When a brigade with a specialist appliance eg BWC (42), Hazmat (28) are responded via paging how do they work out what to send?
For example if Belair are responded and the pager message ends with BELR42, is this only requesting the BWC? Do they also send a general purpose appliance as well? Or should this be responded on a BELR00 message?
This is not directed at Belair as I am only using them as an example. Stirling, Bradbury, Kangarilla, Summertown etc could all have been used.
The pager messages that i have seen specify what they want
eg if there was a job that summertown was required to sent a general purpose appliance too it would say SUMM00 SUMM42.
However i have only seen this with tanker responses not hazmat and rescue as i frequently respond to the same jobs as Stirling and they are always STRL19
SUMM42 should be used thought of as a mandatory bulk water carrier response...up to the brigade/group to respond a firefighting appliance.
If it was page to Summertown area, im sure you'd respond a fire appliance anyway too...?
For us, if the page says 42, you get Jervois BW9 with two crew.
If is says 00 you get Jervois 34 with (hopefully) a full crew.
There has been confusion in the past when the 34 has been paged (with a 00) to adjacent areas only to be met with a 'where's the tanker' request when we arrived at the job. Since then, if possible, we try to contact the relevant IC/OIC at the job to confirm what they actually want (again mainly for out of our area jobs).
In my opinion, if the job is in that brigades area, they are in charge and can send whatever they [as the oic] like from there station.
However if it is a surrounding brigade or another services area, then only send the appliance that has been requested, ie; 42 = only send tanker, dont then empty your station just so everyone gets a run.