Effects of dispatch tones on your body at night

[JFDCo3FF]

I am looking for some articles or studies about the effects of dispatch tones on your body at night. If anyone can help that would be great.

Thanks

[Eng18a]

i just read something, forgot where, but it was something along the lines of first responders/ midnight shifters are at a greater chance of getting tumors, because the horomones that fight it are released at night, found the article...

http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/living...1-30-0164.html

[GeorgeWendtCFI]

For some of the folks here, roughly the same as Viagra or Cialis.

[hwoods]

For some of the folks here, roughly the same as Viagra or Cialis.

Thanks a Lot! I just spit Pepsi all over the monitor.............

[tankerhoosen]

Ha the tones went off at 5am this morning for a car fire, I was dressed and to the door of my apartment before I realized I was even awake!

[dadman]

No articles or studies.
I work nights and sleep during the day.
It doesn't seem good physically or mentally to allow yourself to be jolted out of slep and rush-rush-rush off to a call.
I think the type of tone also has some effect.
Our tone on the pager is low and slow followed by rapid beeps. Overture of Death and Gloom.
Sometimes gets me in a dread and panic mindset.
The radio on "alert" has a different setting. Slow beeps followed by a sane sounding tone.
There have been times waking up where I had to take a minute to ungrog before driving off.
Having an attitude beforehand of being calm, and getting boots and pants on before driving off, is good for gathering the thoughts.

[ResidentTruckie]

A middle of the night call for me usually results in waking up the second someone opens the mic. Its weird and I hate when someone hits their mic on accident and I wake up and expect someone to say something. If it is a call I am usually out the door in under 2 minutes, then to the station in maybe 3 minutes or so.....

If they did do a study it would be very interesting to see the results

[JHR1985]

i remember hearing of a study that mentioned it increases the risk of a heart attack. It recommended a sutle tone and to have red lights instead of the bright lights most have now. It advocated a slow wake up, not a jolt. Like a pre-alert followed by a tone and red lights since it mentioned that bright lights have adverse effects on the eyes and body at night

[BKDRAFT]

A lot of new stations tones come on low and get louder and louder. A light starts off very dim and gets brighter as well. It's supposed to be much better on your body. I like it.

[firecrow]

Ha the tones went off at 5am this morning for a car fire, I was dressed and to the door of my apartment before I realized I was even awake!

Ditto to that. I've found myself at the station putting my bunker pants on just as I 'wake up' - everything else from getting out of bed to driving to the station was a sort of otherwordly fog - and it breaks the moment I actually have to interact with another FF and actually process information.

The good thing is I am so close to the station and its so residential that its very rare to run into anyone on the roads except another responder. Its some sort of weird autopilot. I know I am not alone because I've seen that same sort of glaze on some of the others at times.

The worst part is getting home and the adrenaline is still going and you can't sleep and you know you have to be up for work in 2 or 3 hours (if you're lucky).

Probably the only thing worse is waking up and trying to get dressed with a middle-of-the-night woody...

[jonnyirons2]

I know in Palm Beach County Stations they start out low in volume then increase. Ours knock your heart in to V-tac if you're in the different stages of fatigue.

[DrewOnFire]

A lot of new stations tones come on low and get louder and louder. A light starts off very dim and gets brighter as well. It's supposed to be much better on your body. I like it.

I wish, it is like daylight in my dorm when the overhead light goes on, I'm thinking of unscrewing a bulb... Nothing worse than being disoriented and blind.

[Frmboybuck]

Guess I didnt even realise this was an issue. Pager goes off, I get up, drive to the station, dress, get on the truck, drive on scene, WALK INTO A BURNING BUILDING, put fire out, go back to station, clean up, go home, shower, go back to bed. Ive got to think there are things harder on your body than being woke up in the middle of the night.

[FireMedAS]

There haven't been any studies on fire dispatch tones, so you should search under "noxious arousal" (seriously). You will see that it causes T wave changes on the electrocardiogram, and sudden increases in sympathetic tone are known triggers of AMI. It's ridiculous we don't have less "alarming" tones to wake us at night, especially considering the high prevalence of heart attacks amongst firefighter LODDs.

[nyckftbl]

I know in Palm Beach County Stations they start out low in volume then increase. Ours knock your heart in to V-tac if you're in the different stages of fatigue.

Except for a certain proby in the Heights who slept through a 3rd alarm a couple years ago....



Someone attempted an automatic volume control speaker in our "study room"....didnt work out like we had planned.

[dmleblanc]

I am looking for some articles or studies about the effects of dispatch tones on your body at night. If anyone can help that would be great.

Thanks

They make it hard to sleep....

It's ridiculous we don't have less "alarming" tones to wake us at night, especially considering the high prevalence of heart attacks amongst firefighter LODDs.

You could try just turning the volume down a bit on the pager....I think this helps unless you're a really heavy sleeper and a lower volume just won't wake you.

I think that after you've been doing it for a while you get attuned to the sound of the pager and it doesn't take a very loud or obnoxious tone to wake you up. Sort of like a new mother being awakened by her baby's crying, even if it's not very loud. I find that I'm (usually) easily awakened at the very first tone. I find that it's the newer guys, especially the young ones (late teens/early 20's ) who can quite literally sleep right through the tones, even at full blast.

Another thing I've found is that the stage of sleep you're in when the tones drop has an effect on how easily you can awaken. For instance, I find that when we get a call when I've only been asleep an hour or so, it's very hard to wake up....I'm particularly groggy and it takes me a few seconds to even realize what's going on. But if I've been sleeping for two or three hours, I'm up instantly and pretty well alert by the time the announcement comes over. So I think the sleep stage has something to do with it as well. Maybe someone could do a study on that.

Anybody remember the old Minitor I pagers with the desktop amplifier? Man, those things were loud. I had one when I first started and I only made the mistake of plugging it in once . After peeling myself off the ceiling for that first call, I never plugged it in again.....

[37truck]

It's not uncommon for my company to get up 3-4-5 times a night. I know I sleep pretty light at work. We usually keep our speakers closed. Meaning that it does not monitor what every other company in the city is going on. Before the alert tone, the dispatch system trips a relay that opens up the speakers. It produces a "click" sound. It is the click that wakes me before the one of the 3 variations of tones even begins. Our tones are really not that jolting at any time. Most of our dispatchers are women and the diapatch information that follows the alert tone is much more pleasent to listen to coming from them. My old job had a single tone for all types of runs and it alerted every station in the fire department regardless if it is your company or not. It was an extremely loud buzzer, and until you got use to it you'd about **** yourself when it tripped, especially in the kitchen or bathroom where it echoed around the tiled walls. I am surprised no one ever went into cardiac arrest from it.

[firemonkey311]

I dont really find the tones to be that alarming. I grew up with both parents being in the fire service. I am so used to it. I sometimes feel like a wake up before the tones drop some times.

[PureAdrenalin]

I work for a department, where if the tones go out, they go out at all three stations. We actually still have a plectron in out bunkroom..at 3am, the world is ending when that thing goes into alert mode. Normally I don't sleep very sound there so it's never much of an issue. MY problem is, I can't ever pull the address together on the first set of tones. I have to wait until we get further info from dispatch until I know where I'm going. And they don't give us that until, we go enroute. But, I will agree, I've been jolted awake before..it's not comfortable.

[ullrichk]

I could swear the IAFF had a study on the topic. It would have been before 1999, but beyond that, I can't be much help - I don't have access to my library at the station.