Maritimes Scanning Site

Nova Scotia Fire Services

Last updated June 25, 2009

See  below for other area-specific pages for several counties.

Fire Services in Nova Scotia are similar to those elsewhere.  There is a mixture of small volunteer departments, composite volunteer/professional stations, and the completely paid (career) departments in the cities.  For departments utilizing VHF, the standard mutual aid frequency in Nova Scotia is 153.83 MHz.  

All fire departments in Nova Scotia (with the exception of Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency Service, Halifax International Airport, military fire services, and possibly Truro Fire Dept) operate on VHF frequencies.   In some areas various local fire departments have coordinated communications, at least for paging, and in some cases for operations as well.   It is common for paging providers to be contracted.  This is quite common in the Annapolis Valley, the South Shore, Hants and Colchester areas.  Providers are a mix of for-profit, not-for-profit, and volunteer.   "Not-for-profit" includes dispatching services provided by police departments and hospitals.

Superimposed on the individual paging and operations frequencies of the departments, there is also the Nova Scotia Integrated Mobile Radio System which, for fire services, consists of a network of VHF repeaters covering the whole province.   It is safe to say that all fire departments using VHF would have the frequency for the local repeater in their radios.   These repeaters allowed wide area communications, including capability to call from one end of the province to the other; however this capability is slowly going out of service.  The NSIMRS system is most likely to be heard in paging, as several departments are called out through these repeaters, and as well many use them for operations.  For information on the NSIMRS fire network ("fire grid") click here.  Frequencies of the fire grid are included in the provincial list described below.

Please note that most, if not all, departments also have some capability to operate on the 800 MHz trunk (TMR) for coordination with other departments, and with other emergency service agencies.   Generally this capability would consist of one or two portables used by supervisory personnel only or for Medical First Responders in order to be in contact with ambulance dispatch.  Some departments use TMR to confirm with their dispatch service that they heard a VHF page.

The Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency Service operates on the NS Trunked Mobile Radio System ("TMR") on 800 MHz.   Paging however is on VHF and frequencies are listed in the provincial list accessed above and in the HRFES page.  The HRFES page also includes information on airport and military fire services operating within HRM.  Please note that the military (DND) fire service also now operates on the TMR, and the Halifax Airport fire service is on 400 MHz (the only fire service in the province using 400 MHz)

The Cape Breton Regional Fire Service is also covered, along with CBR Police, on a separate page.

Several areas of the province have been expanded into regional pages, including maps.  These area pages are Hants, Colchester, St. Mary's, Lunenburg, Pictou, Antigonish . [some may be slow to load due to bitmap files] In each case there is a detailed list and perhaps commentary as well, and where possible accompanying maps.  This group of pages is currently under development with much of the information and all of the maps courtesy of Stephen.   These pages are not kept updated as much as is the overall provincial list, but are useful for their maps and explanation of paging and operations.  The date of last revision should be noted.