[HFDlist] Dispatch update

[Russ Hall]

All:

Today we held a quarterly meeting of the regional dispatch towns.  We 
have changed some procedures to align the 3 fire departments together 
and start streamlining dispatch operations:

1. Daily tone tests: As of tomorrow, dispatch will be handling all tone 
tests, on duty crews will no longer be doing the nightly test.  Dispatch 
will be doing the tone tests for all 3 towns at 08:00 and at 18:30 each 
day.  If we need to do an announcement from HQ we will handle that 
ourselves on a case by case basis.

2. During a working fire, dispatch will now be time stamping the 
incident.  We have set this at 15 minute intervals where they will 
prompt command with how long we are into the incident.  This is new for 
them so it may take a few incidents before it becomes part of the norm.

3.  The dispatch center is now capable of receiving cell calls directly 
rather than those calls being bounced to MSP.  This should cut down on 
call lag for this types of calls.

We are looking into setting up some frequency groups that will allow us 
to simulcast on West Boylston and Princetons frequencies. Once this is 
accomplished, we should only have to sign on on our radio when going 
mutual aid to one of the other towns, so everyone hears it.  This is not 
in place right now so when responding mutual aid to either Princeton or 
WB, just use their frequencies to sign on. No need to do that on our 
radio also since it is the same person answering.

As we move forward, this is obviously a work in progress.  Now that all 
3 towns have been in the system for a while, we can start to streamline 
some things to make it easier on dispatch which will help keep everyone 
on the same page and start hopefully limiting issues.

Thanks:

Russ

-- 
Russ Hall
Fire Chief
Holden Fire Dept.
1370 Main Street
Holden, MA 01520
508-210-5650