Portable Radios

[rkline]

Please carry your assigned portable radio whenever you leave quarters. This raises the likelihood that if something bad goes down, at least one crew member may be able to activate his emergency encoder. If possible, relay to Metrosafe the situation at hand

Radio Communications SOP:

13 - All career firefighters, when on duty and away from their assigned station, shall have a portable radio with them. The radio shall be left on, and shall be in the scan mode, listening to FIRE 5, JCF PAGE and FD TAC 80

I know only the officer radios scan. Will check with the administration to see if they can be brought into compliance with the SOP

Roy

[rwcarlson]

Great point. If a guy is carrying another units radio like 8084 or 8037 and he hits the orange button no one knows who it is. Also its easier to track down a lost radio if you only carry the radio assigned to your spot on the truck. For guys worried about battery life, the radio should last at least 12 hours turned on. If the battery meter shows only 1 bar you still have a few hours. Then once it starts beeping you have more than a half hour.

[rkline]

I believe Metrosafe was the agency that decided to disable the scan feature on all "suburban" firefighter portable radios, so our SOP would need to be revised regarding this issue

Roy

[ofd8001]

The decision for firefighter portable radios (P-2, P-3, P-4, etc) to have the scan disabled was a fire service decision.

I was a part of the fire service radio users group that talked about the new radio system's features, including scanning capability. There was lots of discussion on scanning. Here's what the final thinking was:

We wanted to be sure that some radios at emergency scenes would be listening only to the channel assigned to an incident. That way important information would not be missed.

On the other hand there is value in knowing about other things going on that may tangentially affect the incident. For example a neighboring department having its own incident means mutual aid might take longer to arrive.

So it was decided that officer portable radios would have the scan enabled, but the P-2 etc. radios would not be scan enabled, thus giving us the best of both worlds.

Portable radios assigned to 8081, 8084, 8090, 8091, 8094 are scan enabled as is the officer portable for 8072.

Here's the theory behind the OFD SOP. When firefighters are away from the fire station we want them to be listening to both FIRE 5, the primary operations channel and JCF PAGE which is the knockout channel. Listening to JCF PAGE ensures firefighters will hear any dispatches pertaining to them. (There's an outside chance that a firefighter may have inadvertently left his pager at home, or the pager is defective, or happens to be in a dead spot).

FD TAC 80 was added to the list of channels to be scanned because from time to time we have the need to contact a unit for administrative purposes. Attempting to contact a unit on FD TAC 80 before doing so on FIRE 5 may avoid disrupting an on-going incident on FIRE 5.

Thus whenever firefighters are away from the fire station, they should have a radio with them scanning FIRE 5, JCF PAGE and FD TAC 80. If it's a group of firefighters on a company, then the officer's radio will be scanning. If it's a lone firefighter out doing errands, mostly likely a service vehicle with a scanning radio will be involved.

This may be a good opportunity for a reminder. If another department is involved with a major incident, we may find it interesting to monitor the incident. If we select the channel assigned to the incident on our portable radio, that becomes the priority channel. That sets the stage for us missing a call on "our" channels (FIRE 5 or JCF PAGE). (By "selecting" I mean rotating the channel knob).

Adding to Roy's valuable point of always having a radio with you if you are involved in a call for service and need help. There are other opportunities for us to stumble upon some kind of emergency. We could be at the grocery store or at a restaurant and observe someone having a medical or other type of emergency. Having a portable with you is that "lifeline" for calling assistance.

[rkline]

I stand corrected. Thanks