New technology aims to improve fire department response time in Washington County
A small change to the way that firefighters are dispatched in Washington County could help get critical information to crews faster, and in McDonald, they're hoping to make that change.
For each station to be toned out, or activated as they call it, it takes nearly 20 seconds in Washington County, and while that may not seem like a lot, seconds do matter.
When a department is dispatched, a series of radio tones alert fire crews to the call. The process includes multiple tones to activate pagers and sirens, as well as a return tone.
"If we have an in-town fire, we have about five companies coming just from Washington County, and that could take upwards of a minute and a half just in tones," explained McDonald Volunteer Fire Department Chief Phillip Boggs.
That is a minute and a half of radio traffic before crews can communicate effectively.
"If anyone keys up their [microphone] and starts talking before, sometimes that message isn't heard," Chief Boggs said. "Sometimes it blocks out other information, and people start walking over each other; it can create chaos."
Now, in an effort to improve, the department invested in new equipment that combines the tones and drops them down to only five seconds.
"It's small steps forward where we're going to help just a little bit for our community when calls come in," Boggs explained. "We are staffed throughout the day, so the sooner we can hear the dispatch audio, even though we do get a lot of details on our phone, sometimes there are things announced over the radio that aren't on the phone."
Chief Boggs said it will take a larger effort from departments to fully help emergency response times and radio traffic. He said that if they can drop the time down by 20-30 seconds, they can have people pulling out of the garage.
"If they're going to call in route on the radio instead of the tablet, the radio traffic can just congest a lot of details," he said.
Boggs said that he hopes departments follow and, together, things can run more efficiently and more quickly, even if it's by seconds.
