AFG Grant radios will be deployed - Santa Clara County

Northern Santa Clara County regional AFG grant radios deployed in time for July 4th Fire Patrols.

Two volunteer departments in Santa Clara County are deploying state-of-the-art interoperable radios for the first time this July 4th weekend, thanks to a Homeland Security grant.

"After active mutual aid participation in the Summit fire, Hummingbird fire, and Coe Fires, we realized that our 70's and 80's hand-me-down radio technology was in dire need of replacement", said Chris Hall, Director of support/logistics for Spring Valley. "As we
are a rural volunteer department, without a tax base, replacing the radios was completely out of our budget", said Hall.

"Since we are a rural volunteer department, but backstop both CalFire and the surrounding city paid departments in a metro area of over 8 million people, a solution to modernize our radios was critical, with added urgency applied because CalFire (who provides dispatching) is set to go narrow-band in the near future", said Hall.

A decision was made to form the Northern Santa Clara County Volunteer Fire Consortium along with the Stevens Creek Volunteer Fire Department, and an Assistance to Firefighters grant application was entered soon after.

In December of 2008, the Spring Valley Volunteer Fire Department (Milpitas, CA) and the Stevens Creek
Volunteer Fire Department (Cupertino, CA) received a $136,000 AFG regional grant from the Department of Homeland
Security to upgrade critical radio equipment and alerting pagers. Spring Valley was named as the grant administrator.

After an exhaustive federal procurement process, Metro Mobile Communications of Menlo Park was selected as the winning vendor.

Kenwood model 5210 portables and 5710 mobiles were selected under the bid process. Motorola Minitor V's were selected as the voice alert pagers.

The Kenwoods offer 512 channels, high power, wide and narrow band capability, P25 digital capability for Federal Interop, and the CalFire feature set including an operator selectable on-the-fly tactical group, and operator selectable tones.

Acceptance testing followed receipt of the radios and antenna kits in May, and the radios were installed and programmed over the course of several months by volunteer firefighters, and rolled-out in time for the annual July 4th fire patrol this weekend.

"I feel confident now that we can provide effective regional /statewide mutual aid, and have increased the fireline safety of our volunteers as a direct result of this grant.", said Hall.

Source: SPV Admin - Twitter - Link
Spring Valley Volunteer Fire Department Website: http://www.svvfd.org