Fire Chief

After 35 years in the fire service, 30 years full time at the Lisle-Woodridge (Ill.) Fire District, I retired as deputy chief and became the executive director at a busy 911 center: the Western Will County Communications Center, aka WESCOM. I feel very fortunate to have landed a job — as a second career — that allows me to stay connected with emergency services while chasing my life-long interest in telecommunications.

Starting out as a fire cadet, I became a paid-on-call firefighter at Carol Stream, then Wheaton. This set the stage to test at various fire departments, and I became full-time in 1976. These were the halcyon days of the Emergency! TV show and the explosive growth of paramedic services. I tested around northern Illinois and Southern California — the Johnny Gage influence, I guess. In Illinois, paramedics were known as EMT-IIs — the training was a whopping 90 hours! Many of us took the training before the ink was dry on the EMS Act of Illinois.

A parallel interest was in amateur radio and electronics, after being brought into the hobby with the help of Officer Will Sperling, now retired from the Woodridge Police Department. Will and I have been good friends for over three decades and we have continued in the hobby. He has parlayed his experience in the radio hobby and is now in the two-way radio business. For me, the hobby led to a part-time job at a two-way radio shop, because every firefighter has a side job, right? The owner, Bob Hodge, is an excellent technician, tutor and patient instructor in the two-way business. Bob and I still talk about trends in the business some 20 years later. The part-time job exposed me to telephone systems, radio telemetry systems, HEAR radio systems, repeaters, base stations, pagers — you name it. We had service contracts with local public safety agencies, public works entities, businesses and federal agencies. We also designed and built two tunnel-based radio systems, the Deep Tunnel projects in Chicago and Boston — weird stuff. Much of my work was installations for squadcars, service calls, and repair of portables and pagers.

As I rose through the ranks at the fire department, I represented our agency in our dispatch consortium, DuPage Public Safety Communications in Glendale Heights. With 12 police agencies and 15 fire agencies, I was exposed to mobile data systems, CAD systems, regional mutual aid systems, unique needs of police agencies, microwave systems, 911 technology and the interesting politics of working with multiple agencies. DU-COMM is a model consortium and has had a 25-plus year history. It was my pleasure to be the technical services chairman at DU-COMM for many years, being urged on and supported by longtime DU-COMM technicians Jim Briggs and Dan Sykes. (Bob Hodge also is now with DU-COMM.)

As my 30-year career came to its conclusion, I was recruited by WESCOM, a nearby consortium of five police agencies and eight fire agencies. WESCOM was in the middle of a construction project that required a change in location, implementation of a new 911 phone system, installation of new radio consoles, wrapping up labor negotiations, and the beginning of a new budget — a great time to be “the new guy.”

It is my hope that this blog will facilitate an exchange of information on current topics such as interoperability, 700MHz, NFPA 1221, trunked radio systems in the fire service, tactical radio systems, Project 25, Next-Generation 911 systems, and other topics that you ask about. It will be my challenge to service the needs of those who are either technically inclined or not technical at all. This can become a complicated and contentious subject, but leaders in the fire service need to be well informed on communications. Accountability involves command, control and communications — essential for safety and success.

Please go to www.mabasradio.org for more information on fire service radio information. In the future, I will be discussing other Web sites and sources of radio news.