SteveC7010

As a communications industry pro, I've followed the Minitor thing for quite a while. Here's some good info for all of you: First, several large dealers have bought up big supplies of Minitor V's and accessories. While you won't be able to get anything but batteries and belt clips direct from Motorola, these dealerships have plenty of inventory available. Wiscom is one of them and there are more. LB V's are still available, just not from Motorola. Second, it's not just the LB market that is affected. Many departments have large inventories of VHF or UHF V's plus programming capability, including my own and everyone else in my county. We're not buying VI's for the forseeable future. If we need a replacement pager(s), we'll pick up a V or two from one of these dealers. Realistically, none of my squad members can make use of the added features of the VI anyway. (Minor point here, my squad's pagers are only a couple of years old so replacing them really isn't feasible. If the VI offered vastly improved performance, we'd think about it, I suppose, but it doesn't so it's a non-issue.) Third, the jury is still out on whether the VI receives better than the V. I get mixed reports, but the general feeling is that the V works just as well as the new VI. Again, no need to step up in my view. Fourth, Motorola will continue to support the V with depot repair for at least another 4 or 5 years. In all fairness, those of you who are in LB counties have not really been left dangling. You can still get LB V's, accessories, and repairs. The sources may be different, but the gear is still available. There is no sudden vacuum of LB pagers.

If there is a New York State law regarding this, please provide verifiable section, etc. I am not familiar with any law like this and I'm sure that others may be wondering, too.

School rules before FD rules for students who have yet to graduate from high school. If the FD is that dependent on FF's who are still in high school, then the FD bears responsibility to find itself some qualified people who are beyond high school. The school is not cutting into the FD's resources; the FD placed too many eggs in one basket.

The 911 building looks small from the street, but inside if seems really big. Primary operations is 90' x 60' or so. Plenty of space for all the consoles and a huge circular supervisors podium in the middle. I'll start a new thread and post some interior pics. They're not new but you'll get the idea. Over the years, we had a lot of visitors from the rest of the country. They were all keenly interested to learn how we built an all civilian, multi-agency, multi-jurisdiction comprehensive 911 covering the entire county for police, fire, and ems. The key to getting all the 911 phone traffic is call-taking standards plus EMD. When we instituted EMD, all the volunteer and commercial ambulance services int he county shut down their 7 digit emergency lines. There was no way they could train and maintain their staff to the EMD standards as we do. We have two full time instructor/QI people on staff just for EMD. Same for the rest of calltaking. Our system is so advanced, both technology and human, no one wanted the comparative liability of answering emergency calls. The volunteer fire departments dropped their 7 digit emergency numbers for much the same reason as many of them were doing EMS runs. 2-2-2 was the code for a second alarm that was transmitted over the old landline ticker tape and bell systems that were used long ago before radios and such. 3-3-3 meant a third alarm and so on. These old systems were in every city fire house, and there had to be a man awake and monitoring them 24/7 unless the company was out of quarters. Somewhere, I am certain there is a master list of all those old codes. But to this day, 2-2-2 and so on are still part of the working vocabulary. of RFD and 911.

I just added Vital Signs 2014 to the site's calendar. vitalsignsconference for details and such.

