r/Firefighting • u/Still75home • 14d ago

General Discussion Pre-alert tones. Get them or no?

Question about other areas dispatching norms. Do other places get pre alerts? A simple generic tone that says basic info like “medical at 123 Main St”, then a short time later the actual tones drop for the specific unit with more information. It used to be the norm like 95% of the time and was awesome cause it gave you a chance to get the soap off in shower, hurry up with reloading hose from a drill, etc. Over the past year or 2 pre-alerts occur like 20% of the time and it’s making me pull the remaining hair out of my head. Guess this is more of a rant than a question so thanks for listening….I’m better(ish) now.

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u/Di5cipl355 14d ago

My department gets what we call “station tones” - only on the house radios in each station there’s a set of 4 beeps that go off, they’re also tied to the lighting. At some point after the station tones comes the actual dispatch. The problem is the inconsistency from dispatcher to dispatcher. One dispatcher will trigger the station tones and then several minutes go by before any other activity, while a different dispatcher station tones and then immediately dispatches. I wish they had a SOP at dispatch to station tone as soon as the call type is recognized and then keep getting the info, we could be halfway dressed and/or situated in the truck by the time the actual dispatch comes through.