MCFRS and PGFD’s numbers are up. Monday is the day.
National Capital Region First Responders Get New Numbers
Montgomery and Prince George’s County Implement Regional Numbering System
Traditional identification of fire/EMS units, command officers, and support personnel will be changed over a period of the next few weeks and months throughout the region. Soon all Montgomery County fire, rescue and EMS units will identify themselves with our jurisdictional identifier of “7”. All Prince George’s County Fire/EMS units will utilize jurisdictional identifier of “8”.
For example, the paramedic (ALS) unit that responds out of Silver Spring Fire Station 1 which used to be identified as Medic 19, starting Monday, that same unit will use the radio identifier Medic701, seven (7) related to Montgomery County and oh-one (01) associated with fire station #1. While at the same time, the basic life support (BLS) ambulance from the same station, formerly known as Ambulance 18, will be identified as Ambulance701.
While the initial change may sound confusing, the NCR MWCOG renumbering system will assist in the inter-operational capabilities and regional response of units dispatched outside of their jurisdictions and assist incident commanders in readily identifying out of county apparatus that respond mutual aid into Montgomery County (7), Prince Georges (8), the District of Columbia (0) and Northern Virginia. The jurisdictional identifiers are also used to identify the ‘trunked’ radio resources assigned to each jurisdiction in the radios. The agencies within MWCOG share programming across the ‘trunked’ radio systems in the region to facilitate interoperability and these identifiers are used to facilitate identification of, and navigation to, those resources in the mobile and portable radios.
Unit numbering is based on the assignment of numeric jurisdictional identifiers to each major political jurisdiction within MWCOG. These assignments are as follows:
0 – Washington, DC
1 – Arlington County
2 – City of Alexandria
3 – Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority
4 – Fairfax County
5 – Prince William County
6 – Loudoun County
7 – Montgomery County
8 – Prince George’s County
9 – Frederick County
Within Montgomery County, the MWCOG numbering will be implemented in two (2) phases, the first of which begins Monday, October 15, 2007 to include all first response units from all local fire and rescue stations and Duty Operations Chief (DOC) level and operations personnel under the DOC. Within the next six (6) months all other staff and support units (and personnel) will be introduced into the regional numbering scheme.
