Rsudol

Where im at the County is divided up into 4 quadrants. Quad 1, Quad 2, Quad 3 and Quad 4. Every department is given a Dept number 1-9 and then members and apparatus have groupings. So Apparatus and Personel have 4 or 5 Digit numbers. Groupsings are as follows, Officers 1-10, FD Personnel 11-50, Ambulances 51-59 Engines 60-69, Trucks 70-75, Utilities 75-79, Support Vehicles (ATV, Command, Wildland, Trailers) 80-89, Tenders 90-95, Water Support (Dive Vehicles, Boats) 95-99, EMS Personel 100-140. So Example an officer for Quad 4 Department 7 would be 4701. Pretty Simple. Always know what the vehicle type or what personel are comming. Based on the quads departments in each quad also have a quad tone in pagers so if a Mutual Aide call goes out in said Quad all pagers in every department in that quad go off regardless of if only 1 department is requested. then everyone knows whats going on too.

Now i havent been in a westchester department for just about 5 years now. Where im out in Wisconsin the county and neighboring counties all use the passport accountability method. Basically every Rig has a Red and White Tag engraved with the rig info. Each FF/EMT etc has 2 Passport tags engraved with their name and id number. When a member gets on the rig they hand over both passport tags to the OIC and he places them on the corresponding white and rad rig tags, in order OIC at top and the remianing positions in middle and MPO on the bottom upside down so eveyone knows who the MPO is. Then the Red tag stays with the rig and the white tag goes to staging and then on to operations etc. http://www.passportaccountability.com/index.html is the method and Wisconsin is heavily involved in MABAS http://www.mabaswisconsin.org/ which was started by Illinois and has expanded to a number of states.

Looks like they run a rescue out of that station as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broward_County_Sheriff's_Office

Why not look at the solution Know Entry systems has for gate access. Many areas of the country use it successfully. If your community has a know box system in place it would be a natural fit to legislate gated communitys add know entry keys to those gates as well.

Mamaroneck spent alot of money implementing with great success the fire ground plan here, we were able to make sure a portable radio is available for every interior FF and additional are available for Exterior crews too. We dont use repeaters and we seem to work just fine.

The FCC didnt demand that Nextel move their frequencies, it was Nextel being a good corporate company who ponyed up the $$$$ and the plan to move, so emergency service providers using 800mhz spectrum dont have interference problems. As for the constant outages, one should see that emergency services shouldnt rely on any cellular carrier for emergency communications. That is why we all have made significant investment into buying new radio equipment.