The Riverside Fire Department has been waiting its turn to begin using the enhanced emergency radio system now in place at the new Washington County Communications Center.

The county began utilizing a new RACOM radio communication system in January and has brought all of the county’s law enforcement agencies online with fire and rescue services to be added as of March 1st. Riverside Fire Chief Chad Smothers says it will greatly impact emergency services as a whole for the county, “Our old radio system was very dated and antiquated equipment. It wasn’t even really able to be repaired, it’s limped by the last several years, so the new system will bring all of the emergency services onto the same system, the same platform, and we’ll go from basically 38% coverage in the county to 98% coverage in the county which is huge for emergency responders to be able to talk to each other on emergency radios and be able to communicate back to dispatch.”

Smothers says the old radio system could have multiple incidents occurring at the same time overlapping on only one or two frequencies, which could lead to different agencies “walking over each other” while being on the radio at the same time. He says the new system will eliminate that because each individual emergency call will be assigned its own individual channel.