res6cue

I believe that you're the one who needs to research the facts. Here is the exact timeline of events: 21:56 - 911 call to Rockland reporting CPR in progress aboard tugboat Pilgrim 21:57 - Stony Point FD and Sheriff's marine units dispatched 22:19 - Haverstraw Fire Inspector spots tugboat at Tilcon's Haverstraw location 22:30 - Sheriff's marine unit on scene, boarding tugboat The Rockland County Sheriff's marine unit was on scene and boarded the vessel 34 minutes after the initial distress call to Rockland 911, which was 11 minutes after the location was positively identified by cell phone ping. Now go ahead and explain where you came up with that ridiculous bit about how: 45 minutes hadn't even elapsed between the initial 911 call and the Sheriff's marine unit boarding the vessel. Facts matter. Except for the unavoidable and unfortunate delay in finding the vessel due to them reporting their location incorrectly, it was a pretty straightforward operation by Rockland units. I stand by my initial point, which is that the bulk of the confusion was limited to Westchester units.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to "abandon" UHF fireground. In fact, that is one of the few things the surrounding counties got right so far...Westchester, Rockland, Orange fire depts all operate on UHF fireground, making interops easy. 44-Control monitors all UHF fireground in Rockland by way of receivers at all 12 trunked system sites. They "vote" the strongest signal so that the clearest transmission is always heard on the consoles in the radio room. There is no reason that Westchester couldn't do the same, assuming they ever get this new trunked system built out. If you're advocating for some sort of fireground system that goes through repeaters or a trunked system, vs analog simplex line-of-sight...then I'm afraid you're going down the wrong path. K.I.S.S. when it comes to fireground comms, do not unnecessarily complicate things or depend on equipment at fixed remote sites. Nothing is safer and more reliable than two radios communicating directly line-of-sight, period. You're never going to have "one system" for multiple counties like that. The best we can hope for is that Westchester and Orange both get their acts together and finally build out their 700 MHz systems. Obviously Rockland is already ahead of the pack, having operated on the 700 MHz system for three years already. Time for the others to get on board so that the systems can be interconnected via ISSI. That will solve quite a few of these "interoperability" issues.

Let's be perfectly clear about this: the so called "logistical mess" was confined to the Westchester side of things last night. Rockland units (Sheriff's marine unit, Stony Point FD marine unit, EMS on land) were all coordinated very well through 44-Control on Rockland's trunked system, including all involved agencies in direct communication on the Interop 1 talkgroup when necessary. The Sheriff's marine unit was in constant contact with Coast Guard Sector NY on Marine 16, and also had direct contact with the tugboat. They were also the first unit to board the vessel to provide aid. Stony Point's fire chief and marine unit were in direct and constant contact with the Sheriff's marine unit. Notwithstanding the fact that the location was initially mis-reported and it took some time for the correct location to be determined (it happens, especially at night on the river), there were no issues otherwise with the Rockland side of things. Note that this incident was on the Rockland shore, and that 44-Control notified 60-Control more or less as a courtesy than anything else. Somehow, that turned into 60-Control dispatching just about every fire dept marine unit in the county, along with the WCPD marine unit. Perhaps the real issue here is that it appears that Westchester units are allowed to self-dispatch, with no one actually managing resources. That does not happen in Rockland. If 44-Control doesn't dispatch you, then you do not respond, plain and simple. I was monitoring Fire 10 on the Westchester trunked system, and it was painful. You have a fire chief assuming command on the opposite shore 5 miles away from the actual incident? Really? Next time maybe Rockland doesn't bother to notify Westchester at all when the incident is on the Rockland shore. If garbage like last night is the norm for Westchester, and no one can control the response, then just stay home.

At around 1730 hrs on July 2nd, 2014, there was a hardware failure with the simulcast controller for UHF fire paging on 470.800. The failure was caused by a lightening strike in the rear parking lot at 44-Control, which caused damage to the port on the controller that gets the audio from the consoles in the radio room. For just under two hours, there was no dispatch audio coming out over 470.800, however the tones and dispatch audio were still broadcasting fine over 46.18. Most departments still had low band pagers issued out, with some UHF pagers already in the mix. Yes, departments were advised to muster manpower to standby at the firehouses so they could minimize the impact of those who had UHF pagers missing calls during those two hours. The failure did not result in a doomsday scenario, as all departments were able to monitor dispatch over 46.18 with the low band equipment that was still in place. Within a few weeks of the failure, a more robust backup UHF paging solution was aggressively implemented. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a failure like this to smack some sense into those controlling the purse strings. Note that none of this had anything to do with the 700 MHz trunked system, which continued to operate at 100% capacity during the UHF paging failure.

