radios

[wilderness]

In our department we have 18 members and have 5 portable radios.... one radio for the captain on scene, one radio for the RIT team, one radio for interior attack or two depending on how many teams and one for incident command.... anyway you look its not enough radios

[Red_Devil]

ummmm ok.....you made your point...what do you want us to say??????????

[bestcoast]

Everyone on duty has a portable radio in Vancouver.........:D ...BC.....

[wilderness]

RED YOUR A FULLTIMER WITH UNLIMITED FUNDING FOR THE MOST PART...now as volunteers we have limit's and i was asking if other station find themselves short on radios as well...and if they say have 20 guys 15 radio's that damn good but if you have 20 guys and 2 radio's that sucks... i was wondering how as volunteers my hall stood against other hall, put a little imagination with what i asked and i would hope you could see where i was headed.... ooh and if you have a radio that you don't use because you don;t know how too...send it my way... :) and we will put it to good use.... thanks buddy

[JGallagher]

I think in total we have about 8 radios in the rescue truck. The drivers have there own that they bring with them. As well I think all the regular guys have one.

[Leafs Fan]

I am a firm believer that everyone on duty should have a radio for safety reasons. I am a career guy and all our people have radios on duty, But that being said there has to be some control on radio traffic. The volunteer dept outside of our city who we dispatch has about 40 paid on calls with about 20 radios. When they have an alarm you get a play by play of all twenty people's response which is unneccessary and could be dangerous. We don't need to know what the condition of every road is or what station they are listening to in their car. The radio should only be used by the first person on scene for a report and officers after that. All others are there for emergencies, If verbal diahrea is strictly controlled, everyone should have a radio.

just my 2 cents:)

[JGallagher]

If you are not inside a building and are a fixed line then you should not require one. There is enough Officers around with one.

[FClement]

Our Chief ALWAYS have his radio with him. Every officer in our department has one radio in the rescue truck for them. Plus 3 radios are available for RIT and interior attack inside our rescue truck.

[DFCSmash]

Yep leafs fan has it. We had a problem here with too many people talking on the scene. Rule was "Don't speak unless you're spoken to." With the exception of course for exceptional circumtances. It just got beyond reason, so now there are a max of about 5 radios at most working fires. Command, group command (ie 1 for ventilation crew, 1 for attack crew, 1 for backup crew, etc.) Verbal diahrea is a major PITA. Some people are just natural born motor mouths. More rdios are available if required, but for the most part 5 will cover it.

Major spread out wildfires actually require more radios than most structure incidents because of how spread out your people are.

My .02

[Forest]

in our dept we try to get everyone fitted with a radio....actually we just had an order come in for new ones. The newer people get pagers because people around here have the tendency to want there name on the call list and get plates. So all the Jr's and newer FF's have pagers, everyone over 6 months has a radio and that makes.....about 40 radios

We had* the problem of to many people talking on the channel, we couldnt hear the attack team inside so we started using a different channel for the attack team and giving the cheif or IC a second radio only on that channel. Thats a thought for you DFC, we tried it out and its actually a better idea that way the chief has no doubt who hes talking to.

[Scuba]

First Due Pumper - radio in truck & headset on pump
Van - 4 portables
Tanker - 1 portable
Reserve - 1 portable

6 for the Cheif, Deputy, and capt.'s

IMHO everyone should have one......rural departments with responders spread out all over the place we usualy have at least one or two people go direct to the scene because it's between them and the hall. Everyone should have a radio. EVERYONE.

If you suffer from oral spasams........radio's can be taken away....but it's kinda hard to give'em to someone when it's needed and not available.

[ehetu]

Except for the probies, most of us have radios... our 911 dispatcher sends tones on the radio then tells us to stand by for a call. He may then simultaneous broadcast the details and page them. The first few people to respond acknowledge to the dispatch...this tells him/her that we've received the page. While we're responding to the hall we can determine if the apparatus are on their way or waiting for a driver plus the first unit on scene will size up the scene and give us an idea whether we should slow down or speed up our response.

We haven't had the kind of verbal diarrhea (sp?) mentionned above... we have two channels, one for dispatch & apparatus, the other for fireground communications (no repeater) plus frequencies for the local towing co., public works and a few surrounding fire depts that we have mutual aid agreements with. Works pretty good so far!

Edmond
Chelsea FD

[Michael13]

We have a total of 12 radios. Each chief keeps one at home. tanker 1, pumper 2, and rescue 7. we usally have enough. and one member is a radio buff, he has his own, and brings it to calls.

[LTPVFD]

Chief and Deputy Chief both have their own radios. Radio for duty officer if Chief or Deputy not on duty. Three portable radios in each of the apparatus, one for officer and two for crew members.

Stay safe !!


LTPVFD

[DFCSmash]

BTW, nobody has radios here, until they get to the hall. All radios are vhf and stored in Rescue. 1 Fleetnet in hall, 2 in Rescue.

Pagers only outside the hall.

[OldCigar]

DFC. I am just outside of Thunder Bay. We use pagers and radios with a couple of freq. But what is "FleetNet"? Local, District, Prov?:confused:

[firewhirly]

We're a small dept of 20

Chief, DC and capt's all have radio's.

We then have 5 portables for on scene communications their use varies depending one the nature of the call, as an example though with a structure fire..BA teams get one each ( usually 2- 3 teams) and RIT team gets one... on scene accountability officer gets one.

There are fixed radio's in each truck, as well as one portable TMR and one fixed TMR. We all carry pagers.

[Quincy]

All officers have radios (4), the rest are kept on the first due pumper (6). There's no special distribution of the radios on any scene. Normally the pumper operator grabs one and the same with the tanker driver.

[cfergie]

30 members

Radio Carried Full Time
1 - Chief
1 - Deputy
4 - Captians (1 each)
2 - Lieut. (1 each)
2 - Spares on Pumpers (1 each)
3 - Spares in Hall

13 Radio Total = More than enough.

[BenDiesel]

In our department we are all vollies and we all have radios, no pagers, The chief says pagers cost half as much as radios so why not just outfit everyone with a radio.

[Michael13]

BEN---
How do you like carrying the radio in your pocket or on your belt line? Is the radio quite small? How many stations use your frequency? Do you ever have a problem with too much chatter??

[BenDiesel]

WE use two different sizes. one is about the size of the pagers except for the antenna. Mine is the bigger one and I always have it on my belt. It's like anything, you just get used to it. We have a dedicated channel for FD use only so we don't have a problem with a lot of chatter. We also use tones so everything has to go through the repeater, that way we don't have to worry about unauthorized users.

[dave5171]

All of our Officers have radios but only the Chief and Dep. Chief are allowed to responed on air while travelling to a call. When any officer arrives at the call or at the hall will he then sign on the air to let dispatch know a officer is on scene or responding with apperatis. Each Truck has 4 portables on them and get assigned out according by the scene commander.

[ndvfd_ff33]

Chief has his own radio is his truck..But the 2 Dep's Have Portables...and we have 4 others...

[lharrity]

In our FD we all have a radio. We don't use pagers. We hear the tone, we organize our response over our radios. And get details as they are coming in, much better than pagers. We have two fire Dept's serving the same area and we get their calls as well as the ambulance. This is very good because we often end sharing resources and often end up being dispatched to the same calls as the other FD. Or to assist the ambulance. We have about 24people on paper with radio's and the other deparment has about 18 or so.

[Brando]

In our dept chief, depchief and officers have radios, as well as driver on call. There is 1 portable in each pumper, 4 in rescue and 4 in equipment van.
Sometimes there can be too much radio talk, hard to radio units out of the hall, but for the most part its kept to a minimum.