Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Rob Bailey on September 3, 2008 at 10:27am

How can you miss a run????? Don't you have pagers????

Permalink Reply by Drew Tenhundfeld on September 3, 2008 at 11:07am

The house system didn't go off. All officers carry a alpha numeric pagers but didn't them activate.

Permalink Reply by Medicine Man on September 3, 2008 at 11:25am

Is this a volly house? The reason I ask is that we have tones that go off thru the 800mhz system. Then dispatch announces the run, sends a print out and then repeats the info. If you do not respond in 3 minutes they will call you on the radio and then call the house phone. If you dont answer you will get a visit from the BC. So who takes your runs if you miss it. If you are there at overnight and dispatch knows this why did they not attempt to contact you by other means when you did not respond?

Permalink Reply by Drew Tenhundfeld on September 3, 2008 at 12:04pm

This is a career dept. If a second tone is dropped than someone from the other station will call. We have 3 stations, 2 have a squad and the 3rd with a medic chase vehicle. Last night the dept had a alarm drop only only one of the 3 house systems went off. The officer from that house called the other stations. All 3 stations were responding. Can you tell me the type of system that your dept is using.

Permalink Reply by Medicine Man on September 3, 2008 at 12:18pm

Well, lol, no I cant cause I dont know right off hand. I will surely look in to it when I get back to work on Sat. I am off all week. Got to love those EDO's. I will let you know what I can find out though.

Permalink Reply by Medicine Man on September 7, 2008 at 1:34am

Ok we use something called a zetron system to turn on house tones and lights. Not sure if that helps, I am still trying to find some info but it seams to be scarce around here.

Permalink Reply by Drew Tenhundfeld on September 7, 2008 at 12:13pm

This for the little info that you left.

Permalink Reply by Steve Hobbs on September 7, 2008 at 12:15pm

http://www.firehousealerting.com/

Permalink Reply by Brian Dumser on September 7, 2008 at 12:54pm

Drew-
We've got a really good system, but I don't know the specifics of it just now. Have you had any luck with the vendor that installed your current system? That would be my starting point.

Permalink Reply by Mike Schlags (Captain Busy) Retd on September 7, 2008 at 2:27pm

At my station, we don't have the 800 mHz system but operate on 153.770 as our primary frequency, whatever band that is. The tones are recieved by the station and the dispatch is heard over the station radios. Lights are activated and the apparatus room doors used to go up automatically with revolving green strobe lights but time and weather made them stop working years ago.

Because we can have routine winds at our station that approach 75 mph, it is not uncommon to lose power and have the generator switch on. Since our generator wiring was eaten by the mice, we now have a temporary generator that has to be hand started and hooked up if needed. What this means is that when I go to bed at night (at the fire station) I have triple redundancy set up.

1. My personal cell phone number is given to the on duty dispatcher.
2. I pull a portable radio off the engine and if an alarm goes off, the encoder triggers the portable radio to beep.
3. My station has (1) one Motorola Pager. If the alarms go off, then the pager also gets activated and goes off, with the radio broadcast following right behind.

I would like to add that when things are working as they should, we arranged to be awoke by gentle chimes instead of bells or a horn. The exception to this is when we are worried about possible power failures or we are dealing with a loss of power. In those situations where the alarms go off, I end up going through the roof with all the alarms, bells and whistles that are put into place. There is never an excuse for missing a run. We are simply too remote to cause any delay in our response.

"Failure to prepare is preparing for failure..." When in doubt, keep your radio with you...



TCSS, Mike from Santa Barbara, CA

Permalink Reply by Brian Dumser on September 8, 2008 at 5:21pm

Wow Mike, you guys can arrange what sounds to wake up to? Ok, I'd like to arrange right now for my next shift, that I be awakened by Shania Twain kissing me gently on the cheek...LOL

Seriously, our station tones used to put us through the roof, but now they've been modified to go off for about 4 seconds getting louder as they go, and the bunkroom lights will come on and stay on for about 2 minutes. TCSS!

Permalink Reply by Ronald Williams II on September 8, 2008 at 6:06pm

ugh try "first in alerting systems" here is the link for them, http://www.firestationalerting.com/content/view/24/36/ they are a really nice setup we use them at our station.

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