Orange County, NY, "County Fire" vs "UHF Fire Ops" vs "Battalions" (2024)

Hello everyone,

I am very new into the hobby of scanning and have been working hard on trying to pick and choose favorites lists for my SDS100. I wanted to ask anyone who may be familiar with Orange County, New York and how listening to fire works. I'm a bit confused on which subset of frequencies to listen to and when. A specific question I also had is UHF Fire Ops (with fireground A and B etc.) still used? What is it for? And what signifies whether a call is paged on Countywide Fire (on CoRNet) vs the frequencies of a specific town via their respective battalion.
I've tried reading through the descriptions available on RR itself but am having a bit of trouble. Any and all help with all things is greatly appreciated.

P.S. If you are willing to teach me anything about Orange County as a whole, including Police, EMS, etc. (any helpful tips or words of wisdom from experience) I would greatly appreciate it.....All I know so far is to either pick North or South simulcast depending on my location (choosing North since I'm primarily in Middletown with a SDS100

All fire calls are dispatched on 154.205, which is multicast over the Fire Paging talkgroup 4616. The only thing you won't hear on the Fire Paging talkgroup are the non-county dispatches from New Windsor PD (for Vails Gate), Warwick PD, and Woodbury PD...those come over 154.205 only and are not simulcast countywide so you may not pick them up well.

Units call into the county on the Response 1 talkgroup. For more significant incidents, they will move to one of the Command talkgroups for response/coordination.

Depts are free to use the Division talkgroups for communication during the response, on the fireground, etc. Not all depts utilize the Division talkgroups regularly, in particular those who have their own channels for response/operations.

Fireground comms generally take place on the UHF channels, which are simplex and not repeated. Fireground A is the primary fireground frequency except within the three cities, which would use City Fireground or their own channel if applicable.

Some of the local channels are probably no longer in use, so don't be surprised if you seldom or never hear anything on those channels. Not all of them are repeated so you'd need to be fairly close to the scene in some instances.

And yes, you want to scan the North cell when in Middletown. There is a relatively new subsite on Touro College which provides a very strong signal in the city. Be aware that not every talkgroup is carried across both cells full time, so if you're not hearing a particular agency on the North cell (such as Monroe or Woodbury PD), it's because no radio is affiliated with that talkgroup on that cell.

MrMiyagi said:

Hello everyone,

I am very new into the hobby of scanning and have been working hard on trying to pick and choose favorites lists for my SDS100. I wanted to ask anyone who may be familiar with Orange County, New York and how listening to fire works. I'm a bit confused on which subset of frequencies to listen to and when. A specific question I also had is UHF Fire Ops (with fireground A and B etc.) still used? What is it for? And what signifies whether a call is paged on Countywide Fire (on CoRNet) vs the frequencies of a specific town via their respective battalion.
I've tried reading through the descriptions available on RR itself but am having a bit of trouble. Any and all help with all things is greatly appreciated.

P.S. If you are willing to teach me anything about Orange County as a whole, including Police, EMS, etc. (any helpful tips or words of wisdom from experience) I would greatly appreciate it.....All I know so far is to either pick North or South simulcast depending on my location (choosing North since I'm primarily in Middletown with a SDS100

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Feel free to message me and I can help you understand the system