The Huntsville/Lake of Bays Fire Department is hoping to improve fire service communication in the Baysville area at an annual cost of about $1,200.
Communication has been an issue in certain areas of Baysville, and it seemed to get worse when the fire department switched from analog to digital communications, noted a report by deputy fire chief Gary Monahan submitted to Lake of Bays council at its March 8 meeting.
The fire department has been working with Point to Point Communications for a couple of years to increase communications for the fire department in the Baysville area, according to Monahan.
His report noted that in 2020 the fire department approached Lakeland Energy to install communication equipment on the proposed tower at The Landscapes, a fractional ownership development in Baysville.
Monahan was before council asking for approval to enter into an “encroachment agreement” with The Landscapes.
“This agreement will compensate The Landscapes for hydro used and will allow 24/7 access to the building and tower should it be required,” he noted in his report.
Monahan said communication issues in Baysville have been a problem for years and at one point the fire department even considered building its own tower, which would’ve been a very costly enterprise. “So when we heard that Lakeland Energy was putting the tower up we jumped on that and we asked them if we could have priority on the tower, which they agreed to,” he said.
At the same time, Monahan told council there were staff changes taking place at Lakeland, and a few things were missed when the plan was being hashed out. The fire department required power for its communication equipment and a building to house it in.
“Through the modernization fund we were able to purchase all of the equipment and build a building… but it got to the point where we now had to determine who was going to pay for the electricity to run the equipment there. Obviously, a cost much smaller than if we had to bring our own hydro line in from somewhere…” he said.
Monahan estimated the cost of running the equipment would be about $100 per month. “I based it on the costing at the Huntsville tower…,” he told council.
Deputy Mayor Bob Lacroix wanted to know whether the equipment was already up and running. “Is the repeater been running now? I know it was supposed to go up and start operating as soon as the tower got built and there was a delay but is it going now?”
Monahan said it is his understanding that it will be up and running by March 22. He said there have been some delays and noted that fire department equipment has to be reprogrammed accordingly.
Council voted unanimously in favour of entering into an agreement with The Landscapes and enhancing communication with the fire department in Baysville.
Doppler reached out to Lacroix who said the issue involving poor communication in some areas of Baysville is that if a call goes out for fire service, some firefighters may not get it due to poor reception. “I would think that because there’s 20 of them somebody is going to get it [the call] out of the 20, but they will not all respond because they all can’t get the signal but with this booster going in this area it will alleviate that problem.”
He said another issue being worked on at the political level involves what happens at the point of dispatch when someone calls for emergency help. He said due to what he assumes are attempts at streamlining, the calls tend to go straight to ambulance service rather than both ambulance and fire service.
“What we’re trying to do with that protocol is try to change that protocol at the higher levels so that fire and ambulance will get connected again so that in the case of these emergencies that we’re having that the firemen can at least go out and help, assist if they can because they normally can get there faster than the ambulance can in normal cases,” he noted.
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