*** Paging Procedures & Software *** Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 13:59:28 -0400 From: cmethot@cybernaute.com (Claude Methot) To: sar-l@islandnet.com Cc: bguildne@hw1.cahwnet.gov Subject: Re: NOTE 05/17/96 09:05:00 At 09:05 17/05/1996 PST, you wrote: > >I would appreciate any information on Call Down or Activation procedures. >What does work and also what doesn't work for you. What technology are you >using? Alphanumberic pagers, software, cell phones, radios, smoke signals?? > >Thanks! > >Reply to Bob Guildner PhD,EMT/FR Nuclear Emerg Response Program >601 No. 7th Street M.S. 396 P.O. Box 942732 Sac. CA 94234-7320 >Public (916) 323-1175 CalNet 8-473-1175 FAX (916) 323-9869 Here we have 2 ways: The Phone link call by sections (1 team is 10 persons) where the team leader call the sections leader (on duty) who call the next guy on the list and to the down.. it's working if you keep the list uptodate and your peoples are at home The other options is vocal pager call where every body is on the same pager number so one call reach everybody (20 pers.) in 20 minutes. The problem (not really but!) is that people are using the pager for personnal use and the pager is always beeping for somebody else .... ------------------------------------------------------ ^BEEP^BEEP^BEEP^ this call is for JOE please call home, the kids are driving me crazy..BTW bring 1bread and 1 milk..ect......... -------------------------------------------------------- and after a wild if your not waiting for a personal call, your not paing attention about whats on the pager so if you get a emergency call you can miss it!! But for that reason we are using a touch tone sound code on the begining of a emergency pager call we press 5 to 10 times on a number to get attentions and after we pass the important msg.. We tried to avoid personal call on it and it didn't work.. there is always one that think his call is emergency for him.. and also it so nice to have a pager on our belt so why not using it!! Claude Claude B. Methot Bagotville,Quebec, Canada E-Mail: CMethot@cybernaute.com Bagotville Ground Search Team quipe de recherche au sol Bagotville Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 14:20:32 -0400 (EDT) From: darren To: sar-l@islandnet.com Subject: group activation Before I explain how the Appalachian Aearch and Rescue Conference (ASRC) is activated, there are some things I need to explain. the ASRC is composed of 8 member groups centered on various cities in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania totalling about 450 members. the ASRC is alerted by the Virginia Department of Emergency Services by numeric pagers. there are around 100 members on the ASRC pager net, and about 20 alert officers who can respond to the VaDES page. A page is set off by the responding alert officer to notify the rest of the ASRC that the alert has been handled. After conversing with VaDES, a subsequent page is sent notifying the conference about the search. Each member group has designated dispatch officers who will then call into the conference dispatch to receive a briefing, whereupon each group dispatcher will activate their own group internal pager nets to alert group members. I guess we have a two-tiered pager net alerting system coupled with call-downs to members not carrying pagers. In addition, my group, Blue Ridge Mountain Rescue Group (BRMRG), has also recently institued using email as a tertiary method of alerting members. This works because the majority of our group are associated in one way or another to the University of Virginia and therefore have easy e-mail access. We have found e-mail to be a good way of catching members who have/are not on the pager nets, and are hard to contact. I hope this answers your question in a not too confusing way. if you have any questions, feel free to contact me. Darren Chen Blue Ridge Mountain Rescue Group, Director Appalachian Search and Rescue Conference, Alert/Dispatch Officer From: Brett Robertson Newsgroups: misc.emerg-services Subject: Re: Wanted: Phone dialing software for Rescue call-outs Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 19:11:51 +1000 My wife is a new call-out person for the Huntsville Cave Rescue Unit. After being notified of a potential rescue, we make initial contact with members by digital pager, and a point and click interface for calling their pagers & entering a code and call-back number would speed our response. Some members are on a Group Page. I'm looking for some software (address book? / communication?) that will dial tones via an IBM PC computer interface / FAX modem.Windows would be nice. Freeware would be wonderful. We'll buy it if we need to, but what I want is very simple. I don't need bells and whistles. - Marc Mark... Interesting, are the pagers just numeric? or alphanumeric?.In our squad we all have the same alphanumberic pagers. They can display text & numbers so when we get paged the location, job, conatact number etc is displayed. Now, some of us have a seperate service on the pager for our own personal use, which