2020 Fire Department Annual Report

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2020 Annual Report • Fire Department • St. Anthony Village, Minnesota 16 | Page that is happening, the Dispatcher also transmits a string of “radio tones” that are specific to each Fire Department- those tones are received by our radio system for our station - the dispatcher then gives a verbal message over the radio to tell us where to respond to and what is involved- we then acknowledge back to the Dispatcher over the same radio frequency that we received the call and are in service to the address. This can all be done reliably within a minute or less! That is how we arrive to your need for us “so fast!” We are still reliant on this technology as it is has demonstrated to be so proven and so well refined over many years. Until the future brings us something as reliable as this, we will use that as our main way of communicating, and add other newer technologies to supplement it and give us more information. As a department we also use what are known as “voice pagers” that we carry with us whether we are at the station or at home. These pagers are also radio devices. They only receive that transmitted radio message and are not able to transmit back, but these pagers help in our speed of response by alerting members of the department that there is a need for them to respond, and help someone in need. Prior to these voice pagers we carry now, where we can hear and playback the original transmission of the Dispatcher, we used the old form of what was known as the original pager, the alphabet or text only pager. These would beep to notify you that you had a message to read, and often try to decipher as you could only see and read one or so lines at a time. And before that, we had the radio only, with nothing to supplement it, well except for the trusty landline telephone! It worked, and it was fast, but more importantly it was extremely reliable. That is why we still use radios today, supplemented by a myriad of devices and software. So if you happen to need the Fire Department in the future, you now have a little bit of what’s involved behind the scenes in regards to the statement “Thanks for getting here so fast!”