's station was. ESD10 as absorbed most of Avery Pickett's response area and Taylor FD got the rest.

Got it. I think.

Taylor Fire Channel 2 seems to be used for medical dispatch, but I don't know why.

There was a large brush fire in Florence a couple of months ago. They got mutual aid from both Williamson, Burnet, and probably Bell Counties. I caught some of the radio traffic when I was out driving somewhere.

Given the size of Samsung, I won't be surprised if they create their own fire department, but who knows?

I see a new listing in the DB for East Med 2, with part time encryption. I've heard Taylor units told to respond East Med 1, so now will have to try to figure out what TG that is. Maybe Hutto Med 1 TG4503. I'm hesitant to run in TG Search mode. Maybe time to dig my SDR out and see if I can get it running again.

I had done a little research, and before all the explosion of growth to the east of Hutto, there were 4 departments running:
Thrall
Coupland
Taylor VFD/Avery Pickett VFD
Taylor Fire Department

From what I can glean, it appears that at some time the Taylor VFD separated entirely from the city of Taylor Fire Department, and assumed the outer areas to the south and east of the city, including the ETJ. Not sure when the name change to Avery Pickett VFD happened, but that poor department got embroiled in scandal so bad that they couldn't recover. Coupland on the other hand started ESD 10, later voted Thrall in to the territory, and the voters in APVFD territory decided to go with ESD10 and Taylor Fire took over most of their ETJ, which resulted in APVFD being dissolved a couple summers ago.

So with all that, you have ESD10 which is dealing with everything outside the Taylor city limits, including the massive operation at Samsung Semiconductor. They do get a lot of dispatches from my listening.

Florence is a weird one. I've heard Burnet Co dispatch mutual aid to them and mention something about a working frequency due to Bell County's system not being available. Florence is not in Bell County, so I think they may have been mistaken, but I have only heard one dispatch for them, and it was not the big house fire they called Burnet for, so I need to listen more to see if they are mostly on West or Central.

 

[rattlerbb01]

A lot of political stuff Avery Pickett, plus the then chief getting arrested for embezzlement. Yikes. Taylor's new station apparently is near where Avery Pickett's station was. ESD10 as absorbed most of Avery Pickett's response area and Taylor FD got the rest.

Got it. I think.

Taylor Fire Channel 2 seems to be used for medical dispatch, but I don't know why.

There was a large brush fire in Florence a couple of months ago. They got mutual aid from both Williamson, Burnet, and probably Bell Counties. I caught some of the radio traffic when I was out driving somewhere.

Given the size of Samsung, I won't be surprised if they create their own fire department, but who knows?

I see a new listing in the DB for East Med 2, with part time encryption. I've heard Taylor units told to respond East Med 1, so now will have to try to figure out what TG that is. Maybe Hutto Med 1 TG4503. I'm hesitant to run in TG Search mode. Maybe time to dig my SDR out and see if I can get it running again.

Yeah, I'm working on the various MED channels, but when they run full encryption they are impossible to figure out without having an SDR running software on the site. Taylor Fire 2 has been updated to Taylor Fire Primary. There was a convo earlier in which an engine identified the channel as "Primary" to another unit.

More or less it now seems that most of the cities have moved into the 4600 and above talkgroups. They have their own primaries and are dispatched on both simultaneously in most cases I can find. Their old 4400/4500 talkgroups have been repurposed for countywide/regional use, and I don't see where they use the SCENE talkgroups for any routine traffic anymore, everything has pretty much moved to responding and operating on their directional FIRE X or MED X. I would imagine they save the scene groups for big incidents like structure fires and brush fires but I'll learn more as I listen. I'm curious why Round Rock seems to be the sole inhabitant of the South Med talkgroups but uses their own "FIRE X" groups. Probably has something to do with WCEMS running calls.

 

[garys]

Although it would be kind of a surprise, not just in Texas, but anywhere it seems that they are trying to get the system ready for the ever increasing population in east Williamson by expanding TG capability. Not that the western part is not seeing more people coming in, but it seems that for now the east is growing more quickly.

I know that there are developments going up in Leander, Florence, and it seems especially Liberty Hill, so the repurposing of some TGs is like in preparation there as well.

