Wednesday, May 20, 2026

Re: los angeles city fire department radio procedures

we just spent 30 minutes listening to archived messages from lafd via the rrdb - its very easy to use - just click on the freq then click on the bottom message - it will play the 50 ish most recent messages on the channel ems calls are announced on ch4 - sometimes 3 or 4 in a row - in 1 breath by 1 dispatcher ch 5 and ch 9 are basically used for IC to dispatcher comms - but they also have special units signing on to calls - like dozers and crews they seem to assign cmd 10 or cmd 11 to each bld fire or veg fire also 1158 am today Bike Team 51 was trying to talk to Rescue 51 at LAX on Ch 13 - comms were terrible - BT51 might have been in an elevator in a terminal at LAX "Metro 5" might be the dispatchers callsign on Ch 5 morse IDs come up regularly - might be an automated test procedure Metro" is the dispatcher on Ch 9 per channel 9 traffic - on a bld fire on Valeryo - units returned to Ch 8 afterwards - 10 was Cmd - Tac 16 and 18 were assigned - and the IC told the dispatcher to tell everyone to 'check in on 3" - guess that means announcing their arrival at staging - and apparently on Ch 3 - so that was 5 channels used on 1 small bld fire ch 5 radio traffic included - Crew 3B - Heavy Equipment 2 with Dozer 41 - cancel all resources - vicinity call - loomup from the simi valley fire - vicinity call - "would you like to be attached?" ch 4 traffic included - Cycle Team 51 and Rescue 51 to call at LAX terminal with LAXPD at scene - "Engine 12 on air" "sick person" - that was Eng 12 beingh sent to a call via radio since they were not in the station - probably happened on Ch 7 actually - Engine 68 upgrade - AP82 cancels Eng 82 - AP 13 - AP 200 - advanced practice units maybe - like community medics maybe - Light Force 12 requested a Rescue - Rescue 12 was sent - "Rescue 101 press enroute" = hit your enroute button one other radio message of note - dispatcher and Engine 26 using strict message handling techniques - "Engine 26 cancel" - the reply from Engine 26 was "Engine 26 roger" - 6 words total - not 606 words - just saying

FEMA daily headsUp for Weds May 20 2026

National Current Ops / Monitoring for May 19-20, 2026 New Significant Incidents / Ongoing Ops: • Severe Weather – Southern Plains to Great Lakes – FINAL Hazard Monitoring: • Severe Thunderstorms – Southern Plains • Heavy Rain / Flash Flooding – Southern Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley Disaster Declaration Activity: • Request: Major Disaster Declaration – GU • FMAG Approval – Bain Fire, CA Event Monitoring: • No significant events

Maine - "Katherine's an awesome firefighter"

"Katherine's an awesome firefighter": Northport Fire Chief shares update on firefighter injured by searsmont maine she is on a breathing tube married to a firefighter

lafd rollover - 2 minor injuries

https://youtu.be/myJF6HvBT8c?si=Sb-klUDTylKf5_YB looks like an engine rolled over - looks like they were very lucky - could have brought the whole building down los angeles fire department los angeles city fire department los angeles california los angeles in california los angeles city in los angeles county in southern california

a little info about rrdb and broadcastify

when rrdb and broadcastify list a channel as "operations" or "dispatch" - what they really mean is "primary" or "home" channel. for rural FDs - the dispatch channel is also usually the channel that the pagers listen to in the big cities - some of the primary radio channels now have relatively little radio traffic due to the extensive use of tablets, cellphones, mobile data terminals and / or status buttons on rrdb and broadcastify - a 'local' channel is usually a channel with a lower level base station that covers just one 'local' area vs covering an entire county - quite often the local channels are licensed to and paid for by the local agency (not by the county or county association) sheriff radio systems are 99% paid for by county government - including repeaters and field radios - fire and ems radio systems might be paid for by Fire Chiefs Associations or rural fire boards or local hospitals or private ambulance companies - nearly 99% of medevac radio channels are on 'business' channels and are entirely funded by the privately owned medevac operators give or take 1000% lol