Maritimes Scanning Site

HALIFAX REGIONAL FIRE AND EMERGENCY SERVICE
last updated July 13 2009

LAYOUT REVISED AND LINKS TO ALL MAPS RESTORED FEBRUARY 8, 2009

HRM FIRE USES THE NOVA SCOTIA TRUNKED MOBILE RADIO SYSTEM (TMR) FOR COMMUNICATIONS. This is a system operating throughout the province and is provided under contract by Bell Aliant Telecom.  The same groups of frequencies are used by many different agencies and commercial users.  Listeners must have an 800 MHz scanner, and only if it is a trunktracker will these other users be able to be locked out.  Please consult the TMR sections of this site (accessible from the opening page ( www.marscan.com ) for details.

General 

Halifax Regional Fire is the largest fire department in geographical extent in all of eastern Canada, and in terms of personnel and equipment is certainly the largest east of Quebec City.  It is divided into a core area (Stations 2 to 18) covering the urban and suburban areas of Halifax proper, Dartmouth, Bedford, Sackville, Cole Harbour and Eastern Passage, and a much larger rural area (Stations 19 to 63) lying to the west and east of the core.  The two areas are on the same radio system but normally operate on different talkgroups.  All core units are able to travel into the rural area and switch to rural channels, and vice versa.

There is one dispatch centre for the entire HRFES, core and rural.  This is located in Dartmouth at the Eric Spicer building  and is integrated with the HRM Police dispatch centre and with the urban area 911 call-receiving centre.  This combined centre is referred to as IES and operators can move between police and fire consoles as necessary; but the consoles for the two services are separate in the same large room.  The centre uses TMRS consoles and can send all pages and communications directly to distant TMRS towers via fibre optics.   There is a backup system to be described on a separate page.

Paging and Stations

General Frequency Note:  All paging for HRM Fire Service is normally takes place on the following VHF frequencies, but there is a backup system on conventional 800 MHz as shown in the communications chart depicted farther down this page. Pages are transmitted on 800 MHz from time to time for test purposes.  Anyone not wanting to read the details can simply program the VHF and 800 MHz frequencies into their scanners, and will hear (subject to the limitations of their location and antenna) all pages for HRM and also for Mt Uniacke and Enfield in Hants County, and Hubbards in Lunenburg County (dispatched by HRFES).  Note also that HRM pages the CCGC Sambro, at least in its crew's off hours.   While the nature of the incident may be mentioned, the crew is merely requested to contact the JRCC (Joint Rescue Coordination Centre) in Halifax for details and tasking, and there is no two-way communcations with the cutter. Some of the frequencies are in use at multiple locations.   Operations on rural operations channel DISP-R are repeated (simulcast) on rural page transmitters, so that volunteers equipped only with pagers can follow the first stages of a call-out.   Once a unit arrives on scene operations move to OPS-2R or another rural talk group and these are NOT simulcast on the page frequency.

* 151.4 may be transmitted from an additional site in the core area to better serve the downtown stations (verification needed)

**The 152.18 pager has been stated to be at Preston but TAFL indicates 152.18 is in downtown Halifax.

Rural Details:  The rural area is divided into 6 Emergency Response Zones; however Zone 5 (formerly Zones 5 and 6) is normally referred to as the Western Region.  The other zones are in the Eastern Region.  Pageouts can be done by complete zone  when necessary.  Rural stations have their own station or department chiefs but are under the administration or or oversight of a career District Chief.  Stations are paged via VHF in a two-stage or three-stage system.   It is thought that the central dispatcher sends a page out to the appropriate TMRS tower and in some cases it is transmitted by VHF directly from that tower.  In other cases it goes from the tower by UHF? signal to a non-TMRS tower for retransmission on VHF.   See the paging sites and rural stations served in the chart farther up this page.   

MAPS

1.  Maps created by Stephen: 

            
 2. Excerpts from official response map.

The following photos are segments of the large HRFE map showing the response areas for each station.  Each area outlined in red has one to three station numbers... this being the primary station, the first backup station, and perhaps an additional station.   This indicates the order of response for dispatch purposes. Where a location is mentioned rather than a station number, this refers to a non-HRFE station.   Unfortunately I do not have complete coverage, with the worst gap being in the interior east end of HRM.    Photo geographical descriptions are very approximate and are not listed in any particular order.    These photos of an actual official response map were taken in approximately 2006.

