Hi Kathy, thanks for the welcome. I'm a return visitor also from last week!
They use pagers here, the firehouse is in a residential area. I was with our Ladies Aux. briefly (until my mother became ill) and quickly learned to appreciate firefighters all the more.
I joined a volunteer department a bunch of years back in California, and when I came to Alaska I was on the volunteer department on the north slope. My first fire was in February and the temp was 10 below. Talk about shocking!! Everything froze including me. Before I joined in sunny California, I had my first experience with fire sirens....where I had come from, that was what the air raid sirens sounded like. Talk about spooked!! One firefighter at a time we eventually all got personal pagers.