Bill's Nova Scotia Radio Site

HALIFAX REGIONAL FIRE AND EMERGENCY SERVICE
last updated July 31, 2014

 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 65) lying to the west and east of the core.  All units operate on the same set of radio channels, so that urban units can assist at urban incidents and (more rarely) vice versa.

HRFE dispatching is integrated with that for the police services of HRM, and is located in Dartmouth at the Eric Spicer building.  This centre also operates the 911 call-taking service for HRM and together the whole operation is called IES (Integrated Emergency Service).  While the operators can move between these functions, the three services are physically separated in the one large room.  The centre uses TMRS consoles and can send all pages and communications directly to distant TMRS towers via fibre optics.  

Paging and Stations

• See the chart below for a list of stations.

• Paging for HRM Fire Service is normally takes place on 9 VHF frequencies  indicated on the chart below.  Two of the frequencies are used for the core Halifax/Dartmouth area.  Seven other frequencies are used in the rural areas, with some of these are in use at multiple locations.

• Use of the VHF paging frequencies is entirely for paging.   All two way communications are on the NS Trunked Mobile Radio System (TMR1).

• 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 frequencies into their scanners, and will hear (subject to the limitations of their location and antenna) practically all pages for HRM and also for Mt Uniacke and Enfield in Hants County.  This reception is of course subject to location.  For example listeners in the Halifax core area will not likely hear pages transmitted in the far eastern areas of HRM.

• Operations on operations channel DISP-C are repeated (simulcast) on rural page transmitters, so that volunteers equipped only with pagers can follow the first stages of a call-out.   Once sufficient personnel arrive on scene, operations move to another talk group and these are NOT simulcast on the page frequency.

• The backup 800 MHz frequencies may also be entered into your scanner, but don't expect much activity.

• 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 communications with the cutter. Some of the frequencies are in use at multiple locations.  

Further comments re pages:   

• While there is a back-up paging system on 800 MHz it is unknown how it would actually be used, due to the fact that individual firefighters do not have 800 MHz paging receivers. 

• Official lists of frequencies found in Industry Canada's TAFL site show 154.65 as a paging frequency; however in each case the site shown as having 154.65 actually is using 152.06 MHz, which is not listed for HRFE in TAFL in any location.

• It is unknown why some frequencies such as 152.06 are used in two or three locations, whereas 154.415 and 154.175 are each used in only one location.   There are areas such as along the eastern shore near Ship Harbour where all three pagers on 152.06 can be easily heard which is something that an observer might think should not be happening if there are other frequencies available.     Conversely it might be said that there seems to be little need for a separate frequency of 154.175 for Ecum Secum when one of the others such as 153.89 would work as well.   There are no other users of 153.89 in that area and therefore to the casual listener such as this one, it is a conundrum for sure.    A related observation is that in some other parts of Nova Scotia, all the pagers are on one single frequency, rather than several.   One has to ponder the relative effectiveness and cost of such options.  

* 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.   

LEADERSHIP STRUCTURE AND DIVISIONS

HRFES does not openly publicize its structure and names of its leaders. A new leadership structure commenced in 2013, with further changes in 2014. There are now 6 front-line leadership areas, each with a division chief.  The areas and base station for the DC are:

DIVISION 1 (Western area) - Stn 65
DIVISION 2 (Halifax-Bedford) - Stn 3
DIVISION 3 (Dartmouth-Sackville) - Stn 12
DIVISION 4 (Beaver Bank-Waverley-Musquodoboit Valley) - Stn 45
DIVISION 5 (Lawrencetown to Oyster Pond) - Stn 23
DIVISION 6 (E Ship Hbr to boundary) - Stn 28

The Division chiefs attend major incidents and often will take over command.   Divisions 2 and 3 have a rotation of division chiefs, e.g. there is always a Division 2 division chief on duty.   The other divisions have one person only, who goes on and off duty, and may or may not be available on call when not on duty.

There are also two District Captains (East and West) who deal with safety issues at major incidents.

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

Communications

Two way communications are carried out on the 800 MHz TMR.  Radios have the following channel lineup which includes trunk system talk groups and conventional 800 frequencies.   Originally the core stations used the A bank, with the rural units using the B bank.  Beginning in 2012 all HRFE stations began using the A bank only, except in unusual circumstances.  Non-HRFE stations paged by the IES continue to use the B bank.    Note that there are seven operations talk groups in each of Banks A and B.   There were also in the past OPS8-C and OPS8-R but earlier reconfigurations squeezed those out due to lack of space on the radios.   

Conventional (non-trunk) channels are shown in this colour.  BU repeaters are for use in the event of trunk failure and might also be used by other municipal departments. 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.   

Vehicular repeaters are not actually known to be in use, and perhaps are not even installed.

C Bank is used very infrequently, and apart from the vehicular repeaters, is mostly for liaison with other agencies.  Previously there were separate MECLOG, FIREPREV and TRNG talk groups but now all have been consolidated into SUPPORT on the previous MECLOG id.

The following is the sequence of events or protocol for use of talk groups

1. Dispatch pages out stations on the VHF system.  For core area calls the working ops channel (talk group) will be indicated.  This will be OPS2-C by default, or progressively higher C channels if calls are already in progress.   Responding units will reply to dispatch on that assigned talk group and will continue to use it until the incident is over.    For rural area calls no talk group is initially assigned.   Responding units will reply on DISP-C.  A working talk group will only be assigned once sufficient personnel have arrived on scene to actually commence the investigation and response.  At that time OPS2-C or higher will be assigned.   All communications from mobile units on DISP-C are rebroadcast on the rural VHF paging network.  This allows volunteers to hear the progress of the response on their pagers.  Once the responding units reach the scene and they switch to a working channel, the volunteers will no longer hear what is happening.

2. When an incident is over and command terminated units returning to station will go to DISP-C and will report when back in quarters.

3. Units on driver training and other non-incident tasks will be on DISP-C.

4. The two non-HRFE stations at Enfield and Mount Uniacke are paged on VHF similar to rural HRFE stations, except that they go to DISP-R.  Once on scene the dispatcher will assign them to an R operations talk group.   Generally Enfield is assigned to OPS2-R, and Mount Uniacke to perhaps OPS3-R. 

5. DISP-R is patched to DISP-C so that in any area where DISP-R is affiliated, the traffic on DISP-C can be heard routinely over the DISP-R channel.  This is most common around Enfield and Mount Uniacke and listeners outside of those areas should not normally hear any activity on DISP-R, due to the fact that most stations in HRM do not use that channel or indeed any R channel unless there are so many multiple incidents that use of that bank is required.

6. OPS5-R has apparently been assigned as a patch between HRFE and the Halifax Airport fire department.  That department uses 400 MHz MotoTrbo and a link is necessary in case of mutual aid situations.   This link is not continuously in operation, so in normal circumstances you will not hear airport fire by scanning OPS5-R.   It has been reported that the link is tested at least weekly, but you must be in an area where OPS5-R is actually affiliated, which should only be on sites near the airport unless someone elsewhere actually tunes in a fire radio to monitor the test.

Further note re vehicular repeaters:

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.