Fire/EMS Committee Meeting Minutes. Thursday, May 8, hours

Transcription

1 Fire/EMS Committee Meeting Minutes Thursday, May 8, hours Present: John Collins OFD Dave Burkett BFD John Truba CEMS/EEMS Dick Meister PFE/PEMS Chuck Hendrickson HTWP FD Chuck Cribley WFD/WEMS Phil Miller WFD Dick McMahon WEMS Steve Scarlett HTWP FD LeRoy Hummel CFD Casey Godlewski, GLFD Roger McNutt, ERFD Jason Byington, VFD Kim Freer, ERFD Jason Freer, ERFD Vic Hilbert, DFD/DEMS Bruce VanAiken, ER TWP FD Steve Leese and April Heinze, ECCD Call to Order and Roll Call - Meeting called to order at 1905 hrs. Introduction of New Members and Guests Dennis Demray from M/A Com was here for a short presentation on reprogramming the M/A Com radios. Reading and Approval of Minutes of the Last Meeting Motion to approve the minutes was made by Casey and seconded by Dave. Motion carried. Public Comment - None Old Business M/A Com Radio Reprogramming Dennis from M/A Com gave a presentation on reprogramming the radios. The naming conventions for the nationwide tactical channels U-TAC 1 and U-TAC2 will be changed and the Ingham County talk groups are changing. Eaton County has 75 portables and 38 mobiles that will all need to be reprogrammed and there is no charge. If you have a M/A Com radio that wasn t purchased from the grant M/A Com will reprogram those as well for free. Steve will make a blanket request to Ingham County for the IC Events channels for everyone as a group. A 5 th simulcast site is being added in Ingham County at the Lansing Radio Lab to improve coverage in the southwest corner of Lansing. It s a direction site that will look west and improve coverage. Steve wondered why the other tower didn t improve the northeast part of our county as much as we thought it would. Dennis said it s a direction tower that s not pointing toward our NE part of the county. Give Steve your list of the radios you want reprogrammed as soon as possible. Dennis will a list of LIDs in Eaton County to Steve.

2 Report from Central Dispatch Committee (Truba) Met on March 20 Discussed the upcoming November millage renewal and support for it. CAD OPS Codespear CDC Officers elected Staffing - Oral Board interviews are this week. Originally 16 were being interviewed but it s down to 13 now. We currently have 4 openings. We will be temporarily rehiring a former dispatcher who left to be in the military. She ll be here for at least 6 months. We ll retrain her for a month and use her as vacation relief. Veda Woods retired last month and we have two currently in training. One should be finished the end of June and the other in October. We are currently one below minimum staffing right now and have to fill that slot with overtime. If there aren t enough qualified candidates to consider from this round of interviews we will post the position again. New Business The County bought two light towers for the County to use with the homeland security grant. They are at Vermontville Fire and Hamlin Fire. They re not requested very often but April would like to split the County up to create response areas for each light tower. Vic said his light towers are available to anyone in the County too. April asked for suggestions on how to divide up the area. Jason Byington said Chief O Dell suggested using Cochran to split the County but it won t need to be such a large area if Delta is willing to loan theirs out. April will create the areas and submit it to Vermontville Fire, Hamlin Twp Fire and Delta Fire for their approval. Silent EMS Dispatch Delta is currently doing much more with their MCT buttons. From the time dispatch tones them to when they clear they do everything silently with the MCT. April asked the rest of the departments present if they were interested in doing the same. Dick Meister said he tried it but the buttons didn t work on their MCTs. Chuck Cribley said he wouldn t mind if his units used their MCT buttons but he would like to be able to hear his units on the radio. Casey had the same concern as Chuck Cribley. Casey suggested teaching the dispatchers not to enter the information when units say it over the radio. April said its second nature for a dispatcher to do that. She suggested that if units are going to go over the radio then don t push the MCT buttons, let dispatchers do it. If you re going to silent dispatch and use your MCTs then dispatch won t push the buttons. Dispatch will track every unit that goes enroute if they say Central Dispatch. If they just make a statement over the radio then dispatch doesn t. Vic stated that this was the desire of 911 years ago where there was less talking on the radio. Vic feels dispatch needs a dedicated dispatcher working on a frequency. He feels it s inconsistent. April said people go on breaks or the supervisor will answer for them. Steve said at times the fire dispatcher can t do it all, there s too much going on at one time monitoring seven frequencies. The Supervisors pay more attention to the fire frequencies than the police

