Portable radios can be a firefighter’s lifeline as long as planning and preparation have gone into it. When I was a captain I helped to bring several fire departments into our regional 911 center. Those departments all had radios capable of transmitting emergency signals but none of their dispatch centers were equipped to receive them. This article is meant to be a checklist of things you need to find answers to in case you and your firefighters ever need to use the orange button.
Today everyone has a phone and sometimes you can’t get people to put their phones down. They “train” and develop muscle memory with their phones constantly. This is what needs to be done with your portable radios on shift. You should understand how your radios operate and the safety features built into them before you need to use them in zero visibility conditions.
Emergency Buttons: Typically, the emergency button is an orange push button on the top of your radio. Is your emergency button programmed and if so have you tested it? This button can be programmed to do many things besides sending an emergency signal and you need to confirm it is programmed to send emergency signals. Is the emergency feature activated with a short press or a long press? What happens when you activate it? These emergency buttons can activate on the channel you are on or switch to a channel that has been programmed by your department.
In my fire department when our emergency buttons are activated they go back to our main fire channel. It doesn’t matter what bank or channel we are on the radio automatically switches to our main fire channel to send the emergency signal.
There are pros and cons to this feature. The pro is that when activated my dispatch center will know immediately that one of our firefighters is in trouble. In our dispatch center if an emergency button is pushed lights flash, alarms sound, and on the computer screen it shows exactly who is in trouble. The con to this feature is if you are out of range the emergency signal will not reach your dispatch center. We had decided to use this feature because there are still many fire department dispatch centers that do not have the capabilities to decode emergency signals.
In my department we are lucky to have every firefighter assigned their own radio. We are a smaller department of 28 full timers and 10 on call. This allows us to ID by name every firefighter on all radios and in dispatch. If you are a bigger department this might be done by riding or seat assignment rather than names. If one of our firefighters activates an emergency button every portable on the FG will show their name, flash red and give an audible alarm. Once dispatch acknowledges this alarm our radios are all cleared.
A few years ago, I was doing a MAYDAY drill in the station using radios. I had multiple firefighters activate their emergency buttons on their portables. We found a big issue by testing this group activation. When multiple firefighters activated their emergency buttons the last person who activated their emergency button was the only one dispatch could see on their screen. The last firefighter’s portable cancelled out the others. This problem was fixed within days by working with our radio vendor for a solution. If we hadn’t drilled on MAYDAY and portable radios we would have never seen this vulnerability.
There is also the ability for the radios microphone to open up and transmit your audio back to fire alarm for a pre-designated amount of time when you activate your emergency button. If this happens on your portable it makes it difficult to direct resources on the radio to help you because your microphone is open. Until your radio stops transmitting it is taking up valuable air time.
My fire department purchased radios that are made for firefighters. Features include exaggerated buttons on portables radios to support use by firefighters in gear. This includes bigger emergency buttons and knobs that can easily be activated and used with a gloved hand. We also have speaker mics that are heavy duty and again made for use with gloved hands with an emergency button and flashlight built into it. The radios also have microphone technology that allows a firefighter to talk in a normal voice even with pass devices and fire alarms going off. These are all features we tested before purchasing the radios.
Our portables have many channels and banks which can be confusing when you are using them in normal conditions. What happens if your radio changes channels while in a fire. We have a couple of features to help if this happens. We have programmed every bank in the radio with channels 1 and 16 to be our main fire channel. This allows a firefighter to turn the channel selector on the radio or speaker mic all the way to a stop and they will be back to our main channel. The other thing we did is add voice announcements on every channel. When a firefighter turns the selector knob to a stop the radio will say Duxbury Fire. Every channel in the radio is programmed with a voice announcement. When you are in zero visibility conditions these safety features will help.
Many departments use direct or talk-around if you have a repeater. As an added safety feature channel 1 and channel 16 cannot be put on direct in my department’s portables. This was done so that during a fire a button couldn’t be pushed inadvertently and take the portable off the repeater. To put the radio on direct the firefighter must switch to channel two on the radio by using the channel selector knob. When this is done the radio will announce Duxbury Fire direct. All other channels on the radio can go to direct with the push of a button.
Our radios are equipped with an emergency button that allows a user to grab the antenna and follow it down to the emergency button. This design is meant for police to keep their eyes on a suspect at gunpoint and firefighters in zero visibility so they can find the emergency button using tactile techniques.
Another feature that our radio company instituted by policy with their programmed radios is that Channel 16 is programmed for high-noise environments. A Firefighter standing at the pump or running a K-12 saw would have some additional noise cancellation using channel 16 over channel 1. For police radios, they make Channel 16 “dark and quiet” rather than high noise. This dark and quiet shuts off all lights and tones, including low-battery tones. This allows for cops to be more invisible when sneaking up on bad guys or if they are in tactical sensitive position and a low-battery or PTT chirp will give away their position. This could be a feature that you might want if involved in a police operation.
Lastly, my department radios have the ability to use a “FF EVAC Feature”. This feature can be activated in all or just select command level radios. It requires a deliberate effort by an on-scene commander to set off the evac tones. Holding the PTT button then pressing and holding the emergency button sets off an obnoxious evacuation tone to all radios that a firefighter can hear that is distinctly different and loud. This feature needs to be turned on and is a no-cost option using later updated firmware in our radios.
The jobs we do require mission critical equipment. What works in my department might not work in your department. By integrating your portable radios into your training, you will have a better understanding and knowledge of them. It will hopefully allow you to find any problems before you really need them in an emergency
Robert Reardon
Rob Reardon is a deputy chief and public information officer (PIO) with the Duxbury, MA, Fire Department (DXFD), where he has worked for 19 years. Prior to that, he worked as a call firefighter for the Carver, MA, Fire Department for three years. Reardon is an EFO and CFO graduate. He also is the PIO for the Plymouth County Technical Rescue Team, the Southeastern Massachusetts Technical Rescue Team and the Regional Old Colony Communications Center. Prior to working at DXFD, Reardon worked for 10 years in the media for television stations and major newspapers as an award-winning photographer. His photographs have been used on the cover of numerous national magazines, including Firehouse Magazine, and elsewhere. Reardon teaches social media to organizations and taught at Firehouse World. You can follow him on twitter @reardonphotos, on Instagram @robreardonphotos or at www.robreardon.com.
