Buffalo Fire Department Radio Operations
The Buffalo Fire Department's Alarm Office is operated out of 332 Ellicott Street in downtown Buffalo. The Alarm Office is staffed mostly by civilian dispatchers, as the department has attempted to phase out uniformed firefighters in the alarm office. The Alarm Office is home to the Communications Division and Radio Repair of the Buffalo Fire Department. These personnel are civilians, who manage not just the communications for the fire department, but also the police, public works, ambulance dispatch, etc.
The Buffalo Fire Department used to send alarms as the FDNY still does in box format. The gong would strike out the call box number. If it was a working fire or an additional alarm was requested, the gong would strike out the box number, and then a 2-2, 3-3, 4-4, 5-5, or a 6-6 for a General Alarm. A General Alarm is all apparatus in the city, the recall of off duty platoons, and the implementation of mutual aid plans with suburban departments. The Larkin Warehouse Fire of the 1950s was the only General Alarm in the BFD's history.
Today, the Buffalo Fire Department transmits alarms in tone form. Two short tones signify an EMS Call, three short tones signify a Still Alarm or Preliminary Signal. Three long tones signify an Alarm of Fire and four long tones signify a HazMat response.
Read more about this topic: Buffalo Fire Department
Famous quotes containing the words buffalo, fire, department, radio and/or operations:
“As I started with her out of the city warmly enveloped in buffalo furs, I could not but think how nice it would be to drive on and on, so that nobody should ever catch us.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“When there was no more lantern in the kitchen,
The fire got out through crannies in the stove
And danced in yellow wrigglers on the ceiling,
As much at home as if they’d always danced there.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.”
—Tennessee Williams (1914–1983)
“A bibulation of sports writers, a yammer of radio announcers, a guilt of umpires, an indigence of writers.”
—Walter Wellesley (Red)
“There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)