Respond to the scene or to the firehouse?

[ajsbear 11]

When you talk about driving your POV to the scene I remember years ago on Long Island the AVIANCA plane crash. Up on the north shore of LI in that area the roads are very narrow. Much like some of the roads in Northern Westchester, Putnam and Duchess that I have experience with. With so many POV's and police cars parked all over the place you had to bring victoms sometimes the equivelant of 10 blocks to get them to a bus for transport. if there was a fire, you would never have gotten the rigs near it.

[38ff 250]

My dept has been using I Am Responding for 6 months now. It's great. My dept's policy is that everyone except Chief Officers go to the station, suit up, and get on an the apparatus. It's great to walk thru the door of the station, look at the screen, and know what sort of crew and how many you have rolling in. I find it the MOST helpful for daytime and the "not so exciting, and you know some guys are gonna roll over on the call at 3AM and not show up" type calls. For the "big one" type calls, you know everyone is gonna show, so no real need for the system.

For the mundane calls, it's great for letting you know who's coming. Hypothetically, if a dept gets a car fire during the day when manpower is limited and they get 3 drivers calling in but no FF's, the drivers at the station can let the chief know and he can request a 2nd tone out, where is they didnt have the system, they would of waited longer to see who is going to roll in and then figured they needed more tones for manpower.

For depts with special teams (Dive, FAST, rope rescue, etc) the system is especially useful to know what team members are responding, and if more tones are needed without waiting the extra time then only to find out you need more tones.

For the system to work, all you need is a computer, screen, and internet connection. You speed dial the 800 #, and your name pops up. You pay the yearly fee, and thats about it. Getting everyone in your dept set up and into the system takes about 5 minutes per person. Getting my members to used to using it wasnt hard at all, and everyone was onboard with it within a few calls. It doesnt "slow down" your personal response time in my opinion. How long does it REALLY take you to dial a preprogrammed #, and then put the phone down. For me, about 3 seconds, and I do it as I'm running out the door to get in my car. At night, I get up, turn on the light, speed dial the phone, and get dressed and go. The system even terminates the call for you, so you dont need to. My dept found it easiest to program in the # as "A fire call" so it's at the top of the list of contacts in your phone.

An added side (but HUGE benefit) to the system is the ability to send out text messages to your members. We put out messages via the text about things that you dont REALLY need county to tone out for, but want your members to know. Examples are: monthy meeting reminders, putting chains on trucks in the winter, special drills, times when county has the "big one" going and wont put out announcements, trucks in and out of service, or whatever else you want to let everyone or specific groups in your dept know. It's a great way to keep members more in the know about goings on.

No, I dont work for the company, Im just a really satisfied customer of a company whos product fixes a common issue in my dept. They do give you a 2 month totally free test period. Try it out to see if it will work for you.

[antiquefirelt 994]

You can also view the IAMRESPONDING screen on your Blackberry or Iphone/Itouch or mobile laptop, which works well for Chiefs vehicles. As the previous posted noted, we use the "batch text messaging" as well as the scrolling announcements on the main screen for announcing drills. It also has an "In service" bar on the main page to show all you apparatus, when one is OOS for any reason the officer goes in and changes the status and it shows up as OOS on the screen.

[FFLieu 70]

It's easier and more logical to go to the fire house. That's where the necessary fire apparatus is kept and it also keeps the scene open for apparatus placement. How much of a pain in the neck would it be to be driving the engine in and having to negotiate around members' cars in addition to those that might ordinarily be parked in or near the scene?

[PFDRes47cue 653]

It's easier and more logical to go to the fire house. That's where the necessary fire apparatus is kept and it also keeps the scene open for apparatus placement. How much of a pain in the neck would it be to be driving the engine in and having to negotiate around members' cars in addition to those that might ordinarily be parked in or near the scene?

It all depends on the discipline of the members. If people are used to doing this, it runs quite smoothly. But if there is not enough discipline or understanding the nit will be a clusterfuck.

[Guest]

I believe that if it is the departments policy to have the member respond directly to the scene that that member should be issued red lights and a siren. Although in NYS volunteers are only allowed blue, it makes no sense to have an engine and a driver at a structure fire waiting for the other members because other vehicles are not required to pull over for the responding firefighters. There are plenty of times where a vehicle will not move for blue lights and they have no obligation (however stupid that is to move). That being said if there are payed members of a dept that will absolutely get the truck it makes sense to send the manpower to the scene to utilize the equipment on the truck. I think the problem arises when the dept is all volunteer and all of the members are standing at the call location scratching their heads and wondering why the rig hasn't called out responding. There are far too many times that there will be plenty of firefighters at the scene and not one has gone to the firehouse to grab a truck. What good is a firefighter without the tools of their trade, not much good at all.

[Guest]

Of course crews coming on scene all together on fire apparatus is preferable. There's no benefit to having members respond POV to the scene, but sometimes its necessary in large response areas. In CT, my fire dept. has a large response area, and the drive time from the firehouse to the far reaching areas can reach over 15 minutes. Waiting 10 minutes for firefighters to get to the firehouse before driving 10 minutes to the scene, when the apparatus can be on the road within two or three minutes, with firefighters on scene waiting for its arrival, it saves time in that instance. Ideally, every department would have members waiting at the firehouse for calls, ensuring the quickest and most efficient response to all incidents, but when you have departments that run less than a call a day, its hard to justify that time spent. Any sort of vehicles can clutter emergency scenes, I've seen ambulances, chief's cars, police cars, and simply poorly positioned apparatus screw things up for later responding units, so eliminating unnecessary traffic is always a problem.

[milan fire dept probie 2]

i believe it all depends on the town and situation,. if you have a relatively small town and the fire houser is in the center of the district, then yeah respond to the fire house but with volunteer towns covering large areas and roads that take time to travel over, i thinks its nessesary to respond to the scene in your pov. keeping the gear at the firehouse for my dept would never work out and not to mention there are hardly any jobs around here. almost all our memebers work outside of town, therefore it makes it a lot faster and eaiser for them to respond from work directly to the scene. so again it all depends on your town and if the manpower is around and close enough to justify going to the fire house first