TOWN OF VERNON
FIRE DEPARTMENT
COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT
Submitted by Communications Officer
Captain Jack Fisher
It has been some time since our communications page has been updated. The
intentions have been there but the time never seems to be. But let’s see
if we can catch up now.
Town System-Over the past couple of years we expanded our radio
communications system within the Town, when we opened our new Public
Safety Building. Within that building we set up a new Emergency Operations
Center. This EOC has full radio communications capability with all the
Town of Vernon Government Departments as well as most surrounding towns
emergency operations, as well as the State Emergency Centers. The center
has full stand alone capability including the ability of alerting our
emergency personal via pagers including the ability for activation of the
town wide emergency siren system.
The EOC center is activated whenever there are impending concerns for
weather, town wide major activities, Fireworks Display’s or other
hazardous town or State activities.
In addition, we expanded our radio communications system at our major Fox
Hill Radio Tower site which now includes most of the Towns wide
communications systems. Currently we have several radio repeater systems
operating from that site.
This past year a Fireman's Fund Heritage-Employee Grant was awarded to the
Fire Department which allowed us to equip all our line Captains with new
portable radios.
The Vernon Fire Department had a critical and immediate need to upgrade
its radio communications system. Several components of the existing system
were dated and required an increasing amount of servicing and desperately
required replacement with dependable equipment. The current lack of
reliable and adequate radio communications equipment impedes the
successful resolution of Town and mutual aid emergencies. This posed a
significant and unnecessary safety risk to civilians and firefighters
alike.
This Grant also allowed us to purchase several new replacement pagers for
use in alerting the personnel for emergencies.
For those interested listeners with scanners, we have changed our main
radio operating frequencies over the past couple of years. We now operate
on UHF frequency 460.3875 mhz and Low Band frequency of 33.48 mhz.. Our
pager primary dispatching is transmitted on 33.80mhz and 155.2275mhz.
County System-The primary emergency dispatching for the Town of
Vernon Fire & EMS Department is handled by the Tolland County Mutual Aid
Dispatch Center, located in Tolland, Connecticut. This dispatch center
handles thirteen towns and which includes 21 departments and answers
approximately (60,000) 911 calls annually. The Dispatch Center recently
expanded in to a new state of the art communications center with all new
dispatching equipment including a new Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD)
system.
Closing-On behalf of the entire Fire and EMS organization, I would
like to thank all the Town officials and citizens for the continued
support provided to our organizations. Our (your) department is a full
volunteer organization comprised of dedicated people who give many hours
of their time and put their life on the line every day to protect its
citizens and property.