Effects of dispatch tones on your body at night

[JFDCo3FF]

I am looking for some articles or studies about the effects of dispatch tones on your body at night. If anyone can help that would be great.

Thanks

[Eng18a]

i just read something, forgot where, but it was something along the lines of first responders/ midnight shifters are at a greater chance of getting tumors, because the horomones that fight it are released at night, found the article...

http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/living/health.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-11-30-0164.html

[GeorgeWendtCFI]

For some of the folks here, roughly the same as Viagra or Cialis.

[hwoods]

For some of the folks here, roughly the same as Viagra or Cialis.


Thanks a Lot! I just spit Pepsi all over the monitor.............:eek: :eek:

[tankerhoosen]

Ha the tones went off at 5am this morning for a car fire, I was dressed and to the door of my apartment before I realized I was even awake!

[dadman]

No articles or studies.
I work nights and sleep during the day.
It doesn't seem good physically or mentally to allow yourself to be jolted out of slep and rush-rush-rush off to a call.
I think the type of tone also has some effect.
Our tone on the pager is low and slow followed by rapid beeps. Overture of Death and Gloom.
Sometimes gets me in a dread and panic mindset.
The radio on "alert" has a different setting. Slow beeps followed by a sane sounding tone.
There have been times waking up where I had to take a minute to ungrog before driving off.
Having an attitude beforehand of being calm, and getting boots and pants on before driving off, is good for gathering the thoughts.

[JayFireEater]

A middle of the night call for me usually results in waking up the second someone opens the mic. Its weird and I hate when someone hits their mic on accident and I wake up and expect someone to say something. If it is a call I am usually out the door in under 2 minutes, then to the station in maybe 3 minutes or so.....

If they did do a study it would be very interesting to see the results

[JHR1985]

i remember hearing of a study that mentioned it increases the risk of a heart attack. It recommended a sutle tone and to have red lights instead of the bright lights most have now. It advocated a slow wake up, not a jolt. Like a pre-alert followed by a tone and red lights since it mentioned that bright lights have adverse effects on the eyes and body at night

[BKDRAFT]

A lot of new stations tones come on low and get louder and louder. A light starts off very dim and gets brighter as well. It's supposed to be much better on your body. I like it.

[firecrow]

Ha the tones went off at 5am this morning for a car fire, I was dressed and to the door of my apartment before I realized I was even awake!

Ditto to that. I've found myself at the station putting my bunker pants on just as I 'wake up' - everything else from getting out of bed to driving to the station was a sort of otherwordly fog - and it breaks the moment I actually have to interact with another FF and actually process information.

The good thing is I am so close to the station and its so residential that its very rare to run into anyone on the roads except another responder. Its some sort of weird autopilot. I know I am not alone because I've seen that same sort of glaze on some of the others at times.

The worst part is getting home and the adrenaline is still going and you can't sleep and you know you have to be up for work in 2 or 3 hours (if you're lucky).

Probably the only thing worse is waking up and trying to get dressed with a middle-of-the-night woody...

[jonnyirons2]

I know in Palm Beach County Stations they start out low in volume then increase. Ours knock your heart in to V-tac if you're in the different stages of fatigue.

[DrewOnFire]

A lot of new stations tones come on low and get louder and louder. A light starts off very dim and gets brighter as well. It's supposed to be much better on your body. I like it.

I wish, it is like daylight in my dorm when the overhead light goes on, I'm thinking of unscrewing a bulb... Nothing worse than being disoriented and blind.

[Frmboybuck]

Guess I didnt even realise this was an issue. Pager goes off, I get up, drive to the station, dress, get on the truck, drive on scene, WALK INTO A BURNING BUILDING, put fire out, go back to station, clean up, go home, shower, go back to bed. Ive got to think there are things harder on your body than being woke up in the middle of the night.

[FireMedAS]

There haven't been any studies on fire dispatch tones, so you should search under "noxious arousal" (seriously). You will see that it causes T wave changes on the electrocardiogram, and sudden increases in sympathetic tone are known triggers of AMI. It's ridiculous we don't have less "alarming" tones to wake us at night, especially considering the high prevalence of heart attacks amongst firefighter LODDs.

