SA Firefighter

More like one paid staffer who 'knew' better.  Not entirely the fault of CFS.  Of course the CFS could have stopped it when the issue was raised.

It would be great to know who can / cant make the job, however there are a few issues with using mobile phone technology for a task like this.

Pager messages are just blasted out, if your pager gets it then great, if not meh it tried its best.

An automated phone message system requires that an individual call be placed to each recipient, which must be answered, rejected or dialed out.  The issue is that this is using basic phone cell tower concepts, and I can just imaging what would happen on a big day when the system requests a strike team and then call each of the members - chaos.  Phones use a similar cell system that the GRN does, need I say more.

However it would be very cool if you could push a magic button on your pager which then sent a response back to either your station or comms and gave an indication as to your availability.  Pip has already indicated that this style communication is being trailed elsewhere.

One of the biggest issues with maintaining a list of phone numbers is that they change, but are not updated on the right 'system'.  Alerts has all sorts of strange phone numbers in it, and very confused non CFS members trying to answer the calls.

Of course this always comes down to cost - and as I see it there are far more important things to spend the dollars on that the status of individual members during a turnout.

Sadly the Google Maps API only allows usage if the product that is is used in is free to the community and available on the net.