Portable Radios- One For Each Crew Member or Do You Have to Share Them?

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Permalink Reply by James on February 19, 2009 at 11:54pm

I work for a 911 ALS provider in Las Vegas and we only get one portable radio per ambulance. We also have a portable radio that we do all of our radio telemetry with, in theory it can also talk to fire and other agencies in our area; we only have one of those too. In my opinion we need at least a portable radio per crew member, it seems that is everyone else's feeling as well.

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Permalink Reply by Greg aka "Slim" on February 20, 2009 at 1:06am

I work for a dept full time as well as one thats all vol. All members on both departments has an radio issued to them or avaible for them to use when doing a part time shift where Im full time.

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Permalink Reply by kevin elsass on February 20, 2009 at 1:16am

Our volunteer dept. has a large turnover rate, with very little resources. We issue handhelds to members whos longevity and proven dedication to the dept ensures us that the radio will be properly used and not abused. Other than that, our first out stucture fire engine is equiped with a charger holding 6 handhelds. We wanted to do the same with our new rescue engine, but the radios we have for it are the motorola pr400, and the bank charger we looked into purchasing was way too bulky, not condensed and handy like the older model bank chargers, so those radios sit on individual chargers at the station, and are grabbed on a first come first serve basis when responding.
Kevin Elsass, Port Jefferson Community Fire Co., Shelby County Ohio.

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Permalink Reply by Randy Bawks on February 20, 2009 at 1:25am

I am also on a small rural volunteer dept.We have six officers who have portables,thats it. I am one of the lucky six, and since it is normally the six of us plus another handful of fire fighters who show up to calls,normally I am very involved in fire ground operations. So in a nut shell I'm happy that I have a radio and I dont share it.
Randy Bawks,Pickford Fire Dept.,Pickford Michigan.

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Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Zorn on February 20, 2009 at 1:32am

my dept is a Volunteer Dept from a smaller upstate ny town. We have about 25 active members. We have 2 engines, 1 ladder each seats 5 people. We also have a ford pick up that seats 5 and a Bread truck type van that seats 6. We have a total of 3 radios on each Engine including the ladder. We find that this is plenty as when working an interrior attack or rescue that as we work in a group of at least 2 so each group of 2 has a radio. For the ladder we use the portables in place of the built in headset intercom as this is a older ladder and the sytem is older to and we experience issues. The main issues are with the contact rings on the turntable not always contacting right. We have found using radios are more effeciant. For the ladder there is 1 radios for the bucket, 1 for the turn table operator and 1 for the pump pannel operator. For out pick up which is mainly just used for fire police of to transpot personell to the sceen and traing ect we have 2 portables. And Finaly the van which is also used primarly to transport personel and for fire police when needed has 2 portables. We have found that sometimes when we have many personel with radios working clos to eachothjer as we sometimes do you cant use a radio without getting feedback.

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Permalink Reply by Todd on February 20, 2009 at 1:35am

At my station all volunteer officers and engineers are issued radios.
The four career folks on shift each have a radio.
We also carry at least one VHF (we use VHF on scene, 800mhz enroute and to talk to dispatch) on each apparatus.

Every crew that goes in has at least one radio, as does the RIT team.

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Permalink Reply by Robert L. Oswalt on February 20, 2009 at 1:45am

In are lil Vol. Dept. only are offcers have radio's & only 4 of are FPO's have them al so.

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Permalink Reply by michael painter on February 20, 2009 at 2:19am

I live in a small town and we all have our own radios but we have a shortage on pagers. Maybe 15 of our 30 members have pagers most of the rescue squad crew got the pagers.

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Permalink Reply by Franco Vella on February 20, 2009 at 3:26am

we are a volunteer group, but we have radios for all key personell. we also carry a radio with each team that goes out, also utilising 5 channels, 2 simplex, 2 fixed repeaters and 1 portable.

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Permalink Reply by ffemt19 on February 20, 2009 at 5:32am

All firefighters responding to an incident should have a portable radio, so all seating positions should have radio.
We have for all our interior firefighters (every SCBA has a radio) an analog radio and all officiers have a analog radio and a digital radio.
Best for safety, communication is very important an incident scenes.

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Permalink Reply by 1901 on February 20, 2009 at 6:26am

We are a very small department and we share portables. All the officers have one and there are atleast one in every truck with 4 in the main engine.

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Permalink Reply by Harry on February 20, 2009 at 6:34am

We also did this threw a grant. It was actually cheaper than buying new miniture 3 pagers.

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