Alarms, Manning, Attack Analyzed by Computer
features
A major problem for volunteer fire departments in growing communities is to determine at what point paid fire fighters must be hired because the number of alarms is becoming excessive for the volunteers.
Most small fire departments don’t have the capability to keep sufficiently extensive response records in terms of adequacy of manpower and time for apparatus to reach the scenes of various types of emergencies.
Most small fire departments also don’t have the resources to retrieve basic information that will tell them how effective they are in providing the required manpower and apparatus response times for various types of incidents. The problem is that this type of information must be retrieved and summarized in a usable form so that evaluations of fire department capabilities can be made.
As a volunteer-part paid organization in a growing area, the Sandy, Ore., Fire District faced this problem. In 1971, the district was 100 percent volunteer, and its 24 volunteers responded to 125 alarms that year. In 1977, the district handled 641 alarms with 45 volunteer and four paid personnel.
The district adopted a comprehensive plan for fire protection in 1974 that had as one of its primary objectives the continuation of the volunteer-oriented operation as long as possible while meeting manning and response goals.
Information needed
Early in public review committee deliberations, it was obvious that the district did not have the statistical information to prove its case for response times and manning levels. In approving the fire protection plan, the committee strongly recommended that the district develop an information system that could indicate whether the goals and objectives in the plan were being met.
With this mandate from the committee, the district examined its record system for alarm responses. We found that our problem was not lack of information, but lack of ability to retrieve, summarize and put it into a useful format that could be understood by both the people directly concerned with the fire district and the public. The obvious answer was computerization of our records.
Clackamas County provides tax collection, election and other services for special districts within the county. Most of these services are provided with the assistance of the County Data Processing Center, which also provides full data processing services for the county government. A meeting was arranged with Ralf Morris, the Data Processing Center director, to discuss developing a computerized information system. Morris turned the project over to his chief programmer, Robert Camper for development and study, especially as to how funds for the project might be obtained. Camper was able to obtain a CETA grant to employ a programmer trainee to work on the project.
Many program revisions
Numerous meetings were held to determine what information the district would like to receive and what would be feasible for the computer to provide. Because of our lack of experience in data processing, there were so many revisions of the program that it took 18 months to complete its development.
The results have been beyond our expectations. Twice a year we receive a series of seven computer reports based on our alarm operations. These reports allow us to examine and compare our operations in every way imaginable. The reports show alarms by type, area, hour, day, month and the specific station and apparatus assigned to respond. Manpower response to different types of alarms at different times of the day is recorded. Information showing response times by days in different areas of the district is available. Manpower response is broken down to show the number of fire fighters who responded with each apparatus, those who responded directly to the alarm and those who stood by at the stations.
The combinations of types of information that can be retrieved and summarized by the computer are staggering, especially when one considers that the basic information fed into the computer comes from a single page report.
Tactics evaluated
In addition to times and fire fighter response for each alarm, we record information on the Fire attack, the amount of water used for control and extinguishment and any problems encountered. This information is used to evaluate fire tactics and to determine what we should stress in our training program. A record is also kept on how each alarm was received and any problems that were encountered.
For emergency medical alarms, one additional information sheet is filled out by the officer in charge of the rescue rig. This sheet examines each EMS response in detail as to supplies and equipment used, types of injuries and sickness treated, effectiveness of the ambulance response and again, problem areas. This information will be used in our EMS training program and in evaluating emergency medical effectiveness.
Beside computer programs developed by the data center, the other elements of our information system consist of a mimeographed information sheet that is filled out by the duty officer after each alarm and a voice-activated recorder (cost $67) that is connected to our base station so we can retrieve our apparatus response times. We can also evaluate our radio procedures and tactics used.
Cost of service
We receive 12 copies of each computer readout for distribution to our board of directors, chief officers and any other interested persons. The continuing cost of this service is about $50 every six months to pay for the cost of putting the information into the computer, the computer time to digest it and the time required to print out seven reports. The initial programming expense of over $5000 was covered by the GETA grant. From this point on, any changes or additions in the programs will be done at the fire district’s expense.
The information in the computer reports has many uses. To begin with, the information has enabled us to accurately show our fire fighters’ response capabilities and our response times, which in turn allows us to reevaluate the assumptions used in developing the district’s fire protection plan. The reports also serve as a base point from which we will be able to make semiannual comparisons with our past operations, measure our effectiveness and identify trends in our responses. For example, reports showing a reduction of volunteer fire fighter response may mean that we will have to consider adding additional paid personnel. Of course, such decisions were made before the advent of our computerized information system. However, we can now base these decisions on documented facts instead of assumptions and guesses.
Probably the most important advantage of the entire system is that we will be able to present to the public in an understandable way the problems we are facing in providing fire protection and first-aid service. At the same time, we will be able to make a fairly accurate estimate of the cost of overcoming these problems. Thus, the community will be better informed when it makes decisions on the level of protection it desires and is willing to pay for it.
