Monday, April 10, 2006
T1 Line Alert, Going Down... Down... Down...
Greetings From My Planet !
The Blah-g – Part One
I was thinking the other day and THAT is ALWAYS dangerous, at least for me. I have logged more individual radio numbers for Mutual Aid Ambulance Service ( MAAS ) in Greensburg than any other agency. I just did a very quick glance at my radio list and can CONFIRM they have at least 52 radios however GMan has his count at well over 75.
I would bet the underwear I just took off that MUTUAL AID has closer to 100 / 150 of the new 800 Mhz radios.
I am trying to understand how a service that is MAKING A PROFIT is even allowed on the Westmoreland County Emergency Management Radio Cyst-Em ?
What kind of a deal did they make with the county that gives them this special privilege ?
The firemen are volunteers, the police are paid however their departments do not show a profit, county ambulance services are volunteer to my knowledge ( perhaps paid EMT’s and Medics now ) and then there is MAAS.
$500 or more for a two mile / one way trip from your favorite wreck to the hospital inn. Somehow that just doesn’t sound right, but I’m getting off track here.
They should have their own frequency ( which they do ) and should be using that frequency only ( which they don’t ). Mutual Aid Ambulance Service is a business, just like Dick’s Sporting Goods, Kmart or Frank’s Artificial Rubber Testicles, Inc.
I have no problems with MAAS using the 800 Mhz trunking radio Cyst-Em for EMERGENCIES BUTT they continuously use it for VAN TRANSFERS.
According to Richard Matason, Director of OUR 911 Double Standard Circus, the 800 Mhz Cyst-Em is to be used for EMERGENCY TRANSMISSIONS ONLY ! ( Van 6 pickup one at Dr. Zoro’s at 10, Van 5 pickup two at LAH South and take them to LAH North, Van 2 pickup lunch and Van 4 just pickup and leave )
And I’m not talking about one or two transfers a day, MAAS probably has somewhere around 100 to 250 Transfer related transmissions or more each day. I’ve even posted an audio clip on my website showing the ABUSE.
What gets my goat is that we only have 10 usable 800 Mhz frequencies associated with this trunking system and we are only using 5 of them at most tower sites. So in layman’s terms only 5 people can be talking at one time and if 911 and MAAS are talking, that only leaves room for 3 other people to talk.
If you are saying “so what”, let me throw this at you. Westmoreland County Weights and Measurements are now on this system as well at the County Courthouse and Parks Maintenance and STALIES COMPLEXICATION and a bunch of other NON-EMERGENCY Services / People that have NO RIGHT to even carrying a radio INCLUDING THE WESTMORELAND COUNTY COMMISSIONERS are BLABBING on and on about lunch menus and dog do-do ( don’t confuse the two ) while FIRES are going on.
IMO, those 3 Stooges do not need a radio and just by them having one in their possession is taking a radio away from a POLICE OFFICER, FIREMAN or EMS Paramedic. Same thing with the Courthouse and Park Maintenance, those radios SHOULD BE ON THE BELT OF A FIREMAN OR COP !!
Some might think I am showing DISRESPECT towards our County Commissioners HOWEVER RESPECT has to be EARNED and to that end as far as I am concerned they are just 3 people with attitudes, sit in better chairs than I'll ever own, have an enormous amount of unchecked power and they have shown this Blah-ger absolutely no respect and deserve none in return. This is not a war, I am just telling it like it is.
Anywho, what all this leads to is a TIE UP of the few frequencies we have… and then there is a FIRE, or a POLICE CHASE. What happens is “someone” is going to get a BUSY TONE on their radio and there is a good chance it will be the people who need to use the radio the most. Not Weights and Measurements where Kathy is requesting a hamburger without pickles for lunch, or Matt at Parks Maintenance who can’t find the oar to his boat, but it will be a Fire Chief trying to give orders who gets the SYSTEM BUSY SIGNAL.
Well if the Fire and Police Chiefs in Westmoreland County do not care if they have a dependable radio system, perhaps I shouldn’t. If your company or department would like a guest speaker and you are only a few miles away from Latrobe I would be more than happy to come and sit down with your group.