[nyckftbl]

I know in Palm Beach County Stations they start out low in volume then increase. Ours knock your heart in to V-tac if you're in the different stages of fatigue.

Except for a certain proby in the Heights who slept through a 3rd alarm a couple years ago.... :p



Someone attempted an automatic volume control speaker in our "study room"....didnt work out like we had planned.

[dmleblanc]

I am looking for some articles or studies about the effects of dispatch tones on your body at night. If anyone can help that would be great.

Thanks

They make it hard to sleep....:rolleyes:

It's ridiculous we don't have less "alarming" tones to wake us at night, especially considering the high prevalence of heart attacks amongst firefighter LODDs.


You could try just turning the volume down a bit on the pager....I think this helps unless you're a really heavy sleeper and a lower volume just won't wake you.

I think that after you've been doing it for a while you get attuned to the sound of the pager and it doesn't take a very loud or obnoxious tone to wake you up. Sort of like a new mother being awakened by her baby's crying, even if it's not very loud. I find that I'm (usually) easily awakened at the very first tone. I find that it's the newer guys, especially the young ones (late teens/early 20's ) who can quite literally sleep right through the tones, even at full blast.

Another thing I've found is that the stage of sleep you're in when the tones drop has an effect on how easily you can awaken. For instance, I find that when we get a call when I've only been asleep an hour or so, it's very hard to wake up....I'm particularly groggy and it takes me a few seconds to even realize what's going on. But if I've been sleeping for two or three hours, I'm up instantly and pretty well alert by the time the announcement comes over. So I think the sleep stage has something to do with it as well. Maybe someone could do a study on that.

Anybody remember the old Minitor I pagers with the desktop amplifier? Man, those things were loud. I had one when I first started and I only made the mistake of plugging it in once :D . After peeling myself off the ceiling for that first call, I never plugged it in again.....:p

[37truck]

It's not uncommon for my company to get up 3-4-5 times a night. I know I sleep pretty light at work. We usually keep our speakers closed. Meaning that it does not monitor what every other company in the city is going on. Before the alert tone, the dispatch system trips a relay that opens up the speakers. It produces a "click" sound. It is the click that wakes me before the one of the 3 variations of tones even begins. Our tones are really not that jolting at any time. Most of our dispatchers are women and the diapatch information that follows the alert tone is much more pleasent to listen to coming from them. My old job had a single tone for all types of runs and it alerted every station in the fire department regardless if it is your company or not. It was an extremely loud buzzer, and until you got use to it you'd about piss yourself when it tripped, especially in the kitchen or bathroom where it echoed around the tiled walls. I am surprised no one ever went into cardiac arrest from it.

[firemonkey311]

I dont really find the tones to be that alarming. I grew up with both parents being in the fire service. I am so used to it. I sometimes feel like a wake up before the tones drop some times.

[PureAdrenalin]

I work for a department, where if the tones go out, they go out at all three stations. We actually still have a plectron in out bunkroom..at 3am, the world is ending when that thing goes into alert mode. Normally I don't sleep very sound there so it's never much of an issue. MY problem is, I can't ever pull the address together on the first set of tones. I have to wait until we get further info from dispatch until I know where I'm going. And they don't give us that until, we go enroute. But, I will agree, I've been jolted awake before..it's not comfortable.

[ullrichk]

I could swear the IAFF had a study on the topic. It would have been before 1999, but beyond that, I can't be much help - I don't have access to my library at the station.

[FlyingKiwi]

Don't know about adverse effects from a pager tone.

My old station had the old air raid siren crack off 24/7 for calls. we lived across the back fence.

First oh-dark-thirty call, I was up, out and moving quickly when I hit the wall. Wife threw the lights on wetting herself laughing at the twat that turned right instead of left. :rolleyes:

[upstater]

Before the alert tone, the dispatch system trips a relay that opens up the speakers. It produces a "click" sound.

