The equipment was right. The frequency? Not so much.
An error in the band frequency assigned to new pagers for several Columbia Shuswap Regional District fire departments will cost five CSRD fire departments $13,000.
“Industry Canada designated improper frequencies that weren’t meeting the expectations of our equipment,” says CSRD Fire Services Co-ordinator Jack Blair of fire departments in Scotch Creek, Eagle Bay, Celista, Anglemont and Ranchero. “During transmission, firefighters were getting a lot of squelching and echoing.”
Further investigation by a radio engineer revealed that the frequencies assigned within the ‘B Band’ range were too close to repeaters on Crowfoot Mountain and in the Ranchero Fire Suppression Area, something Industry Canada confirmed, says Blair.
“They then went back and reviewed the situation, issued CSRD new frequencies that fall into the ‘C Band,’” he says.
Blair says not only did it take Industry Canada six weeks to address his concerns, when they did, they said there was nothing they could do about replacing the equipment or offering a refund on the units that cost $410 each.
When contacted by the Market News, Industry Canada communications reps said they were looking into the issue, but needed more time to respond.
The situation has angered North Shuswap firefighter David Baxter.
“As you can imagine, as a volunteer department, we don’t have unlimited funds to throw around...,” he said in a March 22 email to the Market News. “Apparently, Industry Canada has simply washed their hands of this matter. If this is the way you treat volunteer fire departments, I don’t understand why we are volunteering for our communities.”
But Blair points out that CSRD has a number of fire departments that still use B Band pagers, “so it’s not like they’ll go in the garbage.”
As well, he says Denbil Radio has “graciously offered” to take the 70 incorrectly programmed pagers back at a very fair market price and replace them with C Band pagers.
“Obviously Industry Canada gave us the wrong information, but I have to look at companies that sell these pagers too,” he says, noting they cannot be reprogrammed. “But even if they could be reprogrammed, there would be a high cost to have that done. The cost would have outweighed the benefits of re-programming.”
On the good-news front, Blair says the CSRD 911 dispatching service has saved some $300,000 in a year by having 911 calls dispatched from Surrey.
“There’s always gonna be bumps along the way, but it will be a year April 30 so they’re getting ironed out,” he says. “I’ve had nobody come to me and tell me this is terrible, everybody seems to be getting comfortable with the new dispatchers.”