CALLING US OUT
The New Zealand Fire Service uses a call out system consisting of radio tone calling, (which activates sirens at most volunteer stations, or station sounders for stations with paid staff) and alphanumeric personal pagers and large format station pagers.
When an emergency call is received by 111 and the caller requests the Fire Service the phone operator transfers them to the nearest of the three communication centres -  Auckland or Wellington or Christchurch.

For a Woodend fire call, they turn out the station by tones over the radio network, then they send a message to the personal pagers.
At the station the radio tone activates the siren, turns on the room lights and opens the engine bay front doors.

The Station alarm is on a timer and is not operating between the hours 2200 - 0600 but if any system malfunctions ie pagers, timer fault the main alarm will activate

The firefighters respond to the station, obtain the call details from the FIRECOM Operator via the Radio or the station (large format) pager , then crew the appropriate vehicle(s) and go to the incident.

 PAGERS        

Alphanumeric personal pagers (Motorola Flex) are worn by most NZ Fire service staff.
Most pagers are on the national Telecom network, but some stations have their own paging transmitters, and some have no paging coverage at all. Many stations have been issued with a second set of pagers (Motorola Advisor) to overcome reception problems. These are actuated by a transmitter and antenna on the station, and rebroadcast the turnout message when the station pager receives it. So now some volunteer staff carry two pagers to receive calls.

An example pager message is:
16: (WOOD777,WOOD7711,WOOD7710) 111-VEG WOODEND BEACH CAMP  BEACH ROAD  WOODEND. (XStr STALKERS RD / NULL).SCRUB FIRE. # M306200.
This lists which trucks to take "WOOD777, WOOD7711,WOOD7710 ", that the call came from A 111 CALL, that it is vegetation "VEG", at Woodend Beach Camp on Beach Road Woodend, between Stalkers Road and NULL (means no other cross street), and the call / alarm type is scrub fire. #M306200 is the Southern Comms Centre Area call number

RADIOS
The communications with FireComm take place on VHF (very high frequency) channels that are part of the Police radio network in the ESA radio band. Channels are available exclusively for the Fire Service in and around major centres, and radio access is shared with the police on their channels elsewhere in the country.
Fortunately, Woodend is mostly covered by the Christchurch Fire exclusive channel. Gaining access to shared channels can be very frustrating.
If the incident requires a large number of appliances then all but one vehicle will change to a simplex fire ground channel, to reduce radio traffic on the repeaters. One appliance or a Command Unit will maintain communications with FireComm on the repeater channel.
All appliances are fitted with Tait VHF T2000II radios.

Portable (handheld) Radios in volunteer districts are Simoco SRP 8020 ABs, issued in 1999, using a different set of VHF channels (in the ESB radio band) to that of the vehicles (the two types of radios can't be used to talk to each other). Some city brigades have retained their old Motorola (and other brands) UHF portable radios because of their superior coverage into commercial/industrial buildings.
Because the Simoco radios are in the same band as most of the Ambulance services in New Zealand, one of their simplex channels is used, when firefighters guide rescue helicopters to landing sites they have prepared at road crashes.

Our Simoco radios are programmed to operate with Waimakariri Civil Defence ( Repeater and Simplex) ES Liasion ( Repeater & Simplex) North Canterbury Civil Defence, Selwyn District ES reapeater , Fireground 1,2,3,4 , NZFS Fireground Repeater,Search & Rescue ( Repeater & Simplex)

CALLSIGNS