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200-002 Radio Protocol for Emergency Incidents Effective Date: 4/24/08 Reference: Revised December 11th, 2013 to address moving from VHF Low Band Communications to UHF Digital Trunked Radio System Revised April 23rd, 2025 – A Mutual Aid section was added to make it clearer how departments are to operate when responding and operating at mutual aid incidents. Next Review: Modified Date: 4/23/2025 CLASSIFICATION: POLICY STATEMENT Issued By: Rich Roberts, County Chiefs President Scott Roman, Director DOERC Preface: This policy is to be adhered to by all Fire Departments operating on the Cortland County Land Mobile Radio (LMR) Network. Due to the inherent performance ability of this radio network the need to repeat messages does not exist as long as your radio is affiliated with the network and set to an on network talk group. Objective: This policy establishes the talk groups that County Fire and EMS units are to utilize when communicating with the Cortland County Communications Center and other county Fire Departments during emergency incidents in order to keep radio traffic to a minimum. Policy: A. Radio Programming 1. All county fire radios will be programmed to best suit each departments home operation. However, radios will have many similarities in channel setup. The base county fire radio programming shall include the following: Zone 1 Channel 1 - Home Department Ops Channel Channel 2 - Fire Dispatch Channel 3 - Fire Direct Channel Channel 13 - Water Supply Channel 14 - County Med Channel 15 - Interagency Channel 16 - 911 Priority Zone 2 ---PAGE BREAK--- Channel 1 - Training Ops Channel 13 - Fire Ops 1 Channel 14 - Fire Ops 2 Channel 15 - Major Ops 1 Channel 16 - County FP B. Emergency Incidents 1. Whenever a fire department is activated for an emergency response, all of the assigned apparatus and officers shall utilize their Status Dek Heads to show the appropriate status. a) Status 2 Awaiting a Crew shall be utilized when a driver is awaiting a crew to assemble. Dispatch will announce the first unit awaiting a crew. b) Dispatch will announce the first Chief and first apparatus that goes Enroute (status 3) over paging. c) In the event a department has multiple incidents at the same time, the first responding unit or chief should contact Fire Control and advise that they are responding to the secondary, or subsequent, incident. d) In the event an ambulance crew member is Enroute to the station and is unable to contact the awaiting ambulance and/or crew, on his/her ops talk group or County Med, the individual may contact Fire Control via the Fire Dispatch talk group to advise that they are Enroute. 2. Fire Apparatus that is Enroute shall state such on their home department's main operations talk group. This notification should also include their crew size (i.e. 206 is responding with a crew of 3. The first arriving Officer should give an arrival report on Fire Dispatch and make any additional requests for manpower or equipment at this same time if not already done. a) Arrival reports are only necessary for fire calls and MVC's, no arrival report is necessary for house calls unless, there is safety issue and/or the call is more severe/involved than dispatch information advised responders to believe and additional resources are needed. ---PAGE BREAK--- c) An arrival report shall be given by the first arriving unit and/or the incident commander to fire control, who will then repeat the arrival report. d) Arrival Reports for Fire Alarms or Structure Fire shall consist of the following: 1) Apparatus that is arriving 2) Building Size and Type 3) Fire Conditions 4) Exposures a. buildings sides shall be lettered with the street address being the A side and subsequently working clockwise. C B D A b. building height shall be numbered Basement Floor 1 Floor 2 Attic Roof e) Arrival reports for Car Accidents shall consist of the following: 1) Apparatus that is arriving 2) Number of Vehicles 3) Number of Patients 4) Actions needed 4. In the interest of limiting communications and because departments will use their main ops talk group as the fire ground ops talk group (communications between the attack apparatus, command, and interior crews), apparatus that arrives after operations are underway should do their best to limit radio traffic. Face to face communication should be used. As the incident escalates operations such as water supply and ---PAGE BREAK--- other non-essential communications should be moved to a second talk group or be done face to face. a) If a secondary talk group is needed, the Incident Commander may work with the Dispatcher to get a secondary talk group assigned and coordinate its use. 5. Only the Incident Commander of any one incident should communicate with the Communications Center. This communication shall be done on Fire Dispatch talk group. 6. Prior to the designation of an Incident Commander, Dispatch is empowered to communicate with the first unit Enroute or the highest ranking officer, whichever they prefer. 7. County Med shall be used for all communications between fire departments and EMS transporting agencies at EMS/medical only calls. For Motor Vehicle Crashes and other similar "rescue" incidents, the host department’s ops talk group shall be used. County Med may also be used for MCI events where triage has been established. Ambulances responding to the scene shall be coordinated on County Med while any rescue activities occur on the home agencies talk group. 8. At the conclusion of an incident, all apparatus and Chiefs shall use the appropriate status button to signal that they are in service or otherwise. The last officer or unit leaving the scene shall notify Fire Control “All Units Complete and Returning”. C. Mutual Aid 1. Responding units shall keep a radio on their department’s ops channel and have all remaining radios switched to the department’s ops channel you are responding mutual aid to. 2. Incoming mutual aid officers shall initially attempt face to face communication with Incident Command, if possible, to get initial assignments for their department. ---PAGE BREAK--- 3. Mutual aid officers will communicate with their department on their Department’s Talk Group to keep the host Department’s Ops Channel clear for incident operations until the mutual aid units arrive on scene. 4. Upon arrival at a mutual aid scene, all units operating at the incident shall operate on the host department’s ops channel unless otherwise directed by Command. 5. For incidents requiring tankers, IC should strongly consider moving the tankers and associated fill site apparatus to the Water Supply Ops channel keeping the host department’s ops channel clear for mission critical incident operations. 6. Incident Command shall notify Fire Control they will be moving the water shuttle supply operation to Water Supply Ops. Upon that notification, Fire Control will announce that all tankers and fill site apparatus operating at XYZ Fire Scene to switch to Water Supply Ops. D. Non-Emergency 1. All county departments are encouraged to use their main ops talk groups for day to day communications and training. D. Landing Zone 1. Interagency shall be the dedicated ground to helicopter talk group. Michael Biviano- County Chiefs President Scott Roman- Director DOERC