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Comment by Brian Dowell on January 22, 2011 at 8:16pm

My Chief always says "the less you say on the radio the smarter you sound"

Comment by Brian Dumser on December 14, 2008 at 3:40pm

Sounds like this F.D. needs to write some radio usage SOP's/SOG's and educate their people. Nothing like useless radio traffic!

Comment by Dustin J. Millis on December 14, 2008 at 7:52am

Shareef, I totally agree with the point about FF's needing the radio clear for really important stuff like maydays, evac, etc. I have one problem with what you said though. FIREFIGHTERS NEVER WORK ALONE!!!!!! I dont care what the situation is, no matter what you are doing, or how long you are doing it. WE DONT WORK ALONE!!!!!!

Comment by Trainer on December 14, 2008 at 7:45am

I think most of us have this problem; we do, but only by a couple of officers. I’ll ask this question, as I’m not sure how to fix it; how do you tell a fellow officer that not all of his radio traffic is not important?

Comment by Shareef Abdu Nur on December 14, 2008 at 4:20am

The most important thing to remember about radio traffic is that if a FF is calling a MAYDAY, he/she needs to be able to get through. many FF's use the radio like it is a telephone. The radio is not for conversations. It is for relaying/receiving critical info. On scene, FF's should communicate with their Officers and those Officers should be the one's talking on the radio to Command. We should keep the air clear and available for critical info(MAYDAYS, Evacuation Orders, Operating orders, holes in the floor, unstable walls, collapses, etc...). Yes, we need talk to dispatchers as far as apparatus traffic, but they appreciate limited chatter and so does that FF who is operating alone and suddenly has a heart attack, or who falls through a floor, or who becomes disoriented and doesn't have the air to waste to fight for radio time. If we do it for anyone, let's do it for that brother/sister who is scared and alone who needs that precious radio time.

Comment by Jenny Holderby on December 14, 2008 at 2:16am

Our 9-1-1 center dispatches for 17 fire departments. At times half will be out at the same time if the weather is bad as it was last weekend. When one department has a call, we often call on at least one other department for mutual aid, sometimes more than one. Each truck marks enroute. Everybody, dispatch & our ffs know when a truck has left the station. We often have communication between trucks while enroute but not often if we can help it. Every truck marks on scene when they arrive. Usually, we go to what we refer to as "fire ground" once we get onscene to communicate with each other.The officers monitor 9-1-1 from that point and the IC is in contact with 9-1-1. When we clear a scene, the IC notifies 9-1-1 that he has terminated command @ that site. Each truck marks up when they get back to the station. An officer will let dispatch know if we are available for service. Once everything is filled up & cleaned up, we notify 9-1-1 that all men and equipment are in service. They fax a print out of our times to the station and clear the call.
One department on a call doesn't always involve a "lot" of radio traffic but three departments all going to the same call makes for a busy dispatcher but we all hear who is enroute and know about how long it will take for them to get there. Our dispatchers don't seem to have much of a problem with the process. We all try to be curteous and keep traffic down which is why the departments all have a private channel or a secondary channel for use on scene.

Radio communications are necessary. I think notifying dispatch that you are enroute or on scene once is sufficient. Maybe they were having trouble with their equipment or were in an area where they weren't able to receive the dispatcher's reply.

One of our neighboring departments has a habit of not marking up when they leave their station. The rest of us, anticipating they don't have anyone to go since we haven't heard them on the radio, will head to our own stations. Often 9-1-1 will give them another alert. Then they notify that they are on scene.
A few departments will immediately go to the private channel after they leave the station which irritates the rest of us because we can't be nosey and listen to their calls.

Comment by lutan1 on December 13, 2008 at 10:01pm

We used to run a simplex and a duplex channel. (One was local and the other hit the repeaters)

The local channel was for who's responding to the station, etc- in other words used between members.

The repeater channel was for all official traffic. I believe the only traffic should be turn out and on scene and perhaps enroute stuff if it's affecting the response of other vehicles such as traffic.

Comment by Lou Anne on December 13, 2008 at 8:51pm

I totally agree with you. The radio traffic on our department seems to get worse when we have a big house fire then it seems that every other department is out at the same time and then you can not talk to dispatch for all the radio traffic.