Ours is pretty much the same - we get a beep and a click as the system trips, and then we get the radio traffic and/or the alert tone, which isn't bad at all. That half second of warning helps a lot.

[BKDRAFT]

Last shift we had eight calls after 10 PM. After three at night I usually just sit up in a chair and wait for them to come in. I find myself to be more tired if I keep falling asleep, and waking every twenty minutes or so.

[SmallBrownBass]

our tones are pretty quiet.
but i usually wake up to them or the printer spinning before or bells and lights even come on.

[Tooanfrom]

Ian,my boy(doing the scholarly pose) has expressed a certain interest in your avatar--he seemed a bit bored by the video

[SteveDude]

Back in the day...when we were mobilised by the old UK Home Office 'Teleprinter' the printer bell would ring...and wake you most of the time a good 10 seconds before the 'clunk' of the switch throwing the lights on then the fire bells.... back then at the Station I was at, sleep was never deep because an uninterrupted night was rare.

In 1990 we changed to a newer mobilising system, the old electric bells were removed and replaced by electronic bell sounds from a speaker... just as loud and because the modern printer did not need to cough and splutter into life the whole thing became instantaneous, often leaving me cramming my heart and stomach back down my throat as I got dressed.

It stayed like that up until I became a Chief and started responding from home overnight... But now, in London wth another new mobilising system (2004) the 'Bells' have gone, to be replaced by a sort of electronic trumpet tune... yep, that's right, then a nice female voice in 'Newsreader English' announcing who is going. I've never turned out to that because I became Chief in 2002, but have stayed at the Station once or twice after a very long day and found it didn't start me as much as the old bells.

i.e 10 seconds of this trumpet type tune then "Mobilise, Mobilise, Foxtrot 221 Foxtrot 221...Foxtrot 222, Foxtrot 222" Then it repeats by which time most people are on the trucks. (F221 & F222 for both pumps to turnout...if just one goes then 'she' announces only one callsign)

Now the pager...first mistake when I became chief...leaving it on vibrate on the side next to the bed.... the bleep bleep was fine... but the damn thing vibrating across the surface frightened the hell out of me...especially as I was in my own bed and had ever been 'turned out' of that apart from a middle of the night cry from the kids?

Now, I leave it on my belt...at the end of the bed so it wakes me gently. The good thing now is...after 15 years of being thrown onto the street with a full bladder and 'morning breath' at least for the last 6 years I get to go to the toilet, brush my teeth and dress at a slower pace before ringing Control for the incident details...

[nmfire]

I'm a pretty deep sleeper so it will often take a lot to wake me up. Seriously, I have three alarm clocks that go off a different intervals in the morning for work. I've been known to turn one or two alarms off without actually waking up. For the FD, I actually had to make a station alert for my house. Partly to wake me up and partly because pager reception sucks.

When I do wake up, i'm usually really out of it. My fire radio will be alerting and I will be smashing my alarm clock trying to hit snooze. Yesterday my cell phone's alarm was going off and I really almost broke it trying to push the snooze button that doesn't exist.

[FHandz15]

We have the all the lights come on and the speaker is louder than hell all at once system, and as stated in the bathroom it makes you sh%t if you haven't already. Same speaker and volume in a room that is what 8x8? Stupid. All our houses were re-built over the last 5 years and I figured they would get a "friendlier" system, guess not! The other odd thing is we have 2 tones one for EMS and one for Fire calls. The EMS one is way louder then the Fire tone, so a tone for a patient assist call makes your bowels move, and we've had people sleeep thru a tone for a house fire. Nice.

A dept in the area has the low and slow tones at night, and the red lights in the bunk hall. They also have a system (so I hear) that you punch a button in the room at night, telling the system if you are on the ambo or engine, and the house has different tones for each truck and the tones in your room only go off if it's your truck! Nice! Me thinks the engine guys were behind that move lol.........