is linked to a different telephone number. So when the callout pager telephone number is rung, ALL 23 pagers go off, and when our individual telephone numbers are rung only that particular pager goes off. Basically, Telstra, here in Australia is our provider for the paging system. They can set up on their computers a program for setting off pagers. I don't know how the system works in the US but, as you might have numeric pagers, cant you call your provider and get them to set the pagers so that when your wife rings, she gives them the code & the contact number and the provider sets all the pagers off... If some of the pagers are with different providers, couldnt you work something out so that their numbers are also actived?. Im sure the paging provider can do that as it is possible over here. I eliminates the use of a computer. I hope this helps.. Brett Robertson Date: Sun, 19 May 96 20:19:00 -0400 From: ted.schober@compudata.com (TED SCHOBER) To: Sar-L@IslandNet.com Subject: Re: NOTE 05/17/96 09:05:00 CAP in NJ has a lot of commercial numeric pagers that have two numbers, one is personal, the other is an all call. The return phone # is given with a suffix. The suffix is a group of 3 digit codes that identify whether a call is for information, emergency callout, return to base, etc. Not everyone in up and running, that is the limitation. The cost is about $12 per month per person from MobileMedia, who has a special rate for SAR organizatons. Ted Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 15:51:00 +0010 From: "Sheehan, Alan" To: SAR Discussion Group Subject: Re: NOTE 05/17/96 09:05:00 Currently we use pagers, phone, and CB radio for call outs dependng on circumstances. We currently use Motorola Envoy pagers which receive a tone signal via VHF radio transmitted from our headquarters. We have two sets of pagers, three that respond to the headquarters tone, and the rest that respond to the rescue tone. When someone rings our headquarters number, an answering machine takes the call and automatically triggers the headquarters pagers. Those people with headquarters pagers can ring in to get the message off the machine over the phone. All calls are treated the same at this stage, so headquarters staff receive all manner of calls: routine calls, severe weather warnings, rescue calls, wrong numbers, etc. In the event of a rescue, the HQ staff roll to the HQ, and manually activate the rescue pagers, and commence preparations for the job (open the doors, start the truck, phone for more info if necessary, etc). In the event of a less urgent situation, particularly a wilderness search, the HQ staff do a ring around so people can be informed and prepare (food, overnight gear, etc) prior to arrival at HQ. On occasions, a two tier ring around may be used but there is no fixed hierarchy so who someone has to ring is delegated when they are contacted. Many of our members have CB radios in their vehicles, and some of us use CB radios at work. We (locally) use UHF CB Ch 20 as a common talk around channel between emergency services (ambos, fireys, Police and SES), so a variation on our call out procedure has been for HQ staff to broadcast a brief message as they respond to HQ. Those of us with radios can respond before our rescue pagers light up. In general SES state wide have gone/are going to Telecom alpha-numeric pagers. Unfortunately, we are in a fringe service area, so they are just not suitably reliable for us at the moment. If they were they'd be great, as the pagers could be used to distribute info about the job, and possibly eliminate the ring around. We have heard rumours of delays through the Telecom system (from time of call to receipt of page). I, personally, am just not aware whether we proved or disproved that during our last trial session with some pagers. Maybe other users can comment...? (Brett...?) Alan Sheehan Oberon State Emergency Service NSW Australia E-mail: All my opinions are just my own - don't blame anyone else. Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 09:56:54 GMT0BSD From: "David Ward" To: sar-l@islandnet.com Subject: RE: Call Down procedure Speaking for a UK based team, we have just put into place a new call-out procedure. However recieves the call, which may be a call from the police to the call-out officer or a team member being stopped by a distressed person, calls first the team leader to verify a team call-out requirement. The call-out officer is then contacted if they have not already been called. She (we find women are better than men for this) first contacts two drivers for the team vehicles followed by a group page on a 60 character message pager carried by team members detailing location and type of incident, e.g. standby if required for a missing person, a full scale search or to assist local ambulance service. Each team member that recieves the page is required to respond with their individual team number and whether they are attending or not. This is done back to the call-out officers individual pager, this is faster than team members trying to phone the