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 (18151882)
“Love and hatred are not blind, but are blinded by the fire they bear within themselves.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900)
“While the focus in the landscape of Old World cities was commonly government structures, churches, or the residences of rulers, the landscape and the skyline of American cities have boasted their hotels, department stores, office buildings, apartments, and skyscrapers. In this grandeur, Americans have expressed their Booster Pride, their hopes for visitors and new settlers, and customers, for thriving commerce and industry.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“... the ... radio station played a Chopin polonaise. On all the following days news bulletins were prefaced by Chopinpreludes, etudes, waltzes, mazurkas. The war became for me a victory, known in advance, Chopin over Hitler.”
—Margaret Anderson (18861973)
“Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.”
—Horace Walpole (17171797)