Give the whole damn Cyst-Em back to Frick and Frack, I liked it much better that way.
That also brings up the use of this Cyst-Em by STALEY COMMUNICAITONS. Who knows what they are using the system for because all of their transmissions are ENCRYPTED. In my opinion the only reason anyone would use ENCRYPTED TRANSMISSIONS is to HIDE stuff from the general public, just like Mark, Richard, Bill, Dan and the other STAR TREK COMMANDERS do every morning on Public Safety Talk Group 1.
IMO, they are either discussing ways to set each others hair OR top secret ways of screwing the county out of more money for more MOBILE COMMAND CENTERS for EACH OF THEM to go CAMPING AND SHOPPING IN.
I will have to check with the FCC, but in some cases what Westmoreland County 911 is doing MIGHT just be ILLEGAL. For example, if the head honchos at 911 are setting up a dinner for staff members that will be PAID FOR BY THE TAX PAYERS and they are trying to COVER THAT UP by ENCRYPTING those transmission, then 911 IS BREAKING THE LAW !
The police are allowed to encrypt their transmissions as information like social security numbers they might need over the air SHOULD be encrypted, hidden from the general public.
A very long time ago when 10 codes were created, the meaning of those 10 codes were kept hidden from the general public and the usage of each of those codes could change daily UNTIL a citizen sued a county for attempting to HIDE information.
Needless to say how the outcome went as we all know what 10-4 and 10-45 now means. YOU CANNOT USE CIPHERS TO HIDE INFORMATION THAT SHOULD OTHERWISE BE PUBLIC. ENCRYPTION IS A FORM OF A CIPHER. ( a cipher is also a little critter that crawls in the night looking for addresses, it can be spotted by using a standard flashlight as it’s bright green coat is very shiny )
ps: Again, the reason why this System is referred to as Cyst-Em is because of the way it was slapped together with Elmer’s Glue and T1 phone lines that continuously go out-of-service. It ( the Cyst-Em ) is a cancerous countywide growth that keeps getting bigger and bigger, filled with DEAD SPOTS with NO FIXES planned, talked about YES, but nothing is planned as we are OUT OF MONEY.
Oh there is plenty of bull floating around and promises being made by “politicians” and “directors” about updating the Cyst-Em to get rid of the thousands of DEAD SPOTS, but no plans are in the works. Just BULL.
The Blah-g Page Two
Piss: Passing this on from the GMan…
Close to home
By David Hunt
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, April 6, 2006
There was no fire, no heart attack, no shooting, but the call was no prank.
"911, do you have an emergency?" the dispatcher answered.
Jerry Feret, 68, who's had four addresses in as many months, explained he just wanted to know if the 911 center could find his Hempfield Township home of almost 40 years. Anymore, he's not even sure where it's located.
"I did it, but I don't know if it makes me feel better," Feret said.
Feret is one of thousands of Westmoreland County residents whose addresses were switched to more efficiently dispatch police, fire and ambulance crews.
In December, his rural route turned into "Mt. Pleasant Road." Since then, he's received mail addressed to house numbers 87, 1380 and 1384. He missed a cable bill and threatened to switch to satellite TV to avoid a late charge. He got two garbage collection bills, both in his name, listing two different addresses.
But he worries more about emergency crews missing the house.
The dispatcher pulled up Feret's address on a computerized map, saying it was located near a number of streets, such as Sunny Drive, that Feret had never heard of.
He took walks to study street signs and reassure himself that everything would be all right.
"You want to have people find you," he said.
In 1998, L. Robert Kimball & Associates, of Ebensburg, was hired to canvass the county's 1,032 square miles for unnamed streets, rural-delivery routes and duplicated road names. Each was a threat to emergency response, said Dan Stevens, the county readdressing coordinator. The 911 surcharge in telephone bills paid for the $1.8 million program.
Stevens expects to be done by the end of the year. He admits to flaws in the process involving local municipalities, post offices and the county.
"No matter what happens, there are humans involved," Stevens said. "We make mistakes. We try to go through enough checks and balances."
"I think Dan's worked hard at it," county Commissioner Chairman Tom Balya said.
"He's been the lightning rod often for people who have been upset, but in the long run, he's trying to do what's right."
