Fire chiefs to inspect county dispatch protocols

‘Iron the discrepancies out, gentlemen’

Last Thursday, a committee of public safety o cials met to create a plan for addressing the recently-identi ed aws in the county’s emergency dispatch system.

In late February, Chief Todd Brown of Chester Gap Volunteer Fire Department noticed that his company was not being dispatched to emergency calls in areas where they’re usually the rst or second to respond.

“If there would have been an EMS call or a re call or something at Settle’s, just to give you an example, [dispatch] would have called everyone in the county before they called Chester Gap. So that was a big mistake,” Chief Brown told the Rappahannock News on March 2.

He immediately contacted Chief Dispatcher Janie Jenkins, who informed him that her dispatchers had “just realized some of the run areas were all messed up also.”

There are a few di erent databases and mapping so wares that interact within the dispatch system, and at the committee meeting last night Lt. Jenkins said she was not exactly sure where the errors originated.

Lt. Jenkins said that until the computerized system has been corrected, dispatchers are using what they call the “run book” — a 126-page binder that lists, for each location in the county, which re and rescue companies should be dispatched and in what order. Richie Burke, chief of Sperryville Volunteer Fire, said the book was used for close to 25 years before the computerized system was put in place.

Committee Chairman Sean Knick noted, however, that, “there’s some difference between the run book and GeoComm,” the electronic mapping so ware used by dispatch.

“They [Rappahannock citizens] are not calling to get the time, they’re calling because they need help,” Chief Brown added. “It’s the citizens of this county who pay taxes that we need to look out for.”

To remedy the errors, Knick suggested that each of the re chiefs comb through their areas in the run book and “query the entire county” for quality assurance.

Chairman Knick gave the chiefs two weeks to complete their inspection of the run book. The committee agreed to hold its second meeting on March 18.

“Iron the discrepancies out, gentlemen, iron the discrepancies out,” Knick said.