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Surrey’s on-call firefighters are given a boost with new £20k pager system
Surrey’s on-call firefighters who provide emergency cover in Cranleigh, Lingfield Oxted Godalming Dunsfold, Chobham, Gomshall, Haslemere, Walton and Guildford - are now better equipped and on route faster thanks to the implementation of a brand new pager system.
The Retained Duty System (RDS) staff, as they are known formally, at all ten of the stations which use RDS cover, have been trialling a number of different alerter systems over the past months. Based on reliability, audibility, ease of use, robustness, battery life and operability the trial was conclusive in identifying the Datanet alerter as the best option of the future of the Surrey RDS mobilising capability.
The Service has placed an order for 150 new Datanet 2A alerters with Datanet Communications, representing an investment of over £20,000 in Surrey’s RDS cover.
Keith Leman, Retained Duty System Development officer said: “It is important that this part of the overall mobilising system has been shown to be exceptional. This order is crucial in ensuring 100% response reliability and that no member of staff on duty fails to receive and respond to mobilising alerts to crew appliances. As part of the trial, crews at an RDS station have been using these alerters for some time and have had no reported alerting failures since the introduction of this equipment. This represents a significant step forward for the RDS which will be further enhanced by a new ‘availability system’ next year for recording when retained staff are available for duty.”
It is anticipated that the new alerter system will be fully operational across all ten RDS stations by the end of November 2008.
