Saving time, and lives
New dispatch system allows Stamford fire, EMS to reach calls faster
STAMFORD — Time is of the essence, especially when calling in a fire or medical emergency.
Experts say structure fires can double in size every 30 seconds. In a house fire, the first two minutes can be the most important and the only time residents may have to escape unscathed. So efforts to get fire engines, personnel and ambulances to the scene of a blaze or injured person quicker are rewarded in less damage and saved lives.
Over the past three years, Stamford has been been tweaking a new computeraided dispatch system that has shaved up to two minutes or more off the response time of its fire trucks and ambulances, which responded to about 18,000 calls for service last year.
The explanation for why they are moving faster around the city isn’t difficult to understand, although the technology of exactly how it happens day in and day out is more complex.
Fire Chief Trevor Roach said the new system was put in place for fire vehicles and ambulances in January 2016, less than a year after he took over the department. The system, developed by a company called TriTech which has since been taken over by Central Square Technologies, required GPS tracking be installed in the department’s nine engines, three
ladder trucks, a rescue truck and the deputy chief’s vehicle, plus more than 10 other fire vehicles, and the Stamford Emergency Medical Service’s 10 ambulances.
Before the switch was made, dispatching was done by district, Assistant fire Chief Mike Robles explained.
If a fire call came in from inside the Belltown district, for example, a Belltown fire truck was sent out even if, because of the geography of the two neighboring districts, it would have taken less time for a Springdale truck to get there.
Now, the system dispatches its fire vehicles and ambulances “closest to the pin,” said Roach, explaining that the pin is the destination for the service call.
“This was a major shift in the way we dispatch and we really saw fantastic results for that shift,” Roach said. “We are very proud of the system and how it has grown.”
Also as part of the system, the city’s 315 miles of roads have been graded to determine how quickly a fire truck can navigate some of municipality’s very curvy passages to more closely estimate their arrival times and routes, Robles said, while pointing to a fire district map projected on a screen in the Emergency Response Center on the sixth floor of Government Center.
All the districts show response-time savings, city figures provided by Roach show.
North Stamford’s response times went from 7 minutes, 33 seconds to 5 minutes, 33 seconds; in Glenbrook-Belltown times went from 5 minutes, 43 seconds to 3 minutes, 42 seconds. Shippan’s response times dropped from 5 minutes, 39 seconds to 3 minutes, 21 seconds and in Waterside, from 6 minutes, 9 seconds to 4 minutes, 9 seconds.
Those times even included reflex times, what department officials call the seconds it takes firefighters to get turned out of their stations and on the road.
Ambulance response-time savings are even greater, Robles said, because those vehicles are constantly on the move.
“Now we don’t care about where the ambulances are stationed. It is all done where they are and those times have decreased dramatically,” Robles said. “When the calls come in, it is calculating the time it will take all the vehicles to get to the incident and deciding who is closest and it is doing that all the time. It’s amazing.”
Standing next to a terminal in the Emergency Communications Center, also in Government Center, Robles pointed to a large computer screen being used by fire Capt. Patrick Tripodi to dispatch calls. On the screen was a mock call about a smoke condition inside a downtown high-rise. It demonstrated that once a call comes in, the new system dictates how many fire engines, trucks and rescue vehicles should be dispatched to the call and they pop up on the screen.
Robles said 99.9 times out of 100, the dispatcher will go with the programmed response and punch the “commit” key, which then starts the system calculating which trucks can get to the address the quickest. An estimated response time then pops up for the engines and the stations get an alert that they are being called out. If a truck is on the road and is one that is closest to the call destination, it too is alerted and notified where it is heading.
Joseph Gaudett, the new director of the Emergency Communications Center, said he was impressed with how much progress has been made in reducing response times and is hoping for even more time savings.
“Getting the right people to the right place at the right time is the most important job we have and the CAD (computer aided dispatch) system helps us do that,” Gaudett said.
Inside each of the trucks is an on-board computer called a Mobile Data Terminal, which is programmed with a map of Stamford and route to get to the call in the shortest amount of time, Robles said.
Roach said there are continuing tweaks to be made to the system.
“It’s like anything else . ... It has been a long learning curve,” the fire chief said.
At the beginning, Roach said there was some resistance to the new system, when firefighters didn’t believe the computed calculations.
“They know their neighborhoods, but as things are changing, the city is growing. The computer knows better than they do,” Roach said.
Robles said he would research the complaints and go back and show the firefighters that another truck would have reached the call, say, 30 seconds before they would have.
“We don’t hear it anymore,” Robles said of the complaints. “They go where the computer tells them to go and the computer is doing its job.”