Pager or Radio? Which do you prefer?

We are a paid on call department. Several of our members carry radios when they are running around town, shopping, at dinner, etc. Some carry pagers and some carry both. For me, I will carry either one. Which do you prefer? Do you like to carry a pager or do you like to carry a radio, or maybe both?

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Permalink Reply by Craig S. on October 30, 2009 at 5:19am

Hi all....

I changed prep to radio. Sorry about the confusion. Prep is an old term that means hand held radio. Not sure on the origin of the name. Maybe Motorola? It is a fairly widely used term around this area.

Paid on call for our department works like this. For calls, we are paid by the hour from the time the tones drop to the end of the call. If we are on day or night duty, monthly meetings, or on drills, we are also paid by the hour.

Craig

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Dalgarno on October 31, 2009 at 8:34am

"For my own knowledge, how exactly does a paid on-call dept. work?"

In our paid-on-call department, we get paid any time we are doing fire related "stuff". Meetings, practices, calls, maintenance, etc. This way, we become employees of the municipality for those times. This gets us coverage under workers-comp as well as the municipality's liability coverage, etc.

Andrew

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Permalink Reply by John Rulli Jr. on October 31, 2009 at 12:12pm

I have both. Our officers are required to carry radios so I keep mine in my truck dont like carring it around its a pain in the arse lol

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Permalink Reply by Kirk D. Baughman on October 31, 2009 at 1:57pm

i'm with a vol. dept. and all members have both pager and radios. i really think it works out great. it's the members duty to keep both page and radio charge. infact it's part of our SOG's to have our radios with us on any fire or medical. infact any call. you never know when you will need it or get in trouble. this is a big dill for our fire chief. he wants to be able to talk to any of his members.

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Permalink Reply by Smoke Eater on November 2, 2009 at 6:08pm

We all have a pager and a radio. My personal preference is to carry the pager. When I'm out and about I can turn it to vibrate so if it goes off, I don't have a bunch of eyes on me. That's the reason I would rather use my pager. I'm not the type who wants to walk around Wal-Mart with a radio on my hip and tones going off, people talking, things like that. What if you get called to someone's house or address and they hear that while they are shopping? Could create havoc.