call-out officer and having to wait until the phone becomes clear. As the responses come back, the call-out officer ticks marks up a sheet showing who is attending and contacts the team leader by pager with numbers known to be attending. Team members who have not replied are followed up by phone to their home or place of work incase the pager has not worked. This part is normally done by area call-out officers contacted by the main call-out officer to ease the load . I hope I have explained this system well, it does sound complicated but it works and everyone knows what they have to do. Dave Ward Scarborough & District SAR Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 10:25:02 +0100 (BST) From: Dr Gerry Butler To: sar-l@islandnet.com Subject: group activation Dublin+Wicklow Mountain Rescue Team (Ireland). We used to use telephone cascade but, thanks to a generous donation of 50 alphanumeric pagers we now use this system. We have a three layer paging organisation. The police page the call-out officers using a tone-only page. This requires the callout officers to contact the police control room and discuss the situation. The first call-out officer to contact the police takes operational control and sends an alphanumeric message to other callout officers advising them of the control officer. Other callout officers them contact the control officer for details. The above two alerts only work on the callout officer pagers. Following a decision, the callout officer, or a designated deputy, sends a standby message to all team members and also request the duty drivers to get to the team vehicles. The military may be contacted for a SAR helicopter at this stage. If it is decided to respond, the full team is alerted by alphanumeric paging, which may indicate a standby, a partial callout or a full immediate response. The exact form of the response will depend on the actual situation and discussions with the police, also SAR helicopter availability. Team members responding are supposed to phone a designated callout officer to indicate response. This number will be given in the activation message. This phone back is not always carried out correctly as some team members are in too much of a hurry to respond. This sytem generally works, the main problem being the inability of the commercial pager operator to spell (sometimes even when the place name has been spelled out phonetically to her). We are just awaiting a situation where she gives a wrong name (which nobody has heard of) combined with a wrong map reference and team members assume both are correct and head off in the wrong direction. All team pagers have the same general number & messages reach all members. Prive activation is prohibited and private messages, even in emergency are also prohibited unless specifically authorised by the team leader. All pagers have an unused number, which a member may activate for private purposes but this is subject to a private arrangement between the member and the paging company. Once a pager activation is underway, all significant developments and, particularily, a stand-down message, must be sent on the pager system, even if VHF radio is used in the field. This is because some team members may not have arrived at the scene control and also the pager has a slightly better coverage than the field radios. Gerry Dr Gerry Butler (gbutler@tcd.ie) TELTEC Radio Propagation Group Electronics Dept, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland Dublin+Wicklow Mountain Rescue, EMT-D, EI0CH Thu Feb 9 00:03:59 1995 Message : #21873950 From: Tom Griffin Address : tgriffin@crl.com Group : Usenet.misc.emerg-services Subject : Re: Paging Software? On 8 Feb 1995, RussB911 wrote: To All Communications Personnel, I am looking for an automated call system similar to the computerized sales calls we all get on our phones at home. I need a system that will call a list of people, in a specific order and offer things such as overtime shifts. The system must be able to record responses, leave messages on answering machines and activated both company and personal pagers. Russ, We just purchased software and hardware called Phone Tree. Seem to recall the company is in North Carolina. We're meeting next week to select the groups we want to program (i.e. EOC callouts, dispatchers, swat, etc.). Looks like one version will call up to 10 groups, and another version up to 26 groups. I'll try to e-mail you the name/address of the company from work tonight if things are slow enough. Not sure if it works with pagers. It will sense whether it gets an answering machine, a busy signal, or a live person when calling. Carter (and others that have asked), The software is called Phone Base, and the hardware is called Phone Tree Voice Message Delivery System. We have the package, but have not started using it yet, so I can't report as to how well it works (or doesn't work). Their phone in NC is 910-722-0087. It can be used for preprogrammed callouts for EOC, swat teams, etc and appears to work with pagers. Tom Vallejo PD (CA) ---------------------------