I’m listening to the scanner feed from Rockingham County, VA, where a military jet crashed this morning. Emergency services had a hell of a time getting to the remote crash site. At one point, a senior fire leader on the scene asked the dispatcher to send someone (I think he referenced “services” or something like that) with more “codes.” At least I think that’s what they’re saying. Loads? Roads? Toads?
They referenced it again when the person arrived in the area with the “codes” and asked if he should proceed to the senior guy’s location since they had relieved most of the fire units after finding the crash site. The senior guy said yes, they’ll still need them because this thing will drag on for a day or two as they investigate and clean up the site, etc.
So what are these “codes?” There was other talk about isolating radio frequencies and such, but the “codes” seemed to be something material that needed to be brought to the site.
Without listening to the audio, or really having any idea of how they do things in Virginia…
Cones perhaps? As in to close off a road, or mark debris?
A “code” is usually radio-speak for a cardiac arrest. If they needed help due to a code or multiple codes, I could see that verbiage being used. One wouldn’t request cardiac arrest patients brought to the scene, however.
Outside of that, I’m out of ideas. And I do that sort of thing for a living.
“Cones” actually makes some sense. There was lots of talk about closing off roads, and I may have heard a sheriff’s deputy instead of a fire official.
Very interesting to hear it unfold in real time. They were really challenged by the terrain and lack of roads. Last I heard, they were taking up some locals on their offers of horses and ATVs.
That’s only one type of code, there are many. EMS uses 1-3 for the severity of the event, 3 being lights and sirens. In hospital we use colors, code blue is cardiac arrest, red is fire, we have colors for infant abduction, violent person, others.
ETA, they might have been requesting that dispatch roll more units??
Not “code [something],” just “code.” The word in and of itself is (at least in the northeast) a way of communicating a recently-dead person, in a way that those in scanner land aren’t supposed to know what it means. Many agencies use “code [something]” to denote some sort of calamity or sense of urgency, but “code” all by itself usually means “cpr in progress.” In fact, my EMT-Cardiac final oh-those-many-years-ago included “trauma megacode” and “medical megacode” modules, full ACLS workups of cardiac arrest patients.
Some fire trucks have IIRC ‘Nox’ or Knox’ boxes or something like that. Basically locked boxes that contain keys to businesses in the district. To get them open the firefighter needs to enter a code and at the same time central dispatch needs to send a code over the air, if received together the box is opened. Since opening of the box needs to involve a request over the radio there is a record of who opens it.
But from your description it sounds more like the above mentioned road cones.
Codes as the OP heard it was probably just that, codes.
My guess would be the scene commander dealing with way too much radio traffic on a single frequency.
At major incidents, we would request more codes (channels) to get dispatch to start organizing different groups, onto different channels. (incident command/Bat. Command, individual fire teams, etc.)
Lots of units/agencies arriving on scene with too few channels makes for a confusing mess.