Change the system from ID SEARCH to ID SCAN, then it will only monitor the talkgroup you've programmed and will ignore the rest. http://marksscanners.com/BCT15X/bct15x.shtml#id%20scan/search

It's HIPAA, not HIPPA. I can't believe people who work in EMS/health care still can't even get it right after so many years...

1 - There is no "Citywide 2" 483.38125. It was licensed, but never implemented. 2 - The narrowband waiver for VHF expires on Dec 31st of this year. After that they either have to operate in narrowband, or turn VHF off. 3 - Almost every vehicle has a UHF radio by now, there are very few VHF radios left in the field (if any at this point). Hint: when you hear the MDC "squawk" at the end of the transmission, the unit is transmitting with a UHF radio. 4 - Like Rob said, everything is currently being simulcast over both VHF and UHF, but per #2 above, not for much longer.

Police use it the most, followed by the fire service. It goes up quite a bit to search for marijuana plants and to search for/observe other illegal activities, or to search for missing/lost persons. I know that FLIR cameras have become standard equipment on helicopters these days, but Chopper 1's was installed back in 2001 and has come in pretty handy in those 13 years. Ditto for the searchlight being pretty standard and mundane, but when you need to light up the river to find a jumper, or light up a cliff on Hook Mountain in Nyack to locate stranded hikers while the high-angle team rescues them, it's a godsend having that thing up in the air hovering above. EMS certainly uses it the least, given the lack of medevac capability. Like I replied to Seth, I'm sure in an extreme case where there's no other choice you could throw a patient in the back and fly them to a hospital, but I don't know of any incidents where it has happened. I do know that back in 2007 they flew down to JFK to pick up botulism antitoxins that were flown in for a critical patient at Good Samaritan Hospital, so I suppose you can classify that under "medical usage".

Well, that escalated quickly lol. For the record, yes I did get a bit snippy with my previous replies. We would all love to have a brand new helicopter for Rockland that had the same capabilities of WCPD's two new birds, but it's just not in the cards at this point. I think they did an admirable job with this overhaul, spending less than 15% of the cost of a new unit to keep this one safely flying for the next 5-10 years or however long before they can hopefully upgrade to a new model with more capability. I think much of it comes down to something we all wish a lot of agencies would do, which is to take a look at the resources around them and determine if they really NEED that new toy, or if it's just something that would be desirable but not critical. We see fire departments with overkill duplication of apparatus resources and we all shake our heads. I think given the abundance of air support in this area, and the proximity of various helicopters to Rockland, there's no urgent need for them to spend a few million on a new helicopter. Westchester has their two new birds that are within a few minutes flight time of Rockland; the NYSP fly out of Stewart and are also just a few minutes out; West Point has two new choppers that have hoist and air drop capability that are also based out of Stewart; NYPD aviation has responded up to Rockland a few times; etc. Believe it or not, it used to be that Rockland County was one of the few agencies in the area to have a helicopter dedicated exclusively for public safety usage. Westchester didn't get their first helicopter until 1994, a full 20 years after Rockland was already flying their own, and 8 years after this one was already flying. I don't have the stats on the NYSP and when they had a helicopter in the region, or West Point for that matter (I know they recently replaced a pair of Huey's with the new Eurocopters), but I have to imagine from what I know and remember that for a good while, it was basically Rockland or the NYPD if you wanted a public safety helicopter in the region.

It underwent an overhaul, that's correct. No one claimed that it underwent a "capabilities enhancement upgrade" program, which I think is a very important distinction. It's a 40 year old 5 seater (2 cockpit, 3 rear) Bell 206B, which is historically used only for observation...not lifting, hoisting or medevac operations. It's a small helicopter by modern standards. No functionality was "left on the table" during the overhaul, they just wanted it brought up to current standards with a few fairly mundane improvements like the new UV resistant cockpit glass, new skids to replace the old pan float type skids, and a shiny new paint job/design. Oh and it needed a new P25 Phase II capable multi-band airborne radio so it can operate on Rockland's new trunked radio system. The initial allocation for this overhaul was $150,000, however during the overhaul process it was determined that it needed a new tail boom section, which tacked on another $170,000 to the cost. So if we put aside the unforeseen expense of the unavoidable tail boom replacement, we're left with a $150,000 overhaul to a 40 year old machine that was intended just to bring the critical components up to date; not to turn it into Airwolf or Blue Thunder! It's not my opinion that this particular helicopter has served a valuable purpose as an "airborne observation platform", it's a fact based on 28 years of usage in that capacity (plus 11 years prior to that with the original county helicopter).

