Hey all this may be a little strange but could someone please to me how your alarm system in the states work as in what resources turn up on which alarm , this is so that i can equate it to the alarm system that we have here in Newzealand,
Thanks
Rod

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It's different in just about every single jurisdiction/city, let alone the whole state, throughout the U.S. Generally speaking though, the initial alarm is 2 engines and a truck. The second alarm brings 2 additional engines, an additional truck and a rescue, or another specialized service.
Don't forget box and still alarms
oooohhh crap this is not gona be as simple as i hoped
Nope...sure isn't. Waaaaaaaaay too many variables out there.
okay my area: silent alarm Mva (non rescue), fire alarms, co alarms, ect... is one station or engine
Dwellings: 4 engines 2 ladders, rescue, ambo, and 2 cheifs....(sometimes we hold with 2 engines and 1 ladder)
All companies in service. 1-2 rit teams, a rescue if not added already, cascade, fm, another ambo and ems chief, and 2 engines and 1 ladder to cover the station
2nd alarm: 4 more engines, 2 ladders, rehab, cascade, oem, and pio
3rd alarm 3 more engines, 1 ladder,
after that its 2 and 1 and what ever we need

Buildings- same as above but sometimes we will request and adi'nl engine(s) on the initial dispatch depending on the building
An "alarm system" ie; bells ringing not phone call about smoke or fire. We used to send a full alarm (3 engines, 1 truck, the heavy rescue and a battalion chief). Now we just send the closest apparatus (engine, truck, rescue) and either and engine or truck with it. This keeps a lot of apparatus off of the street for what is usually a false alarm.
Around here:

Still Alarm: Usually a 1 apparatus or 1 ambulance response.

Full Still: 2 or more apparatus/ambulance response. Usually from different stations.

General: Usually dictates a full departmental response along with Auto aid companies.

MABAS Box: Full departmental response along with Auto Aid companies. Mutual Aid as required by the "Box cards", or as requested by Incident Command.

Special Alarm: Incident Command can request special responses above the MABAS level. (ie., "I need 5 more ambulances")
it sure is complicated
here we have 1st alarm is 2 appliances,
2nd alarm is 2 more plus a command unit plus an aerial
3rd is another pump plus another aerial
4th is another 3 pumps and an aerial plus canteen unit(gotta feed the troops)
5th is another 2 pumps
now this is the basic set up but most of the time it seems to work ,
for MVC we send a pump and a truck (prt) as our ambulance service is separate here they are generally there or close behind us .
we also send single pumps for investigation calls ,
we do have a little different set up though as all of our appliances are pumps and some of them also carry rescue gear (prts) so all of our truck preform fire fighting duties and we have specialist ladder trucks that are just ladders .
It's different in just about every single jurisdiction/city, let alone the whole state, throughout the U.S.

Surprise, surprise! Is there anything simple (and even remotely uniform when it comes to the emergency services?) in the US? :-)
We use the term to, it refers to a fire alarm box (red box, you pull the handle and the fire trucks come) on a corner in town, that box has an assignment, ie; 1st, 2nd, 3rd alarms. A box alarm or box assignment is the companies assigned on the first alarm to that intersection. I live in the Northwest and the term is used in Spokane, Seattle, Tacoma, Everett etc. A still alarm refers to when a "box" is not pulled and dispatch calls for one company or one station to go to a fire, example, car fire, grass fire, dumpster etc. It is "still" or quiet because the big alarm bell in the station did not ring. If a department had a box alarm system, Gamewell system, then they had box alarms and may still use the term.
Gregory is correct. Box alarm is what was pulled before there was a 911 system. We still have them all over DC. They aren't able to be used but they are there.(Most neighborhoods decorated them) Being a traditional department it still gets dispatched as a box alarm. In probation we actually have to remember the running routes for several box alarms. Now we just remember the address but they all still have a box number attached. For example, it would get dispatched as Box 2841 which would be the box that was pulled and the area they need to respond to.
Very difficult because it's probably different from agency to agency. With some CAD systems you build it by breaking your district into 'response zones'. Then for every type of call you respond to you assign the units for handling that call type.

For a fire call, for instance, you would put into the system the first alarm assignments by apparatus ID. Then you do the same for every additional alarm all the way out to 12 alarms (if you have the resources). This way when a call comes in from an address, the CAD system knows what zone that address is in (because when you broke up your district into zones you entered the address ranges too), what type of call the call taker assigns it, and then the CAD systems tones out the applicable apparatus. The building of the CAD system for a response zone is very tedious and time consuming but "garbage in, garbage out".

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