In spite of good intentions, the program's fallout has irked many.
Hempfield Township Manager Rob Ritson said his staff logged calls itemizing nearly 1,000 problems with 11,000 address changes in the township.
Many residences, especially in Feret's area, were skipped during an initial canvas, Ritson said.
When Sam Calo, 47, moved from Laughlintown to Ligonier in 2002, his moving man asked if the truck was headed for Ramsey Street in the borough or Ramsey Road in the surrounding township. Calo, who has muscular dystrophy, wondered if ambulance drivers would have the same question.
He told the moving company to go to 108 Ramsey St. in the borough, an address that several months later became 108 Hadley St.
Deliveries were delayed to his home accounting business because drivers couldn't find the new address. Cards and letters went back to friends marked "address unknown."
"It's just been ridiculous," Calo said. "They changed Ligonier in 2003 and here we are.
It's 2006 and I still have a phone book in front of me that has an incorrect address. ...
It was a great plan that was so poorly executed."
In the 20 years Darlene Vukovich has been a real estate agent, she's seen nothing like it. When she leaves her Jeannette office to look at a property, it can turn into a scavenger hunt because she is unsure how old addresses relate to the new.
"No one can find anything," Vukovich said. "There needs to be a published, cross-referenced list. I'm not asking for anything that should be any secret. It's public information."
Stevens said he disagrees because the address database includes sensitive information like unlisted phone numbers. "The information is gathered for 911 purposes," he said. "The county can't sell it. I can't distribute it."
Somehow, junk-mailers prevail.
Penn Township Commissioner Chairman Charles Horvat said he gets various bulk mailings at his home, listing an address the township has yet to make official. Junk-mailers found the address in U.S. Postal Service databases that were updated prematurely, he said.
Post offices have their own problems.
Murrysville Postmaster Pamela Abbot's district got about 800 new addresses. But some residents neglected to inform the people who send them mail, slowing down the sorting process.
Same goes for Unity Township, where more than 5,000 addresses were changed in November 2004. "We still have some folks using their old RD addresses," Emergency Management Director Pete Tenerowicz said.
One person who's been able to find people's homes: pizza delivery driver Nancy Burkholder, who drives for Fox's in Ligonier.
"A lot of people haven't changed their mail box numbers and house numbers. It's a headache for some of the new (delivery) people," she said. "For me, it's not much of a problem because I've been here for so long and I'm from this area."
Yukon Fire Chief Larry Mencer said firefighters use a cross-referenced address list to study changes made nearly a year ago. Just outside the fire hall, the same number is assigned to two separate homes, but the department is trying to correct that, the chief said.
He thinks the project has reduced response time. "I think they wanted to make sure everybody's safe," Mencer said.
Maryann Phillips' address is literally etched in stone. A large chunk of granite on Harrison City Road in Level Green, Penn Township, says "718." That's where she lives, next door to her monument business marked by a stone pillar.
Whatever happens to her address, Phillips said, the markers stay.
"I'd have to get a crane in to get those pillars," she said. "You're not talking a few dollars here."
Harrison City Road, the local name for Route 130, is destined to drop its name to be known only as a state highway, Phillips said.
"As long as I've lived around here, it's been Harrison City Road," she said. "It will be 20, 30, 40 years until it's not Harrison City Road."
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Who's next?
East Huntingdon Township: Readdressing complete. Letters informing residents of the changes went out in March.
Mt. Pleasant Township: Expected to be complete with letters to residents due out this month.
Penn Township: Expected to be complete by the end of May
Still under construction: Rostraver Township, Irwin, North Irwin, New Kensington, Lower Burrell, North Huntingdon Township, Mt. Pleasant Borough
Is Your Address changing?
The Westmoreland County Department of Public Safety offers the following tips to aid in the transition to a new address:
Keep a copy of the 911 center's letter informing you of the address change with important home documents, such as a deed or mortgage.
Contact your local municipality if it appears there is a problem with the new address.
Start using your new address immediately; make changes as quickly as possible.
Decoded,
K3SAM
http://800.k3sam.com – website
news@k3sam.com – tips / comments / insider information
PSS: DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU SEE ON TV !!