Herring Cove to Porters Lake   Hammonds Plains to Grand Lake    Musquodoboit Hbr to Ship Hbr    Prospect to Cow Bay

Sackville to Waverley     Sheet Harbour to Ecum Secum     Waverley to Wyses Corner     West End of HRM

Please note that as of December 2004  I am no longer including an apparatus list for each station as this is too difficult for me to keep up.   I will be interested in expressions of interest from anyone who would like to take on this task and submit to me a complete list.

Communications

All vehicles and all stations are equipped with TMR base, mobile and handheld units.   Each radio has the same three banks of talkgroups and conventional frequencies.  Effective with this system the core and rural stations have complete interoperability, as each radio carries both the rural and core talkgroups.

The following chart indicates the channelization of HRFES radios as of the fall of 2006.  Those who were familiar with the previous chart will see that OPS8-C and OPS8-R have been discontinued, and all three of MECLOG, FIREPREV and TRNG are now using the SUPPORT tg which itself uses the old MECLOG id number.  Also note that vehicle repeaters 1, 7, and 8  seem to have disappeared even before these repeaters have been installed.  Talkgroup id's for trunked channels, and frequencies for non-trunked channels, are shown under channel designators.  

Trunked channels (talkgroups) are in black.  Conventional channels (frequencies) are in teal.   Conventional backup repeaters are installed at each of the TMR sites that serve HRM.   Repeaters with the same frequency have differing CTCSS tone access.  It is thought or suspected that the core area bu rptrs use 156.7 and most rural bank rptrs use 173.8, with Tangier and Chaswood using 192.8.   

VR (Vehicle Repeaters)  As of September 2006 it is not known if these have been instituted at all in HRFE.  It is thought that 8 frequency pairs were set aside for this use, but only five VR spots are now on the chart.  VR's are intended to extend portable communications, such as from within a fire scene, to the ops channel in use.  For example it is thought that VR2 would be used if OPS2 was designated at a particular incident.   Transmissions on VR2 from within the building would be repeated by a truck radio on the OPS2 talkgroup.   These details may be erroneous, because there are 6 OPS talkgroups for each of rural and core areas, for a total of 12 (they would not use the DISP tg's) and only five VR's listed.   The 8 set-aside frequencies were as follows (outputs only shown, in ascending order):  VR1 867.9750, VR6 867.9875, VR2 868.4625, VR3 868.4750, VR4 868.4875, VR5 868.9625, VR4 868.9750, VR 7 868.9875 MHz.   It is not known which of these have been retained in the five VR plan. The designations VR2 to VR6 on this chart may be obsolete, but on the other hand the five remaining VR may have retained old designations and frequencies shown above. 

Simplex and non-trunked repeater channels are in this colour and are technically not part of the trunk.  Frequencies shown for BU channels are the outputs from the repeaters.  Mobile units transmit 45 MHz down.  Area-specific BU (backup) non-trunked channels are 800 MHz non-trunked frequencies accessed directly by fire dispatch and control in case of trunk system breakdown.   As these are not often in use, any knowledge of CTCSS is sketchy and comes from observation by listeners.   Some of these backup repeaters are also for use by police units in the event of TMR breakdown.   In the rural areas both police and fire will share the same backup repeater.   In the core areas only the fire units will go the backup repeater, as police in those areas will use site trunking.

Sequence:  Initial dispatch will be made on VHF paging frequencies. Response is initially on DISP-C (core stations) or DISP-R. (rural stations)   In the case of rural calls, the traffic on DISP-R is repeated on the local paging channel so that volunteer firefighters en route and without a tmr radio can monitor the response on their pagers.   On arrival of the first unit at the scene communications are transferred to the next available OPS channel.  Note that core apparatus may be sent to rural areas and vice versa, in which case these units will operate on the OPS channel in use at the scene.

Notes:

BU = Backup channels are conventional 800 MHz repeaters used if the trunk system goes off-line.
HRM = liaison with other HRM departments (police, works, etc)
AMTAIR = Air Medical Transport, air ambulance trunk talkgroup
AMTSIM = Air Medical Transport Simplex for local communication with air ambulance (not often used)
VFDSIM = Common Volunteer Fire Dept Simplex, province-wide.

VR = vehicular repeaters used to link portable radios at the scene, possibly inside buildings, with the dispatcher.  It is thought that a portable set to, for example, VR3, will be retransmitted on the equivalent OPS frequency for that zone, either OPS3-C or OPS3-R.  In practice, anything coming over the VR channels should be rebroadcast on the trunk.  VR Frequencies will be added to this chart as they become known; however it is known that they are in the 868 MHz range (vehicle out; with portable transmitting 45 MHz down)
SXALL = simplex with any and all government/public safety users of NS Trunk
MA = Mutual Assistance trunk channels = for joint use with other NS Trunk users