Valley Dispatch

Bill's Nova Scotia Radio Site

CENTRAL DISPATCH SERVICES

This page has not been updated in some time (as of late 2010), and possibly I have not acted on a few tips emailed to me in the past year or so. Please check out the information on the page and let me know what must be updated. Tnx frm Bill

Dispatch centres are publicly or privately operated entities that provide dispatch and/or operational services for public service agencies, mostly fire departments. Larger towns generally self-dispatch, for example Halifax, Truro and Cape Breton RM, but some sizeable towns do contract out to outside agencies.

The information below comes from many listeners around the province. Invariably dispatch centres not only actually dispatch fire departments to incidents, they also conduct tests on a daily basis at or around pre-determined times, sometimes more than once per day. It soon becomes clear who dispatches who. Additionally all or most of these dispatch agencies are listed in the federal government TAFL along with the frequencies that they use.

1. VALLEY DISPATCH . Valley Dispatch is located in Kentville.

Valley Dispatch appears to be the largest privately owned and operated dispatch centre in Nova Scotia. Not only does it dispatch more VFD's than anyone else, it is also a PSAP 911 call-taking centre and in this capacity serves Kentville and the surrounding area but can take overflows from elsewhere when required. Reports and TAFL listings indicate that they dispatch the following departments but this list is not guaranteed to be 100% accurate.

Annapolis County	Colchester County	Cumberland County	Hants County	Kings County	Lunenburg County	Queens County
Annapolis Royal Bridgetown Lawrencetown Margaretville Middleton Nictaux Port Lorne Springfield	Bass River Bible Hill Brookfield Cobequid Debert Economy Five Islands Great Village Hilden North river Onslow-Belmont Salmon River Special Hazards Stewiacke Tatamagouche Upper Stewiacke Valley-Kemptown	Advocate Collingwood FPW* Joggins Leicester Oxford Parrsboro Pugwash River Hebert Shinimicas Southampton Tidnish Truemanville Wallace Wentworth Westchester	Brooklyn Indian Brook Elmsdale Gore Hantsport Kennetcook Lantz Maitland Milford Nine Mile River Noel Rawdon Shubie Summerville Walton Shore Windsor	Aylesford Berwick Canning Greenwich Halls harbor Kentville Kingston New Minas Port Williams Waterville Wolfville	New Ross	Charleston Greenfield Liverpool Mill Village North Queens Port Midway West Queens First Responders

For specific frequencies used by individual fire departments please go to the Nova Scotia fire department list ( http://marscan.com/firens.htm ). Valley Dispatch appears to interact with the departments its serves in three different ways. The most noticeable is paging on VHF frequencies which may be individual or group private frequencies such as 153.77 serving East Hants, or they may be via the provincial government fire department network of repeaters ( http://marscan.com/nsfiregrid.htm ). Departments may also communicate with Valley Dispatch following the page-out using the same or different VHF frequency. Finally departments may communicate with Valley Dispatch using the TMR ( http://marscan.com/tmrintro.htm ) by way of the EO or other talk groups.

2. DIGBY DISPATCH The list below is not considered to be complete. Please email updates to me marscan1 AT gmail.com

Digby dispatch can, in addition to VHF paging, be heard on the EO TMR talk groups, particularly EO-W1.

This centre is located in Bridgewater and dispatches all departments in the Lunenburg County with the exception New Ross (dispatched by Valley Dispatch). This list is provided in January 2009 directly by Scotia Business Centre. TAFL lists the following frequencies for SBC: 154.22 to activate the 152.21 Sherwood fire grid repeater, 154.34 simplex to communicate with Bridgewater Fire (and possibly other Bridgewater town divisions), and as well a paging frequency of 167.1 MHz. It is thought that other than this direct use of radio, SBC activates other paging transmitters via landlines. Note that Hubbards was taken over by Scotia in 2010 after several years of service by HRM.

Canso Dispatch is operated by the Strait Area Mutual Assistance Association. Information is needed regarding the dispatch location; however it is thought to be a dial up system in which the dispatcher uses a land-line to connect to a remote paging site. All sites appear to be on 153.920 MHz but it is not known if these sites are simulcast. Generally if several sites are on one frequency simulcasting is indicated. According to TAFL the page sites are: Mabou, Whycocomagh, Oban, Fairmont and Evanston. This service covers areas of Antigonish and Inverness Counties. Check the fire frequency page for departments involved. Any department in that region served by 153.920 is part of this system.

Yarmouth Fire Department dispatches several VFD's in the Yarmouth County area and possibly some in Shelburne as well.

This centre is located at the Roseway Hospital in Shelburne. Nick indicates that they dispatch 5 local area departments.

Stellarton PD not only dispatches itself, it also serves a number of fire departments in the Pictou area:

Trenton dispatches a few VFD's in the Pictou area: Trenton, Little Harbour, Pictou Landing, Abercrombie

HRM operates its own dispatch centre (referred to in-house as Integrated Emergency Services). This is the PSAP 911 call-taking centre for the Halifax Regional Municipality and as well dispatches both the HRM Fire Service and the Halifax Regional Police, and the Halifax Detachment of the RCMP. Additionally the IES dispatches the following VFD's lying outside HRM: Mount Uniacke and Enfield. All fire stations are paged out on vhf (151 to 154 range) with a backup system on conventional 800 MHz transmitters. Following pageout, communications with the centre are on the TMR. Please note that it is common in rural parts of HRM for the page frequency to also carry the initial TMR communications in order for volunteers to be able to follow the status of the response.

Shubie Radio is the central communications station for the provincial Dept of Natural Resources, and also dispatches some of the smaller components of the provincial government. At one time they were quite active in coordinating the use of the now obsolescent NS Integrated Mobile Radio System. They do page out at least one VFD, in the St. Mary's District of Guysborough County, but possibly also others. Information is required...

I am hoping also to revise my frequency list for NS fire departments ( http://marscan.com/firensbyregion2.htm ) and ultimately may consolidate that page with this one, so please also send me updates on VHF page and operational frequencies.

	Clare Rural Municipality	Digby Rural Municipality	Annapolis County
	Southville New Tusket & Havelock Weymouth St Bernard Little Brook	Smiths Cove Digby Digby Neck Freeport Tiverton Westport Bear River Brighton & Barton Plympton & Gilberts Cove	Annapolis Royal PD (`432`)


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