Hand-held Radios

[berlinfire]

Hello everyone,
My name is scott from MI,
I am from a small paid on call department with 24 Firefighters that responds to about 200 emergencys a year.
I am doing an applied research projct for Company Officer I and II.
We are doing projects on problems in our own Fire departments and the problem with my dpartment is that we do not have enough hand-held radios. We recently were forced to swith to the 800 mhz system from vhf. We had enough radios with vhf but our county only provided us with 6 hand-held radios.( make that 5 because the chief has one on him all the time).I read an article that a Firefighter was killed when him and his partner were seperated and he no way of calling for help because the other Firefighter had the radio.I think that every Firefighter should have a hand-held on all emergeny calls, but at $1200.00 to $2000.00 its hard to find funding. Was thinking of maybe a grant. One of my questions is do other departments have hand-helds for every Firefighter? any and all comments or suggestions would be great.
Does anyone have any SOG'S on this subject? or know of any NFPA standards?.

Thanks for your help
Scott
E-MAIL= ltkogelmann@berlinfd.org

[Stukov]

All of our firefighters with FF1 have (unless of course they don't want it for some reason) a portable. We also have some older ones that we issue to those without FF1 if wanted. As for our SOGs regarding the issue, I don't know if its even mentioned in there.

[nmfire]

The most cost-effective way to go is to have a portable radios = air packs. If the truck has five air packs, put five portable radios on the truck (plus one for the driver). This will always provide enough radios for everyone going in to have one, and the people outside who need on will have one since you never have every pack in the building. It would be way overkill to buy one for each member.

[mtnfireguy]

Hello everyone,
Was thinking of maybe a grant.

The AFG program is currently accepting applications for grants. Portable radios are allowed. The program will fund one portable radio per seating position on each apparatus.

www.firegrantsupport.com/afg

[preyn2]

The Austin (TX) FD equips each unit with enough radios so that every member on the truck has a protable radio, including the driver (4 portables per truck). As our minimum staffing is 4 on almost every unit (don't go there...), that's usually enough. Once or twice I have seen units with 5 people on board, and on those very infrequent occasions, a quick phone call to Communications can get a fifth portable on that unit.

The short answer is "Yes, we equip every on-duty Operations member with his/her own portable radio."

In my volunteer department, a portable radio is part of the personal issue (we're still on VHF, so it's still affordable...for now). When a member is accepted into the department, s/he is issued a pager, radio, and a full complement of structural and wildland firefighting equipment.

phil