[RFDACM02]

There has been some formal information and possibly legal action with regard to station alerting. Check with someone from Portland, ME FD. I'm pretty sure they successfully forced the City into installing ramped tones in their stations.

We had one FF go into A-FIB due to the loud buzzer Klaxon outside the dorm door. Now the dispatcher pre-announces the call over our radio freq that's piped in throughout the station then trips the buzzer. It is nicer, though not a perfect system by any means.

[KyleWickman]

It stayed like that up until I became a Chief and started responding from home overnight... But now, in London wth another new mobilising system (2004) the 'Bells' have gone, to be replaced by a sort of electronic trumpet tune... yep, that's right, then a nice female voice in 'Newsreader English' announcing who is going. I've never turned out to that because I became Chief in 2002, but have stayed at the Station once or twice after a very long day and found it didn't start me as much as the old bells.

i.e 10 seconds of this trumpet type tune then "Mobilise, Mobilise, Foxtrot 221 Foxtrot 221...Foxtrot 222, Foxtrot 222" Then it repeats by which time most people are on the trucks. (F221 & F222 for both pumps to turnout...if just one goes then 'she' announces only one callsign)

Now the pager...first mistake when I became chief...leaving it on vibrate on the side next to the bed.... the bleep bleep was fine... but the damn thing vibrating across the surface frightened the hell out of me...especially as I was in my own bed and had ever been 'turned out' of that apart from a middle of the night cry from the kids?

Now, I leave it on my belt...at the end of the bed so it wakes me gently. The good thing now is...after 15 years of being thrown onto the street with a full bladder and 'morning breath' at least for the last 6 years I get to go to the toilet, brush my teeth and dress at a slower pace before ringing Control for the incident details...

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[FlyingKiwi]

Ian,my boy(doing the scholarly pose) has expressed a certain interest in your avatar--he seemed a bit bored by the video


To wake that bloke up would take a small nuke going off, a station siren wouldn't even make him flinch.

[MemphisE34a]

We use in house Vocal Alarm system. Prior to any audible alerting tone, a dispatcher announces, "Companies, Stand by."

It kind of takes the edge off.

[FiftyOnePride]

Most of the time unless in a dead sleep I'll wake on the first set of tones right before the pager breaks. It allows me to be awake somewhat and have a chance to turn it down before it gives me the hells broken loose signal. But I am relatively used to it now, just gets the adrenaline flowing, especially when there are mutiple departments tones following yours.

[FireDawgEMT22]

Usually the pager goes Beep Beep Beep...and i go "huh, whats that" then realize someone musta called 911, roll outta bed...put on my pants and shirt, just to realize I have to peepee, so i stumble into the bathroom, to undo those pants i just did up, make my water, and walk outside, just to realize its colder out than i thought so i turn around and get that sweatshirt or jacket, and go out to my truck and head to the station...good thing i keep my keys IN my truck...get to the station, and wake up just enough to answer the call and write the address on the board...I think im doin pretty good to do all that before i even realize I am awake...and to think someone wants a study to see what kind of effect just the beep beep beep has...I would be more interested in a study to find out HOW we do that at those hours...

[volfirie]

...leaving it on vibrate on the side next to the bed.... the bleep bleep was fine... but the damn thing vibrating across the surface frightened the hell out of me...

Thank the gods for that! I thought it was only me that just about wet himself when the pager started gyrating all over the glass top bedside table! Never left it on silent again!
I selected the gentlest tone I could for the pager - still makes me jump though. And then trying to read the bloody thing with eyes that won't open/focus...

And Steve, what's all this 'Chief' stuff? I didn't know you pommies used yank ranks?

[bomberodevil]

I think that there was some type of study or research being done by the Mesa (AZ) FD and Arizona State University on the negative effects and wear and tear on FFs and high level of call volume. Maybe they are also looking into the initial physical responses of tones and lights and waking members up from a deep sleep. You can try to contact someone at Mesa FD admin and maybe they would know more or who to contact. E-mail me if you can't make any progress, and maybe I could find something for you.

