North Wales Fire and Ambulance Service Joint Control

A combined fire and ambulance control room covering the whole of North Wales: Anglesey, Gwynedd, Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire and Wrexham. The area runs from Holyhead to the English border and takes in Snowdonia, the A55 expressway, the Menai crossings, a long holiday coastline and the industrial belt around Deeside and Wrexham.

The control room is based at St Asaph Business Park. In reality, fire and ambulance calls in North Wales are handled by separate control rooms. This one merges them so a single session gives you both services.

At a glance

• About 220 units across 44 fire stations and 26 ambulance stations
• Almost 500 points of interest, including 35 hospitals with their departments
• 139 keywords covering ambulance, patient transport, fire, road traffic collisions and special service calls
• Eight radio groups: Fire West, Central and East; Ambulance West, Central and East; Patient Transport; Air and Critical Care

Areas

West: Anglesey and Gwynedd, including Bangor, Caernarfon, Holyhead, the Llŷn peninsula and Snowdonia. Rural, mountainous and a long way from anywhere.

Central: Conwy and Denbighshire, including Llandudno, Colwyn Bay, Rhyl and the A55 tunnels.

East: Flintshire and Wrexham, including Deeside, Mold and the busiest roads and industry in the region.

Callsigns

Fire callsigns are built as WN + station number + appliance type + number. For example, WN02P1 is the first pump at station 02.

• P - Pump
• A - Aerial ladder platform
• R - Technical rescue unit
• W - Water carrier
• C - Incident command unit
• F - Foam unit
• H - High volume pump
• E - Environmental protection unit
• L - Wildfire unit
• B - Boat / water rescue
• WN SM, WN GM, WN AM - Station, Group and Area Manager (officers)

Ambulance callsigns are the resource type followed by the base, for example EA Bangor 1.

• EA - Emergency ambulance
• RRV - Rapid response vehicle
• CHARU - Cymru High Acuity Response Unit
• APP - Advanced paramedic practitioner
• CFR - Community first responder, named after the village
• UCS - Urgent care service
• PTS - Non-emergency patient transport
• BARI - Bariatric ambulance
• DOM - Duty operations manager
• Helimed 61 and 59 - Wales Air Ambulance, Caernarfon and Welshpool
• Medic, BASICS, ACCTS - Critical care car, volunteer doctors and the critical care transfer service

Keywords

Ambulance keywords follow the current Welsh response categories: Purple (cardiac and respiratory arrest), Red, Orange, Yellow and Green. Fire keywords are grouped as FIRE, RTC and SSC (special service calls such as water rescue, hazmat and gas leaks). Patient transport journeys use PTS.

Hospitals

The three district general hospitals are Ysbyty Gwynedd (Bangor), Ysbyty Glan Clwyd (Bodelwyddan) and Wrexham Maelor, supported by the community hospitals. Specialist centres over the border are included for transfers, such as the major trauma centre at Stoke and the specialist hospitals in Liverpool.

Feedback and questions

This is a new control room and it is still being tuned. If a unit is in the wrong place, a keyword sends the wrong response, or something local is missing, please reply here or leave a review. Corrections from people who know the area are very welcome.

Planned changes

• Correcting the map position of some points of interest
• Adding more points of interest
• Checking the departments at the smaller community hospitals
• Adding task prompts for outside agencies such as the gas and electricity networks, police, coastguard and Network Rail

This control room is fictional and made for entertainment. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by North Wales Fire and Rescue Service, the Welsh Ambulance Service or any other organisation named.