Please Note:
This Web site and nsfd.net are "owned" and operated by Frank Benn, not the
Nottawa-Sherman Fire Department. The viewpoints and opinions
below are not necessarily supported by all members of the
Nottawa-Sherman Fire Department or the governing boards of Nottawa and Sherman Townships.
Note: If you live in the northwest corner of Isabella County or south of the Village of Lake Isabella, you may want to read about the "turf" issue.
To Isabella County:
Please give back everything you took from us!
Since
March 2015
Decisions made by Isabella County officials
have potentially placed Nottawa-Sherman firefighters, and the citizens they serve, in greater danger.
Click here to see MOST RECENT update.
For the extensive "paper trail", click here.
Posted 12/13/15
Our firefighters, and the citizens they serve, are now more at risk because Isabella County officials have put in place a new digital radio system that gives us poorer hand-held radio coverage than the one it replaced. There are now dozens of areas (including the interior of our own fire station) where hand-held radios will not access the county fire service radio repeaters. In these areas, our firefighters cannot summon help or report conditions on the scene to anyone else using hand-held radios. In terms of our safety, this is a serious and dangerous step backwards in our communications security and, I suspect, it has cost Isabella County taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. (FOIA requests have been made, in part, to determine the amount of money wasted on this fiasco.)
Our firefighters, and the citizens they serve, are now more at risk because Isabella County officials have put in place a new digital radio system that gives us poorer hand-held radio coverage than the one it replaced. There are now dozens of areas (including the interior of our own fire station) where hand-held radios will not access the county fire service radio repeaters. In these areas, our firefighters cannot summon help or report conditions on the scene to anyone else using hand-held radios. In terms of our safety, this is a serious and dangerous step backwards in our communications security and, I suspect, it has cost Isabella County taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. (FOIA requests have been made, in part, to determine the amount of money wasted on this fiasco.)
In
years prior to this one, the personnel of several fire
departments within Isabella County were experiencing intermittent
2-way
VHF radio coverage within their coverage area. Nottawa-Sherman was not having problems. The problems experienced by the other departments could
have been solved by the addition of another repeater system and tower
and by upgrading antennas, coax & electronics at existing sites.
Instead, in spite of other digital radio failures in the county, the politicians that run Isabella County allowed
themselves to
be convinced that the fire service radio system needed to be converted
from an analog system to a digital system without additional repeaters
or towers. This very expensive conversion seriously degraded the communications security for Nottawa-Sherman Fire Department personnel.
My Background
For those who don't know me, I
am currently in my 37th year of service with the Nottawa-Sherman Fire
Department. I am a certified firefighter, EMT and Safety Officer
for NSFD. Our department has 20 active members. We are
all required to meet the requirements for state certification as
firefighters and national certification as medical first
responders. These certifications come only after 350-370
hours of evening and Saturday classes & a lot of written and practical testing. We are all on call 24 hours a day,
every day whenever we are home.
First, this may not be a matter of incompetence or ignorance. I suspect that the term cronyism might apply in this situation. By allowing this situation to exist, our county officials are showing their indifference to the fact that they have made the lives of our firefighters more dangerous. By the end of 2014, some of them knew that the new system wasn't working as well as the old system. After months of experimenting and meetings, the problem still exists.
To be fair, I agree that digital communications, when working as intended, are clearer and radio traffic from other areas (skip/ducting) is reduced. This can be an important plus, especially for dispatchers. The key phrase is "when working as intended". The current status is that NSFD firefighters have less coverage with hand-held radios via the new digital County fire service system than we had prior to the digital transistion.
My Perspective On Why This Is A Serious Problem
First, this may not be a matter of incompetence or ignorance. I suspect that the term cronyism might apply in this situation. By allowing this situation to exist, our county officials are showing their indifference to the fact that they have made the lives of our firefighters more dangerous. By the end of 2014, some of them knew that the new system wasn't working as well as the old system. After months of experimenting and meetings, the problem still exists.
To be fair, I agree that digital communications, when working as intended, are clearer and radio traffic from other areas (skip/ducting) is reduced. This can be an important plus, especially for dispatchers. The key phrase is "when working as intended". The current status is that NSFD firefighters have less coverage with hand-held radios via the new digital County fire service system than we had prior to the digital transistion.