Dispatch up there is one of the top 911 centers in the country. They hold every accredidation possible for comm centers. When I retired in '03, there were 178 employees. They're up to 220 and growing. I was hired in '76 as one of the very first civilian replacements for police officers by RPD. (I made the jump to Dispatcher II (police/fire/ems) in '87 or '88.) That was the start of forming up 911 since RPD dispatch was the largest dispatch group in the county and we already occupied the site of the planned 911 facility. RFD dispatch moved over from HQ and joined up in the first half of the 1980's. We jumped to our first CAD system, turned on 911, and began absorbing other dispatch operations from around the county in the mid 1980's. We moved into our own custom designed and built stand-alone 911 facility in 1994. Today, typical on-duty staff is a shift manager, 3 supervisors, a dozen police dispatchers, a dozen calltakers, and half a dozen fire/ems dispatchers. Our center manager ranks with the police and fire chiefs. 911 is funded mostly by Monroe County but operated by the City of Rochester. Quint and midi was controversial, but had its good points. The two man midi's were great for ems runs and service calls. Since the midis were Class A pumpers, they used them extensively for water supply at fires. The firefighters felt the midis were a way to reduce manpower. They were a dispatcher's bad dream because of the complex rules for response. Sometimes they could go alone and other times they were treated as just part of the quint and not counted as a separate unit. RFD uses one of the slickest dispatch systems I've ever seen. The city is divided up in to hundreds of small areas called nodes. There's a huge database of response time to each node from each firehouse and other RFD facilities. When a job comes in, CAD automatically determines how many of what type units are needed, and recommends them based on who is in service and where they are currently located. For most runs, the dispatcher reviews the CAD recommendation and makes the dispatch as recommended. Occasionally, there's variations from the recommendation but not often and always with a good reason. I moved east to the southern Adirondacks a few years ago so I don't get back that way as often as I'd like. But I was there last Wednesday for lunch with the retirees and then the annual awards presentation at the center. And, yeah, western NY has a lot going for it, particularly the Rochester area. BTW, 911 is continuous recruitment and they are constantly hiring. I am not sure what the starting pay is these days, but you can stop by Rochester City Hall and pick up the job notice and application. IIRC, there's no residency requirement except to live in the county. Sorry to ramble but you asked some great questions...

In my nearly 30 of 911 service, we saw the most scanner abuse from a very few media reporters. Generally, they were new at the job and overly eager to jump on stories. We'd send out units for an MVA with injuries and the news phone would ring immediately. They'd want the number of patients, severity, etc., etc. etc. We'd politely remind them that they really ought to wait until someone is on scene before demanding details. Most of them got the hint pretty quickly, but we did have to call managing editors every now and then to have them deal with abusers who wouldn't work with us. We also told media loud and clear that there would be no information on police events until they were over. We politely reminded them that our media phone (direct to 911 supervisors desk) was a privilege, not a right, and that we had no problem ignoring their calls if they didn't work with us and follow our guidelines. The biggest factor in our favor was that if one reporter was being a real jerk, we'd inform the others that if he/she didn't behave, we would not answer the phone at all for a while. Peer pressure is a wonderful thing.

Great photos, Seth! You must have been close by to catch some of those shots with a lot of smoke still showing. It was my great honor to have been a Police/Fire/EMS dispatcher up there for nearly 30 years. Dispatching RFD was some of the best of the best. What you doing up there so far from home?

Over on elightbars.org, there are a number of threads on cleaning and restoring lightbars. If you search around a bit you will find plenty of detailed info and product suggestions. I'm a regular over there under the user name Steve0625. As the website's name suggests, they are focused on all things related to lights and sirens and related products. There's a lot of emphasis on restoring vintage and collectable stuff and on installs of current products.

Wow! This thing is amazing. We've got a Stryker power stretcher, but not the Powerload system. The cost of the Powerload was a huge turnoff for us. We're a small squad with less than 300 calls per year and could not justify the expense. But even if the IN/X is double the cost of a Stryker stretcher, it would be worth it. We run a lot of day calls with just two or three of us retirees. I'm the young 'un at 66, and the less heavy lifting we each do, the safer for all of us. I grew up in EMS on Ferno 29's and just met the Stryker four years ago when I got back in after a long haitus. The Stryker is great on the ground, and loading and unloading from the ambulance if two of us can lift the foot end until the legs retract or extend, but with a heavier patient, it can be a stretch. Stairs and such are much worse. The IN/X would seem to solve many of these problems. I like it!

Fully agree with your assessment, Seth. Even a good CAD system with diligent operators should solve most of that problem. I've found that lazy dispatchers don't record status changes into CAD when a unit advises. Management and supervision lets them get away with it day after day until it becomes acceptable procedure. Thus the shout-outs and more. I spent most of my career using one of the best CAD systems in the world in a very busy 911 center. As an instructor and mentor to many new dispatchers, we held them to a much higher standard while in training, and beyond. Luckily, our supervision and management agreed with and promoted an extremely high standard of dispatcher competence. It was nice to work in a center with everyone doing things correctly.