Training

[TLFD40]

Can anybody tell me if our dept keeps on dispatching Fire calls only, do our drivers(paid) have to be trained to do dispatching. For 70 years our paid drivers have taken the calls and paged out the call. Now that we are finally getting e-911 our Village fathers want the county to dispatch because the county says it is a requirement in order to receive a call and dispatch a call......... I live in NY state....

[Weruj1]

need some more info about the requierment part.......

[blancety]

In Massachusetts, to be a Primary 911 answering point, dispatchers have to be trained to the APCO 40 hour standard, and I believe but no positive, they are also supposed to be APCO EMD certified. Secondary PSAPs are not required to meet a standard(as far as I can remember).

Primary is where the original call comes in, 2ndary is where a call is transferred to. ie the Police answer a 911 for a house fire, they transfer the call to the FD dispatch. PD is primary, FD is secondary.

[BarryTFurey]

I can't speak directly to NY State, but many others do require minimum training for anyone answering an emergency telephone. I also know that NY did enact some standards relating to wireless E 9-1-1 that may have a carryover effect. After reading your initial post, I had a question concerning multiple calls. If your drivers make the initial dispatch, what happens to additional telephone calls or follow ups that come in on that alarm, or on any subsequent calls that happen while you are responding to the first?

[TLFD40]

What used to happen was the PD would pick up the next call and page out until an additional driver arrived at the station. We are in a unique situation up here, we have paid drivers on 24/7 with all volunteer dept. 1 of only two in Northern New York. The drivers were under the impression it was one way of the Village getting rid of their jobs to cut costs, but that wasn't the issue. The issue was; if we have a driver right there at the phone when the 911 center gets the call, why not just send it to us and we could dispatch our own calls. Well the village said okay then the County said wait listen to this, then the village said okay let the county dispatch, and now it is final, so now the big deal is the county is going to dispatch Fire and Rescue (two seperate agencies) on the Village frequency(the county will do it on low band and convert to the village high band) and along with us and rescue you have the village DPW, Water dept and town DPW (you see the disater awaiting to happen)
Any ideas on this one....(to much money to convert our dept to low band......) who's gonna pay? Apply for a new freq takes a year.