Seth, This is the same helicopter Rockland has owned and operated since 1986, there has been no change to the availability or staffing or anything else. Same as it always was: Housed at the Fire Training Center, 24/7/365 availability (weather conditions permitting,of course), and staffed by four volunteer pilots who are paged out by 44-Control. The average turnaround time from page out to in-the-air is 30 minutes. The helicopter will fly with just the pilot on board if need be, with common practice being for it to pick up additional personnel on the ground at other locations as necessary (assuming the additional personnel won't make it to the FTC within a reasonable amount of time and would cause a launch delay that eats up valuable in-the-air time). I'll let someone else answer the medevac question, as I don't have the definitive answer. Regardless, it doesn't apply to Rockland's helicopter since it only seats three in the rear and is not used to transport patients. In extreme cases where no other options exist, you could certainly 'do what needs to be done', but all other options would have to be exhausted first.

My post was full of plenty of "evidence" as to why the helicopter is a valuable resource for Rockland and the area. You didn't offend me personally, I just don't think that the uninformed opinion of a guy whose location is listed as "Florida" matters one bit as relates to Rockland County's helicopter. You're certainly entitled to post whatever opinion you'd like to, it's a free country and an open discussion forum. That doesn't mean it has to matter, though! Oh and I'm sure plenty of guys from Rockland would agree, and would probably have the very same "shove it" attitude towards you after reading your post. QTIP!

You're certainly in the minority with your thinking, especially when it comes to the people whose opinion actually matter, meaning those who work and live in and around Rockland County. Those who understand the purpose of the helicopter and who have appreciated the fact that Rockland has operated their own helicopter for nearly 40 years. Ask the river departments from both counties how much of a "waste" the helicopter has been over the past few decades when they need the bridge or water to be lit up, or need infrared search capability. You know, Westchester County didn't always have a fancy set of brand new helicopters, so who do you think provided those services for all of those years? Your comment "going to turn out to be some sort of VIP transport vehicle" makes very little sense. Do you realize that this is the same helicopter that Rockland has owned and operated since 1986, and is not something new for the county? The existing helicopter was sent out for a much needed refurb and updates, but it's been the same exact helicopter for the past 28 years. As far as the helicopter being used for brush fires, it's quite valuable being up in the air when something breaks out in Bear Mountain/Harriman State Parks. This isn't out west where huge water drops are required for wildland fires, most brush fires in the parks in this area are dealt with by cutting fire lines and letting the fire run its natural course. It's nice to have a helicopter with infrared capability up in the air within 30 minutes to spot for the Forest Rangers and ground crews. It's nice that Westchester found $9 million to spend on a pair of brand new Bell 407's, but that wasn't in the cards for Rockland. There was an attempt to purchase a Bell 407 with the same capabilities as Westchester in 2006, but it never happened. Instead they came up with $320,000 of asset forfeiture funds and gave "old reliable" a refurb. Anyways, as I said...the people in and around Rockland appreciate the fact that the county has operated their own helicopters for 40 years now, and they understand that the current model does have limitations. There are no shortage of other agencies in the region that have additional capabilities (WCPD's two helicopters, NYSP, NYPD, West Point, etc.), and I'm quite sure that if Rockland spent $4.5 million on a brand new Bell 407 with all the bells and whistles that WCPD's helicopters have, many would complain that it's a duplication of services and a waste of taxpayer's money...instead of making comments about how the current model is a "waste" because it can't drop 100 gallons of water on a brush fire in the woods. Damned if you do, damned if you don't!

Two videos on News 12's site http://hudsonvalley.news12.com/news/rockland-county-emergency-services-helicopter-flying-again-after-2-year-overhaul-1.7830637 http://hudsonvalley.news12.com/multimedia/video-rockland-county-helicopter-1.7829046

No one single agency operates it. Oversight for the helicopter is governed by a board that represents all of Rockland's emergency services (H.E.L.P., see below). The helicopter is equipped for aerial observation and air support operations (search, illumination ,fire spotting, etc.). It does not have medevac, hoist or firefighting capabilities (e.g. Bambi bucket). It is equipped with a 30 million candle power searchlight and a FLIR camera. http://rocklandgov.com/files/9013/5998/5543/Helicopter3Panel.pdf http://newcity.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/rocklands-emergency-helicopter-getting-a-makeover-tha806786a2d4

WCPD Air 2 assisted Orangeburg FD/Rockland County during the large brush fire on Clausland Mountain in November. Also assisting with water drops were the NYSP with their Bell UH-1H Huey N129SP, as well as West Point 2nd Aviation Detachment with their Eurocopter UH-72 Lakota, based out of Stewart.

