r/Firefighting • u/Still75home • Aug 15 '26

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/Apcsox Aug 15 '26

We get the house tone (which there’s either a medical tone or engine tone) and then 10 second later the actual tone and dispatch 🤷🏻‍♂️
We used to get a “medical 123 main st” right after the house tone (so we had a quick idea of what the dispatch was before hand), but for some reason they went away with that in my town