One would
think that when you are entrusted by the taxpayers of your community to
spend their tax dollars wisely you might want to get pertinent
information from more than one source. Apparently, that didn't
happen because Isabella County has invested thousands of our
tax dollars in the conversion to digital radio without doing anything
to improve signal strength over that of the old analog system.
They
should have taken a few minutes and Googled topics like "radio tower
costs" to find out what it would have cost to fix the coverage problems
without a conversion to digital radio.
Read about prior digital radio problems in Isabella County here.
Also, please read "An Interesting Sequence of Events" here.
Two
separate agencies within Isabella County had already experienced
serious problems with digital VHF radio systems installed by the same
commercial radio service that works for Isabella County. If prior
experience wasn't enough, within
Isabella County there are dozens
of people who could have predicted the dismal results if the
switch
from analog to digital was made without significant upgrades to the
tower and
repeater infrastructure. Among them
are dozens of amateur radio operators (hams) with a vast range of
experience in constructing VHF and UHF radio systems which provide
county-wide and state-wide coverage for hams using hand-held
radios. Their advice would have been free. Just over the
west county line in Mecosta County is another commercial communications
company (Crouch Communications, Inc.) that
would have been a good second opinion source. Dozens of computer
programs are available which accurately map radio transmissions
coverage based on topographical data. Had these resources been
properly utilized by our commissioners, they would have been able to
predict the failure of the digital system in the Nottawa-Sherman fire
district. Did they know about prior failures of digital radio conversions in Isabella County and still proceed to waste more taxpayer dollars? Please read "An Interesting Sequence of Events"Read about prior digital radio problems in Isabella County here.
Also, please read "An Interesting Sequence of Events" here.
Volunteer firefighters throughout our great nation make tremendous personal sacrifices to serve their citizens. Our crew is no different. When we get out of bed during the middle of our sleep cycle to help someone, we often don’t even know them. When most people are safely tucked away during a raging blizzard or ice storm, we are obligated to brave the elements and render assistance, if called. We do this willingly and faithfully because our mission is to help people through their emergencies. We certainly don't do this for the meager paycheck we receive once a year. If we are roused from sleep at 1 a.m. tomorrow morning and spend the next 6 hours on a fire scene (and another 1-2 hours at the station getting the equipment ready for the next call) we will be paid a total of $15 each (not $15/hr). Most of our members will then go to work at their regular jobs having had little or no sleep. Our medical runs may expose us to any manner of infectious diseases or a violent domestic situation. For medical runs we earn a whopping $14. These emergency runs are not occasional activities. We responded to 425 events during 2015. Given the personal sacrifices we make and the conditions we endure, Isabella County should, at the the very least, make a maximum effort to provide us with reliable communications. Instead, we have been left with a system less reliable than the system we had prior to March 2015.
After reporting problems with the new digital system, Chief Livermore was told by a county official that we should use a truck radio when the hand-held radios won't work. That is a ridiculous statement, indicative of a remarkable degree of ignorance regarding rural volunteer fire department operations. Since we have no full time paid personnel, we often do not have the luxury of having an IC (incident commander) who is not actively involved with the emergency. When I am the only medical first responder on the scene and I need to contact dispatch, getting to a truck radio is an impossibility. Once I make contact with a patient, I am legally obligated to maintain continuous patient care until a person possessing an equal or higher license can replace me. I have worked many multiple-casualty accidents with just one or two other first responders. Under those circumstances, when all of us are actively engaged in medical care or extrication, there is no way we can break away to use a truck radio to request additional resources.
BY THE WAY...
WE NEED MORE VOLUNTEERS!
If you would like to know more about what it takes to be a firefighter and medical first responder on our department, click here.