Old news. Like EMT111 said, Whistler bought GRE's intellectual property when they went out of business last year. The scanners they've announced so far are nothing more than re-badged GRE and Radio Shack designs (GRE manufactured most of Radio Shack's recent scanner models). Whether or not Whistler follows through on their promise to come up with new designs and features remains to be seen. Not quite. The GRE PSR-800 was already capable of decoding P25 Phase II by October 2012 via a firmware update. The two new Uniden models were released just a few months ago. Technically yes, Whistler hasn't released their re-badged version of the PSR-800, but Uniden was way behind GRE on TDMA decoding. I was a beta tester for Uniden back in mid-2012 when they attempted to get the HomePatrol to decode TDMA, and it was a failure due to the scanner not having enough CPU/DSP horsepower to pull it off.

Rockland is now dispatched on a 10 site simulcast system on 470.800. While 46.18 will remain active for likely years to come, it will be a legacy/backup/mutual aid system only. The county is issuing 25 Minitor V T-Band pagers each to all 26 fire departments, with many more budgeted by each department to systematically replace all of the low band pagers. Somewhat on the same topic...on Monday, March 3rd all Rockland fire department will go live on the new 700 MHz P25 system and will no longer operate on low band.

Am I seeing double, or did the county purchase a second Bell 407 in 2011? Two separate FAA registrations (N509PD and N592PD), two different years of manufacture (2006 and 2011), and two different serial numbers on the registrations (53703 and 54073). They didn't publicize the second one like they did with the first, that's for sure. I couldn't find a single article online announcing the purchase of the second one, nor is it mentioned on the DPS website. http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NNumbertxt=509PD http://flic.kr/p/aumzx4 http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NNumbertxt=592PD http://flic.kr/p/cDa4v7

Thanks for the confirmation. It's remarkable, given the post you made over the summer regarding the (lack of) availability of the pilots because the county is concerned with OT being out of control, and yet the county can find $9 million to spend within the last 8 years for two fully equipped, state-of-the-art helicopters. I'm not hating on the PD or the aviation unit, so don't anybody get it twisted. I actually think it's fantastic that they're so well equipped, and I know they keep very busy, so this isn't a case of some outfit buying a very expensive piece of equipment that will only get used a handful of times a year at most. More power to them for managing to pull of getting two of these 407's...I only hope they staff them properly so that when their services are requested, they can actually have a crew to operate them.

Rockland County has a longstanding countywide Mutual Aid Plan that all 26 depts participate in. There are no "1 to 1" agreements per se, although some depts do establish AMA arrangements for certain types of calls, e.g. a dept might have one particular neighboring dept dispatched automatically for a FAST to all reported structure fires within their jurisdiction. These arrangements still fall under the overall countywide plan, however, and are established in the county's CAD system. 44-Control is the single point of dispatch for every fire dept in the county; there are no other PSAP's that dispatch fire anymore. https://rocklandgov.com/files/5213/4211/7836/Mutual_Aid_Plan_Revised_2011.pdf

