BY ALAN M. PETRILLO
Alerting systems for fire departments have come a long way from using simple sirens, bells, or whistles.
Twenty-first century alerting systems offer the best in cutting-edge technology to help fire departments improve response times and efficiently manage information. In addition to the call alerting function, some systems add greater functionality through lighting systems, visual display, specialized zone routing of alerts, and even door opening functions.
Network Systems
Dave Johnson, national sales manager for ComTech Communications, says that radio-based alerting makes up about 85 percent of fire and medical emergency services, while 15 percent use a network-based alerting system. "Radio is tried and true, but it takes a bit of time because you are dealing with paging tones that take time to go through," Johnson says. "And, depending on the number of stations that have to be alerted, there might be a 10-second delay. With a network-based system, all alerting goes out nearly simultaneously, within microseconds of each other."
Typically, a network alerting system establishes a direct network path from dispatch to fire and emergency medical services (EMS) stations, Johnson points out, and most of the time the systems are proprietary ones. Johnson says the ComTech Communications ComTech 10 system is both radio- and network-based. "The network-based system has the redundancy of radio built into it," he notes. "It can interface with any known trunked or conventional radio system and can integrate with P25 radio systems."
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| 1 US Digital Designs offers basic, standard, and advanced designs of its G2 station alerting system. Shown is a layout for an advanced design at one of the Phoenix (AZ) Fire Department's stations. (Photo courtesy of US Digital Designs.) |
Station Alerting
Courtney DeWinter, director of communications for Locution Systems, says her company offers a comprehensive fire station alerting system that is broken down into five basic categories of products developed to solve different fire station problems. "Our PrimeAlert Fire Station Alerting System is designed in a modular way so the fire department can pick and choose the products it wants," DeWinter points out.
The company offers automated voice alerting in two types of voices. "Concatenated Voice Technology is the clearest and crispest voice technology for station alerting," DeWinter says. "Voice talent prerecords all the words, street names, and numbers needed for dispatch, which are then put into an audio database on a personal computer."
The second type of voice that Locution Systems uses is synthesized voice, she adds, where a computer system holds a variety of sounds. When it reads a dispatch, it does a text-to-speech conversion. "But concatenated voice is crisper and better for longer words or words indigenous to a particular area," DeWinter observes.
Dominic Magnoni, vice president and general manager of US Digital Designs (USDD), says his company makes the G2 system, which it originally designed for the Phoenix (AZ) Fire Department. "We redesigned Phoenix's original fire station alerting system in 2005 and a number of years later spent