In summary, here's what Nottawa-Sherman firefighters have lost due to the incompetence and indifference of Isabella County officials:
- We no longer have reliable 2-way VHF hand-held radio coverage from any point in our coverage area to any other point in our coverage area;
- We no longer have reliable VHF hand-held radio coverage communications with Central Dispatch or any of the fire departments that border our fire coverage area;
- We no longer can use our hand-held radios to communicate with Central Dispatch from the interior of our fire station while in the process of gearing up for the incident. Our choices are to (1) ignore the calls, (2) stop getting our gear on climb into a fire truck, start it up and use it's radio, or (3) walk at least 20 feet outside of our station to make the call;
- We no longer can communicate with Central Dispatch from inside many private buildings within our fire district using our hand-held radios;
- We now have many more "dead spots", even outside of buildings or vehicles, where we have do not have reliable hand-held radio communications with Central Dispatch;
- We no longer have quick and reliable hand-held radio communications with our two neighboring fire departments in Mecosta County and three neighboring departments in Clare County;
- Because our pagers are not capable of receiving digital transmissions, fire fighters en route to the scene or our station can often not hear critical radio traffic from Central Dispatch, fire officers or truck operators. They can no longer hear which trucks are en route, warnings about road hazards or road conditions & scene hazard reports from the 1st firefighter arriving on the scene;
- Transmissions to our pagers from Central Dispatch are now weaker and of poor audio quality;
- With the old analog system, partial communication was often possible with weak signals. This was often enough so the receiving party at least knew contact was being attempted. With the digital system, partial communications are mostly prevented.
Given
the personal sacrifices we make and the risks Nottawa-Sherman firefighters take
on behalf of the citizens of Nottawa, Sherman, Coldwater and Gilmore
townships, it
seems like the people who run Isabella County should be concerned for our welfare. On the contrary, our “lifeline”, radio
communications,
have been callously degraded for nearly a year with little effort being made to bring our communications capability back to the level
it was prior to the imposition of the digital system.
My
safety and that of my fellow
firefighters is being jeopardized by
the incompetence, indifference and possible cronyism of county officials
and the communications company they have hired. We had a system
that worked well. We now have a system that doesn't. This
situation has existed far too long and it’s only a matter
of time before it has disastrous, possibly lethal, consequences.
Please
visit the Board of Commissioners Web site and click on the link for your
district to obtain contact information for your commissioner.
Isabella County Board of Commissioners: http://www.isabellacounty.org/dept/board
Isabella County Administrator: admin@isabellacounty.org
Administrator: Margaret A. McAvoy PH: (989) 317-4053 FX: (989) 773-7431
Email: mmcavoy@isabellacounty.org
Email: mmcavoy@isabellacounty.org
District Map
PDF File
(Must be downloaded and/or opened with a PDF reader.)
Isabella County Board of Commissioners
District 2: Commissioner John Haupt (D) - Mt. Pleasant - Email (989) 644-3390 - Home
District 3: Commissioner Jerry Jaloszynski (R) - Email Shepherd - (989) 330-4890 - Cell
District 4: Commissioner Jim Horton (R) - Email Mt. Pleasant - (989) 621-1534 - Cell
District 5: Commissioner James Moreno (D) - Mt. Pleasant - Email (989) 773-5797 - Home
District 6: Commissioner David Ling, Vice Chairperson (D) - Email Mt. Pleasant - (989) 773-7823 - Home
District 7: Commissioner Michael Fisher (D) - Email Mt. Pleasant - (989) 860-1807 - Cell
Click the link below for updates.Updates
Posted 12/13/15
Unrelated to the radio issue is the "turf" issue. This is not the first time those of you living in western Isabella County have been handed a bad deal by Isabella County politicians. Twenty years ago, we could get help from Mecosta County law enforcement and emergency medical services if they were closer. Now, the closest ambulance is no longer dispatched, nor are the closest fire department first responders. You will experience this personally if you get in a really bad accident or have a heart attack in the 11,000 block of W. Coleman Road or the 0-999 block of S. Coldwater Road. On Coleman Road, the closest ALS ambulance may be only 8-9 miles away in Mecosta County, but they will not be dispatched. You may have to wait for one to come from Mt. Pleasant (26 mi) or Alma (39 mi) if there isn’t an MMR unit stationed north of Clare or at our station in Weidman. As always, we will do our best to keep you alive until an MMR crew arrives. Those living in the area of south Coldwater Road between M-20 and Baseline Road who are not within the Village of Lake Isabella will have to wait for first responders from Remus if they have a medical issue.
