How do you name units?

[katgrl2003]

Our company has the top three managers as Med 1, Med 2, and Med 3. Street supervisors are 401, 402, etc.

Medics are Medic 1 through 15, BLS is Ambulance 50 through 70.

[ERDoc]

A friend of mine named his Bill and Ted. :dontknow:

I can't believe no one made joke like that yet. I guess Dust was just distracted by the size of other people's units.

[stcommodore]

Bucks County:

Ambulance Has squad number and carries a fourth number/its unit number depending on squads number of ambulances

Medic XXX (Denotes Transporting Unit) Numbers are in 100 Series

Ex. Medic 131, Ambulance would be 1311

BLS Units are denoted by there unit number only, so if the above Medic unit was BLS it would be "1311" or "Thirteen, Eleven" on radio.

Paramedic Responder Units would be "Medic 131R"

Delaware County:

Transporting Paramedic Unit: Medic 84-7, 7 designates it as a transporting unit. Other fire department units like an Engine would be 84-1, etc.

Responder Medic Unit: Medic 84

BLS Unit:84-7

Additonal Units:Medic 84-7A, 84-7A, or Medic 84A

[brentoli]

BLS in my county are "Ambulance" ALS are "Medic" thats the only set standard.

[JakeEMTP]

Wow. Our dispatching is simple being ALS only. If the hospital requires a BLS ie: stretcher fetcher, the Hospital will make their own arrangements. The different stations have assigned numbers. All units have the same numbers.

Example:

2111

2411

3411

etc.

Since we are EMS only, fire has there own set of tones thus alleviating any confusion.

[Scaramedic]

Usually it's along these lines..

"You gotta be F'ing kidding me, we're stuck in that F'ing piece of shit again!!!"

[tator55]

Station i work part time at has 3 basic ambos run from two stations:

Station 27:

A27

B27

Station 1:

A1

Medics in that county are by number Medic 1- Medic 9 (i believe thats as high as they go now)

Medic Supervisors are Identified by ALS Prefix IE: ALS 21 is a supervisor.

[JPINFV]

Usually it's along these lines..

"You gotta be F'ing kidding me, we're stuck in that F'ing piece of shit again!!!"

The sad part is that it seems that the damage most of the time is 20% wear and tear and 80% crew inflicted. Unless holes normally open up in the steering wheel that are strangely a perfect fit for the unit's key.

[Richard B the EMT]

I now go a bit nostalgic.

Pre-merger, the NYC EMS would number it's radio designations as follows (Yeah, I know I am repeating myself from a different string somewhere):

The first number would indicate what borough, or county (we got 5 of them). 1 was Manhattan, 2, "Da Bronx", 3, Brooklyn, 4, Queens, and 5 was Staten Island, also known as Richmond.

The second number was a subdivision of the borough, as the Rockaways/Broad Channel area of Queens was called the "Q-1", Howard Beach/Ozone Park/South Ozone Park was the "Q-3".

The next alphanumeric was a letter. "A" through "S" were BLS, "V" through "Z" were ALS. There was a brief, bad time when half the fleet was allowed to go down due to mechanical problems, and we would have either a BLS crew acting as a "fly-car" to start patient evaluation and treatment. They'd have the "T" designation, for "Triage". ALS in like circumstance would have the designator "U". Neither was transport capable, and would have to wait for an ambulance to respond.

The last designator was a 1, 2, or 3. This indicated what tour, and would usually only be heard when the unit was near tour change, especially if a supervisor had put the following tour out in a spare ambulance, so dispatch would know which ambulance was the one on the "Late Call".

Supervisors were usually Lieutenants in"Conditions" cars, a "C" followed by the station ID. The Rockaways supervisor was Conditions 41, or "C41". (Add the 1, 2, or 3 for tour). A station Captain would be the station number, as the Rockaway Captain would be simply, "Four Seven".

Community based Volunteer Ambulance Services included in the Mutual Aid Radio System would be known by designator 9, followed by the number of the borough, and an arbitrarily assigned letter. If they had more than one unit available, the second unit got a "2" on the end of the designator. Peninsula Volunteer Ambulance Corps, my alma mater, had designation "Nine Four Larry".

Following the merger, each station got renumbered to the Fire Battalion, so station 41 Rockaway became known as station 47 Rockaway. Now, I no longer can tell what general area a member of the service works from by asking what unit he or she is on, by the radio designator.

[AnthonyM83]

A friend of mine named his Bill and Ted. :dontknow:

I can't believe no one made joke like that yet. I guess Dust was just distracted by the size of other people's units.

That was my first thought.

Our unit's first number tells which of the dozen or so stations they run out of, then second number identifies what type of unit (a 24 hour car, 12 hour car, etc). So, when someone hears the number on the air, they know what kind of unit it is even if they haven't worked it before.

The few medic ambulances we have don't follow the pattern, they get 3 digit designations from county EMS office.