[SteveDude]

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Yup,
That's the one... but because the guy pressed the manual mobilise button in the Watchroom (as you would wit a running call off the street) it didn't announce the callsigns attending as it would with a regualr call.

[SteveDude]

And Steve, what's all this 'Chief' stuff? I didn't know you pommies used yank ranks?

We don't...just adjusting my language for the majority of Forum users... saves explaining what an Assistant Divisional Officer/ Station Commander/Station manager is.:rolleyes:

[wcfpd2601]

We are paid on call...but 2 of our stations have college live-ins. Both stations have a base radio that has speakers throughout the station. The live-ins in my station have also hooked up a pager with amplified charger, but using an external speaker to wake them up. A few of them are heavy sleepers! 9.9 times out of 10 our dispatchers give a "Williamson County Fire Call" pre-alert. Our tone is a solid low tone...so it's not too bad. However, the pager they are using does a long solid high beep rather than multiple beeps. I was glad to get my new pager and get rid of the solid beep, it was annoying when you were awake!

[Firescueguy]

I remember reading an article about either the City of Las Vegas or else it was Clark County (NV) Fire Rescue that had done studies on the effects of blasting their members out of bed at 3 AM. It detailed a variety of measures they undertook to ensure their FF's were able to sleep soundly while still rousing them quickly without causing a mild heart attack. Some of those measures included:

*Blue lighting in the hallway - maintained your night vision better when
hitting the head (like anyone can aim at 3 AM anyway :D )

*Alert tones that started low & increased in frequency (volume)

*A female dispatcher handling overnight alarms as a female's voice was
supposed to be more soothing

It was a novel approach...it sounds like they did their homework and we're genuinely looking out for their guys. Many of the career depts. out west seem dedicated to keeping their FF's healthy & do things like this. I honestly don't know what the end results have been, maybe someone from that region can share their 2 cents.

Kinda cool the way the London boys gets alerted...it seems very refined..here in the US, the simple...GET OUT...ENGINE & TRUCK GOES!!! seems to work pretty well.

Just my 2 cents...Stay Safe...:)

[GeorgeWendtCFI]

*A female dispatcher handling overnight alarms as a female's voice was supposed to be more soothing

Most of the time, I got my nioght jobs by telephone from the county communications center. There was one female operator (our families were friends, so we knew each other pretty well) who had a tremendous voice. She would call me and say something like "Hey sexy, what are you wearing?" She would then slowly coax me out of my sleep.

Now THAT is the way to get oned out.

[CaptainGonzo]

Our station's tones have a "pre-tone" at low volume, the main tone turns on the lights and speakers.

I usually say "oh,crap", listen, and if I don't have to respond, roll back over and go back to sleep! :p

[Engine542]

I'm a junior with Station 54 here in NC, Rowan County, and Rowan uses a bit of a DIFFERENT tone system, one that'll, BELIEVE ME, scare the crap out of you. It's a computer generated system that blends QC-II and QC-I style tones, and if you're awake, oh that's good and dandy, but when you're asleep and you get a call with multiple stations, boy will you JUMP. Case and point, I was asleep about a month ago(My dept isn't called out too often), and a call comes in for a fire alarm at a Taxidermy Supply warehouse(False alarm thankfully. And by the by, I'm not able to respond yet, I have a scanner, she's a old Regency ACT R-10, and quite deafening! Sure competes with a minitor well.), with stations 57, 71, 76, 64, 59, 60, and 54, our tone came about middle, ours is similar to 41's, a moderate primary QC-II tone then a high pitched secondary QC-II tone, then our QC-I tone comes(Same order for all stations in the county except for 79 and 46 who seem to only have QC-II tones), which from browsing round on the net, seems to be the same as LA County Station 39's(You can find this for those who don't know on lacountyfire.org). My mind gets semi-alert by the tones of 57, 71, 76, 64, and then gets snapped awake by the QC-II tone for our station, which I've come to memorize. Believe me, it gets your heart going, and even then I wasn't responding but I shot out of bed anway! Personally though I think Rowan could do with a better system. The ONLY warning you get is if there's previous radio traffic and the dispatcher will say "All units, hold your traffic, emergency dispatch." and then there's the dispatch but that's the only warning you get really.