So, he will not allow his village workers to respond with the village dept to calls within the village...but he's perfectly fine with town and county workers who volunteer with surrounding depts responding mutual aid into the village to bail them out? Ridiculous. When you start to exaggerate that badly to make your point, you lose credibility. SVFD averages 1,000 calls per year, which works out to 2.7 calls per day. Taking into account that a number of these calls come in at night and on weekends, the percentage that come in during weekday working hours starts to dwindle. Then take into account how many of those weekday working hours calls are not false alarms, but are instead legitimate calls, and the number dwindles even more. Of the 929 calls they've responded to so far in 2013, 414 have occurred between 0700 and 1800 hrs Monday through Friday, which is a pretty generous 11 hour workday (there were only 328 calls between 0900-1700 M-F). 150 of those alarms were not in the automatic alarm, telephone alarm, or alarm sounding category; they were legitimate calls to varying degrees. That leaves 264 that were most likely false alarms, which works out to be about 1 per weekday. "Every five minutes"? Hardly. They are also at the top of the chart as far as legitimate fires and incidents are concerned, so they're hardly chasing 1,000 false alarms each year. Yes, 534 of their alarms this year have come in as an automatic alarm, telephone alarm, or alarm sounding...so assuming that all of them were false/nuisance alarms, that's a 57% false alarm rate. It's probably a little bit lower than that assuming a few of those turned out to be legitimate causes, but it's still over 50%. However as broken down above, less than half of those types of alarms have come in during weekday working hours. The bottom line is that these numbers matter. It matters how many calls come in during normal working hours, and it matters how many of them are BS alarms vs legitimate alarms. If the mayor wants to make a stink about guys lollygagging at BS calls for "3 hours" while on the clock, then let him back that claim up with some data. Instead this guy wants to settle old grudges, that's really what this is about. Anyone familiar with this guy's history understands this is not about him "doing good for the village", it's personal. He should've sat down with the FD to come up with a policy that made sense, such as limiting the types of calls they can respond to initially. You know, hang back for automatic alarms unless it turns out to be a legitimate call, then they can respond if a request for additional manpower is transmitted. Here's the breakdown of their incidents in 2013 so far, for those interested in raw numbers: 929 Calls in 2013 as of Dec 4th 416 AUTOMATIC ALARM 69 ALARM SOUNDING 49 TELEPHONE ALARM 45 BRUSH/MULCH/RUBBISH OUTSIDE 36 SMOKE/ODOR OF BURNING - INSIDE 32 STRUCTURE FIRE 30 HAZMAT 27 ELEVATOR RESCUE 25 VEHICLE FIRE 24 ELECTRICAL OUTSIDE/WIRES/POLE 21 OVEN/APPLIANCE/COOKING FIRE 20 NATURAL GAS - OUTSIDE 18 HAZMAT 16 CO W/ SYMPTOMS 15 SMOKE IN THE BUILDING 14 SMOKE/ODOR OF BURNING - OUTSIDE 14 ELECTRICAL INSIDE 11 UNKNOWN TYPE - OUTSIDE 9 UNKNOWN TYPE - INSIDE 9 DUMPSTER FIRE 8 FLOODING CONDITION 6 ASSIST POLICE/EMS/UTILITIES 3 EXTRICATION CALL 3 BOILER/FURNACE 3 BARBEQUE GRILL/OUTSIDE EQUIPMENT 1 WASHDOWN 1 STANDBY 1 RUBBISH FIRE INSIDE 1 PUMP OUT 1 COLLAPSE 1 ACCIDENT - NO EXTRICATION

For those wondering what a P25 Phase II TDMA system actually sounds like, here is a short clip of some overnight activity on Rockland's system. The clip features both mobile and portable radios operating in several areas of the county, including Haverstraw, Pomona, and Spring Valley. This audio was recorded on a PC connected directly to a Motorola APX 7500 Consolette, which is basically a mobile radio in desktop form. The audio was originally recorded as a .wav file, but was converted to .mp3 to make the file size more manageable online. Audio quality is slightly reduced from how it would sound directly out of the speaker of a radio on the system, but is still pretty representative of what these systems actually sound like in the field. http://www.44-control.com/RCPSCS/RCPSCS_20131119.mp3

You're comparing TDMA on a commercial cellular network to TDMA on a public safety grade P25 system...apples and oranges. Judging by your post, you've likely never experienced a P25 Phase II TDMA system with an APX radio. I have with Rockland's new system, and the fact is that Phase II TDMA with the AMBE+2 vocoder actually has better audio quality than Phase I FDMA with the IMBE vocoder. That's what it really comes down to, the quality of the vocoder determines the quality of the audio, and AMBE+2 is much improved over IMBE. Is the audio quality as good as 25 kHz analog? Of course not, no one is arguing that point. But for you to talk about signals on cell phones being bad, and somehow making the case for that being directly comparable to a P25 system, misses the mark. No one is arguing that point. The NFPA has been warning against the use of both digital and trunking for fireground communications for years, and with good reason. Fireground communications should follow the KISS principle, and should be analog simplex, period. Rockland is leaving fireground on UHF simplex, and I suspect so will Westchester. It sounds like you're under the impression that interior ops are going to take place on a digital trunked system...that is not the case. It cuts both ways. A well designed trunked system can actually improve coverage in some cases. How many times have guys been on portable on one of those "basic systems", and they're all static because the signal can't reach the receiver 5 miles away? If we're going to have a discussion about these digital systems (which aren't going anywhere, by the way), let's at least be fair and deal with the facts.

No problem! In addition to the different frequency bands, none of the older model XTL or XTS radios are compatible with the new Phase II TDMA systems, so they wouldn't have worked anyway.