If that makes sense.

 

[rattlerbb01]

I did go ahead and update the Wilco Fire/EMS category on the GATRRS page to better reflect the primarily used talkgroups and regional significance. I will add the names of departments dispatched when I am certain of them all. I see some opportunities to perhaps separate Fire and EMS to organize it better. That can be done down the road.

 

[garys]

Maybe separate East, West, Central into different sections.

 

[rattlerbb01]

Maybe separate East, West, Central into different sections.

I considered that, but they can end up on any of the talkgroups if they are running mutual response, and then if they use SCENE or FIRE 1-14 those are countywide. The medic units are almost always encrypted on any of the Med channels or WCEMS agency groups, so I'm not overly concerned with segmenting them off into their own group.

 

[garys]

Leander Fire was just dispatched to a call and told to respond on West Med 1. I don't see it in the RRDB. I didn't hear any follow up, so don't have the TG number. The hunt goes on!

Cedar Park FD was just dispatched to a call and told to respond on West Med 2.

TG5840 is Lee County Sheriff, but I'm hearing thay Williamson County.

 

[rattlerbb01]

Leander Fire was just dispatched to a call and told to respond on West Med 1. I don't see it in the RRDB. I didn't hear any follow up, so don't have the TG number. The hunt goes on!

Cedar Park FD was just dispatched to a call and told to respond on West Med 2.

TG5840 is Lee County Sheriff, but I'm hearing thay Williamson County.

Yeah, if I had DSD+ running on the Wilco Simulcast, I could have them all figured out within a week in conjunction with Calls. But it’s just window dressing when they are ENC. Lee Co probably has a unit within the county with their radio turned on. Could be inmate transfer, meeting, training, etc

 

[garys]

My thought was that a Lee County unit was somewhere where the signal from Williamson was stronger and so affiliated with that site. Does Lee County house their prisoners in Williamson County? There was some traffic about taking someone to jail.

I should dig out my SDR set up, update DSD+, and try to remember how to set up a system. It's been close to two years and getting back into that wasn't a priority as there didn't seem to be much going on in terms of new systems.

Hopefully those Med TGs aren't encrypted, but who knows?

 

[rattlerbb01]

I know the Med talk groups aren’t forced encryption, but the ambulances and dispatchers are secure most of the time, and fire apparatus may default to secure on many of the med channels. As for Lee County, it’s possible that they extradited an inmate from Wilco Jail on their own charges. Happens all the time around the state, guy has a hot check or assault warrant in X County, gets pulled over and held on that warrant when Y County confirms extradition will happen, and Y county will book them and hold them for X County to come pick up.

 

[garys]

If you have a DSD+ configuration file you can send me, that would likely save me some work. I can set DSD+ up on my laptop and do some monitoring. Doing it using the ID Search mode on my 325P2 is tedious as every time new ID pops up, I have to compare it to the RRDB. That requires a lot of scrolling up and down. That's how I stumbled on the Lee County TG.

If you can do that, DM me and I can give you an email address.

 

[rattlerbb01]

If you have a DSD+ configuration file you can send me, that would likely save me some work. I can set DSD+ up on my laptop and do some monitoring. Doing it using the ID Search mode on my 325P2 is tedious as every time new ID pops up, I have to compare it to the RRDB. That requires a lot of scrolling up and down. That's how I stumbled on the Lee County TG.

If you can do that, DM me and I can give you an email address.

I don't really have a configuration file for DSD+, but I do have the GROUPS file that already has all the known talkgroup aliases loaded in it. Other than that, I plug in my SDR and antenna, open FMP24, locate the control channel on the spectrum window, and open DSDPlus.exe and begin letting the system catalogue data in the EVENTS file. Once you start adding aliases to the RADIOS file in the DSD folder, you can start tracking what talkgroup, for instance, Leander Engine 3, will pop up on after being assigned to a MED channel. Even if they are encrypted, that is a solid way to start ID'ing the talkgroups that you can't hear.

 

[garys]

I'm having a problem getting DSDPlus to work properly now that I've set everything back up. Once I get that figured out, I would be interested in the GROUPS file.