[FlyingRon]

We get a single beep (alert tone), box #, (station tones) list of apparartus to respond, box number again, then the description of the call. The tones trigger a klaxon outside the bunkroom door.

Any of our first due boxes would wake me up when on the initial box number as if someone were calling out my name. I'd sleep through the rest. Funny how the mind works. From the sound of some other feet hitting the floor, it worked that way for others as well. Others weren't jolted awake until the whooper went off.

[bcarey]

Heart rate and ECG responses of fire fighters.
"Data were obtained from 35 fire fighters responding to 189 alarms. Fifteen to 30 sec after an alarm heart rate showed a mean increase of 47 beats/min (range 12-117 beats/min). Approximately one minute after the alarm, while on the truck, heart rate still showed a mean increase of 30 beats/min (range 1 to 80 beats/min) above that recorded before alarm. S-T segment changes were observed in the ECG shortly after the alarm sounded. Upon approaching a fire, heart rates as high as 150 beats/min were observed before the men got off the fire truck. During actual fire fighting extremely high heart rates were observed for prolonged periods of time. One fire fighter had a mean heart rate of 188 beats/min for 15 minutes during the initial stages of a structure fire. The heart rate responses observed immediately after the alarm as well as on the truck approaching a fire indicate that the men experience a state of high anxiety. The extremely high heart rates observed for prolonged periods during fire fighting may also indicate a state of high anxiety coupled with the heavy work performed in a hot environment. Repeated exposure to states of high anxiety as well as inhaling pollutants related to the high incidence of ischemic-stress tests previously observed in fire fighters."
Journal of Occupational Medicine, 1975

Firefighters' reaction to alarm, an ECG and heart rate study.
"Firemen's reaction to alarm was investigated with a pulse rate and ECG analysis. The frame of reference was the psychophysiological alarm reaction and its relation to psychosomatic diseases. ECG and pulse rate measurements were recorded continuously from 22 first-string firemen. According to an exercise stress test, the subjects were healthy, but not more fit than a sedentary population. High pulse rates occurred during the alarm due to vigorous movement to the trucks. No anticipatory pulse rate rise occurred as the firemen approached the fire. Non-pathological ECG deviations were found 13 subjects although no abnormalities were found in the same subjects during exercise test. Different firefighting practices, environment, selection, and training might explain the differences between the findings of the present investigation and those of other recent studies."
Journal of Occupational Medicine, 1981

The 1981 study was referenced in a NIOSH alert, "Preventing Fire Fighter Fatalities Due to Heart Attacks and Other Sudden Cardiovascular Events" from June 2007.

[Zutroy]

There is currently a study going on in Indianapolis with IFD by Indiana University that is collecting data on night time alarm tones are part of the study.

Here is a link to a New story on it.

http://www.iub.edu/~firefit/img/fox59.wmv

[CommDiva]

The dispatch centre I work in dispatches for 2 cities and a large volunteer area in one huge region. One city just gets the automatic tones, the second city we do a voice pre-alert, and the third area is volunteer, so they're paged out.

I almost feel like HAL 9000 when I do the voice pre-alert..."Dave, Dave"...

I wonder if anyone has done a study of dispatchers and our stress reactions when the phones go off in the middle of the night. Not that we sleep, oh no, we never sleep, we're alert and awake and ready to rumble!!

Pat

[aromania]

Lately it seems my body has decided not to respond to the station package... but usually waits for my engineer to kick my bed and say "Cap, we got a call".

Our alert never really caused me too much stress, and I sleep under a speaker... I usually just looked up to make sure the "E" was lit up before getting out of bed and on the engine. Oddly, Certain address seem to cause a simultaneous "DAMN IT" response in the entire crew (except the new guys) while other address and apartment #s cause a "You have got to effing kidding me... again!?!?!" response.