Saturday, October 19, 2019

Listening to Fremont Fire

Many of you may not know, but the Fremont Fire Department is dispatched by the Alameda County Fire Department's dispatch center in Livermore.  You can listen to them online by selecting "Alameda County Fire" https://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/11878
On this talk group (or channel) being broadcast is also fire traffic for Alameda County Fire Department (includes Newark and U.C.) and Alameda City Fire Department.  You may hear a lot of radio traffic that is not of interest to you.  In radio terms we say "high noise to signal".
Some history.  Back in the 60s Fremont Fire was on the same frequency as most other fire agencies in southern Alameda County, 154.07.  Someone with a tunable VHF receiver or crystal controlled monitor could listen in and hear most of the East Bay as well.  I believe FFD's call sign was KDA429.  Other fire departments on that channel were :  San Leandro, San Lorenzo, Ashland, Cherryland and Hayward.  Alameda County Fire Dept. was not organized until the late 80s.  Sometime in the 90s all communications went to a high tech system requiring an expensive trunk tracking scanner.  Fremont Fire had their own talk group, or channel at that time.  One could simply lock the scanner on FFD and only hear local fire traffic.  It was a great thing.  Then about 10 years ago or so, in order to save money, the city decided to contract dispatch services out to ACFD and that is where we stand today.  Unfortunately FFD has to share the channel with numerous other departments.  It is a busy talk group to listen to.  If a major fire event is happening I will try and lock the live stream to that events tactical channel for all to listen to, but otherwise you will have to select the ACFD stream or listen in on Pulse Point, which has a radio option.

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