Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mel on February 24, 2009 at 5:03am

As Im very involved in the Rural Fire Service, I have several ringtones indicating which area they are from. For Example: I have a ringtone set on my mobile phone for the crew members at my station, another one for FireCare...etc
I have 'Great Balls of Fire' set for high fire danger days !!!! Everyone gets a laugh and eases tense situations at times

I also have "Hot stuff" when the station number or crews call me

Permalink Reply by Robert Stewart on February 26, 2009 at 5:48am

Having a dedicated mobile phone profile with the title like Total Fire Ban or Fire Calls so it can be set to recieve phone calls on bad fire days makes it easier to be warned of impending fire calls or emergencies

For example heres the phone profile i have for my mobile

Profile Name: Fire Calls
Ringtone: Boys From The Bush
SMS Tone : Texas QLD 4385
Alert: All Calls
Say Caller Name: On

Permalink Reply by Tony P on March 5, 2009 at 10:24pm

Interesting. I've never even heard of such a thing! We carry pagers with three channels; Emergency, Non-Emergency and Admin. Calls for jobs come over the first, cancellations over the second and everything else over the third. Bad weather alerts, TFB declarations, Code Red alerts and weather forecasts all come over the Admin channel.

We're also encouraged to use the paging service for personal reasons, either by phoning the paging service or by logging into our own account on the CFA site and typing in the message ourselves. For instance, if I'm on a call and not answering my mobile, a family member can call and have a message sent to me if they want me to contact them ASAP - I have been known to stay around at the shed talking after a job...

Permalink Reply by Robert Stewart on March 6, 2009 at 1:00am

Our SAGRN pagers only have 1 channel Tony which is 148.8125 this receives all the emergency,stop and general info calls so thats why some of us volunteer fire fighters rely on calls via mobile phone or text messaging for heads up on potential call outs

I've also got my mobile number subscribed to the Early Warning Network which sends me notification of severe wx warnings or fire ban notifications long before my pager goes off saying the same thing i also tend to send an sms to a fellow volunteer fire fighter in Adelaide about fire ban days if she doesnt get the pager message

Also here in SA were not allowed to use the GRN paging service for personal reasons the only people who are allowed to do that are the high ranked officers or ops support staff

Permalink Reply by Tony P on March 9, 2009 at 12:02am

Your GRN system is the same sort of thing that we've moved away from. The new system has more flexibility, but nothing is perfect...

It'd be a laugh here if a person received a TFB advice quicker than it's paged out to us. Considering that it's our Chief Fire Officer who declares them! Not to say it couldn't happen, some of our messages seem slow coming out.

For a 'heads up' I, like many of my mates, keep the scanner running all day. It's been handy at times, hear that an incident that's fairly close has turned pear-shaped - get ready in case I'm paged. During nasty fire weather I usually carry a scanner in my car as well.

Permalink Reply by Matt (aka Hawk) on January 6, 2010 at 11:23pm

I am with the CFA so have the pager covering everything, bit I do have a profile on my phone so if anypone from the station etc calls me it plays the theme from backdraft or if I get an SMS it plays sirens going off.

Permalink Reply by Tony P on May 20, 2010 at 12:40am

An upgrade from me! A year down the track...

As some new members came online (have to be Widfire qualified or they can't get on a truck, so no need for a pager!) it's turned out that extra pagers are pretty well a non-event. Bloody shortage of money means out-of-pagers. Would have been far better to give EVERYBODY pagers instead of highring that great big jet airliner/water bomber thing last season!) So we have some of our members relying on their mobile phone for pager messages. The Brigade is only allowed seven of these, so that is about used up too now. The mobiles receive some of the normal pager message it seems. Enough to get the people down to the staion with some idea of what's going on!

Steve? The coverage with our new pagers is state-wide. Except for the odd hole of course... The old ones were fairy local.