technology

Do it yourself … “What Resources?” Not exactly something we built ourselves, but thanks to our local Emergency Operations Center (in combination with our local Dispatch / Communications Center who use it for community-level emergency notifications) we have access to what I’d term “team-level” Everbridge mass notifications system. Using Everbridge we can send a message to all our team members; phone (land line, mobile, work), email, TXT either in priority order (with time delays in between) or all at once … all devices / mechanims - almost instantaneously.

Drones (UAV/UAS) helping on lighting strike fires We are a mountain volunteer department with access to a mutual aid partner Boulder Emergency Squad; a volunteer technical services emergency response team. BES run a UAS program - Unmanned Aeriel Systems, colloqually knowns as drones. BES UAS are systems because they carry technology; high definition cameras, heat sensetive cameras and radio technolgy to transmit those images (in real-time) back to ICP. This summer a powerful lightning storm started a set of fires in remote areas of our district.

Do it yourself … “CAD dispatch to membership” Modern Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) systems provide an email interface (often known as SMTP interface, with that M being for eMail.) Typically a department may request that their communications center (dispatch) assign an email addressfor them, and that email address receives notifications upon dispatch. The simplest step to take is to wire this email address to a Google Group of members who want dispatch notifications to their device.

Do it yourself … “Who is responding?” We are a mountain volunteer department where we respond to incidents from home. We don’t do shifts. With limited cellular service in most areas I was long against tools that showed I am responding thinking “wait 5 minutes and all who are coming will be on radio at station … no need to take time for some system.” That is still true, but I’ve changed my thinking somewhat, in the main because we now have a full-time Chief who is at station.

Technology for Volunteer Firefighters Overview:  Technology can help Volunteer Firefighters. Technology is a dirty word in volunteer firefighting. Technology gets wet and fizzles on the fire ground, technology makes things harder when time is of the essence, technology just sucks. Firefighters rant against technology. Much of this is true, very few technologies help during the incident, but technology can significantly help volunteer fire departments both before and after the call.