Unfortunately, it was said that at this meeting, in terms of call receipt & dispatch, "everything will be the same...no change to what you do now, except you talk to the Call sign "Adeladie Fire" not "State HQ"
But then went on to detail the process & procedures which haven't changed, but those procedures were slightly different to what we in Region 1 currently ...and thus created confusion amongst those at the meeting.
It was clear from comments made at the meeting, by those attending, that many people have no idea of why they do the things they do now, in terms of call receipt & dispatch (and that is what we are talking about - call receipt & dispatch NOT SACAD )
There were some issues where suggestions had been made as to what procedures are going to occur, which did show a lack of understanding of how Groups & brigades in general, work with their call receipt & dispatch.
Perhaps to elaborate a little further on what others have posted...
A suggestion was made that when a response page is sent to a CFS brigade, that the Adelaide Fire then ring the ALERTS number for the brigade, to confirm that the page has been received, rather than wait for a brigade to either come up on radio, or ring through on the phone, to acknowledge the RECEIPT of the page.
A few problems with that
It was stated that sometimes if Adelaide Fire were busy, they wouldn't get time to ring the ALERTS in all cases... so straight away you have a system that works some of the time, but not necessarily all of the time.
A major issue for some Groups, the ALERTS system is run on a Group basis, not a brigade basis...so there might be 8 phone answerers on ALERTS. A page for brigade "Somewhere' is sent, and Adelaide Fire rings the ALERTS number to confirm the page. Probelm is only 3 of the phone answerers have a Group Pager, and the rest don't get the page for the "Somewhere" brigade, and hence can't confirm that a page has been received, because their pagers can't receive the message anyway...
In addition, if that Group ALERTS system was contacted everytime there was a page for that Group, that would be a lot of calls through a small number of people, who may well be rather peeved to receive large number of calls, for something they have no involvement in anyway!!
It was suggested from those presenting the session, that we could call in on our home phone, or our mobile on the way to the station,to acknowledge the page. I don't think the concept of a) if you don't have a hands free kit, you are acting illegally in making the call, and b) many areas have limited or no mobile phone coverage, and hence making the call on the way to the station is pointless!!!
The issue in relation to times taken to acknowledge a call was also a point of discussion - currently EMA brigades have 4 minutes to acknowledge the call with Adelaide Fire, while the rest of us currently have 6 minutes to acknowledge the pager. If no acknowledgement was received then a default brigade is called. The suggesting made at the presentation was that the time be 4 minute acknowledgement time....many at the meeting felt that particularly for rural brigades, 4 minutes is a very difficult time frame for crews to get to the station and acknowledge the page.........
These two issues were going to be explored by those in charge of the project, and see what they can come up with.
But with only 2 weeks before the transition to the new system, not having sorted out these issue is a bit of a concern.
I hope that they can quickly sort out these issues, and advise us all BEFORE the commencement of the new system...
Pip