3 because the fire dispatcher has to listen to seven frequencies and answer phones. Having separate calltakers and dispatchers won t work. Vic would like to see a better tracking system and MCTs in the fire trucks. CAD OPS Steve explained that CAD OPS is an internet based view into our CAD system and it doesn t require a license. You can view it from your home computer. You can see your units and where they re at. CAD OPS isn t set up yet for use but Steve will let everyone know once it is. CAD OPS is 100% inquiry, no input capability. It s all internet based with no special equipment required. Radio upgrades update Steve reported that new shelters for radio equipment are in place at Vermontville and Eaton Rapids. Both shelters are fiberglass with cement pads, generator power, two air conditioners and heaters. The simulcast isn t working yet but the microwaves have replaced T1 lines. The T1 telephone lines will be canceled once we know the microwave system is working OK. There was a problem last weekend with Tele-Rad s equipment which turned out to be a faulty cable. It took Tele-Rad 3 hours to respond but they took responsibility of the problem and got it fixed. Steve felt Tele-Rad is doing a good job. Chuck Cribley stated that once dispatch has direct control of the fire county repeater dispatch won t hear agencies on the talk around, which is a good thing. Also, when Rumsey Hill equipment gets relocated to this building dispatch will be able to monitor the status better. MCT upgrade Steve reported that he was able to buy 18 used modems at a good price. He also has budgeted for more MCTs for next fiscal year to outfit more rigs with MCTs. We will not be purchasing any more Itronix. How many and where will have to be decided by this committee or the CDC. An 800 MHz MCT base station was installed in Olivet to help the MCT transmission in the Olivet/Bellevue area. John Truba stated he continues to have MCT problems and his staff is frustrated. John said there are lots of problems in Eaton Rapids and Charlotte trucks have to reboot all the time. Chuck Cribley said he hasn t had any MCT trouble. Loren s new direct number is Codespear Profile Sheets Steve passed out the sheets and explained how to fill them out. He needs two representatives from each department to add to Codespear. Please turn the forms in to Steve as soon as possible. John Truba reported that Lakewood EMS is out of service and it has created a gap in coverage in the Sunfield area. Charlotte EMS is a temporary solution right now for Sunfield but if Sunfield decided to go with Charlotte EMS, Charlotte EMS would be able to add to their staff coverage because of more runs being generated. Leslie Ambulance is going out of business and selling to Mason, Eaton Rapids hospital is interested in serving the Onondaga area. Miscellaneous - Round table discussion Dave Burkett wondered if the equipment at the Olivet tower is up and working on the police side yet because ECSD was trying to raise BPD officer on the OFD radio

4 frequency the other night. Steve stated it is not working yet. Dave also stated that the breaker tripped at the Bellevue water tower and someone plugged the electric cord into the Village s side instead of the correct side. Steve wondered if it could have been a Tele-Rad worker since they ve been all over updating the microwaves. John Truba reported that Eaton Rapids hospital is breaking ground. The ambulances will be based at ERFD for about a year. The helicopter pad will stay where it s at. Dick Meister asked for an update on the District 1 radio grant. Steve said he has all the numbers from agencies but hasn t been asked for them yet. Steve said he is up to 550 radios having to be reprogrammed and 177 replaced. Chuck Cribley said there s not near enough money for what people are asking for. Grant money is just now being released. One problem is that District 1 doesn t have anyone to handle the money right now. Chuck Cribley felt that going regional has created a lot of problem. Dick wondered if Potterville could get on board with the M/A Com radios. Steve said we re enhancing our system to a point that he doesn t foresee us patching on to Ingham s system. Steve feels if you purchase radios for our system you ll be fine and happy with them. We pay $400 for our radios and the digital trunked systems pay upwards to $2000. Steve will try to stay on top of individual grants for agencies. LeRoy reported that the Westside fire station footings are in the ground and should be completed by December. Last fall, LeRoy asked the group for a list of their equipment. He needs to know what equipment is available when in the EOC is activated. Leroy will give you a form to fill out. Once you get the form please fill it out and send back to LeRoy as soon as possible. LeRoy began discussion about the DNR notifications. He said Charlotte doesn t follow them and doesn t need to be paged. He asked if Codespear would send out the DNR notifications. Steve said it s up to this committee. After some discussion it was determined that no one cared about the DNR burn restrictions. The consensus was that dispatch does not notify departments on burn restrictions. Also, the committee felt severe thunderstorm warnings shouldn t be toned either. Roger McNutt made the motion for dispatch not to notify departments about DNR burn restrictions or severe thunderstorm warnings. Casey Godlewski seconded. Motion carried. The policies will be changed. Vic talked about the major apartment fire that happened in Delta Township recently. He said it really worked out well for his staff to focus on the incident when he asked dispatch to give all of their calls to other agencies. April said it worked out well for dispatch too. Jason Byington reported that Dan Sowles is the new Vermontville EMS Director. Casey reported that they have a new tornado system alarm similar to Delta Fire s on the primary GLFD channel. Polling occurs which sounds like clicks and digital noise that talks to the siren. The polling will be during the radio tone tests on Saturdays. Dispatch

5 may not be able to talk over the radio when it s polling. They have a new 75 Quint in service. Steve Leese During National Telecommunicators Week, Dispatch Supervisor Lara Gillentine, Dispatcher Lexi Davis and Clerk/Receptionist Teresa Tucker were presented with awards. Adjournment Motion to adjourn was made at 2105 hrs. The next Fire/EMS Committee meeting is Thursday, August 14, at 7pm