The McMinnville Fire Department is upgrading its emergency communications by implementing the new Tennessee Advanced Communications Network system.
McMinnville Fire Chief Marty White said the system uses network towers installed across the state to maintain emergency communication among agencies. White said the new system should improve the Fire Department’s communication.
“It should make the system a lot more reliable, and it should make our communication better to where you can be in different areas and be able to communicate across the counties or even across multiple counties, even regional, we should be able to communicate,” White said.
White said if one TACN tower were to go down, the radios could use a different tower. White said the department has not officially joined the TACN system but expects the new system to be ready within the next month or two.
“We’ve been training on the radios,” White said. “We are not officially online with TACN yet, so we will have a little more to learn when we get in there and start working with it. Of course, the radios we have now are multi-channel, so we can go back and forth between VHS and TACN. So, right now the radios we are using now can be used either way so when TACN goes online, all we have to do is flip a switch.”
White said the holdup is that some work has to be completed on a couple of TACN towers in Warren County before they can go live. DeKalb County is a neighboring county that recently joined the new TACN system. White said TACN was first created after 9/11.
“At first, it was targeted for interstates and metropolitan areas,” White said. “Now they are branching out to your smaller communities and state park areas.”
White said McMinnville Police and EMS are planning to make the switch as well. White said there are plans to build more TACN towers throughout Warren County.