I've used DSDPlus since before it could even do trunking. Back then I was trying to figure out where some non public safety municipal systems had gone after the narrowbanding in 2013.

I don't really have a configuration file for DSD+, but I do have the GROUPS file that already has all the known talkgroup aliases loaded in it. Other than that, I plug in my SDR and antenna, open FMP24, locate the control channel on the spectrum window, and open DSDPlus.exe and begin letting the system catalogue data in the EVENTS file. Once you start adding aliases to the RADIOS file in the DSD folder, you can start tracking what talkgroup, for instance, Leander Engine 3, will pop up on after being assigned to a MED channel. Even if they are encrypted, that is a solid way to start ID'ing the talkgroups that you can't hear.

 

[garys]

I got DSDPlusup and running and have found a few surprises on the Williamson system. One is 3545, which sounds like LE Interop, but I can't ID it. It's in the same area of numbers as DPS dispatch. Dispatched to a crash on FM2222. It's listed in the RRDB as DPS Training, so maybe it was just a training exercise.

4503 has popped up as well, but I didn't get enough voice traffic to see if it's Hutto only or East Med 1. RRDB shows it as encrypted, so it might remain a mystery.

 

[garys]

I got DSDPlus up and running on Wilco. So far I've confirmed (for my own purposes) some of the TGs that are already known.

It looks like East Med 1 is encrypted, possibly formerly Hutto Med1 (4503).
It also looks like West Med 1 is encrypted, but I haven't figured out the TG yet.
I heard a reference to East Med 3, but again don't have a TG yet.
I also saw a TG 50559, which wasn't encrypted but I didn't hear enough to ID the user.

 

[rattlerbb01]

TG 50559 is TDEM (Texas Dept of Emergency Management) and is the regional talkgroup that the employees communicate with state dispatch on. It pops up on Comal Simulcast a lot as well.
I did suspect TG 4503 as being East Med 1 looking patterns, and it has not had a transmission on Calls since November 2024 so its hard to confirm. If you do confirm it with another dispatch/ops assignment with DSD, submit it and I'll update.
TG 4502, old Taylor Fire 1, is another of the East channels, but the one recent fireground op on it was not dispatched with a reference to the channel assignment. Keep an eye on that one, as it is probably East Fire 3 or 4 now.

 

[garys]

I will do that as I get a better handle on what is going on. I think I finally got it so it ignores encrypted Talk Groups, but might have disable that until I have a good picture.

That Lee County TG seems to be pretty constant, maybe even permanent for coverage reasons.

Two APD Interop TGs were active all day, but that might be because they are regional and shockingly some criminals don't stay within one county.

 

[rattlerbb01]

I will do that as I get a better handle on what is going on. I think I finally got it so it ignores encrypted Talk Groups, but might have disable that until I have a good picture.

That Lee County TG seems to be pretty constant, maybe even permanent for coverage reasons.

Two APD Interop TGs were active all day, but that might be because they are regional and shockingly some criminals don't stay within one county.

Yeah, DSD can follow voice conversations but a site like Wilco will overload it and make it no fun, especially if you are following ENC voice.

 

[rattlerbb01]

I have Jollyville included in my West group, but they aren't very busy so it could take a while to confirm. I don't have Florence anywhere, but should probably do more research.

ESD10 has been fairly busy over the last few days.

Florence (District 7) had two dispatches on Central Fire today. Response channels were Central Fire 1 and Central Fire 2. However, twice they popped up on the old Weir Fire 1 responding, and dispatch told them to go to the correct Central Fire channel, saying they were on "Scene 1" not the correct regional channel. So.....that adds some mystery to this for sure.

 

[garys]

That's confusing. The Weir Fire 1 I see is TG 4490 in the RRDB as DE. Is that the same one you heard or something else?

I did some listening today, but was mostly fine tuning my installation of DSDPlus. I'm trying to get the various windows back where they were before I screwed up the latest upgrade. Funny how much I forgot because I haven't used it in a while.

The lock out ECN TGs seems to be behaving as it should now. It seems it takes a few transmissions before both DSD-CC and DSD-VC lock it out.

I heard Llano County EMS Dispatch (TG7007) for a while. One of their units must have been doing a transport somewhere into Williamson and affiliated.