Communication — Too Many Eggs In One Basket
Posted By Randy on January 29, 2023
“There is a tendency, based on a far too wide spread conceit of far too many, to learn of something that was done a certain way in “the olden days”, realize the reason is unknown to them but make no attempt to research why, deciding instead to derive contentment from the conclusion that it’s because the people back in those days simply didn’t know any better.” ~ Everything Old is New Again
Welcome back Goode Reader to this second installment of our ever so educational, and I hope entertaining albeit darkly so, series on the subject of Communication as it applies to winning instead of losing, and living rather than dying.
Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. 1983-1985:
On 3 May 1983, after two years as a consultant in Halifax, I hung out the shingle for the business I still operate to this day. The following year (1984), I spooled up its 24/7 staffed facility to provide continuous alarm monitoring services for our own client systems, mostly fire alarm in those days. It was the year after that (1985) when we were approached by the Lunenburg & District Fire Department to service all of its emergency dispatch needs. That marked the first of 17 trailblazing years spanning those prior to and after introduction of the Nova Scotia 911 emergency reporting system in 1997, that saw “Central Dispatch” handling emergency traffic for five fire districts (Lunenburg, Mahone Bay, Chester, Chester Basin, and Hubbards) and the Lunenburg-Mahone Bay Police Service.
Nova Scotia fire services were then, and still are, mostly volunteer, covering a mix of small town, rural, and woodland districts. In 1985, each fire department had a unique seven digit emergency number that, with few exceptions, rang simultaneously on extension phones located in the homes of its members, local nursing homes, the hospital if the community had one, and even the funeral home. True “centralized dispatch” in the form of a dedicated 24/7 establishment where emergency calls were answered and dispatched by anything more than a simple “answering service” represented terra incognita for most rural and small town fire departments before Lunenburg & District Fire Department (LFD) officially joined Central Dispatch on the fateful date of 3 June 1985. (more…)