am also always personally amazed at how we can get good responce time in a rural brigade i.e. 18 minutes (nearest mets do it in 17 mins) using nothing more then SMS to get an entire crew on the road and rolling. The cost of the SMS is something that I do out of "donation to the Brigade" which is done with out any quarms. I wonder what would happen if we all had pagers.
The concept of SMS alerts is useful but you have to look at it from all angles malleefire and consider numerous things such as
* How many brigade members actually have mobiles
* Can you be sure the phones will be turned on
* What mobile phone provider is each member with
* Signal coverage
Personally i wouldnt mind seeing SMS paging being introduced even to volunteers who have pagers but dont always carry them as it can assure response but also there is a downside in terms of delay in getting the sms due to area and mobile provider