Benzie County (MI)

Benzie County Public Safety

Benzie County Fire/EMS Info

There are 6 fire departments and 3 EMS departments in Benzie County, Station 1-9. Stations 2 and 3 and County EMS station, which are always manned. All other departments are part-time and volunteers. All personnel check in to central dispatch when responding to their station during a call using their POV unit names. Example of a POV unit name: 15-73. To identify what station this POV belongs to/is responding to you look at the first two digits. If the first two digits are 15, the POV is responding to Station 5.

Examples:

15-73 = Station 5

17-21 = Station 7

19-56 = Station 9

This rule applies to all stations.

To determine the type of responding POV, you look at the latter two digits

Going back to the 15-73 example, the '73' indicates that this POV is a firefighter.

-01 through -10 means that the responding POV is a fire-officer Ex. 14-03

-11 through -19 means that the responding POV is a fire-medic Ex. 16-13

-20 through -99 means that the responding POV is a firefighter Ex. 15-73

This rule applies to all stations except for station 1. All POVs with the prefix 11- are medics Ex. 11-43

Station - Department - Address - Township

Station 1 - Thompsonville EMS - 14714 Lincoln Ave - Weldon Twp

Station 2 - Benzonia EMS - 448 Court Pl - Benzonia Twp

Station 3 - Frankfort-Area EMS- 120 Park Ave - Crystal Lake Twp

Station 4 - Frankfort-Area FD - 1223 James St - Crystal Lake Twp

Station 5 - Benzonia Twp FD - 1020 Michigan Ave - Benzonia Twp

Station 6 - Homestead Twp FD - 11508 Honor Hwy - Homestead Twp

Station 7 - Almira Twp EMS/FD - 7272 Ole White Dr - Almira Twp

Station 8 - Thompsonville FD - 14714 Lincoln Ave - Weldon Twp

Station 9 - Inland Twp FD - 19668 Honor Hwy - Inland Twp

Station 1 and Station 8 are located in the same building but are manned by different personnel.

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Benzie County Radio Info

Because of the county's small size (the smallest in the state), the radio service used for fire and EMS is fairly simple. As of Monday, 2/18/19, ALL fire operations are broadcast on P25. The one used analog public safety frequency in the county is 154.92MHz, which is used for dispatching tones and call description only. The County is currently testing and working on digital tone-outs, but 154.92 is still being used as of 5/9/19 for fire paging. As of 8/19/19, Two-Tone isn't being broadcast on 154.92 anymore, but call description is still patched through. In the near future, this channel may soon be deprecated along with the old EMS/Fire frequencies.

Benzie County P25 Info

Benzie County's law enforcement has fully migrated to the Michigan's Public Safety Communications System (MPSCS).

The county uses 3 different sites.

Site frequencies can be found by following these links:

• WPQD480
• WPQD481
• WQWL875

The main one used in the county is located on Zimmerman Rd at 44.641308, -86.016659

Another Site used within the county is in Inland Twp at 44.64250, -85.82369

The final site used in the county is located in Frankfort at 44.63608, -86.24081

The Talkgroup IDs (TGIDs) used in the county are as follows

65535 - PD TAC

4967 - PD DISPATCH

4335 - FD/EMS OPS

4201 - COUNTYWIDE

5534 - EMS TAC

5535 - FIREGROUND/OPS 1

5536 - FIREGROUND/OPS 2

5537: FIREGROUND/OPS 3

“Benzie County Attractions Information”

Crystal Mountain is using Kenwood portable 2-way radios and mainly uses the frequencies 464.5125 (Alpine Slide for summer months) and 462.3625 (for housekeeping operations). No other activity has been logged through their other channels.

Their radio system consists of at least 3 repeaters: one at the top of the crystal clipper lift, one atop the housekeeping building, and one on the top of the cell phone tower on site.